Arizona’s Governor Doug Ducey today signed the repeal of a ’90s-era law which forbid teachers from “homosexuality as a positive alternative life-style” or even suggest that “some methods of sex are safe methods of homosexual sex” in health classes.
KJZZ reported: ‘Arizona’s [law] was created in the throes of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and after a 1986 recommendation from the U.S. surgeon general that HIV/AIDS education start at an early age. Lawmakers in Arizona initially resisted that recommendation, but that changed in 1991. “Rather than opposing it, they began to say, ‘Well, if we’re going to teach teenagers about HIV, then we have to make sure that we’re not teaching them how to be gay or how to have gay sex or things like that,'” [University of Utah law professor Clifford] Rosky says.’
The repeal of the law ends a lawsuit brought by Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights on behalf of Equality Arizona and LGBTQ students.
Said Lambda Legal Staff Attorney Puneet Cheema: “The writing was already on the wall, considering that the Arizona attorney general had already signaled they were not going to defend the law in court. We are thrilled that state officials have moved so quickly to get this harmful law off the books and allow LGBTQ students – in fact all students – to get access to the medically-accurate information that literally could save their lives.”
