‘Grooming’: The ubiquitous buzzword in LGBTQ school debate

DeSantis and other conservative politicians and parents who have criticized schools’ use of books with sexually explicit material argue that parents, not teachers, should be broaching such subjects with their children.

The main point of the Florida law is that it “empowers parents to be engaged in their children’s lives,” said Republican Rep. Joe Harding, who sponsored the legislation. At Monday’s signing ceremony, a placard affixed to the speakers’ podium and signs held up by young children featured the slogan “Protect Children/Support Parents.”

But Catherine Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel at Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., said conservative groups are capitalizing on the fear of unknown materials, books and discussion taking place inside classrooms to propel measures that would place more “surveillance” on teachers, librarians and other educators.

These groups “are really coming from this idea that sexual orientation (and) gender identity is something that’s being imposed upon kids,” Oakley said. “It comes from just a really fundamentally wrong position about where a person’s LGBTQ identity comes from.”

The current trend to limit the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity echoes similar campaigns of the 1970s in which far-right religious groups characterized people who identified as LGBTQ as trying to “convert children,” said Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who researches the U.S.-based religious right and the white nationalist movement. The accusation helped stall the expansion of civil rights for sexual minorities, Bjork-James said.