The most recent litigation, brought by Equality Utah against the state, attacked existing law that included an outdated prohibition on any “advocacy of homosexuality.” The Legislature repealed the provision during this year’s legislative session because it did not comply with current law relating to same-sex relationships. Equality Utah would have sued whether sex ed was in the classroom or online – the problem wasn’t the mode of transmission but the actual curriculum itself.
While Fawson’s bill is an attempt to take the sexuality out of sex in a prudish grasp at yesteryear, conservative pushback illustrates the trouble with reforming sex ed in Utah: Fawson’s bill is vulnerable to attack from even bigger prudes on the far-right.