Delegates share vulnerable, personal stories during debate on health education bill

As she rose to address the House on Friday, Del. J. Sandy Bartlett (D-Anne Arundel) first took a deep breath to steady herself.

“I am able to say this now, after 52 years, that I am a sexual assault survivor,” said Bartlett, who went on to tell the story of how she was molested as a child.

It was just one of the personal, and sometimes emotional, stories delegates on both sides of the aisle shared Friday as the House debated House Bill 161, which would require that state health and education officials create an age-appropriate health education framework that includes sexual orientation and gender identity, family, nutrition, and safe social media use. The bill also covers mental health, substance abuse prevention, and safety and violence prevention.

Bartlett started by saying she could not understand why debate on the bill earlier this week was triggering for her, until she realized that had it been around when she was a child it might have saved her.

“I bet you, if someone had told me, when I was 9 years old … that what was happening to me was wrong, it would have made all the difference in my life. It also would have empowered me to say ‘no’ to the individual,” Bartlett said.

Democrats said the bill is about much more than sex and gender identity, and that it would teach the youngest students about respecting other people’s differences and treating them with kindness. Parents would be able to opt their children out of curriculum involving sex education, they said.

But Republicans focused on the parts of the bill requiring components on sexual orientation and gender identity, arguing that certain ages are too young to learn about those subjects, and that parents should be able to decide if their children take part in those discussions.

House Minority Leader Jason Buckel (R-Allegany) drew on his experience as a father to argue that parents should be trusted make decisions on how their children learn about sensitive topics.

“I have a little 8-year-old boy … I love that little boy the way each and every one of you in this room love your children,” Buckel said. “It would be beyond disappointing to me – it would be crushing to me — if he mistreated someone or judged someone or hurt someone based upon their identity, based upon who they were, based upon who their family were.”

Buckel said he is fine with a curriculum that teaches kindness and respect, but that he’s heard from families who are concerned that the lessons for young students would go beyond those concepts.

“All they [parents] want is a chance to see in real time – this is what the lesson plan is going to be, this is what the curriculum is going to be, these are what the words are going to be,” he said. “If they’re good, if they’re something I’m comfortable with as a parent, if they’re teaching kindness, if they’re teaching respect, if they’re teaching that people are different and that’s OK.”

But Buckel said that it’s the specifics of the lessons that could make some parents uncomfortable and that “if it doesn’t work for me, as a family and as a parent, I’d like to … be able to say ‘I’d like my child out of that particular portion of the curriculum,'” he said.

Democrats stressed that families would be able to opt out of the Family Life and Human Sexuality section, but the bill is to ensure that school districts are complying with state health education standards, which include curriculum on LGBTQ+ issues.

Bartlett said later that she has shared her story previously, but decided to go into more detail on the floor in service of supporting the legislation as a whole, not just the parts that she said could have helped her as a child experiencing sexual assault. She talked about her mother, a single mom of six, spending weekdays in Washington, D.C., to earn enough to support her family in North Carolina, where she spent weekends.

“One thing that was on there [in the bill] was health. Nutrition is on there,” she said. “These are things that, with my mom being a single mom, we didn’t always get … You can’t make an assumption that everyone is coming from a home where there’s communication – you just can’t. And sometimes schools are the safe places.”

Bartlett wasn’t the only delegate who shared sensitive aspects of her childhood in support of the legislation.

Del. Deni Taveras (D-Prince George’s), said  the health education in the bill would have helped her understand her first menstrual cycle and her struggles with mental health.

“As a child, I was an orphan by the time I was 9. I didn’t know what a period was — I thought I got cut,” she said. “To me, as a child of a mother who committed suicide by the time I was 4, this means that I didn’t understand why I had chronic depression into my 30s. So, this is a life-and-death matter to me.”

The bill passed 95-39, mostly along party lines. Del. Sheree Sample-Hughes (D-Dorchester and Wicomico) voted no, and Del. Julian Ivey (D-Prince George’s) did not vote on the legislation.

This is the third time the House has passed the bill, which was first filed in 2023 in response to the Carroll County school board deciding to remove certain curriculum related to LGBTQ+ issues.

The bill has died in the Senate in each of the last two years. Del. Vanessa E. Atterbeary (D-Howard), one of the sponsors of the bill, concedes that it could face challenges in the Senate again, but said she has talked with Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) who promised to see what he could do with it this year.

Bartlett said that the bill could help children “who may not come from a two-parent household, or who may not come from a household where the parent has the ability, the wherewithal, or the knowledge to see the signs.”

She added that the bill is “for those children, and myself, who didn’t have a parent who could explain what was right, what was wrong, what I should be proud of, how I should protect myself — that’s what this bill means to me.”