Letter to Governor Abbott: Call for a Special Session

May 31, 2023

To The Honorable Governor Greg Abbott of the Great State of Texas:

The 88^th Legislative Session was a productive session for Texas. The Legislature passed numerous conservative priorities including legislation to protect children from harmful gender modification treatments and sexual drag queen shows, ensuring fairness in women’s collegiate athletics, and removing obscene materials from public school libraries.

Nevertheless, we share your frustration that other conservative priorities did not pass this session, including religious freedom protections for legal professionals, and a permanent Opt-In for Sex Ed requirement in law for school districts to obtain written consent from a student’s parent before providing human sexuality instruction.

The current Opt-In requirement is set to expire in August of next year, but the legislation (SB 163 by Campbell) that would have made it permanent failed to pass in the Texas House. We write to you today as a coalition to ask you to include Opt-In for Sex Ed on any further special session calls, as well as any religious freedom issues that were not handled by the legislature. We cannot allow important protections for students, and right of parents, to lapse.

Leftists across Texas are promoting radical sex-education curriculum in schools that seek to indoctrinate children with a harmful pro-LGBT agenda. It’s important for Texans to remember that children belong first to their parents and families, not to their government. Parents have the primary responsibility and authority over the education of their children.

In the past, Austin ISD, and other school districts run by “woke” leftists, have been known to use human sexuality instruction to directly attack the traditional, historical understanding of marriage and family, and to infuse divisive sexual orientation and gender identity issues into classroom discussions and coursework.

Governor Abbott, Texas is at a crossroads. We have a short window of time to make Opt-In permanent to protect students from activist school districts pushing radical gender ideology through sex education instruction. We are looking for you to provide leadership against the left’s radical agenda in order to keep Texas the beacon of freedom that the world knows us to be.

God Bless Texas,

Texas Values