NJ GOP Gubenatorial Candidate Vows Not to Teach 'Sodomy' in Schools (Where It Isn't Taught)

With educational curriculum under attacks from conservatives throughout the country, the GOP nominee for governor of New Jersey, Jack Ciattarelli, "is vowing to roll back school curricula that centers LGTBQ inclusivity, falsely claiming that 'sexual orientation' is being taught to kindergarteners and sixth graders are learning 'sodomy,' " reports the Gothamist.

"I feel lucky [our kids] are in their 20s and I don't have to be dealing with what you're dealing with right now. You won't have to deal with it when I'm governor, but we're not teaching gender ID and sexual orientation to kindergarteners. We're not teaching sodomy in sixth grade. And we're going to roll back the LGBTQ curriculum. It goes too far."

Ciattarelli made the comments during a campaign stop at a gun range last month according to a video the Gothamist/WNYC obtained. His comments were criticized by NY's gay rights group Garden State Equality. "Sodomy is a term�referring�to sexual acts that people of all sexual orientations engage in, but it has historically been used to equate homosexuality with deviancy, and anti-sodomy laws were long used to prosecute people for their sexual orientation," writes the Gothamist.

The use of the term "sodomy" is meant as way of "speaking in code or virtue-signaling to a very specific group of people," Christian Fuscarino, executive director of Garden State Equality, told the Gothamist. "He (Ciattarelli) goes on to say more bluntly that he wants to roll back some of the progress the LGTBQ community has made. We've seen enough of that at the federal level the last four years with the Trump administration."

Ciattarelli said in a statement that "sodomy" had "absolutely nothing to do with someone's sexual orientation and the inference that it does is purposefully misleading." He added, "Read my statement. It has to do with mature content being taught to young children. That is a parent's job, not the school district's."

The Gothamist reports that the campaign did not provide specific instances of mature content being taught to young children in New Jersey.

Ciattarelli is seen a a moderate Republican whose win would focus on fiscal matters. "Indeed, his website makes no mention of his desire to end LGBTQ inclusivity education, and it did not come up publicly during the primary campaign," writes the Gothamist. "'But issues involving education and racial or sexual identity have caught fire on the right. Controversies over transgender student athletes and teaching so-called critical race theory dominate right-wing media outlets and animate Republican candidacies around the country."