Sex Ed Classes Can't Teach 'Gender Ideology' If States Want Federal Funds
Plus: Court refuses to break up Google, Epstein victims speak at the Khanna/Massie press conference, a shift in young men's views on porn
The Trump administration is threatening to withhold sex education funding from states that won't strike "gender ideology" from their curriculums.
State governments must "remove all references to gender ideology in their federally-funded Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) educational materials within 60 days," the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced last week. "This action reflects the Trump Administration's ongoing commitment to protecting children from attempts to indoctrinate them with delusional ideology," the agency said in a press release.
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What Is 'Gender Ideology'?
There's a lot going on there, but what jumps out at me first is the way this is positioned as part of a larger culture war.
The term "gender ideology" has no fixed meaning, of course, but it's become a common phrase on the right. For some, "gender ideology" only conjures up more radical ideas about sex and about gender—for instance, the idea that biological sex itself is a total construct. But for many, it seems to apply to the whole idea that people could have a gender identity apart from their biological sex, or the idea that being transgender is anything other than mental illness or degeneracy.
In this case, HHS isn't just asking sex ed programs to refrain from teaching more disputed ideas about sex and gender but from asking students their pronouns or even acknowledging transgender people at all.
One example of offending content that HHS gives is a sentence in a section on diversity that says "some may identify as male, female or transgender." To call that a form of indoctrination, rather than simply an acknowledgement of reality, is pretty absurd.
And some of the examples don't even have anything to do with gender identity and are simply about gender more broadly. Another example given by HHS of offending content is an instruction to sex ed teachers that "it is important to use gender neutral language while facilitating the sessions."
The battle is over the curriculum used in the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), which was created by the Obama administration. It's used by some public schools, and also by some state-run education programs for minors in prison, juvenile detention, and foster care systems.
Sex Ed Is Inherently Ideological
HHS Acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison said the administration's decision was meant to ensure that "federal funds will not be used to poison the minds of the next generation or advance dangerous ideological agendas."
But only funding sex ed programs that refrain from any mention of gender identity is an ideological agenda of its own.
Of course, the content of sex education curricula has long been a matter of ideological and political contention. For most of my younger years, the fight focused on whether programs should have to teach abstinence-only education. Now, the fight has apparently moved on to whether it's OK to talk about gender identity.
The battle changes, but the underlying theme of using youth sex ed programs to fight larger cultural and political battles remains the same.
On one level, there's no way to depoliticize sex education. Questions about sex, gender, and sexuality—and how to talk to young people about these things—are inherently value laden and will always divide people of different values.
But tying sex education programs to federal funding makes this paradigm so much worse. It inevitably invites these programs to reflect the whims of whoever is in national power.
And what we definitely do not need is one, nationwide take on how sex ed programs should handle the topic of gender—or any topic, really.
More Local Control, More Parental Control
That gets at the crux of this whole issue: the way federal funding is used to fuel ideological aims across the country.
If we want individual states, school districts, and schools—and the students and parents directly involved with them—to have more say, we need to divorce sex ed programs from federal funding.
That won't be easy, of course. (The PREP program is only one of the programs through which the federal government funds sex ed.) But it's the only way to ensure a modicum of local control.
Sex ed programs being funded at a state or local level won't somehow make sex ed curriculum non-contentious. Conservative states may still wind up with sex ed programs that many will consider too conservative, and less conservative states may still wind up with programs that many will consider too radical.
But divorcing sex ed from federal funding will allow these battles to play out based on the values and sensibilities of local communities, not the whims of far-removed political figures. It will allow for different communities to take different approaches, rather than being forced to follow a one-size-fits-all approach. And it will ensure that we stop seeing sex education across the country constantly shifting based on national political priorities.
Localizing these battles also means that parents and students in individual areas have more of a chance of actually influencing outcomes, since it's much easier to change policies in your local school district than on a national scale. And pairing state and local funding of sex ed programs with more school choice gives parents and students even more opportunity to both influence local policies on sex education and to wind up in schools where what's being taught is OK with them.
Court Won't Break Up Google
A federal court won't break up Google, despite the federal government pushing for it to do so. In fact, the government "overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints," Judge Amit P. Mehta wrote.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has rejected several of the Department of Justice's proposed remedies in a federal antitrust case in which Google was found guilty of illegally maintaining a monopoly on internet searches and on search advertising (not to be confused with the DOJ's other antitrust case against Google.) The government responded by proposing that the court force Google to sell off its web browser, Chrome, among other remedies.
Now, federal judges have responded—and rejected a forced breakup.
"Courts must approach the task of crafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility," wrote Mehta. "This court has done so. It has no expertise in the business of [general search engines], the buying and selling of search text ads, or the engineering of GenAI technologies. And, unlike the typical case where the court's job is to resolve a dispute based on historic facts, here the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future. Not exactly a judge's forte."
Ultimately, Mehta decided to bar Google "from entering or maintaining any exclusive contract relating to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app" and to make some of its search index and user interaction data available to competitors.
But Google "will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment," said Mehta's ruling. Nor will it be barred from making payments or offering other consideration to distribution partners for preloading or placement of Google Search, Chrome, or its GenAI products."
The court will not force Google to give users of its products a choice screen allowing them to choose other browsers, etc. Nor will Google be required "to underwrite a nationwide public education campaign," as the government requested. ("That remedy does not fit Google's violations and its terms are too indefinite," the court said.)
"Today's ruling in the Google search case wisely avoids most of the requests from the Department of Justice," said Jessica Melugin, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Technology and Innovation, in an emailed statement. "But the mandated data sharing introduces questions about who might qualify as a 'qualified competitor' and if that benefits consumers, or just Google competitors."
Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, hopes Mehta's ruling will positively influence judges in future antitrust tech cases concerning technology companies. "There are still concerns regarding the underlying decision," said Huddleston, and " in other antitrust cases against tech companies are ongoing." But "perhaps courts will also consider the caution about their inability to predict the future and recognize that innovation often remains our best competition policy."
More Sex & Tech News
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• More fallout from age verification laws: Porn data may be getting leaked in France, Mississippi residents are being blocked from an artist journaling platform, and porn platforms that aren't complying with the U.K.'s Online Safety Act are seeing a massive traffic boost.
• The Committee on the Judiciary heard testimony this morning on how the U.K.'s Online Safety Act and the European Union's Digital Services Act may be threatening free speech and innovation in the United States. U.K. Parliament member Nigel Farage testified, along with Lorcán Price of the Alliance Defending Freedom International and Morgan Reed of the App Association. You can check it out here.
• Porn age verification laws "are occurring alongside a remarkable shift in public opinion," notes the Young Men Research Initiative:
Young men are historically the heaviest consumers of porn and have traditionally been split on adding more restrictions," it points out. "But young men's attitudes appear to be shifting. While there is strong evidence that a majority of young men would not support a total prohibition on porn in the U.S., a 2025 Survey Center on American Life poll found that 64 percent of men ages 18-24 agree that accessing porn should be more difficult. This represents a significant increase from just 51 percent in 2013, and was well above the measured support from men ages 25-54 (just below half).
• Ruxandra Teslo on vaccinating newborns for hepatitis B at birth (and, no, it's not because of a refusal to stigmatize "degeneracy" among expectant mothers).
• How "end demand" policies harm sex workers.
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