Missouri teachers and school counselors who are caught helping children socially transition could be charged with a felony and be required to register as sex offenders if a new bill passes, KY3 reported.
Under H.B. 2885, teachers or counselors commit the offense of contributing to the social transition of a minor student if they provide support material, information, or other resources regarding child social transition.
According to the legislation, which was filed this week, the offense would be a class E felony.
The bill defines social transition as the process where a person adopts a name, pronouns, and gender expression of the opposite sex, such as clothing or haircuts.
"This bill was created and really submitted to help parents and families and to help teachers," Rep. Jamie Gragg, R-Ozark, who sponsored the bill, told KY3. "I talk to parents every day who are frustrated with things that kids are being taught in school."
Gragg said the small percentage of teachers who consider themselves "social activists" are pushing the transgender agenda onto children.
"I would say the large majority of teachers in our state and also in our country do a great job; they do a fantastic job," he said. "This [bill] is to put the social learning development of our children back in the hands of the parents.
"Schoolteachers and professionals are trained to teach a topic or subject matter and help our children and their parents by bringing them along in that topic or subject matter," Gragg added. "They're not trained to do all the things that society has heaped on nowadays; teachers are underpaid already as it is."
If the measure passes, teachers or school counselors who are found to be aiding a child's social transition will have to register as tier 3 sex offenders.
"There are actually three tiers," Gragg told KY3. "The third tier of course, being the highest; 1 being the lowest."
The state representative said a teacher who talks about a student's gender identity would meet the criteria of a level 1 sex offender, adding that a teacher who displays LGBTQ signs around the classroom "would fall into that same category."
"Teachers are there in the schools to teach the topics that they're trained to teach and to help those children grow in knowledge," Gragg said. "They're not there to necessarily push a total social agenda, things of a sexual nature."
According to KY3, tier 1 sex offenders are individuals who have engaged in nonpenetrating sexual contact; public indecency, including exposure; simple possession of child pornography; and voyeurism of an unwilling victim.
Aaron Schekorra, executive director of the GLO Center, an LGBTQ community center in Springfield, Missouri, told KY3 that the bill is "a very extreme move" and predicted it won't pass the Legislature.
"It is just another in a long string of pieces of legislation that are meant to incite hatred and violence against the queer community," Schekorra said. "And it comes from a source that, frankly, has just been a bully to a lot of marginalized groups in our state."