Metro East Sun

Republican state Sen. Jason Plummer (R-Edwardsville) has serious reasons for not supporting Senate Bill 818.

"This legislation ensures that a large number of young children in Illinois will not receive sex education to protect them from things like predators, from sexual abuse,” Plummer said in a video posted to YouTube. “This ensures it. You’re voting to ensure that children in Illinois will not get the proper education to protect them from predators and sexual abuse. That’s what this does because it’s all or nothing.”

SB 818 seeks to replace everything after the enacting clause, including amending the School Code in courses of Study Article to repeal the sex education, family life, and instruction on diseases provisions. Instead, beginning no later than July 1, 2023, school districts would only be required to provide comprehensive personal health and safety education in kindergarten through the fifth grade and comprehensive sexual health education in the sixth through 12th grades.

In addition, districts, including charter schools, would be required to provide age and developmentally appropriate consent education in third through 12th grades.

Given the high stakes, Plummer is convinced it’s the wrong approach.

“We don’t think it should be all or nothing,” he added. “And on top of that, for those school districts that do implement this, for your cousins and your nephews and your daughters and sons and everything else, you have no idea who these groups are. You have no idea who’s funding these groups and based on some of the back and forth, I don’t think you’re entirely sure of what the curriculum actually contains."

Plummer also recently took Democrats to task over their passage of a criminal justice reform bill that he argues makes it “unaffordable” for small communities to have police departments.

"We're already seeing the consequences of this bill emerge, with one central Illinois village disbanding their police department entirely as the cost burdens of the reform bill weighed heavily over their small community," Plummer said in a late February statement on his website. "The fact is, the governor is making it unaffordable for police forces to operate and even harder for our officers to do their jobs."

Plummer said part of the problem stems from Republicans not being allowed to have input in the filing of the bill.

"House Bill 3653 is a terrible anti-law enforcement proposal that will have irreparable consequences for all Illinoisans, and I fear this is just the first of many so-called reforms from our governor that will threaten the safety of our state and pave the way for future criminal-friendly laws under this administration's leadership," he added.