(LifeSiteNews) — A bill working its way through the Utah state legislature would provide Christian students the ability to opt out of certain homework assignments they have a moral objection to.
Republican state Rep. Mike Peterson told The Salt Lake Tribune that he introduced HB204 after his daughter said her professor required her to write a letter to a local politician expressing support for pro-LGBT policies.
“Sometimes a student gets put in a position where it violates their conscience. It goes against their own core beliefs. They’re not comfortable with doing that assignment yet currently have really have no recourse,” Petersen said.
Peterson’s “Higher Education Student Belief Accommodation” bill was pass in an 8-1 vote by the House Education Committee earlier this month. If signed into law by the state’s governor, it would go into effect on July 1.
Republicans currently hold a 61-14 edge in the Utah House of Representatives and a 22-6 majority in the Senate. Republican Spencer Cox is the state’s governor.
Petersen’s bill would create a “belief accommodation” process that ensures students at Utah’s eight public colleges and universities can object to required assignments on moral grounds. Students would submit a written notice to their instructor expressing their objections and the instructor, in turn, would need to “schedule an alternative examination” or “make accommodations for other academic requirements.”
“This isn’t a right or left issue,” Peterson said. “It could be someone who is told you have to write in favor of pro-life, or you have to write in favor of pro-choice to the newspaper, to your legislator, or be on an op-ed. We shouldn’t do it either way.”
Last month, President Donald Trump pleased millions of parents, teachers, and school officials when he issued a proclamation celebrating National School Choice Week. During remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump spoke of “the God-given right” of parents to “forge their family’s — and our nation’s — future.”
Trump also told the gathering that “to be a great nation, you have to have religion. You have to have faith. You have to have God.” He announced that the Department of Education will be issuing policy guidance to protect the right to prayer in our public schools.
“My administration is bringing the sinister ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ agenda to a screeching halt and … we are proudly eliminating Federal funding for schools that permit discriminatory treatment and anti-American indoctrination,” his School Choice Week statement said.