People for and against bills that could impact LGBTQ people in Alabama schools and colleges had their say in a legislative committee meeting Wednesday in Montgomery.

During public comment, residents argued that the bills were needed checks on school employees — or that they were an overreach that could harm people. HB244 and 246 are still awaiting votes from the House committee.

HB 244, introduced by Mack Butler (R-Etowah County), is an expansion of a 2022 law, sometimes called “Don’t Say Gay,” which applies to K-5 classrooms. The bill also prevents employees from displaying Pride flags and forces them to call students by the pronouns which correspond to their gender at birth.

HB 246, introduced by Rep. Scott Stadthagen (R-Morgan County), would provide immunity to students and teachers who decline to use certain pronouns or names and mandates students get parental permission if they want to use a different name or pronoun at school. This bill extends to students in colleges and universities.

If a student legally changes their name and gender identifier, they would need to provide documents to the school or university, and get parental permission, in order to go by their preferred name and pronouns.

Huntsville resident Susan Stewart said HB 244 is “outrageous and un-American.”

“Unfortunately, we’re wasting time and money on culture war bills while Alabamians are begging you to address urgent life-threatening problems such as food insecurity, housing costs, health care access,” Stewart said.

“Schools should be places of learning, not activism, and this provision ensures that classrooms remain neutral and focused on education,” said Becky Gerritson with Eagle Forum of Alabama, in support of the bill.

Former Rep. Patricia Todd, Alabama’s first openly gay legislator, was one of 10 Alabamians who spoke against HB 244. She said the bill doesn’t reflect what’s happening in classrooms.

“I didn’t become gay because I saw a pride flag or somebody taught me something,” Todd said. “It was a feeling of the heart. And when you look at bills in Alabama that you all are dealing with, it’s like the queer community is the enemy. I mean, we just want to live our lives. We want to pay our taxes, mow our grass, be with our families, raise our children without government interference.”

“We’re here. We’re not going away,” Todd added. “We’re going to continue to be loud and proud.”

Marisa Allison said in a statement she homeschools her child with her wife in Huntsville because of the initial “Don’t Say Gay” bill passed in 2022. She said HB 244 will restrict students from talking openly about their families and create “a hostile and dangerous educational environment for them.”

“What this bill will undoubtedly do for children from families like ours is force a sense of shame and illegitimacy onto them by telling them that their families cannot be discussed for the entirety of their K-12 public education,” Allison said.

After the public hearing, Rep. Jeremy Gray (D-Opelika) asked why private schools weren’t included in HB244. Butler said his constituents who came to him were from public schools.

“COVID exposed a lot of stuff that was happening in the classroom that the parents were unaware of,” Butler said.

Ted Halley, a proponent of both HB 244 and HB 246, described himself as someone who was formerly transgender. He previously spoke in favor of the “What Is A Woman?” bill, which Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law Feb 13.

“I know what it’s like to be transgender,” Halley said. “I know how hard it is. But it’s important to know it is not a real fix for an internal problem.”

Stadthagen’s HB 246 also drew more opponents than supporters to the public hearing. Paige Gant, a former math professor at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, said “this bill is a solution in search of a problem.”

Gant said this situation never came up as a professor and that it would put teachers at legal risk.

“Teaching is a difficult job and this would make it even more difficult having to worry about lawsuits coming about,” Gant said. “It places a burden on educators that is unnecessary.”

John Eidsmoe, senior counsel for a conservative legal nonprofit, Foundation for Moral Law, was a proponent for HB 246. He said clients in Iowa and Ohio were disciplined for not using people’s preferred pronouns.

“I believe that a student has a right to call himself by any pronoun he wants, but he doesn’t have a right to force others to use that same pronoun, especially if it violates that person’s religious or moral or medical or social or scientific beliefs,” Eidsmoe said.