A slim majority of Democrats are opposed to letting parents opt their children out of LGBTQ lessons in school, a new Pew Research Center survey finds.
While 54% of U.S. adults at large say parents should be allowed to remove children from lessons on "sexual orientation or gender identity" if the ways these lessons are taught conflicts with their personal views, 51% of Democrats oppose the idea.
Republicans are far more likely to approve the opt-out of LGBTQ lessons. The survey found 79% of Republicans and 32% of Democrats believed parents should have the option.
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The Pew survey also asked respondents if parents should be allowed to opt students out of lessons on "racism or racial inequality" if the ways these lessons are taught conflict with the parents' personal views.
Respondents had vastly different responses when it came to this issue.
Most Republicans (55%) agreed this should be an option for parents, compared to 16% of Democrats and 34% of all adults.
The differences were even more pronounced when comparing White Democrats' views to those of Black and Hispanic Democrats.
Sixty percent of White Democrats believed parents should not be able to opt out of LGBTQ lessons, but just 42% of Hispanic Democrats and 34% of Black Democrats agreed.
White Democrats were also more likely to say parents should not be allowed to opt out of a racism or racial inequality curriculum. Eighty-one percent of Whites took this view, while 70% of Asian Democrats, 65% of Black Democrats and 61% of Hispanic Democrats agreed.
There were no differences in views between White and Hispanic Republicans on these issues, the report said, while the numbers of Black and Asian Republicans in the sample were too statistically small to analyze.
Racially and religiously diverse parents in states across the United States have protested school boards who've required students to be taught LGBTQ curriculum in their schools.
In Maryland last year, Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Hindu parents joined together to demand an opt-out for their children who were required to read from an "LGBTQ-inclusive" reading list.