It's been over four years since a new state law took effect requiring California schools to teach students about some of the LGBT people who have made significant contributions to US history, however there have been multiple delays in actually implementing a curriculum. As the Associated Press reports, California's Board of Education is edging closer to finally approving a new set of curriculum guidelines for history and social studies classes which includes units about LGBT history that begin in the second grade.

The curriculum would begin with discussions of diverse families, and would be followed in the fourth grade by discussing the role California has played in LGBT history. Subsequent units in the proposed curriculum in the fifth and eighth grades would focus on gender roles in the 18th and 19th centuries and teach examples of "individuals who flouted them," per the AP, and high school seniors would then learn about the 2015 Supreme Court case legalizing gay marriage, and about recent cases pertaining to transgender people and bathrooms, and more.

While individual schools and teachers have probably been teaching such topics all along, especially after the 2012 mandate, Carolyn Laub,of the LGBT parents group Our Family Coalition says that most have probably hesitated without having the backing of the state guidelines. "If educators perceive, rightly or wrongly, [that] they may not get support from their administration if they face pushback from a parent who says, `I don’t want you talking to my kid about that,’ they are reluctant to do a whole lot of inclusion," Laub tells the AP.

The original law, which was sponsored by Sen. Mark Leno, required "a study of the role and contributions of both men and women, Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, European Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, persons with disabilities, and members of other ethnic and cultural groups, to the economic, political, and social development of California and the United States of America, with particular emphasis on portraying the role of these groups in contemporary society."

Pushback from conservative groups led to a couple of failed petition efforts to overturn the law at the ballot box, with the second attempt failing to garner enough signatures in 2012.

Further pushback came from the LGBT community itself with complaints in 2014 that a proposed curriculum made only a cursory attempt to highlight several LGBT figures in history. That led to a set of detailed recommendations from a panel of 20 scholars affiliated with the American Historical Association, many of which are included in the proposal being discussed today.

SFist will update this post when final word comes on the proposal from today's meeting of the state Board of Ed.

Previously: Second Petition Effort to Repeal Gay History Law Fails