Washington: President Donald Trump's administration this week told 40 states to eliminate parts of lessons that focus on LGBTQ+ issues from federally funded sexual education materials or risk losing funding.

The move is the latest in a series of efforts since Trump returned to the White House in January to recognize people only as male or female and to eliminate what he calls “gender ideology.”

“Federal funds will not be used to poison the minds of the next generation or advance dangerous ideological agendas," Acting Assistant Health and Human Service Secretary Andrew Gradison said in a statement.

That position contradicts the American Medical Association and other mainstream medical groups, which say extensive scientific research suggests sex and gender are better understood as a spectrum than as an either-or definition.

The funds in question under the Personal Responsibility Education Programme total over USD 81 million for 40 states, the District of Columbia, and five territories. Officials were told they have 60 days to change the lessons or risk losing their grants.

California was warned previously, and its USD 12 million grant was stripped on August 21. Other states have until late October to decide whether to comply or give up the funding.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong suggested there could be legal challenges. “Threatening to defund our schools over this is completely unhinged and we're not going to let Trump steal money from our kids,” he said in a statement.

The grants fund programs teaching adolescents about abstinence and contraception, targeting those who are homeless, in foster care, living in rural areas or places with high teen birth rates, and minority groups, including LGBTQ+ populations.

Alison Macklin, spokesperson for SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, said the money is used to train sex education instructors and for groups presenting lessons in schools or after-school programs.

“This money is essential to states and territories to support sex education,” she said. “They build critical life skills for young people.”

She noted that some states have laws requiring education about lesbian, gay, and transgender people.

In the letters, the federal Administration for Children and Families cited examples in textbooks and curricula they find objectionable.

For instance, a curriculum in Alabama encourages instructors to ask participants to share their pronouns. It also instructs teachers to tell students that people “may identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight. Some may identify as male, female, or transgender. All of these differences make us unique. Regardless of how you see yourself, your background, previous relationships or experience, each of you has a place in this group.”

South Carolina Gov Henry McMaster applauded the warnings during a question-and-answer session with reporters this week.

“The things they describe there really have got no business being in there," he said. “Somebody has gone crazy somewhere trying to put all this stuff” in lessons.