As questions about transgender and gay rights continue to roil the Texas Legislature while it prepares for a July special session, Houston ISD Superintendent Richard Carranza on Tuesday proposed adding LGBTQ studies to the district's existing U.S. history curriculum.

Speaking at a community meeting hosted by the Houston Defender, a publication that focuses on the area's black community, Carranza said including LGBTQ - lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer - and ethnic studies in history curriculum will show students in the country's seventh-largest school district a broader picture of America's past.

Carranza stressed that conversations about including LGBTQ issues within history curriculum are just beginning and no decisions on such curriculum changes have been made. It could take months or years to implement such proposed changes.

"The LGBTQ movement in the U.S. has a history, and in many cases, many people would call it a civil rights history in terms of acceptance and in terms of who have been leaders of the movement," Carranza said. "I think it's part of the American history. To include that as part of what kids study is just a bigger picture of who we are as America."

Elsewhere, California schools are required to include the contributions of gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual and queer people as part of social studies curriculum, thanks to a 2011 law and a 2016 California Board of Education decision. Carranza was deputy superintendent and superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District from 2009 until last year, when he came to Houston, and he oversaw some schools that rolled out anLGBTQ curriculum.

Texas, however, mandates that education materials "state that homosexual conduct is not an acceptable lifestyle," according to the Texas Health and Safety Code. Another rule within the health and safety code encourages school districts to emphasize "that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public."

Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said those statutes only apply to curriculum developed by the Texas Department of Health, which districts can opt to use or not use. She said the law does not require districts to teach a certain curriculum and that districts have local control when it comes to deciding what will be taught in regards to human sexuality.

'This is Texas'

But Rev. Dave Welch, executive director of the Houston Area Pastor Council that has led local efforts to defeat pro-LGBTQ ordinances, said the proposal is about indoctrination, not education.

"Carranza is an import from San Francisco where this kind of propaganda that attempts to equate sexual lifestyles, gender confusion and hostility toward the traditional family has become the norm," Welch said in a statement. "The HISD Board of Trustees needs to remind Dr. Carranza that this is Texas, where the people of all ethnicities still believe that our children are to be protected, nurtured and educated, not used as a social experiment of a radical political agenda."

Neither Equality Texas nor GLSEN, two groups that advocate for gay and transgender rights, commented on the proposal by Tuesday evening.

Carranza's proposal comes as state legislators prepare to debate which restrooms transgender students and teachers should use on public school campuses during a special legislative session slated to begin in July.

Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have been outspoken in supporting laws that would require transgender people to use the restroom that matches their birth certificate at public schools and universities.

Although Abbott, Patrick and other social conservatives pushed for the so-called bathroom bill during the Legislature's regular session earlier this year, the proposal died after moderate Republicans in the House balked at determining how far-reaching such a bill should be.

Some in the Legislature feared economic and political repercussions similar to those experienced in North Carolina after that state passed a law in 2016 requiring transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificates rather than the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

City efforts mixed

While opponents of the bathroom bill say it will codify discrimination against transgender people and will open school districts up to civil rights lawsuits, those who favor it say it will protect the privacy and comfort of the majority of students who do not identify as transgender.

Houston's reactions to transgender and gay issues has been mixed. Although the school district passed sweeping anti-discrimination policies in 2011 that include protections for gay and transgender students, more than 60 percent of voters within the city of Houston rejected a similar proposal in 2015 that would have made it illegal to discriminate against someone based on sex, race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, among other characteristics.

Welch with the Houston Area Pastor Council said the defeat of the city's anti-discrimination ordinance should show school leaders that residents don't want LGBTQ issues discussed in local classrooms

Carranza said Houston is incredibly diverse and its curriculum should reflect that diversity.

"Those conversations are just starting, but we're not excluding any topic that is germane to what is America's story," Carranza said.