Voters across Racial, Religious, and Political Lines Are United to Protect Kids and Parental Rights

While much of what is happening in our culture can feel heavy, thankfully there is good news! The American public has finally woken up to the LGBT lobbyists’ devasting influence on kids and families, and it overwhelmingly supports the absolute necessity of parental rights and religious freedom.

In fact, a new Rasmussen poll shows that even liberal-leaning California voters support parental rights by an overwhelming margin: 82% of the state’s likely voters disagree with the statement, “A person loses their parental rights when a child enters public school,” including 69% who strongly disagree. Only 12% think parental rights are lost when children enter public school. In addition, 84% of California voters would support a local law that required parents to be notified of any major change in a child’s physical, mental, or emotional health or academic performance, including 66% who would strongly support such a law. Only 12% would oppose a law requiring parental notification.

The Biden administration should take note of this and reconsider their multi-agency federal push of the LGBT lobbyists’ agenda. In their June 8 press release, the Biden White House announced that HHS’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has “just released an LGBTQI+ Family Support Grant to provide $1.7 million in federal funding for programs that prevent health and behavioral health risks for LGBTQI+ youth (including suicide and homelessness) by helping families to affirm and support their LGBTQI+ child.”

Considering the many coercive actions of LGBT+ activists and the Biden administration, when they say “helping” families to affirm and support their child, one can’t help but wonder if they mean “force.” (See “California Bill Would Consider It ‘Child Abuse’ to Not Affirm a Minor’s Chosen Gender Identity” as the latest example.) As Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Education Studies, Meg Kilgannon, said on the June 9 “Washington Watch,” the Biden administration is advancing LGBT rights at the expense of other people’s rights. With these new actions, the White House will help the Department of Homeland Security make threat assessments of those who don’t affirm the LGBT agenda.

The administration’s fact sheet outlining their new actions also states, “The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is announcing that … it will appoint a new coordinator to address the growing threat that book bans pose for the civil rights of students. That coordinator will work to provide new trainings for schools nationwide on how book bans that target specific communities and create a hostile school environment may violate federal civil rights laws.”

Does this mean that parents who fight to keep sexually explicit books out of schools could be legally prosecuted for violating civil rights? Because, as we have seen, “book bans” is a term used to scare people into thinking that parents want to suppress free speech when, in actuality, they are protecting children from sexually explicit material and groomers.

Thankfully, the agenda of transgender ideology in schools, forcing girls to accept boys on their sports teams and in their locker rooms, promoting sexually explicit books in libraries, celebrating Pride Month at elementary schools, and even transitioning kids without their parents’ knowledge has caused moms and dads from across the country to stand up and say, “Enough is enough!”

One such dad is Kyle Reyes. He and other parents stood up when their children’s elementary school in Connecticut showed a gender identity video to their children during Pride Month without their knowledge or consent. Reyes and his wife ultimately removed their children from the school.

You can watch part of the video shown at that school here. It is a clear example of indoctrination that’s been promoted by groups such as the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) for over 30 years — groups that Family Research Council and our allies have been actively opposing throughout their existence.

As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins wisely noted on “Washington Watch,” oftentimes we can substitute the word “indoctrination” when leftist groups say “inclusion.” For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) president said on MSNBC, “We have marked that there are actually 12 anti-student inclusion groups in the country that are pushing to ban certain books, ban curricula, punish teachers who talk about inclusion education and generally make our school boards miserable in seeking to provide an inclusive education for all.”

Perkins said, “Notice that she repeatedly used the term ‘inclusion.’ If you really want a more accurate description of what she was saying, replace the word ‘inclusion’ with ‘indoctrination.’ Parents are tired of schools indoctrinating their children with leftist ideology and so they are protesting, they are showing up at school board meetings to say, ‘Look, we don’t want our tax dollars indoctrinating our children.’ Maybe the SPLC has gone too far this time.”

Laura Ingraham vividly pointed out on her show that while liberal groups and politicians like to label opponents “white supremacists” to silence conservatives and parents, people are seeing through that tactic, because leftists are calling black and brown people, including Muslims and Jews, “white supremacists.”

Watch Muslim students in Montgomery County, Maryland speak at a school board meeting, saying they shouldn’t be bullied into supporting pride month which goes against their religion. One student explained, “The issue of gender and sexuality are influenced by our faith, and we should not be caricatured as ‘intolerant.’…Intolerance of the faith community threatens to erode support for religious freedom therefore eroding the benefits it provides for everyone.” In response, Councilmember Kristin Mink said, “This issue …puts some Muslim families on the same side as white supremacists and outright bigots.”

Ingraham explained, “This … is a disinformation campaign meant to intimidate good people from speaking out and those same good people from trying to influence things like school boards or their local governments. If kids feel under siege, it’s precisely because groups like GLSEN and HRC have turned our educational institutions into their own sick playgrounds for left-wing community organizing, and along the way they’ve shown their own vicious intolerance against parents and students of faith who just want a good education, not indoctrination.”

This issue of woke gender ideology being pushed on children, including in schools, is uniting moms and dads from various faiths and ethnic groups to speak up in defense of their children. Asra Nomani says that Muslim parents are waking up to the “unholy alliance” their community had with the Democratic Party after standing with conservatives to fight for parental rights.

“Parents everywhere, from the Muslim community to the Asian community, the Armenian-American community in California, are recognizing that their children are in the crosshairs of this woke army and they don't want to have any part of it.” Nomani went on to say, “These woke activists have stirred the mama bears and the papa bears in our Muslim community in a way that is irreversible. This is going to be the wedge issue of 2024, because they are now coming after the children.”

Again, anyone who openly disagrees with the default, woke values of cultural Marxists are labeled bigots and white supremacists –this includes Jewish moms. Three Jewish moms appeared on “Fox & Friends Weekend” with Rachel Campos-Duffy on June 10. They are leaders of parental rights groups recently added to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” list (along with Family Research Council and over 700 other groups). The FBI and the Department of Justice have used the SPLC list to, for example, investigate parents who speak at school board meetings. Education First Alliance Founder Sloan Rachmuth said, “It’s very remarkable that the three founders sitting here with you today … we’re all Jewish moms, and I was absolutely startled to find my name on a list with Holocaust deniers and dangerous neo-Nazis, and I find it remarkable and dangerous. … This isn’t just a passing citation in some obscure group. The Biden administration takes its marching orders oftentimes from the very radical groups who want to castigate normal parents fighting for their children’s education.”

These three moms who founded parental rights groups are examples of the difference that can be made by those who are courageous enough to speak up and fight for what is right. As more and more parents from various religions, races, and political parties speak up, we can fight the soft totalitarianism that has impacted America, and we can defend the self-evident truths endowed by our Creator which our Founding Fathers ingeniously protected through our Constitution, including the freedom of religion and speech.