USAID Encourages Students to ‘Hide Their Sexual Identity’ from Parents

USAID, which serves as the “world’s premier international development agency,” recently released a guide that promotes ways of integrating people who identify as LGBTQ into the American education system. To help public school partners implement widespread acceptance, the guide presents its “best practices for LGBTQ inclusion in education,” but admittedly states that “not all of these strategies will be relevant or appropriate in every country-context.” These 11 strategies include topics like the promotion of diversity, inclusion, and respect, limiting violence, increasing inclusive language throughout curriculum, and advocating for anti-discrimination laws.

Resources for inclusion like this new guide are not foreign concepts to the LGBTQ movement, as similar strategies have been tried in universities and among activist groups. USAID takes its agenda a step further than usual, experts say, since one of their suggestions could potentially infringe on parental rights and contradict the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

The ninth principle mentioned in USAID’s considerations has provoked a negative reaction from parents as it states education systems should “protect students’ privacy.” This means that USAID is working to ensure that students have the ability and right to, as the agency says, “hide their sexual orientation or gender identity from family and close friends.”

What conservatives, like co-founders of Moms for Liberty Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, find so outrageous about this form of integration, is that students would not only be encouraged to keep their “sexual orientation” to themselves, but intentionally hide it from the people they are most connected to. “American parents are fighting every day against this outrageous principle that teachers know a child better than their parents,” they said in a statement to The Washington Stand.

According to TWS’s Ben Johnson, the LGBTQ lobby has spent decades “pressuring public school administrators to mainstream explicit sexuality and transgender ideology in the classroom.” If educators incorporate this new proposed principle in their classroom, not only would children be exposed to LGBTQ ideology, but their parents will be kept in the dark regarding their child’s gender identity, and educators would assume responsibility. The guide states that it is, “imperative that educators respect students’ right to privacy.”

USAID’s role within education systems, it claims, is to “enable all individuals to acquire the education and skills needed to be productive members of society.” Instead of upholding this mission, experts like senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council Meg Kilgannon insist that they are “exporting the radical sexual extremism that permeates our own culture and schools to poor countries not yet infected with this content.”

As a federally-run institution, hiding such personal and private information from parents dodges what some see as outside of their jurisdiction and infringes on their 14th Amendment right, which “protects the fundamental right of parents to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children,” she told TWS. Disregarding this fundamental right, the guide pins responsibility on education officials to withhold the information from family members without the consent of the student.

The form of integration USAID suggests, according to Kilgannon, “is a disturbing example of sexual identity colonization by the United States government.” Instead of advocating for education and skills, like their focus claims, this federation “advises perpetrators to hide their indoctrination of children from parents.”

Although, as Kilgannon states, “the Biden administration is exporting the radical sexual extremism that permeates our own culture and schools to poor countries not yet infected with this content,” organizations like Moms for Liberty are fighting those efforts. Justice and Descovich emphasize that “there are multiple federal and state lawsuits going on about these very topics.” Other American leaders like Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla), who wants “education, not indoctrination,” are also focusing on reform in educational institutions.