HRC Story Time Leaves a Plot to Be Desired
It looked like your typical reading class. Dozens of kindergarten students sat cross-legged on the floor watching their teacher turn to the first page. It didn’t take long for the five-year-olds to realize: this was no ordinary children’s book. “I have a girl brain but a boy body,” Miss McBride started. “This is called transgender. I was born this way.”
It looked like your typical reading class. Dozens of kindergarten students sat cross-legged on the floor watching their teacher turn to the first page. It didn’t take long for the five-year-olds to realize: this was no ordinary children’s book. “I have a girl brain but a boy body,” Miss McBride started. “This is called transgender. I was born this way.”
Thanks to a new partnership between two radically liberal forces — the National Education Association (NEA) and Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — there’s no telling how many elementary school students heard the exact same message in their own classrooms. That’s because Monday was “Read across America Day,” and for the first time, the country’s biggest LGBT extremists were official sponsors.
The NEA, which has been a satellite office for the far-Left wing of the Democratic party for years, insisted that it was “urgent” to ally with HRC now that the president has rolled back Barack Obama’s bathroom mandate. “The Trump administration has been openly hostile,” said NEA President Lily Garcia, “whether or not you’re a transgender soldier or transgender little boy or girl. It is more important than ever before that we speak out.”
In the Washington Post article about this new initiative, no one explains whether parents were warned. Judging by both organizations’ track record, it’s safe to assume they weren’t. After all, this is exactly the kind of outrageous indoctrination that’s caused millions of parents to pull their kids out of school and either move them to Christian campuses — or teach them at home. With radical sex ed around every corner — including first graders’ — and now this dangerous excuse for “story time,” it’s no wonder that U.S. homeschooling is in the middle of its biggest surge in 20 years.
Encouraging kids to accept — or worse, live out — this kind of genderlessness is not only destructive, it’s what the American College of Pediatricians calls “child abuse!” “When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such,” the ACP warns. Not to mention, the physicians go on, that this type of confusion is a passing phase. “As many as 98 percent of gender confused boys and 88 percent of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.”
For years, LGBT activists wanted to keep the goal of luring children into sexual confusion under wraps. Now that they’ve hoodwinked a lot of the country on their agenda, these extremists no longer have to hide. In fact, they are increasingly bold — even boastful — about their real intentions of recruiting kids. As the head of a Toronto publishing company famously said: “I have come to indoctrinate your children (and I’m not a bit sorry).” It’s up to vigilant parents to make sure they don’t succeed.
Originally published here.
Planned Parenthood Hotline a Wake-up Call for Schools
Imagine forcing every kid to walk around holding an ad for Planned Parenthood. Well, in California, you don’t have to imagine it. State Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D) is doing everything he can to seal the single largest free publicity deal in the history of abortion: a Planned Parenthood phone number on every student ID. Including kids at private and Christian schools!
He calls it the “Pupil and Student Health” bill, but critics of Gabriel’s AB 624 want people to know what it really is: an attack on the First Amendment. By slapping Planned Parenthood’s hotline on the back of every 12 to 24-year-old’s ID, California would essentially be forcing every student to join an abortion sales team. And if you think private schools are exempted, think again. Gabriel’s plan doesn’t just affect public middle schools, high schools, and colleges — but Christian campuses too. Good luck winning that one in court. Parents would be filing lawsuits faster than you can say “compelled government speech.”
And of course, it’s not like Planned Parenthood needs the publicity — especially in California, where the group holds a virtual monopoly on sex ed. Most kids are exposed to Planned Parenthood before they can even spell it. Thanks to Governor Jerry Brown’s Healthy Youth Act, Leana Wen’s group already has a head-start on indoctrination — which, as we all know, is her best shot at future business. Even charter schools are ordered to serve up Planned Parenthood’s propaganda in California, including the controversial “Get Real” curriculum, a program so radically pornographic that parents across the country have packed townhalls to have it removed.
If Gabriel wanted to put a resource on the back of student IDs, fine. But why pick a group as corrupt as Planned Parenthood? (An organization under criminal investigation for selling baby body parts doesn’t exactly scream credibility.) The answer’s simple. Planned Parenthood forked over $4,400 for his 2018 campaign. This isn’t about wellness — it’s about a down payment on future contributions. Apparently, California Family Council’s Greg Burt writes, Gabriel “doesn’t see the conflict of interest in using government resources to provide free advertising to an organization that has given him an endorsement and campaign cash.”
Speaking of money, Planned Parenthood doesn’t need to be on student IDs. They’re in our wallets already! Remember, this is an organization that rakes in more than half a billion dollars from taxpayers every year. Surely, they have enough cash to get out their pro-abortion message without forcing schools to advertise an activity they should be discouraging! Imagine the uproar if conservatives tried to put the contact information for a pregnancy care center on the back of student IDs? Or, since Gabriel seems to be so intent on political plugs, how about the California Family Council?
In the end, his idea isn’t just outrageous — it’s deadly. Gabriel is lobbying to replace the suicide hotline on the back of these kids’ IDs with an organization whose number one business actually leads to the mental health issues that cause some women to take their lives. As FRC explains in its publication, “Planned Parenthood Is Not Pro-Woman,” a “2011 peer-reviewed synthesis on the mental health effects of abortion included a survey of 22 published studies combining data on 877,181 participants, showing that abortion increases the likelihood of depression, anxiety, and reckless behavior such as alcoholism, drug use, and sadly, suicide.” Gabriel’s bill doesn’t just force young people to violate their beliefs — it promotes an industry that jeopardizes these girls’ health.
If today’s teenagers want to talk to someone about sex, here’s an idea — call home! Until then, stop using the heavy arm of government to burden these kids’ free exercise. As Attorney Dean Broyles with the National Center for Law and Policy said, “The radicals in the California legislature just don’t get it! We still have a First Amendment.”
When California tried to force pregnancy care centers to do the same kind of Planned Parenthood PR, even Justice Anthony Kennedy was appalled. It’s time to read the Constitution, he insisted, “to understand the history of authoritarian government as the Founders then knew it; to confirm that history since then shows how relentless authoritarian regimes are in their attempts to stifle free speech; and to carry those lessons onward.”
If liberals haven’t learned that lesson, then it’s up to Congress to help them. It’s time to defund Planned Parenthood — once and for all. If the abortion industry has enough money to fund Gabriel’s campaign, then it certainly don’t need ours.
Originally published here.
In the Hate of the Moment
The hate business has been a profitable one for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). But is the country really as hostile as they say? Some experts say no.
It was just last month when SPLC grabbed headlines with its latest “hate report.” The mainstream media was abuzz with the news that the animus in the U.S. was the highest the Center had every recorded — clocking in at 1,020 “hate groups” for 2018. To most people, a 30-percent increase seemed high. And thanks to PJ Media reporter Tyler O'Neil, we know why.
“When Americans hear the label ‘hate group,’” O'Neil explains, “they associate it with an organization — not a chapter of an organization.” In its latest “hate map,” he points out, SPLC is inflating its numbers more than three times over by counting every chapter of an association as its own separate group. “While SPLC counts 1,020 ‘hate groups,’ by their own reckoning there are only 354 ‘hate groups,’ and at least 19 of those are not actual hate groups. This means the real number of hate groups is only 335, although it is likely to be even lower than that.”
Why exaggerate the numbers? Well, for starters the SPLC needs some way to justify its existence. By making it seem like America is overrun by “hate groups,” they convince people that the catalogue they’re providing is necessary. If they want to fill their coffers, they have to show that hostility under President Trump is growing. That’s especially necessary after their friends in the liberal media published a string of damaging exposés that cast even more doubt on SPLC’s credibility. “Researchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center have set themselves up as the ultimate judgers of hate in America,” the Washington Post magazine argued in November. “But are they judging fairly?”
Not according to the most recent “hate list.” As usual, O'Neil points out, SPLC ignores any organization “dedicated to demonizing conservatives or Christians” (which just so happens to include the Center itself). There are fewer groups fostering more hate than SPLC, an organization that’s been linked to domestic terrorism in federal court. As Politico points out in its own damning feature, “Has a Civil Rights Stalwart Lost Its Way?” SPLC’s overreach has been clear since 2012 when it refused to take FRC off its “hate map” after Floyd Corkins walked into our lobby with the hopes of killing as many people as possible.
Since then, SPLC has so overstepped its bounds that it’s faced multiple lawsuits — and been publicly humiliated by a lawsuit that forced it to pay out a $3.4 million settlement with Muslim Maajid Nawaz. And its days in court won’t be over any time soon. Last Thursday, the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) sued Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) Executive Director Agustin Arbulu for launching a new hate crimes unit based on the SPLC’s labels.
“It’s one thing for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a private organization, to engage in political propaganda and political hyperbole,” AFLC’s Robert Muise says. But it’s another “when you have the attorney general who’s relying on that political propaganda to investigate and target us with the power of the state.” As usual, O'Neil points out, Michigan’s radical AG can’t point to a single criminal activity of the organization. But then, that’s not really the point, is it? The point is to silence and marginalize — a goal SPLC will have a hard time meeting now that so many Americans are onto them.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.
