As the Library of Congress notes, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month is celebrated each year in the month of June.
An entire month?! Our mothers, fathers, and soldiers only get a day. And then there is the “pride” angle. I’m not sure who you have intimate relations with should be a source of pride any more than your height, weight, or shoe size should be. (It’s worth noting that the barrage of days celebrating same-sex coupling doesn’t end on June 30. October is LGBTQ+ History Month, the same month we celebrate National Coming Out Day. In November, there is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. And in case you missed it, we had the Transgender Day of Visibility in March, and in April, the Day of Silence honored the contributions of the LGBTQ community.)
LGBTQ month is not about tolerance; it is about the agenda, which is a leading reason for the culture wars that all of us, especially parents, face practically on a daily basis.
Just a year ago, the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s “largest and most influential activist organization representing the interests of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community,” hysterically issued a state of emergency for LGBTQIA+ people in the U.S. HRC claimed more than 525 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills had been introduced in state legislatures. Men not being allowed in women’s bathrooms and 10-year-olds not being allowed to pick their own gender qualify as an “emergency” to HRC, you see.
HRC’s over-the-top alarmism aside, our nation’s youth are buying into the agenda. Big time. The results of a CDC report released in April 2023 reveal that 24.5% of high school students identify as gay, lesbian, transgender, or “something other than heterosexual.” Traditionally, that number has been around 3.8%.
The Pride bug is hardly limited to HRC; our institutions have also been infected.
National Review obtained a memorandum sent in May to federal judges and other employees of the federal court system recognizing LGBTQ Pride Month. Federal employees will have to undergo training that explores “the common misnomers associated with gender, why gender inclusivity is essential, and how to navigate gender identity professionally in the workplace.”
Needless to say, the schools are saturated with Pride propaganda. Scholastic, a major publisher of books and other educational materials, has announced a “Read with Pride” campaign, in which educators are provided with a list of “LGBTQIA+ stories” for “kids and teens.” Scholastic vows to use company resources to fight efforts by local school districts and parents to determine what content is appropriate for children.
Not surprisingly, Scholastic emphasizes that the very act of teaching is itself political and “is meant to impress a certain ideology on students.” The organization’s guide asserts, “Books and literature are never neutral; by engaging with queer literature for children and young adults, you are disrupting the status quo that implies being cisgender, heterosexual, and allosexual are the default. You are showing children an expanded way of thinking and being that validates all children and people.”
Taking it a step further, the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center has amassed a list of “Anti-LGBTQ hate groups. While all the usual Christian groups grace the list, it also includes “Gays Against Groomers.” I guess grooming children into the homosexual lifestyle is okay with the SPLC.
California, of course, is ground zero for sex-related craziness. Cities around the state have seen school board meetings turn into battlegrounds over parental notification on sex- and gender-related issues. In Temecula, Joseph Komrosky, a Christian conservative who was elected to the school board in November 2022, has been targeted by foes who claim his words and actions are divisive. Komrosky’s major sin is that he approved a policy requiring parents to be told if their child identifies as transgender. Supporters say he has kept his promise to restore parental rights and protect children from pornography and liberal indoctrination. The vote to recall Komrosky is too close to call as of this writing.
As a way to disempower local school districts, San Diego Assemblyman Chris Ward has authored AB 1955. This bill would prohibit all school boards in the state from implementing policies requiring parental notification regarding their child’s gender identity or gender expression without the child’s consent.
State-sponsored sex jihads are certainly not limited to the Golden State. In Vermont, a new lawsuit alleges that the state blocked two families from fostering children, despite the state’s foster care system crisis, because the families hold traditional, religious views on gender and sexuality.
Predictably, colleges have become a laughingstock on gender-related issues.
Russell Sage College, a private institution in Albany, NY, plans to offer a Gender-Affirming Voice Program starting in the spring 2025 semester. The school’s website explains that during the sessions, participants will “explore aspects of voice, like pitch, inflection, resonance, articulation, and loudness.” Attention will also be given to “nonverbal communication,” and students will be taught “how to sneeze, cough, and modify their voices to match their identities.”
At the same time that everyone is supposed to embrace the LGBTQ agenda, traditional masculinity is excoriated. Daniel Greenfield, journalist at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, writes that the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona is now promoting “A Call to Men,” whose materials teach that “all men and boys are complicit in violence against women and girls” and that the Man Box (traditional masculinity) does not allow us to be fully human. “Vulnerable boys are programmed to repeat the cult-like mantra, ‘I was taught gender norms, which means I can unlearn it and teach myself to be free.’”
In Texas, where sanity still prevails, children may get to read stories from the Bible in elementary school, according to a redesigned curriculum. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick explains that this will “get us back to teaching, not necessarily the Bible per se, but the stories from the Bible.”
The program’s adoption is voluntary and will go before the state Board of Education in the fall. The sex-obsessed crowd that would rather see children read books like Gender Queer, which graphically depicts young people indulging in various kinds of sex, and Ready Player One, which includes explicit descriptions of blow-up sex dolls, online brothels, and masturbation, is sure to do its best to nix the reading of any Bible-related stories.
Supporting LGBTQ Pride Month, Kevin Rector, a legal affairs reporter for the Los Angeles Times, insists that “Queer people should not just be accepted but celebrated.”
That is absurd. What willing people do behind closed doors is no one else’s business—not yours, not mine, and not the government’s. But to honor people—for an entire month, no less—for their sexual activity is an insult to us all, gay and straight.
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Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.
The common philosophy dictates that “compulsory education” is a good thing. “Compulsory” implies that parents take a back seat to “experts” or that parents are somehow incapable of deciding what their children must learn, or lack the authority to prevent detrimental indoctrination. Americans witnessing the shocking videos of parents in Loudoun County, Virginia being dragged out by police-enforcers of the State have learned just how far the Education Industrial Complex will go to brainwash and groom young children. Public schools have become purveyors of porn, and pure evil, and teachers along with “administrators” (who now outnumber teachers) are to blame. School administration long ago surrendered privacy of students to Silicon Valley. The bribes of free computers and so-called “learning tools” turned the poor kids into products to be assessed and marketed. That was evil and a complete betrayal of the kids.
America has always supported innovation, except it seems where educational choice is in question. Nowhere is there more at stake than in the kind of education parents select for their children. States can never be allowed to trump parents. It is time to do away with the public school. All education should be private as only under the auspices of a competing private system, will Americans be able to choose what is appropriate for their children and produce competing models for education. It’s worth noting that less than 20% of Biden voters support families at all: having them and raising them. Why are Americans letting these people determine the fate of their children?
Among college applicants, education majors possess the lowest SAT/ACT scores and grades. Teachers used to come from the top 10% of high school graduates. The over credentialization and unionization of this occupation/profession has ruined it and attracted people incapable of scholarship or lacking in the desire to produce a legacy of functioning, contributing citizens among the younger generations.
I was curious how pride month got started. It was a proclamation by President Clinton announcing June 1999 as Gay and Lesbian month for the 30 year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Sneaky how it evolved as a month long thing every June, and continues to be official by presidential proclamation. President Clinton changed his proclamation to include bisexual, transgender and queer identities. It is now celebrated regardless of presidential proclamation.
“Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do thereby proclaim June 1999 as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. I encourage all Americans to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that celebrate our diversity, and to remember throughout the year the gay and lesbian Americans whose many and varied contributions have enriched our national life.”
Yes, indeedy! Where’s the month celebrating the American family? Mom, dad and the kids? Why do we need D.C. telling us what to “celebrate”? If anything, it should be September 17th, Constitution Day, not “Juneteenth”.