According to a recent report from the New York Post, millions of US public schools are teaching students to “differentiate between biological sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.” The report highlights that more than 3.2 million US public school students are also covered by guidance that blocks parents from knowing whether their child identifies as a different gender in the classroom.
This sort of material in educational programs is more prevalent in blue-state schools and as such, many parents in deeply conservative states probably believe they are immune to this nationwide trend. However, they are mistaken.
Many reports have exposed that despite existing laws, thousands of educational institutions in conservative states are still being exposed to this teaching, and its prevalence is only increasing. Idaho is a recent example of how these concepts have infiltrated schools in Republican-leaning regions of the US.
What Has Been Happening in North Idaho?
A senior at Coeur d’Alene High School in North Idaho recently encountered a male, dressed as a male, inside the girl’s restroom using the stall right next to hers. Afraid and uncomfortable, she reported the incident to the administration, but she was told they couldn’t do anything about it and that she could just use the private nurse’s restroom since they had to allow boys inside the girl’s restroom.
Interviewed following the occurrence at the school, the student said that the school reiterated that they couldn’t do anything about the situation until policy changes.
Here is a clip from the interview:
The 2014 policy described in the interview above is vague at best. It is not official policy. But the secret guidelines have been in place since 2014 when the board was chaired by Christa Hazel – a person many residents say is a main figure behind the liberal takeover of North Idaho.
From the KC Spectator:
The CDA School District administrative guidelines were put into place before the 2015 ISBA ‘model’ policy 3281 came out… CDA School District’s Executive Assistant to the Superintendent did, however, ask ISBA for a copy of the transgender policy in August 2022…and was given Policy 3281 – the same policy that has been used as the foundation in other Idaho school districts since 2015.
The CDA secret administrative guideline, put in place in 2014, isn’t as bad as the Idaho School Boards Association Policy 3281 but it does have some interesting parts:
In January — right around the same time there was uproar at a Caldwell, Idaho school board meeting after parents found out the board was trying to pass gender policy 3281 — the Atlantic published a piece calling on Parents to defy parents and hide the gender identity of students. Parents in red states may assume that the concepts discussed in this piece are not applicable to the schools their children attend, however, they couldn’t be more wrong.
Despite what many may claim, these non-Public Internal Documents reveal schools in Coeur d’Alene, as well as other North Idaho Schools, do in fact have guidelines in place that allow transgenders in the restroom of their choice, require staff to use chosen pronouns, and prevents staff from discussing issue w/ parents.
What Else is Happening in Idaho Schools?
In an article by the American Mind entitled “Even in Idaho,” Anna Miller and Scott Yenor write about how School administrators in Coeur d’Alene manipulated an 11-year-old girl into believing she was a boy and should undergo gender transition surgery.
According to the report, the elementary school counselor coached the young girl into believing she was transsexual and instructed her how to tell her parents about her new identity. A recorded phone call revealed the principal and other school officials were aware of the situation and began calling the girl by a boy’s name while purposefully choosing not to inform the child’s parents.
Teachers in many Idaho counties are reportedly trained in gender theory and how to teach the curriculum. The recommended statewide sex education curriculum teaches school-age kids that there are five types of sex, and statewide sex education program standards require sixth through eighth-grade students to “differentiate between biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression.”
Idaho schools are not required to do this, unlike many other states, but advocacy groups and other branches of government undermine the sound intent at the legislative level.
Additionally, groups like the Gay Straight Alliance are now operating openly in middle schools and high schools in Idaho, starting LGBT clubs and recruiting young kids as members. At Lake’s Middle School in Coeur d’Alene Idaho, for example, children as young as 12 years old were handed out flyers inviting them to LGBT groups at the school.
Across Idaho, there are frequent courses for teachers instructing them how to ‘create safe spaces for LGBTQ+ students.’ One of the courses from the Idaho Education Association, for example, was described as designed to ‘help educators create spaces for all students, but primarily for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students.’
No State authority knows how widespread it is, but according to a recent study, about 14% of 6-8 graders gain practice putting condoms on in a required course and a large percentage of elementary and middle schools in the state teach curriculum promoting LGBTQ advocacy and groups.
According to the same report, 47% of school libraries provide students with LGBTQ-related resources, and nearly 51% of high school graduates have been taught to be LGBTQ+ allies in their required courses.
SEICUS data suggests that LGBTQ-affirming curricula are widely available in Idaho’s education system. According to their data, an estimated 31% of Idaho’s middle school students and 51% of high school students are taught about sexual orientation, ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression.’ The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN) data show similar numbers.
Around 48% of Idaho districts implement what they call ‘social-emotional learning’ in their guiding curriculum framework according to the Idaho State Department of Education 2021.
According to studies, social-emotional learning cultivates certain attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and behaviors in children. There are two types of social-emotional learning, ‘standard’ and ‘transformative.’
“Transformative social-emotional learning programs seek to displace and stigmatize religious institutions and cultural norms such as the nuclear family, meritocracy, and the church (Sailer 2021) and replace them with ideas such as gender fluidity, anti-white racism, toxic masculinity, and white privilege,” reads the report. “For example, the ‘Second Step’ program used in many Idaho school districts teaches children to adopt the belief that white people are privileged and to become activists for Black Lives Matter and LGTBQ causes.”
Just a cursory look at some of the books that are either at local school libraries, on reading lists for student book reports, or shown to them in class should concern any parent. Many of the materials in Idaho classrooms are recommended by North Idaho Pride Alliance, which calls for educating children on ‘LGBT issues and the lived experience of LGBT people.’
The group also vows to ‘work toward full inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons’ within churches.
What Needs to Be Done, and Why Legislation Hasn’t Worked Thus Far
This issue of “parents’ rights” in regard to school transgender issues became a topic of national discussion during Youngkin’s gubernatorial campaign when a self-identified “nonbinary” teenager assaulted two teenage girls in high school bathrooms in affluent Loudoun County.
During his first year in office, Republican Glenn Youngkin vowed to reverse many of the policies championed by his predecessor, Democrat Ralph Northam, yet many of the districts in his state still have this guidance and curriculum in place.
On Jan. 30, several students in Fairfax County, Virginia, told their parents about a disturbing video they were forced to watch at school, portraying white people as cartoon mosquitos. In December 2022, during a civics lesson at Irving Middle School, a teacher reportedly told students that black people had to go through all sorts of things that white people didn’t, and that “white folks” just wouldn’t understand.
School districts across the country with Republican governors and legislatures are maneuvering around executive orders and legislation by using new titles for curriculum like ‘social-emotional learning,’ or the new meaning for the acronym CRT, ‘culturally responsive teaching.’
In March of last year, officials in several Idaho school districts were caught in an undercover video discussing different ways to bypass the state’s ban on teaching critical race theory in public schools.
During the video, Melissa Langan, the chief academic officer for Caldwell School District in Idaho, was recorded explaining how the district intentionally renames curriculum in order to bypass laws. “Change the name, teach the same thing.”
“Social-emotional learning, we can’t say that here anymore. It’s mental health,” Cindy Dion, a district instructional coach for the Nampa school district in northern Idaho, said in the undercover video. “It’s just our mental health curriculum,” Dion said in the video again, referring to social-emotional learning. “We’re just learning how to worm around all those weird things that are out there.”
Conservatives have many more children than liberals do and it’s not even close. But there are major obstacles standing in the way of our children adopting our conservative values through and after college. The educational system is one of these obstacles.
Florida and Texas have attempted to pass several bills in order to prevent these sorts of curricula from penetrating deeper into their schools but to no avail. Hundreds of stories have since been published about the same sorts of lessons and images being pushed on students in K-12 schools in these states.
Continuously passing bill after bill is like ineffective radiation treatment on a tumor. It must be cut completely out.
It is not enough to attempt to pass one law that ‘bans’ this from schools and employment – this is a temporary band-aid that will be ripped off by propagandists finding loopholes in the laws. Republican states must form an entirely new curriculum. A reactionary curriculum. One that is radical and created under a conservative framework, and one that is pro-family, pro-nation, and pro-Christianity.
In 1994, the New York Times wrote about the conservative Christian members of the Lake County School Board ordering schools to teach why western and American culture was by far the best.
The policy, written by the board’s chairwoman, Pat Hart, said at the time, “This instruction shall instill in our students an appreciation of our American heritage and culture,” while most schools were coaching their students to hate western culture and despise America.
The regulation of morality has been a big part of American culture up until 1965. For most of American history, individual states regulated the morality of citizens in some form or another.
There were laws for sodomy and even cohabitation, and for a long time, even exposed breasts were banned from American TV shows. The Hays Code, for example, was designed specifically to reign in licentiousness in American film in an attempt to prevent the chain of events that have culminated in the slippery slope we see the results of today.
It is because we have peeled back these layers of protection that sexual perversion has worsened over time.
Florida recently passed a bill barring teachers from teaching children about ‘sexual identity’ from kindergarten through third grade. Put simply, the bill does not go far enough. Republicans completely control the governments of over 20 states, and schools in these states should not be allowed to promote gender studies, have ‘pride’ celebrations in any grade, or allow groups like the GSA to operate on school grounds.
Not only is this a major moral battle in the culture war for the next generation, but all of these things are a direct violation of the religious beliefs of Christian students in these schools.
Prayer in schools was just as common as the pledge of allegiance before the 1960s. Following the 1960s sexual revolution, this all changed and continues to change for the worse each passing year.
In June of 1962, the United States Supreme Court decided in Engel v. Vitale that a prayer approved for use in schools was in violation of the First Amendment by constituting schools an ‘establishment of religion.’ The following year, in June of 1963, the Court disallowed Bible readings in public schools for similar reasons, in Abington School District v. Schempp.
These two landmark decisions, both occurring in June, ultimately changed the face of American civil society, and in turn, helped usher in the last 50 years of the culture wars. Religiosity is all but dead in schools and some conservative pundits say that today, students across America are essentially required to convert to a new religion.
If Christianity is no longer welcome in public schools, why should something that directly violates the religious beliefs of students be?
Because of the police powers under the 10th amendment, individual states with legislatures dominated by Republicans can very easily pass laws that prevent this from happening. The bills must have teeth and prohibit any celebration of LGBT in schools as well as the discussion of gender identity through high school.
Coupled with anti-abortion bills, bills that challenge Obergefell v Hodges, laws that are tough on crime, and pro-gun legislation, this combination will help keep red states red and keep blue state refugees from migrating and taking over conservative areas.
Conservatives need to stop legislating according to the moral framework the left has molded for them, and instead start legislating according to the Christian understanding of morality. Usually, when conservatives are courageous enough to stick together on issues they succeed in defending their values. Gun rights and abortion are perfect examples of this.
