By Laura Zorc in Newsweek
Mama Bears and Papa Bears, listen up. Nobody is going to save our kids from radical leftist indoctrination in their schools if we don’t do it ourselves. The woke mobs show no signs of letting up in their drive to influence how and what our children learn, so we can’t afford to let our guard down. It’s sad to think that the days of learning reading and writing, basic and advanced math and the facts of American history are in danger of disappearing forever. We’ve entered a new world in education, and whether it’s a “brave new world” depends on how brave we are willing to be.
The battle lines have been drawn, and once again my home state of Florida is in the crosshairs. Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed legislation that would restrict public school teachers from giving lessons about sexual orientation and gender identity to the youngest kids—Kindergarteners through third graders. The law will also make sure that similar discussions for older kids stay age-appropriate.
Ensuring that discussions about sex in school are age-appropriate—including minimizing discussion for children under eight who have (or should have) no concept of sexuality at all—used to be considered common sense. In fact, for most Americans, it still is. A Public Opinion Strategies poll found two-thirds of Americans agreed that gender identity discussions in K-3 classrooms were inappropriate.
You wouldn’t guess that from the backlash to what the Left has cleverly termed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Activists, Democratic politicians and their allies in business and the media have tried to turn this issue into the new civil rights frontier, and paint the new legislation as some sort of “Jim Crow” law targeting the LGBTQ community. Disney—which collaborates with Chinese communists to film movies in the prison-province of Xinjiang—has vowed to fight this legislation tooth and nail. One of its executives recently vowed to make 50 percent of Disney‘s cartoon characters LGBTQ or other minorities by the end of this year. This kind of manic overcorrection obscures what should be a very simple point: people can be for gay rights but also not want their seven-year-old children to discuss sexuality—of any sort—in school.
