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Parents' Revolt Draws Fire

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis displays the signed Parental Rights in Education Act, flanked by elementary school students on March 28, 2022, at Classical Preparatory school in Shady Hills. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)


By Robert Knight

Parents are up in arms from San Francisco to Florida and everywhere in between.

They’ve had a good look at what the schools are doing to their kids, and they don’t like it one bit. Naturally, the parents are being told to shut up and keep paying taxes to support an educational establishment that despises their values.

The media, like the leftist teacher unions, reflexively cast parents as the bad guys. Fresh from its prominent role in gaslighting America for three years over the Russian collusion hoax, the “legacy” media are now eviscerating parents and politicians who are trying to protect children from early sexualization.

Their ire is aimed at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and anyone who uses the term “grooming” to describe the schools’ blatant efforts to corrupt children sexually. “Grooming” means manipulating someone into a position of sexual vulnerability so they can be exploited.

“Grooming claims [are] part of anti-LGBTQ push in GOP,” proclaimed last Thursday’s awkwardly written front-page Washington Post headline. It’s a typical “Republicans Pounce” scenario. When progressives are caught doing something profoundly wrong, and their actions elicit a response, the leftist media focuses on the response, as if that is the wrongful act.

For example, Republicans questioned Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s abysmally light sentencing in child porn cases, so a Washington Post columnist put it this way: “The New Red Scare: Pedophilia.”

In the battle over schools, resisting the perversion of children is the supposedly immoral stance. Here’s the Washington Post’s runover page headline: “GOP’s baseless insinuations of grooming come amid anti-LGBTQ onslaught.”

The coverage includes a photo of a Michigan Democrat state senator who the Post says was “falsely accused of wanting to sexually groom children.” I don’t think “falsely” means what they think it means, especially when it refers to an opinion, not a set of facts. The senator clearly supports introducing small children to “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.” If it walks like grooming, talks like grooming and quacks like grooming….

The senator in question walked out on an invocation in which a Republican senator prayed for children “under attack.” The Democrat then blasted the Republican as “hateful” for “targeting marginalized kids.”

Remember, we’re talking about trying to protect five-year-old girls from being terrified they might really be boys. Gender dysphoria, as author Abigail Schrier has chronicled in “Irreversible Damage,” is rampant among teen and even pre-teen girls, many of whom are seeking to have their breasts removed. How did this happen?

The subject of “grooming” came up when Gov. DeSantis sharply objected to the Walt Disney Company freaking out over Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education Act.” The newly enacted law prohibits discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade and bars materials not “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” for older children. Oh, the horror.

Opponents slammed it as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Fine, the Guv said. You want to make up language that isn’t in the bill? How about we call it the “Anti Grooming” bill? Hysteria ensued. It always does when someone puts the tiniest speed bump in the way of the LGBTQ juggernaut that is remaking American life into a perpetual Drag Queen Story Hour.

Mr. DeSantis was called every name in the book. Now it’s Mr. Youngkin’s turn. He won the Virginia governor’s race in November by championing parents’ rights. He ticked off liberals by overturning the statewide school masking mandate and the teaching of Critical Race Theory. Now, he wants to hold a rogue school board accountable.

The Post, whose not-intentionally-ironic motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” called Mr. Youngkin a “tyrant” in an editorial. The governor has asked the legislature to amend a bill so that school board elections in Loudoun County, slated in 2023, would instead be held this November. Every eligible voter will get a chance to weigh in, including parents who support the board’s plunge into “wokeness.” That's "democracy."

Six school board members were named in recalls by an outraged public fed up with Critical Race Theory, covered-up sexual assaults and sexually explicit materials. No wonder the Post wants things to cool off before the voters have a say.

The trend toward parents reasserting their authority is spreading, with homeschooling soaring and private schooling getting a new lease on life. In Loudoun County, Cornerstone Chapel, a large nondenominational church in Leesburg, has purchased a 50-acre former private school campus in Middleburg, Virginia, and will open a new Christian academy in the fall of 2023.

Meanwhile, more states are considering anti-grooming measures. These include Georgia, Ohio, Louisiana, Arizona, Indiana, Oklahoma, Kansas and Tennessee, according to The Washington Times. Texas and even New York are poised to join the tide.

It’s all part of a parents’ revolt across the nation that can’t come any too soon and is scaring “progressives” to death.