The Daily Signal - Progressive Sex Education and the Battle for Our Children

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

Progressive activists seek to expand sex education in schools across America to include topics such as sexual orientation and gender identity. Their proposed curriculum also promotes abortion. On today's episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast," we listen in on The Heritage Foundation's virtual event Wednesday, the Protecting Children in Education Summit. Participants break down proposed leftist curriculum and addresses how Americans can stand against the sexualization of children. We'll hear from Irene H. Ericksen, senior research analyst at the Institute for Research & Evaluation; Monica Cline, a former sex educator with Planned Parenthood who founded the group It Takes a Family; and Mary Hasson, the Kate O'Beirne fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Serving as moderator for the discussion is Jonathan Butcher, senior policy analyst at Heritage's Center for Education Policy. We also cover these stories: President Trump announces a historic peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Unemployment claims fell below 1 million for the first time since March, according to the Labor Department. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says we could see the worst fall in history if Americans don't continue to follow CDC guidelines to fight COVID-19.  And be sure to take The Daily Signal Podcast survey here. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, August 14th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Kate Trinko. Today, instead of an interview, we're going to share with you a panel from a Heritage Foundation event this week, featuring top speakers discussing sex education and our children. If you'd like to listen to more Heritage Foundation events, please subscribe to heritage events wherever you get your podcasts. Also, we invite you to take five minutes to complete the Daily Signal podcast search. We want to take your feedback into consideration. So at the end of the show, head to dailysignal.com slash survey. Again, that's dailysignal.com slash survey to give us your input. Now onto our top news. Could this be the beginning of a significant change in the Middle East?

President Trump announced Thursday that Israel and the United Arab Emirates had reached a peace agreement. via Fox News, here's what the president had to say. Just a few moments ago, I hosted a very special call with two friends, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zaid of the United Arab Emirates, where they agreed to finalize a historical peace agreement. Everybody said this would be impossible. And as you know, Muhammad is one of the great leaders of the Middle East.

After 49 years, Israel and the United Arab Emirates will fully normalize their diplomatic relations. They will exchange embassies and ambassadors and begin cooperation across the board and on a broad range of areas including tourism, education, health care, trade, and security. This is a truly historic moment. Not since the Israel-Jordan peace treaty was signed more than 25 years ago, has so much progress been made towards peace in the Middle East. By uniting two of America's closest and most capable partners in the region, something which said could not be done, this deal is a significant step towards building a more peaceful, secure, and prosperous Middle East.

President Trump says he opposes Democrats proposed additional funding to the United States Postal Service for mail-in voting. In May, House Democrats passed a coronavirus relief package, which includes $25 billion in funding to USPS and specifically $3.5 billion for mail-in voting. The Senate has yet to take up the bill. Trump joined Fox Business on Thursday morning to explain why he opposes the funding. They want $25 billion for the post office because the post office is going to have to go to town to get these ridiculous ballots in. You know, there's nothing wrong with getting out and voting. You get out and vote. They voted during World War I and World War II, and they should have voter ID because the Democrats scammed the system.

But two of the items are the post office and the three and a half billion dollars for mail mail. in voting. Now, if we don't make a deal, that means they don't get the money. That means they can't have universal mail-in voting. They just can't have it. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, criticized Trump's opposition to mail-in voting during an interview with MSNBC on Thursday. The president's family was all out in California urging absentee ballot during the special election in the spring. So this is, nonetheless, yet again, shall we say, another contradiction, Pelosi. The economy is trending in the right direction. The Department of Labor announced unemployment claims for the most recent week available were below a million. The first time

that's happened in several months. Due to the coronavirus and the impact of the lockdowns and other measures taken to alleviate the spread of the pandemic, unemployment and unemployment claims have been high much of the year. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says this could be the worst fall in American history if people do not continue to follow recommended CDC guidelines. On Thursday, Redfield told WebMD that cooler temperatures in the fall and this winter will mean more people staying inside together, which will likely increase the spread of the virus. The coupling of COVID-19 with a normal flu season poses a threat to hospital capacity, he explained. When it comes to social distancing,

washing your hands and wearing a mask, Redfield said, I'm not asking some of America to do it. We all have to do it. It's a critical time in our nation's history. Now, more than ever, at the Daily Signal, we're committed to equipping you with the best information and insight we possibly can. And to do that, we need your help. By sharing your thoughts and suggestions through our five-minute online survey, you can help the Daily Signal improve our report. and reach even more Americans with the message of freedom. Find the five-minute survey at daily signal.com slash survey. Again, that's a daily signal.com slash survey.

Next up, we'll feature a Heritage Foundation panel discussing sex education in schools. And now I would like to invite my colleague, Jonathan Butcher, senior policy analyst in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, to join us along with the panelists, to begin the next panel on exposing sexual content in recommended curricula. Thank you, Jonathan. And thank you, Emily. And as the rest of our panelists join us,

I'd like to thank everyone for being with us this morning for session two of our event today in the Protecting Children and Education Summit. The title of our session now is exposing sexual content in recommended curricula and its failures to meet legal standards. It's my pleasure to implement. introduce the three panelists who will be joining us now. And I'll introduce them in the order in which that they will begin speaking. So first, Mary Hassan, who is with the Catholic Women's Forum at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. We'll be speaking first. She'll be followed by Monica Klein,

president of It Takes a Family. And then finally, Irene Erickson, who is from the Institute for Research and Evaluation. So thank you again. We have a great list of the attendees, I can see the size of our audience. And so very pleased now to turn this over to Mary. So Mary, if you would. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here, and I'm grateful to Heritage for hosting this program. I think it is just essential. So we're going to start first with a slide. This panel is on sexual content, but I want to back up for a second and point out one of the real problems going on in the school is the promotion of gender ideology, which is a radically different vision of the human person. Where the human person is fractured, there's no unity

between the mind and the body or the body and the soul. And instead we see this image of the person and this image of the gender bred person or sometimes you see the gender unicorn, gender elephant. Note that all these different dimensions need not align, that the person is just fractured into all these different parts. So I call your attention in particular to two things. One, gender identity. In this vision of the person, the person's identity is defined by feelings, their sense of who they are.

And that's what gender identity is defined as. It could be your sense of being male, female, neither, both, or something else. But that predominates over your bodily reality. And so the other thing I point you to is the description there of anatomical sex, where it talks about maleness and femaleness, as if there's no. no actual truth to the body that's fixed. There's the suggestion that even our sex is not something clearly defined as male or female. So what difference does this make? Well, we're seeing a rise in the number of children who are identifying as transgender or who are expressing confusion about

their identity. In other words, this idea that there's a separation between their feelings and their body or a mismatch is really taking hold. And it used to be that there were always a small percentage of children who would have some confusion about their identity. And yet the standard procedure was to either wait it out because when puberty would arrive, that flood of hormones would resolve much of that confusion or to delve into some sort of therapy with the family to try to explore why. What's the reason why this child is rejecting their bodily identity? or there are other wounds that need to be healed. And when those two approaches were taken,

85, 90% of children would resolve those confused feelings by puberty. That's called desistence. What we're seeing now is a different approach. It's called the gender affirmative approach, or gender affirming therapy or care. And that takes the approach that when a child expresses a gender identity, this feeling-based sense of who they are, that's at odds with their body, that the adults are supposed to respond with a no questions asked response

and to just simply affirm that identity as true. And that puts the child on the fast track to a lifelong dependency on medicine and just confusion, mental health issues, because it starts with social transition, which is just changing your hair, your name, your pronouns. But then it quickly moves for younger children to puberty blockers so that their body literally is put into, it used to be called a pause, but it's not fully reversible. It has damage to the brain, the bone structure, and just to the child's maturity. This is what the body's supposed to do. So the puberty blockers follow. And then from there, within a few years, the child is put on cross-sex hormones. So all this time, they're living as if they are the opposite sex or some other identity. But when you combine puberty blockers with cross-sex hormones, so all this time they're living as if they are the opposite sex or some other identity. But when you combine puberty blockers with cross-sex hormones, cross-sex hormones. In other words, you have a child with immature sexual function, and then you add cross-sex hormones, you sterilize that child for life. So this moving sidewalk, this fast track to transition through gender affirmation is a huge thing. It's so consequential in a child's life, and yet it's being promoted through our schools. And so that's what we're seeing, that schools are promoting this idea of affirming

any identity expressed by a young child, no questions asked, and then proceeding to socially transition the child, even without parental consent, as you heard from Luke's video. So how does this affect the curriculum? Let's talk in particular about that. What are you looking for in terms of schools? Well, this ideology, this view of the person,

comes in through specific courses. For example, five states require LGBT history to be taught, But that's not the primary route. It comes in first and foremost through bullying, anti-bullying curricula, through inclusivity, assemblies, and programs. In other words, those become the excuses to teach children this new vocabulary about who they are and to encourage them to explore. We also see this coming in to the schools through what I call an infusion, an infused curriculum, almost like an overlay, where the teachers go to professional development, they learn these principles,

and they infuse it into a variety of courses. Chief among them, health education, where now we're seeing something called Puberty or gender-inclusive puberty education, where they literally erase the idea of male, female, sexual difference, and it's all about body from the person. We're also seeing it in soft curriculum. Many, many schools have now gone to digital-owned,

materials or curriculum where parents are not able to monitor very well and teachers are turning to all sorts of activist organizations for specific additional curricula resources and so that digital curriculum comes in outside of the normal process of approving curriculum materials and that's something that you have a right to know about but is routinely not given to parents and then finally We see this in just the school culture. You know, the school culture of the average public school celebrates anywhere from three to 10 to 12 specific LGBT kinds of events or holidays or things like that that engage the children. It's not suffering from confusion with the idea that they should be allies. It's me to embrace this, regardless of what they are taught at home.

So these things have a huge impact, and we can probably talk in the Q&A about ways to take action besides exposing exactly what's being taught to understand that you have a right to know and that you as parents and activists have to be the ones to bring this to light because the schools, unfortunately, are not doing that of their own accord. So with that, we'll move on to the next. Thank you, Mary. I think that point of transparency, I think, is one that will come up later in the questions I can see already. And I appreciate the use of your term consequential there, I think, is always something that we need to think about when we're talking about young children. So with that, thank you very much, Mary. And so we'll move to Monica if you'd like to take it from here.

Hi there. My name is Monica Lial Klein, and I am the founder of a Texas family. And my goal is to educate and equip parents. to be the leading voice in their children's lives regarding marriage, sex, identity, and healthy relationships. But that wasn't always my story. I'm actually a former comprehensive sex educator of over 10 years. My first job was in HIV prevention. I worked for a gay organization. And then shortly after being hired, I was invited by Planned Parenthood to come over to their clinic and be mentored by their director of sex education. And so today what I want to share with for the next five minutes is really what is that philosophy behind that is really the foundation of Planned Parenthood's comprehensive sex education, the leading provider of comprehensive sex

education in really, I think, the nation and the world. And I think the first thing I want to mention is that they have a very distorted view of our children and of humanity and of sex. And I want to illustrate that with a couple of quotes. My mentor who taught me how to teach comprehensive sex education to school-aged children at Planned Parenthood. This is what she said to me. She said, Monica, when you walk into a room of school-aged children, imagine that they've done anything and everything when it comes to sex, and if they haven't, they will.

And it's your job as a comprehensive sex educator to teach them about every sexual practice and to teach them how to use condoms and lubrication to reduce their risk, and then teach them how to get to the clinic to get treatment and to have abortions. Now, when she told me the stories of these young girls coming into the clinic as young as 10 with sexually transmitted diseases, getting abortions, and even to the point of all foreign objects in their bodies, my first reaction was, you've convinced me, how do I teach these girls not to have sex? Because they were so young. But she let me know that it was very judging of me and others to tell a young person that they should not be having sex and that our job. was to meet them where they're at, which is their choice to be sexually active and to basically leave them there by giving them risk reduction education and referring them to Planned Parenthood.

Now, I believed her at that, it was 1996. I was pretty young right out of college anyway, but I believed her because, hey, they received government funding, Title X funding. They're the experts, so I trusted her. But I want to illustrate another quote from a Planned Parenthood nurse. After becoming an HIV educator over my 10 years, I rose up the ranks and eventually became the Title X training manager for the states of Texas and New Mexico. And as I was training Planned Parenthood in Corpus Christi, Texas, I was talking to them about human trafficking and the need to report cases of human trafficking. And I knew that there were many cases of statutory rape, human trafficking in Planned Parenthood clinics because my experience and my work. with them was that they always told me that they, you know, back then they used the word

pimp. They were very proud that they provided services to pimps and their girls. And so, and then many times they also let me know that young girls that they knew were having sex with adult men were coming in and they were still providing them with services and not reporting it. So here I was ready to teach them about human trafficking to correct what they had been doing. What's that? What I found is that they did not respond the way I thought they were going to. And so I asked them, why do you refuse to take this seriously and report cases of statutory rape, which is now human trafficking?

This is in 2009. And one of the nurses raised her hand and she said, honey, if she's not having sex with this man this month, she'll be having sex with another one next month. And they began to try to school me and tell me that these young girls wanted to be sexually active. They wanted to have sex with adult men. They went even as far as saying that she was empowered for having sex with a more experienced person who could pleasure her. That was the year that I decided to quit and that's when I knew that I did not belong there. And so again, I want to emphasize, this is a very distorted view of sex, humanity, and very distorted view of our children.

What is their goal? Their goal is to have a customer for life. They are a business. So, So they need very much so to sexualize a young generation, sexualize the children through comprehensive sex education, teach them how to dehumanize themselves and others through the act of sex, and make them dependent on needing to use their services, contraceptives, testing, and abortion. And so what you need to understand is that comprehensive sex education is like Planned Parenthood's marketing tool or their vehicle. They need comprehensive sex education so that they can, mold that child, sexualize them to become sexually active in school age years, and then

that be, as they then dehumanize themselves through that act, it's a natural next step to dehumanize the preborn child. So then it seems as though having an abortion is not that big of a deal to them anymore because it's all been normalized. There's also a huge move to normalize sexually transmitted because they know that when people are having sex like this and treating it like a like a recreational activity, having multiple partners, they will become infected. And so instead of realizing and being able to say this is not healthy to voluntarily be involved in a behavior that puts you at risk for disease, they're now saying STDs, getting infected is totally normal. Everyone has an STD, not a big deal. So they're really normalizing

school age sex, they're normalizing disease, and they're normalizing ending the life of a child through abortion. Now, another point that I want to make is that in order to be able to reach their goals, they need to eliminate obstacles, they meaning Planned Parenthood. So what obstacles do Planned Parenthood needs to remove? The number one obstacle for Planned Parenthood is the parent. You know, why? Parents are powerful. Parents are the key to protect children and creating that barrier between anything that's dangerous and their child. This is why I created it takes a family because the one thing that Planned Parenthood always emphasized to me is that parents, and this is a quote from them, parents are a barrier to services.

Parents are a barrier to their services. As soon as a parent gets involved in their child's life, when they know that they're getting services at a Planned Parenthood, that parent usually, they observed, would then take over as they should and start to, you know, have that authority, over their child and protect them and Planned Parenthood would never see that child again. So they need to eliminate the parent. And they're getting a lot of support to do this, as you heard earlier, about how the schools are not telling parents about all kinds of things, from gender identity to sexuality. But they are also getting a lot of support from the CDC because they have this, what they

call privacy and confidentiality for teen health, which really justifies these clinics to then make sure that parents are not aware of the health care that their children need or are getting. So there are several articles on the CDC that says this, that parents are an obstacle for teens to get their health care. And so they've created these very, very nice, clever language of privacy and confidentiality for teens. There's also, if you've noticed when you take your child to a general practitioner, they might say, okay, well, we're going to meet with your child by themselves. you wait here. There's no law that says that you have to do that. That again is just part of this

indoctrination to make parents believe that they're not supposed to be involved in their child's health care and that somehow their child needs privacy away from the parent and that is not correct. So what is their other goal is really what they're doing through all of this is redefining humanity, redefining sexuality, redefining gender, redefining marriage, redefining family. If you notice a lot of this, when you even talk about Black Lives Matters, you know, they've made a stance that the nuclear family is bad. And so a lot of this has to do with redefining all of those things. And so when you look at their curriculum, when you look at their philosophy and their practices, what you see is that there are no moral absolutes and there are

no biological absolutes. They ignore all of those things. Everything is relative. So they really do practice secular humanism in that regard. So I'm sure that you have made probably have a lot of questions for me and I look forward to that. But thank you. Thank you so much, Ms. Klein, for those comments and especially your story. I mean, I think that's a definitely a sobering, I think, message. And I think this issue of privacy and the role of parents is already coming up in some of the questions that we're getting already. So we're looking forward to getting to those in just a minute. pleasure now we'll turn to Irene is our last speaker and just a reminder for those of us who are on the call and who have joined us and even for our speakers if you could mute your mute yourselves

when you're not speaking and that'll keep us from getting some feedback while we have our speakers so thank you and Irene I will turn it to you and then once you are finished we'll come back on together and we'll have some time for questions and answers thank you thanks Jonathan you may be familiar with two claims made by advocates for comprehensive sex education. First, that teenage sex can be practiced safely, and second, that research shows comprehensive sex education is proven effective, and abstinence education doesn't work. Today I'm going to demonstrate for you that the research does not support either of these times. First slide, please. Okay. I represent the Institute for Research and Evaluation. I represent the Institute for Research and Evaluation

and we'll be sharing findings from our recently published study, reexamining the evidence for comprehensive sex education in schools. Next slide. First, research shows teenage sex is always a risky behavior. Next slide. For example, contraception provides incomplete protection for teens having sex. Even consistent condom use provides only partial protection from STDs. In addition, studies show one in six new condom users experiences of pregnancy. within one year and one in 11 women using birth control pills becomes pregnant.

In addition, studies show teen condom use has declined and STD rates are increasing despite increased federal funding for CSC over the past decade. And condoms do not prevent the higher rates of emotional harm and dating violence caused by teenage sex, especially for girls. Next slide. Science also shows the immature teenage brain is not equipped to master safer sex, risk reduction skills. Regions of the brain that control impulsiveness and judgment are not fully developed until the early to mid-20s. This means the teenage brain is not well equipped

for performing consistent correct condom use and the condom user error and failure are common. Finally, the teenage brain is not developmentally suited for negotiating consent to have sex. Next slide. Regarding program effectiveness, science shows that when measured by credible criteria derived from the science of prevention research, school-based comprehensive sex education or CSE shows little evidence of effectiveness. In fact, there appears to be more evidence of harm than effectiveness for CSE in schools. And the evidence for abstinence education appears to be better. Next slide. Our recent study reviewed 120 of the strongest most up-to-date studies of school-based sex education worldwide. Spanning 30 years of research, studies vetted for

adequate scientific quality by either the UN, CDC, or the Department of Health and Human Services, thus ensuring a credible database. Next slide. Looking at the results for sex education in U.S. schools, we found that only three out of 60 CSC studies found evidence of effectiveness defined as improvement in teen abstinence, condom use, pregnancy, or STDs for the target population. not just a subgroup lasting at least 12 months after the program and without other negative or harmful program effects Seven on the other hand seven out of these same 60 CSE studies found evidence of harmful CSE impact increased sexual risk behavior pregnancy or STDs Note that there was more evidence of harm by CSE seven studies than evidence of effectiveness three studies

By comparison, the evidence for abstinence education looks better. Seven out of 17 studies found effectiveness, improvement in teen abstinence lasting 12 months after the program, and only one out of 17 studies found evidence of harmful program impact. Next slide. Here are four popular CSC programs that have produced significant harmful effects, yet despite these negative outcomes and contrary to the recommendations of the field of prevention research, these four programs are listed on the federal teen pregnancy prevention website as programs showing evidence of effectiveness.

Next slide. We conclude with three recommendations. First, a cultural norm should be established that sexual activity is a risky behavior not suitable for children and adolescents. Second, programs that do not meet a scientifically-crested, definition of effectiveness should not be labeled as evidence-based, especially those programs that have had harmful impact. And third, given the lack of success shown by school-based CSE, after 30 years of research, a new prevention strategy is needed to replace the failed

CSE approach. And I should note that you can get a copy of this presentation by emailing me at ierickson.I.R.E. at gmail.com. And you can use this in meetings with state legislators or school board members or other policy makers to demonstrate that CSE has not shown effectiveness and is likely doing more harm than good. Thank you. Thank you to Irene and to all of our speakers for joining us. We have a few minutes here for questions and answers. So why don't we start and what I will do is I'll read the question and then so that everyone gets a chance to answer who'd like to. Why don't I call our speakers by name and then we can avoid talking over each other if that's right with you. So the first question that I have here, is there a basis

in federal law to challenge our states and schools district policy which allows schools to transition students, sexuality and gender without parental notice? And by let me add just a little bit to that and say if if not in federal law or what what can be done even outside of that. I mean what I think I think the root here is what do we have to do as a society, as families, as interested parents and teachers. So can we start, Ms. Klein, if you'll start, please. I'm actually not familiar with the laws for the transgender. I was actually hoping Mary would be the first. Jump in.

Well, very good. Well, that's fine. So Mary, please. And then Monica, Ms. Klein, if you think of something as Mary's speaking, we'll come back after we circle through Irene. So there are no cases specifically on point that say schools have a right to kill gender identity from the parents or that they have a right to move them on towards transition. There have been a couple of cases related to people in the school setting or orientation. Those are different things. But what's happening is the schools are putting this in their policies saying that students have a right to privacy and confidentiality.

And so much of this has been the way has been. paved by the approach towards providing contraception and condoms in school and parental consent. And there is an attempt right now as well to more officially enshrine this under the mature minor doctrine. But there's there is a lot of ground here to fight this battle because they do not have the law behind them. We parents need to speak up and we need to push back and we need to get legislation specifically protecting that before they pull the end run and try to get this into the law and other ways. But parents stand your ground. That's what I would say.

Thank you, Mary. Irene, I would just add a couple of things. I'm not an expert in the law either, but I would recommend contacting organizations like the Family Research Council and others that are on this program today because they do have legal staff that address these issues all the time. And then also, I would say at the local level, attend a school board meeting and sign up to speak before you go to the meeting and address your concerns, which will let others, other parents know and also the press. And we'll get maybe perhaps some press. I did this years ago about a gay club that was being organized at our local high school. And we were able to push back on that for a while.

I had one thing, Jonathan. In Montgomery County, Maryland, this is very similar to the case in Wisconsin. In Montgomery County, Maryland, there is a form that the teachers use when a child says that they are expressing a transgender identity and they want to transition. The form that the teachers use evaluate how safe those parents are. In other words, they are making a judgment about the parents being safe or unsafe. And on that basis, making some decision about whether they're going to put the parents in about what's happening with their children. There's no notice, no nothing, which is why that case in Wisconsin is, it's the first one specifically challenging this kind of effort by the schools. But we need to see a lot of parental pushback and more lawsuits, frankly.

Right. And I think that that's what we're seeing a lot with Alliance Defending Freedom, which has been able to effectively work on that as well. So I believe that they probably have some good resources and they may be speaking today as well. But yes, I mean, as far as laws goes, I'm not an expert in that. But it is definitely something to be very concerned about because what we're seeing is that because there's not a law, but yet the schools are making these policies and CDC has these recommendations for privacy and confidentiality for teen health. We're seeing that they're really taking advantage of that. but parents need to know their rights. And I think we can get a lot more information from Family Research Council and that

Lions Defending Freedom about those laws and our rights that they cannot do this. And I want to also, you know, just jump on with what Irene said is that involvement with your school district, that personal relationship that you have with your school board. And then even many times in our community here in Texas, I encourage parents to run for school board. A lot of this is happening because we are not being represented on the school board. We're not represented in the districts and we're not represented on the state level. And we need to become those leaders in our community to ensure that these things are not happening. I would just add that here in Utah, we have every school has what's called a school community council,

which is different than the school board and its parental involvement. It's kind of a hybrid between the PTA and the school board. But if you go to one of those meetings and speak and share your concern, then you get more parents aware, which they may not even be aware, and in support, and then they can take it, you know, the school community council to even if you're, you're not having legal grounds to stand on. If you get popular support, that can override, you know, what they're trying to do. Thank you and good comments all around. Okay, so we have a question here. And this one is for It Takes a Family. Your story is powerful and you matter.

How do I join It Takes a Family? Well, you can come to my website. It Takesafamily.org and you can sign up to receive emails. And you can email me directly if you have questions at Monica at It Takesafamily.org. And let me know how you'd like to help and be a part of that. I have one of the things that I've been doing is working a lot with some of the younger population. And somehow, I think it's a God thing that young people are actually listening to me. And I figured I was going to be listened to by mostly moms.

But I have sponsored several young adults in college to become sexual risk avoidance specialists. And I think that that's a really great certification to have through Ascend to learn more about sexual risk avoidance, the programs. I mean, this is the program that Irene was talking about being successful. And I think when we know more about the two health approaches to these health concerns that we have about our teens, risk reduction and risk avoidance, when you understand what they are, what they stand for, and how they're different, then you'll be able to then speak well about these topics with legislators and with your school districts, with your schools and with other people in your community. So that's one of the ways that it takes as family has been able to reach out as well as to start educating those young people and have them also be a sounding board wanting to protect children and in the definition for marriage and family and intimacy. Thank you. Those comments are great. So let me start with Irene, if I can, for this next

question because I think we've addressed it a little bit already. A lot of questions coming in about how to be active and how to respond. And I think what Irene was just mentioning to us, touched on this. So the question is, what can school PTAs do to be proactive in stopping sexual content from entering their school? And so, Irene, you talked about this a little bit, I think, just a moment ago. Can you elaborate or expand a little bit more? Well, it's not really, you know, an area of expertise. I'll give that qualification. I was speaking actually more from my experience as a mother. I think, you know, going, you know, getting involved is the key, going to the meetings,

ahead of time calling some people and saying, do you share this concern? Find out who your allies are, you know, first because there are going to be some people in the PTA and the school community council who are fine with these other, you know, approaches. But find out who your allies are and ask people to help you call and get people to come to the meeting. The school board meeting that I spoke at, I hadn't done that. And there wasn't hardly anyone there to support me. And I was so nervous that I gripped the podium to support myself. And there were posters in the back of, I shouldn't tell you this, because this will dismayed you, but in the back, hate is not a family value, you know. And I got my name in the paper, you know, but after that, there was.

was sort of a groundswell of people that rose up. And, you know, had I done my homework ahead of time, I could have avoided some of the notoriety just by calling and sort of getting, you know, my fellow, you know, friends that I knew, you know. And so that would be something that I would say is this kind of grassroots coalition building that many people are so good at in this movement. So. Yeah, I want to agree with that having that support from more people. Because if you, have someone you know who's really strong and conservative and they run for school board and then they're there all by themselves and they don't have anyone supporting them and at the meetings with them that makes it very difficult and so definitely getting allies together to work together.

But I think the other thing that I thought of is Irene was speaking about this is, you know, when they talk about hate and such and inclusivity, we can reach a common ground. You know, the CDC actually says that children who identify with LGBTQ are at even higher risk for disease and sexual violence and not using condoms. So they are more at risk than their heterosexual peers. And so what I always mention to people is sexual risk avoidance is good for all children, regardless of how they identify, regardless of their family formation, all children deserve the same protection, the same opportunity to health and information that protects them physically and emotionally. And so if the CDC is saying that LGBTQ youth are at even higher risk for all of these things, my first reaction is let's protect them as well with sexual risk avoidance.

So I really feel like there's some common ground we can find. Of course, I also know that a big piece of this is indoctrination. But if we are just talking about the health of the children, then sexual risk avoidance provides an amazing opportunity for all children regardless of their background. and regardless of their identity to be protected physically and emotionally. So if I could jump in here, I think it's a great idea to be involved in the school board, but I would caution parents not to place too much faith in that because unfortunately the school boards are way more responsive to the teachers' unions

and to the sort of the higher-up apparatuses in terms of the state organizations and all those things. But where you can make a difference is in exposing what's happening, because when these schools undertake things like not telling parents that they're socially transitioning a child or bringing in an explicit comprehensive sexuality education curriculum, they do not want parents to know. The average parent is very busy. So one of the best things you can do is set up a network of parents and monitor and then expose. And that's what the Arlington Parents Council does a tremendous job. but what it does is it puts the school folks on notice that they're being parents care and they're going to find out what their kids are exposed to. And it also helps you find the allies within the

school system because we know there are some great teachers, principals, administrators, families who are involved, many of whom are silenced and who don't know who their allies are, if you make it clear that you're about giving parents knowledge. Everyone should be in favor of transparency, knowledge, right? And accountability. So if you make that known and you start bringing these things to light and expanding that parent network within the schools, you will find some good allies, which means you will find more information.

And as I said, the schools are very much attuned to bad publicity. And the good thing is there is good media out there now. So you can bring these stories to light, but you can also just disseminate what you find among the parent groups that you have. And that can operate as a good check. The other thing is use FOIA. Find out who is professional developers. Find out who, you know, who are the organizations that are being paid to advise on the curriculum

or advise on the, you know, the comprehensive sex ed. Find that out. And again, criticize that. So information is your best friend. But they're not going to, they're not going to volunteer it. you have to go and look for it and then publicize it. Thank you, Mary. And I'd like to pose the next question to you.

And thank you for bringing up this issue of school boards. Actually, I should mention that. We've had a couple of comments here asking about getting involved with a local school board and this significance. But let me ask this one to you. So this question asks, so how can parents defend themselves if or when a teacher or doctor reports them to an agency such as CPS or Child Protective Services? And if there are examples that you know of, if you can, you know, elaborate on those a little bit, please.

So, Mary, we'll start with you. Yeah, unfortunately, there are cases. It oftentimes will involve a situation where the parents are separated or there's a divorce. And so you have parental disagreement about the course of action a child should take. So some of these cases we've seen, you'll have a child who declares a transgender identity. One parent's supportive, one is not. and then it's very difficult. The courts, unfortunately, are more and more sympathetic to the ones promoting transition because they have that gloss of respectability saying it's been endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. It's been endorsed by Endocrine Society and all this stuff, which you should know is not true in this sense. The American Academy of Pediatrics report that promoted transitioning kids or supporting kids in transition was written by one activist approved by a small committee. and then put out under the name of the organization.

It's not like 60,000 pediatricians said, this is a good idea. They did not. So you have to challenge those things. So here's what I would say is it's important to stay close to your kids, know what's going on, find your allies. If you get into legal trouble, you need a good lawyer. You have to fight it with the best tools that you have.

You know, whether there's First Liberty, there's ADF, there's Beckett, there's all sorts of good organizations that will help you. But I think the big thing is to be on top of it and to get in there early, but also let the school know you're a watchful parent and that you care and then say, how can I help? What committees can I serve on? And I serve on the committee that's reviewing their curriculum. And what is the process for being part of that? So it's not just the school board. It's getting down into what's happening in the school and all those other mechanisms. that allow you an opportunity to have input or to help shield and protect them. Great. I see Emily has joined us. So Emily, I'll turn it to you. Well, thank you so much, Jonathan. And thank you to all of our panelists for providing not only excellent information,

but very encouraging stories. So to close today's summit, I want to just reiterate what's been said already by many of the panelists, there are steps that interested citizens can take. First of all, learn what is going on in schools. Learn about your rights. Second, network. And then third, speak up. So the message of this summit is clear. Children should be protected from early sexualization and from indoctrination.

Parents should be involved in all important decisions in their child's life, particularly in education. We hope that the resources that we provided to you today, both through the talks and through the resource page, will equip you. But most importantly, contact one of the organizations in the Protecting Children Coalition. The reason why we decided to work together is because the efforts to sexualize children through education are happening at many levels, at the local level, at the state level, at the federal level, and even at the international level. That's why we have partnered together with organizations that work at the United Nations in Congress, in the state legislatures, and in the local school boards. So please contact one of our partner organizations to make sure that you are networked with others. Because there are so many people like you around the world, in America, in your states, and in your local neighborhoods who care about children and want to protect their emotional, mental, and physical well-being.

So thank you again for joining us today and please stay in touch. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify. And please be sure to leave us a five-star review and rating on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening. And Robin Virginia, we'll see you Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation.

It is executive produced by Kate. Trinko and Rachel Del Judas sound design by Lauren Evans Mark Geinney and John Pop. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.