The Highwire with Del Bigtree - FATHER FIGHTS FOR PARENTAL RIGHTS

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

From Episode 317: Lost in Trans NationBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

When we think about the child, which is I think the part of this that we're all the most sensitive about. You know, I have a daughter that's nine years old. I have a son that's 14. We are fairly in control of their environment. We started our own school. We didn't like where it was going during COVID. But I know so many of you out there are trust in the school system you're in. You're busy. I get it. You know, there's only so many fires we can put out in a lifetime here. But imagine that you find out that maybe your kindergarten or first grader, maybe even fourth grader, was, they read this book in school.

This is one of those, and we've seen it all. I've seen the, you know, the protests at school board meetings. And here's just a couple experts. But this is basically, let me just, just the idea is this is a story about a little girl that's born and she thinks she's a boy. And, you know, some very, you know, it's sweet but confusing art. There's even a boy in here that sees himself as a boy that's wearing a dress all around. So it's all sort of thrown up in the air, at least from what, you know, storybooks used to have in it when I was a child.

But here's just a couple of excerpts. You just get a sense of what is being read to some children in this country in their schools. When a baby is born, a grown up says it's a boy or it's a girl. If a brand new baby could talk, sometimes that baby might say, no, I'm not. When a baby grows up to be transgender, it means that the grown-up, who said they were a boy or girl made a mistake. And in this case, it really points out the parents later on as they find their way in this book. My mom and dad talked to my teacher, and we found a group for kids like me, boys and girls and kids who weren't boys or girls.

All of us were transgender. We talked about serious things like bathrooms and teasing. We also talked about fun things like video games and books and toys. I don't know what our parents talked about, probably the same things. Not necessarily, you know, and I think that that's what's at the heart of this. Where is the appropriate time? And sure, there's always these issues where there's children, some, you know, small group of children going through difficult, confusing times.

God knows what's happening inside their households. But what about the majority of children that wouldn't really be thinking about this at all? One parent did find out this book was read to his young daughter in school, and he's doing something about it. This is him in a school board meeting. You see what you created? I'm talking all of you up here. You guys created this. I just wanted to know what was going on in my kid beforehand.

That's it. See the spectacle? I feel no shame in standing for what I believe in. And I'm here today because my rights as a parent were taken from me. No matter your position, I think we can all agree that schools need to include parents before teaching things other than basic education. I came to CVUSD in the past and voiced my concerns only to be brushed away like I meant nothing. There was no inclusion then, there's no inclusion now. I'm not sure how or why you would think that an eight-year-old could understand what transgender even means.

In fact, that six-minute video only confused my daughter more. I wonder if Maple considered this. or if you had. You discuss inclusion in one breath, and in the other you exclude parents. That makes no sense. Ladies and the gentlemen of the board, you've made it abundantly clear to people

in the Cano Valley that you will continue to pursue questionable subject matter without parental inclusion. It's unacceptable. As you see this evening, this community is mobilized to stand up for parental rights. You created a false narrative of hate. I don't hate anyone out here, by the way.

I just want you to know that. In fact, I think I could honestly say I love every person in this community. I don't care what sex you are. I don't care if you're trans or not. This is not about hate. This is about love and inclusion, which you seem to keep forgetting about. The parents' right to decide what's best for their child must always be a part of any school policy and a fundamental part of our educational system.

These are our kids, not yours. I've told you that quite a few times. Don't forget that. I'll be in the hallway here. If anyone has any questions, and we could have an open. open conversation about this. Great, brother. I'm joined now by Steve Schneider.

He is actually suing Cunejos Valley School District for violating parental rights. Steve, thank you for taking the time to join us today. Thanks for having me. Look, when I hear about this story, especially in liberal media, it's like you're out trying to kill gays, you're trying to book burn, right? which is amazing and there's an irony to that. But when we watch you speak, you're doing, and I think speaking about this the way I'm trying to today,

which is we have to be involved in the conversation. We have to be able to find a way to have an open conversation. And you feel like you were robbed of that opportunity. Explain why. You know, I think as parents, we need an approach situation, especially with young children, seven and eight years old in this situation that affects. my family, we need to approach us as parents and be willing to entertain ideas from both sides.

In this case, you're villainized immediately if you speak out against their narrative, and that's out of fear on their side. What initially got this whole thing started last year for me and my family was when that book was read to my daughter, we were completely put out so that way we weren't included in this. In fact, unless my daughter, had said something, we would have never known that this was, you know, read to the classroom. And, you know, everything that fell in line from that day forward was one extreme to the next to the point where, you know, myself and other parents involved said, how is this going from a simple discussion to, you know, protests? It just really didn't make sense initially. Right. And what was the reason given for reading the book to a group of children,

at that age? So one of the children coming back from the winter break, I guess there was one child that transitioned. These are seven and eight-year-old kids in the third grade, had transitioned from a girl to a boy. And rather than just a quick discussion or a million of other ways that could have handled it, they decided to play a video of a transgender child

reading the book called me Max. And in their, in their perspective, this was to promote inclusion within the classroom. But it led to a lot of other things. It's a very confusing book. I mean, like I said, you know, you are suggesting this is a girl who sees herself as a boy than is out playing with a boy that's wearing a dress, but the boy sees himself as a boy, but loves wearing dresses.

And so it's this whole, you know, space of, I suppose, acceptance in a way, yet I keep, as a father, and, you know, questioning, you start wondering about, you know, grooming. Is there a grooming going on? Is there a moving a child? These are such susceptible minds to any thought you give them. Can I ask you this? Is sex ed being taught at that age in your school? Sex ed comes in around the seventh grade. And, I mean, that's a whole other topic. I mean, the sex education program, it's horrifying. I mean, if you've Googled the gingerbread man of sexuality and some of the other photos depicting men that can become pregnant,

it's kind of taken a turn that's so inappropriate. It's definitely not age appropriate. And the school districts seem to believe that this is the path that should be taught. This is what our children should be learning. you know you're generally supposed to be given the opportunity to pull your child out of you know to opt out and in most cases you are in the instance that happened with the last year we weren't even given the proper notifications ahead of time the links that were provided by the school district didn't work and when one parent spoke up about it the superintendent in the school his name is mark mclaughlin he had said that she had clicking problems um You know, if you're at the top of a school district and a parent approaches you with a legitimate concern, the last thing you should try to do is call them out and try to make them seem unintelligent or that they're in the wrong. You know, leaders accept responsibility for their actions and admit to their faults and find a way to fix things.

So tell me about your lawsuit. You're bringing a lawsuit. You know, we got in contact with you through Amy Bond and Perk, who we've teamed up with at, I can to get into some of the issues we cover a lot, you know, around vaccines, forced vaccinations. Why the lawsuit? Why go that far? You know, we were left with no choice. In the beginning of this, when that book was shown to my daughter in the classroom,

there was a lot of pressure on my daughter. In fact, some of the kids in her classroom really pushed a narrative that was extremely hard on my child socially. They wanted her to shave her head. They wanted to all dress like boys. And, you know, this is something that's not leaving our schools. It's here. And a lot of groups are pushing into the schools with their idea of what's best for my children.

Well, you know, my kids are going to stay in public schools. I can't afford to send my kids to private. And this lawsuit is the one way that I could hold to my oath as a father to my children to make sure that I could protect them. And it only goes so far when your kids come home. You check their social media. You stay involved. But you really got to focus in on what's going on in school these days

because there's wild teachers out there doing some crazy things. But fortunately, we have a few good ones in this district that are still remaining. Do you feel like a minority in this conversation? Because it sure seemed like a lot of the crowd there was behind you. And you came out of the school a lot of cheering. But you are in California, I think Newberry Park, in that area somewhere around there. So what's the climate like there on this conversation? You know, I almost think at times it's 50-50. Sometimes I think we outnumber them, but there's a

whole bunch of people out there that support us quietly, and I have to assume that the same is for the reverse, for the other side. What you didn't see in that video is the majority of people that were off-camera outside, and there was a substantial amount of them as well. And they're active in the community but the reality is I don't think that they represent the transgender community to the fullest I mean the reality is I took a deep dive and learning more about this community because I knew nothing about it and these are just activists and they're there to cause problems and shake things up and they want to push as much as they can but the transgender community that people that I've

met like Scott Nugent from what is a woman one of the most amazing resources and become one of my greatest friends along the the way and the majority of people just want to be left alone and live their lives but these people want to push it on my family and other families in this community. I wonder as I look at this that it my concern is that it has it has the potential of having a backfire effect which is where we are working towards trying to be more inclusive, more understanding that there are people going through all sorts of different things when they start interjecting this forcing people like yourself to bring lawsuits, creating places where, you know, we're getting sort of a more volatile

conflict that it's forcing a battle where we shouldn't have a battle and forcing us to take very strong sides when it seems the goal should be trying to find some unity here in a way that makes sense for everybody. Does that make sense? It absolutely does. The first time I went to the school board I had told you got to fill out a blue card you got to put your information a phone number and I made it very clear to the school board as well as to Mark McLaughlin that I raised the concern of what happened at Maple Elementary School and that I would like a phone call and that we could talk this out and I never you know it fell on death ears I never received a call nothing

happened and ultimately that's what led to a local newspaper running the first articles because there was no communication with the schools. This matter probably could have been resolved. And in the beginning, I said we could have made something really beautiful happen when people can communicate and come up with a solution to a problem. That's what parents do. Yeah. Do you have advice for parents out there? Or is there, you know, as you, you're getting to be sort of a face of this discussion. Certainly, we're all about solutions here. What do you see the solutions for parents that are watching this around the world? You know, for the viewers watching today, I think that right now you could jump on your

phones, you could one look into Perk. Perk is doing some amazing things. They have some fantastic resources that are going to help parents, and they're in the fight big time, and that's why I went with them. Along the way, Amy Bond has been fantastic with helping me step by step. with that I think that if you believe you're not this isn't happening your school district you need to pick up your phone you need to Google like indivisible and then keywords your community your city on there and look up unity along with

your city if you put those keywords in you're gonna see groups in your schools and those are the ones in my community that are trying to affect what's happening with with our with our children one person in particular would like to actually point out her name is Megan Goebel and she sits at with she's part of the school district on the LGBTQ district advisory excuse me district advisory council and she helps write policies for the transgender LGBTQ whatever you want to call it within my community now this is a woman who has a transgender six-year-old

and I don't believe her values coincide with mine, but yet she's the one sitting at the top, unwilling to have a conversation with parents, and it's going to be her way and no one else's way. So these are problems that are affecting everyone in the United States and in your own communities, you will find that these people are there. Do you, when you've looked at you're deep in this, is there a deeper agenda? I mean, you know, what are your, what runs through my mind? Is this really just a about accepting a group of people or is there something else going on? Certainly it feels like it's, when we look at these secrecy laws we're looking at,

I know Perk is fighting to keep that from happening in California, but it feels like this is a part of trying to create an excuse for reasons we tear children away from their parents and make them see their parents as being out of touch and wrong, along with vaccines, gender discussions. All of this feels like an attack on the family. Does that the sense you're getting? Yeah, you know, I can't argue it because there's no other logical reason why this would be happening. You know, if you have somebody on the other side of an issue that's unwilling to hear you, they're not there for a conversation.

They're there to push whatever it is they want. And, you know, you can break this down and look at this as a monetary value. How much is each child worth to the pharmaceutical companies over the course? of their lifetime. I mean, will these children who transition be able to be removed from hormones once they transition? Does that mean that's a subscription service that our health care providers or that our health insurance companies are going to have to pay for these hormone shots throughout the rest of your lives? I heard one statistic that each child that goes on hormones is worth about 1.5 million dollars over the course of their lifetime just pharmaceutical drugs. So I mean, we could look at it from a lot of perspectives. I don't want to

want to go into any you know of my theories regarding it what it really comes down to is parents being involved and you know community standing up and at this point it's all or nothing parents need to get involved we need to look further into what's going on in our schools and we need to show up to school boards and we need to ask the difficult questions we need to force the difficult conversations and we need to do it with an open mind and an open heart because you know, me and the rest of my community, we're not, we don't hate anybody. You know, this is not about hate. This is about love. We love our children. We know the other parents love their children as well. And we're still here sitting, waiting to have this conversation

and come up with something amicable. But the reality is we're going to be waiting a while on that. Steve, I want to thank you for being such a considerate and thoughtful voice in this space. It's really important that we keep composure. You're doing a brilliant job at that. I think it's important that we do, Sue, that we do push back and say, we're not having this. If that's what it takes to get a conversation, I think that's the right move. So we stand behind and support your desire to have a very important conversation, not just

in your school, but in schools across the school. country and I would assume the world is dealing with this. So thank you for taking the time to enlighten us on what you're going through right now. Thanks for having me. All right, take care.