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Officials ready to fight sexualization in schools

By
Jasmine Hall with the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, via the Wyoming News Exchange

CHEYENNE— State Superintendent of Public Instruction Brian Schroeder welled up with tears as he began a news conference on a topic he said he found disturbing and unsettling. 
He organized Tuesday’s event at Little America Hotel and Resort to bring together stakeholders to inform the public on the sexualization of children in Wyoming public schools. 
Inside an overflowing room, he said this is designed as a “clarion call to our legislators to do everything they can to make our schools places that protect childhood innocence and respect parental authority.” 
Wyoming’s K-12 public education leader said he would be remiss if he ignored the cries of parents, because only parents and legislators could “turn the ship around.” 
“Do you know how difficult and intimidating it is for one parent to challenge a system as monolithic and powerful as the public school system is?” he asked. “It fills them with overwhelming angst.” 
Schroeder asked for action to be taken and was supported in what some described as being “at war.” 
Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, said residents have a battle ahead, because the truth is under attack. He said if citizens don’t stand up, they would suffer irreparable consequences. 
Neiman was one of four state lawmakers who pledged legislation to address librarians and teachers distributing obscene materials, parents supporting gender-affirming surgery for their children and transgender female student athletes playing sports. 
He said he couldn’t do it without parental support. 
“You have to be just as committed to them as you are today, to come and to stand in the gap,” he said. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood. ... We wrestle against principalities and powers and rules of darkness in high places.” 
Attendees who pushed back were in the minority. A teacher who said they quit because of perspectives such as Schroeder’s that attacked educators, and a community member who said she disagreed that “gender fluidity is a religion,” were met with audible crowd disapproval. 
“I wish I brought our movement T-shirts, because it says ‘Abolish the Department of Education,’” the keynote speaker said in response to the former educator, as the crowd burst into applause. 
Parents from across the state were the first to take to the podium. They said from elementary school to the University of Wyoming, their students were provided explicit materials, encouraged to discuss gender and sexual identities, and expected to have certain answers on social issues or face peer backlash. 
A section of state law that excludes some from punishment for obscene materials drew scrutiny. Statute protects anyone who produces, reproduces, possesses or disseminates the material in educational endeavors or in the course of employment for educational institutions, museums or public libraries. 
Stakeholders said the law was put into place to let schools safely teach reproductive health and sex education, not to intentionally allow explicit content. They considered books describing sex acts, rape, incest, abuse and drug use at the top of their priority list for removal. 
Inappropriate materials being available to students wasn’t the only issue brought forward. 
Jackson native and parent Gloria Courser argued for separation of church and state and upholding the Establishment Clause requiring schools not promote particular religions. 
“What is religion? Religion is either a set of personal or institutional beliefs. Religion requires faith, something that cannot be proven. Christianity requires faith, Judaism requires faith, and gender fluidity requires faith,” she said. “Introducing the ideology of gender fluidity in our public schools by paid staff violates the Establishment Clause.” 
She said she believes teachers should be given leeway to use methods that work for them and honor students’ diversity, but that a standard curriculum is needed. 
Courser said she was uncomfortable with students being asked to fill out questionnaires about their preferred pronouns, and a science teacher answering a question regarding a sex act in her daughter’s seventh-grade class. 
“When I confronted the teacher regarding this and pointed out that it would have been more than reasonable to pass on the question, considering the act had no part in human reproduction, her defense as to why she answered the question was because if she didn’t tell them, they would find out somewhere else,” she said. “That was not her decision to make.” 
Kyle True, who said he has students at UW, said a woman with a doctorate in sexuality encouraged freshmen “to explore their sexuality in their time with the university: in groups, alone, with their gender, with opposite genders, with videos. This is non-academic.” 
He said his other kids were expected to say they, as women, were victims of the patriarchy and Christianity, and were witness to “a bizarre, sexually-tinged, woke ideology.”
“The university is spending money, which I would say is taxpayer money, on gender transition education, encouraging hormone replacement therapy,” he said. 
No Left Turn in Education President Elana Fishbein was the keynote speaker and was joined by Missouri chapter President Andy Wells and Georgia chapter President Melissa Jackson. 
Fishbein said the organization was founded to “clean” K-12 schools of politicization or radical indoctrination, and she came to discuss a different kind of STD. 

She said western countries suffer from a “school-transmitted disease,” with educational institutions as pipelines for the “sex and transgender industries.” 
Fishbein has demanded investigations into every adult at schools who are responsible for sexualizing students, because it is a nationwide crisis. She said such teachings are insidious, predatory, pornographic and manipulative. 
“The availability of pornography to children in K-12 schools has now edged on depravity, actionable under the law,” she said. “It is, in fact, being forced on them in public-funded schools and libraries. It is provided under a number of false covers, including literature and health education.” 
Wells is a veteran, and he became involved with No Left Turn after his 13-year-old daughter brought home a book with pornographic material. 
He said he believes Wyoming school districts and teachers are trying to do the right thing, but they overly trust the American Library Association. He said ALA makes recommendations every year to libraries on books, and many rural school districts lack the resources to sort through every suggestion. 
He said he found materials in this state that described rape, incest and sodomy. 
“Stop it. Get it out of your schools,” he shouted across the room. 
Fishbein said students are negatively impacted by materials like these, which lead to increased mental health problems, including suicide. She said when children are told they are oppressed or oppressors, or are expected to conform to the expectations in classrooms to share their pronouns, it can have consequences. 
“We’re hearing over and over, around the country, that kids that do not identify themselves in their biological sex – they are celebrated, they’re very special to the teacher, and they are getting special perks,” she said. “But kids that are identified with their biological sex, that are the gray color in the crayon box, they are not special at all. 
So there is a lot of social pressure to do something that you don’t actually believe in.” 
Reps. Neiman; John Bear, R-Gillette; Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody; and Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, said they plan to sponsor legislation in the upcoming general session, but they had differing priorities. 
Steinmetz hopes to revisit defunding the gender studies program at the University of Wyoming as a member of the Joint Appropriations Committee. Her colleague, Rodriguez-Willliams, wants legislation to remove librarians and teachers from the obscenity exemption in state statute. 
“Wyoming funds public education and, as spelled out in the Wyoming Constitution, I believe the Wyoming Legislature has a duty to protect and promote morality,” Rodriguez-Williams said. “I believe in implementing restrictions necessary to protect the public welfare of our youth in this great state. We must protect innocent children. We should not allow the grooming of kids.” 
Discussion focused on how to handle gender identity, as well as gender affirming therapy and surgery.
Bear wants a bill to consider any action taken in the reassignment of gender of minors to be child abuse, and Neiman wants to revisit the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. 
“I believe when these people reach the age of 20 and 30, and they’re unable to have children, they’re unable to have sex – the psychiatric trouble is going to be so immense that we’re going to have an epidemic of people wanting to de-transition,” Bear said. 
Neiman said adults are charged with protecting youth, and countries are recognizing the negatives of gender-affirming treatment. 
He compared the therapies and surgeries to other psychological disorder treatments and asked what the course of action is when individuals come into an eating disorder clinic believing they’re fat. 
“They’re starving themselves to death. Do we do them a service by saying, ‘We’ll give you liposuction? We’ll help you. We’ll help you do what you want,’” he said. “No, we don’t do that. We offer them the ability to say, ‘That’s not the way this is. You need a chance to heal. You need a chance to recognize who you really are.’” 
Neiman said he recognized not everyone in the room would agree, and there were those who didn’t concur. 
Cheyenne resident Carol Mathia said she appreciated the speakers asking for separation of church and state, and for schools to teach science properly. 
“If we want science taught, we need to recognize that XX and XY chromosomes are not the only determination of sex. Chemicals and hormones during gestation also affect the child once it was born, hence gender fluidity,” she said. “It can be taught in science class.” 
Although not all stakeholders came forward to share their views, some opponents to Schroeder and allies’ message were throughout the crowd wearing T-shirts with slogans such as “I read banned books.” 
Activist and Wyoming Tribune Eagle Editorial Board member Lindsey Hanlon said she didn’t find the conference to be a welcoming environment. She said it was held on a Tuesday morning, when many couldn’t attend, and only certain speakers were allowed. 
“I was frustrated. I was heartsick. I stood in a room of dozens of people, telling the people in that room that learning about people like me is obscene,” she said. “As a former prevention specialist, someone whose job it was to go into schools and talk to children about things like consent, bodily autonomy and being safe – everything that they were talking about in that room is counter to best practices.” 
She criticized opening up teachers and librarians to obscenity charges, legislation to ban transgender girls from women’s sports teams and punishing parents for supporting their child’s gender identity. 
Hanlon believes it should be seen “as an attack on our personal freedoms. We should see that as an attack on being able to do what we need to do for our children.” 
Jen Solis, a Cheyenne parent, said the event was an overwhelming experience. 
She said Schroeder is inciting fear in parents who care about their kids’ welfare, and was disheartened adults expressed hatred. 
“My grandpa stormed the beaches of Normandy; he was one of those guys. My grandma worked in a factory during World War II. They fought fascism,” she said. “He taught me fascism isn’t somebody bombing you or shooting you. It’s this subtle division of people and saying,‘You’re wrong, and only my way is the right way.’” 
Solis said discussing books that affirm people’s existence as she heard in the conference is “a nefarious form of fascism.” 
Schroeder originally planned the event to be held in a state building and paid for with state funds.
That later changed, and the Wyoming Department of Education announced it would not be associated with the event. 
Schroeder took responsibility for the gathering that cost close to $3,000, saying he received coordinating help from Moms for Liberty. His personal funds backed the news conference in advance, and he said he is raising money from private donors to be reimbursed. 
“Gender ideology will destroy public education as we know it, if we don’t do something,” he said at the event’s conclusion. “That’s part of what has motivated this. But it’s mostly been the angst of the parents.”
 
This story was published on Oct. 26, 2022.

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