The city of Dearborn, Michigan has been popping up in the news an awful lot lately, and for good reason. Within the past few weeks, the suburban enclave located just outside of Detroit has become a hotspot in the ongoing fight for greater parental oversight in children’s education.
After discovering sexually explicit material within the school district’s library system, Dearborn parents have begun showing up in droves to the locality’s school board meetings to protest the city’s allowance of such content in public schools and push back against the left’s continued promotion of radical gender theory in the classroom.
“We as concerned parents in Dearborn are not tied to the left, to the right when it comes to this issue and we’re not going to be used as pawns for any organization for their agenda,” said local resident and parent Hassan Shami. “We’re here to protect our children.”
As documented in a tweet by the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, one of the books in question purportedly teaches children the “ins and outs of gay sex” and “how sex apps work.” A separate social media post from Rufo detailing the explicit material also shows a diagram of a young boy that provides readers with a “rogue guide” about which “parts FEEL NICE when you touch them.”
“A lot of guys like having their nipples played with — they are mega sensitive,” one of the captions reads.
In predictable fashion, local leftists, as well as those throughout corporate media, have gone out of their way to label the concerned parents as “unruly” and “anti-LGBT,” with one Dearborn resident even going as far as to compare the protesters — a large segment of whom are Muslim — of engaging in the same kinds of activities as Adolf Hitler.
“I am not in favor of banning any books in Dearborn. If parents do not want their children to read a book, they should not allow them to do that,” the middle-aged white woman said. “But to foist their views of one group of citizens on the rest of Dearborn doesn’t work either. This is what Hitler did and we all know how that worked out.”
The controversy in Dearborn comes on the heels of a bombshell report that found Michigan’s Department of Education is actively encouraging teachers in the state to “facilitate the sexual transition of minors without parental consent” and embrace leftist concepts like gender “fluidity” in the classroom.
Virginia on My Mind
While outrage over inappropriate curricula in public schools may be a new subject for Michigan, the brewing battle for greater parental rights in education is reminiscent of what happened in another state just last year: Virginia.
Following the adoption of policies advancing critical race theory and transgenderism in schools by several Virginia localities last year, parents across the state began turning out to their county school board meetings to protest the leftist indoctrination happening in their children’s classrooms. As the push for increased transparency and parental oversight continued to grow, even more fuel was added to the fire when it was revealed the Loudoun County School Board had covered up a female student’s alleged rape at the hands of a “gender-fluid” boy in a school bathroom.
The revelations didn’t just shape the relationship between parents and their local school boards; they shaped the outcome of Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election. What started as an unlikely bid to defeat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in a traditionally blue state soon evolved into a major upset victory for Republican Glenn Youngkin. After capitalizing on the struggle for parental rights and embracing the state’s signature culture war issue, Youngkin sailed to victory in November, with Republicans also winning the races for lieutenant governor and attorney general and gaining control of the state’s House of Delegates.
Can Michigan Parents Pull Off the Upset?
Much like Virginia, Dearborn, Michigan is no Republican stronghold. In 2020, nearly 75 percent of Dearborn voters supported Democrat Joe Biden for president, compared to only 24 percent who backed Republican President Donald Trump. But the fight against radical, leftist instruction in public schools unveils the same truth brought to light in Virginia; that is, regardless of their political party or background, most parents want their children to receive a quality education free of indoctrination and outside agendas.
Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon seems to have recognized this stark reality and has opted to make education the centerpiece issue of her campaign. In addition to putting forward proposals that would bar school districts from teaching children in kindergarten through third grade about sexual orientation or gender identity, Dixon has also voiced opposition to Proposal 3, an initiative set to appear on Michiganders’ ballots this November that seeks to enshrine unlimited abortion and Democrats’ “trans the kids” agenda into the state constitution.
By tying herself to Michigan parents and the well-being of children, Dixon is creating an unorthodox coalition of voters to take down incumbent Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. And judging by the corporate media’s recent shift in narrative about Dixon’s chances of winning, such a strategy seems to be working. While the left-wing press all but deemed a guaranteed victory for Whitmer, more reliable pollsters have recently begun to show the race move in Dixon’s favor.
According to a just-released survey from The Trafalgar Group, Whitmer and Dixon are locked in a statistical tie at 48 percent each with two weeks until Election Day. The results represent a major electoral shift towards Dixon, who less than a month ago trailed Whitmer by six points in the same poll. News outlets such as RealClearPolitics also appear to have recognized the changing political winds in Michigan, with the firm’s election analysts now projecting the contest to be a “GOP Pick Up.”
Just as parental rights won conservatives Virginia, it can still very much win them Michigan next month. While voters will ultimately determine the fate of Dixon’s candidacy, her opposition to Democrats’ war on parents has allowed her to capitalize on Michigan’s ongoing culture war and turn what was once a longshot bid to unseat Whitmer into a potential Republican victory.