With the Biden administration controlling the Department of Education and Democrats planning to dump millions into public schools to fund social workers and medical and psychiatric services in the upcoming budget, the trans-ing of kids in Michigan will be on the agenda if parents re-elect Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and pass Proposition 3.
The discovery of sexually explicit books in school libraries has awoken apolitical Michigan parents to the significance of their vote at the local school board level. But with the Biden administration controlling the Department of Education until at least 2024, a much more dangerous threat will lurk in the government-run school system if voters re-elect Whitmer and pass Proposition 3: stealth efforts to push transgender ideology on kids and the secret “transitioning” of young boys and girls without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
During the second and final Michigan gubernatorial debate earlier this week, Whitmer made clear that under her administration, public school libraries can continue to stock sexually explicit books. The question arose against the backdrop of hundreds if not thousands of parents in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn demanding that books they described as “pornographic” be removed from the school libraries. To chants of “vote them out,” the outraged parents descended on two school board meetings to protest the sexualizing of their children.
While Republican challenger Tudor Dixon pledged to stand with parents and unequivocally declared that sexually explicit books had no place in the public school system, Whitmer not only rejected the removal of sexually explicit books from school libraries, but the Democrat governor also framed Dixon’s support for parents as a “dangerous” attempt “to wedge communities against one another.”
The only danger, however, is to Whitmer and Democrats’ electoral fortunes as the party’s extremism over the sexes is fracturing the coalition between the far-left and moderates. The debate in Dearborn — the sixth largest city in Michigan — showcases the schism.
Parents in this heavily Arab-American and Muslim community, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic but are now fighting to remove these sexually explicit books from schools, find themselves fighting against the Whitmer-endorsing American Federation of Teachers union, the liberal Democrat Arab-American Muslim mayor, and LGBT activists.
What many Michiganders don’t know, however, is that the presence of sexually explicit books in school libraries represents but one aspect of Whitmer and the Democrats’ efforts to use the schools to sexualize kids and peddle gender-bending ideologies.
Take One Look at Democrats’ Priorities
An expose last month by Christopher Rufo revealed that “the Michigan Department of Education has adopted a radical gender theory program that promotes gender ‘fluidity’ beginning in elementary school and encourages teachers to facilitate the sexual transition of minors without parental consent.” Rufo, who obtained videos and internal documentation of the Michigan public school training program, detailed the materials’ claims “that the West has created a false notion that ‘gender is binary’ in order to oppress racial and sexual minorities.”
“Teachers should know that, in fact, gender is a spectrum,” one presenter taught, “including identities such as ‘gender non-binary,’ ‘gender fluid,’ ‘gender queer,’ ‘gender non-conforming,’ and ‘bi-gender.’” “Likewise,” the training presentation continued, “sexual orientation can include an expanding range of categories,” with students identifying as “asexual, lesbian, straight, gay, bisexual, queer, questioning, demisexual, demiromantic, aromantic, and skoliosexual.”
The Michigan Department of Education’s program goes further, however, with “the trainers explicitly tell[ing] educators that they should keep a student’s new name, pronouns, and sexual identity confidential, including from family, unless otherwise directed by the child,” including in the situation where the pupil appears suicidal. The Michigan Department of Education also recommends that teachers create “Gender & Sexuality Alliance” clubs for students as young as elementary school, but use “cover names such as ‘Leadership Club’ or ‘Everyone for Equality,’” to conceal the clubs’ promotion of gender theory from parents.
When confronted with the content of its public school training program, the Michigan Department of Education defended the material as “respecting all children” and “meet[ing] the needs of their LGBTQ+ students,” Rufo reported. However, most parents would view this training material as an effort by public schools to indoctrinate students on LGBT ideology — not merely as showing respect to all children.
The confluence of two developments threatens to move this training program from indoctrination to the much more dangerous realm of medical intervention — without parental notice or consent.
Of import first is the Democrats’ proposed fiscal 2023 budget that seeks to add nearly half a billion dollars to fund “community schools.” The concept of “community schools,” while amorphous, involves converting schools into one-stop centers to address the holistic needs of children, making it the “neighborhood’s medical and therapeutic hub.”
Adding millions to fund community schools in Michigan, where the Whitmer administration’s Department of Education already trains teachers to affirm students’ so-called gender identity, represents a dire risk to children in light of Proposition 3, the second significant factor raising the risk to Michigan school children.
Prop 3 Is More Than an Abortion Amendment
While Democrats have marketed Proposition 3 as the “abortion amendment,” and claim it merely codifies Roe v. Wade, the actual language of the proposed constitutional amendment extends much further than Roe and its progeny, Casey. If passed, Prop 3, would gut parental rights and trump Michigan’s current law requiring parental consent (or a judicial override) for minors to obtain abortions. Social workers or medical personnel serving the students at “community schools” could then assist in arranging for medical or surgical abortions without parents even learning their daughter was pregnant.
Prop 3, however, extends beyond abortions and guarantees a right to “sterilization.” And the plain language of the proposition guarantees that constitutional right to “any individual,” prohibits discrimination by the state in protecting the right to sterilization, and expressly provides that the state cannot regulate sterilization if it “infringes on” the “individual’s autonomous decision-making.” If Prop 3 passes, then, the plain language of the amendment guarantees children — both boys and girls — a constitutional right to be sterilized, and without parental consent.
And if voters re-elect Whitmer, whose Department of Education taught school employees to secretly affirm a child’s false “gender,” they can expect next year’s training program to address how schools can help students obtain puberty blockers, without parental consent, to either temporarily or permanently render the children sterile. After all, if Prop 3 passes, young Michiganders will have that constitutional right and the state won’t be able to discriminate in protecting the “individual’s autonomous decision-making.”
In a second term, Whitmer’s Department of Education would also likely jump at the opportunity to obtain “community school” funding from the Biden administration, which could move Michigan public schools to add in-house medical or therapeutic services, including services geared toward wrongly named “gender-affirming” interventions.
In contrast, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon already made clear the Michigan Department of Education should not be “weaponized” to “advance their radical gender theory with zero input from parents,” and teachers should never “hide important information from parents about their children,” such as the child’s possible gender confusion.
Of course, to Whitmer, exposing her and her fellow Democrats’ extremist policies is playing politics — but parents know better. And come Nov. 8, parents of all political stripes should send a clear message: Schools are not for social engineering, the sexualizing of children, or gender-affirming experimentation, and politicians who think otherwise will be out of a job and not just at the school board level.
