This past week I met with some other community members to talk about school board races. November is most of a year away, but campaigns will be underway in just a few months. And campaigns—like war campaigns—take planning and strategy. Those are things I’m not good at. But I’m an interested taxpayer and I have a stake in the education of the next generation, as do we all. So we’re in recruiting mode.
Our school board, Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District (CFISD), will have four of the seven positions up for election this round. We had three in 2021, and we conservative school choice people won all three, but they’re still a minority on the board, here in a conservative sector of northwest Harris County, Texas.
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| CFISD's current board. Green are those elected in 2021. Blue are the 2023 races; dark blue will be open seats, light blue incumbents. Image adapted from the CFISD Board website |
Of the four seats, two will be open, where board members are
retiring, and two have incumbents, one of which is the most pro-woke and most
formidable as an opponent. She claims to be a Republican; her voting record shows her to be. She’s got an
influential position on a state committee. She’s a petite, lovely woman who
seems sympathetic, gentle, and child loving. I believe I voted for her when she
got in, before she had revealed her real intentions. Still, if we get a strong
candidate, and if there’s momentum going with other strong candidates, I think
she can be defeated. At worst, we could disempower her with a board in
opposition to the woke policies she favors. She supported school library books such as I will talk about below (I wrote about this here).
What I’m seeing in her is, I think, a not uncommon reaction
to having a child with LGBTQ issues. She lost a child recently—which is
heartbreaking. I didn’t know the cause for a while, but if I’m understanding
correctly, it was to suicide, a daughter with gender dysphoria. I think this
board member is now seeing any lack of acceptance of transgenderism as bullying
that is life-threatening to those particular students.
Here is my belief about LGBT issues, based on social
science, which I’ve written about, according to Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Jr.: One
likely cause is childhood trauma, often sexual, that causes a dissociation with
the child’s sexual identity. The child can’t understand something traumatic,
and rejects a portion of themselves, in this case their femaleness or maleness.
As with other dissociative disorders, there is standard talk therapy that can
help. This particular type is called reintegrative therapy. The intent is to
help with the unwanted dysphoria. The intent is to deal with the mental
problems, not necessarily to change orientation. But the resolution of the
trauma does tend to help a person be happier, more functional, and less
obsessed with the unhappy feelings.
In short, the way to deal with the high possibility of
suicide accompanying gender dysphoria or unwanted same-sex attraction is not to
change the world and its attitudes, but to relieve the underlying trauma in the
person with the issues.
Which is more compassionate?
·
going along with a child’s delusion, while
attempting to change the attitudes toward human reproduction in the entire
human race, and then going ahead with body alterations that will both make a
person freakish and likely also infertile for life?
·
or providing therapy that will at least make the
person more mentally healthy and has the possibility of total resolution of the
problem?
Let me add something I think is relevant here. Childhood
trauma is often something we all recognize as traumatic and confusing; sexual assault
would qualify. But sometimes it’s something we as adults might consider
relatively minor. One of the possible traumas is introducing sex prematurely
into a child’s life. A child has natural reserves and modesty. Breaking that
down can cause trauma and confusion. Breaking down that natural reserve is
something pedophiles do. It is called grooming. That is why that word is
currently being used in reference to school curricula that sexualizes kids at
earlier and earlier ages.
What can a drag queen “kid friendly” event do? Sexualize—and
traumatize—kids. It attempts to normalize something the kids know instinctively
is not normal. The trauma can lead to gender confusion and dysphoria—the
normalizing of which can traumatize and confuse more children.
Trauma could come from sexualizing books or media. This
could be in the schools or just about any other place. But in schools is a
particular problem, because there’s a loophole in the law—until we can get it
fixed through the legislature—that provides what is called an obscenity
exemption for pornographic materials.
If you try to read from these materials at a school board meeting,
you’ll get shut down, because those meetings are livestreamed, and children can
see them, and they’re obviously offensive. But the moment you put that vile
material in a school setting, it is considered educational, and those who
provide it are exempt from prosecution for providing pornography to minors.
The proponents of these materials are very vocal. The
defense is always the accusation that anyone wanting to remove a book from the
school library is a Nazi book burner, or the same-old puritanical pearl
clutchers who have tried to get classics like Huckleberry Finn banned.
If I weren’t paying attention, I could be swayed by such
arguments. I’m against banning good books. I’m against banning books in general.
However, I do believe we need books to meet certain quality standards to be in
school libraries—paid for by taxpayers and given the approval of school
authorities. If a parent wants their kid to read something I and many (most?)
community members would find offensive or downright filthy, the parent can do
that at home. [Warning: providing porn to a minor, even in your own home, might
be a crime.] But that doesn’t mean the taxpayers and schools need to provide
such materials to that irresponsible parent. Such parents can use their own money or a
non-school library.
At our meeting about the school board last week, we had a
presentation from a parent who is doing a project to get these books removed
from our school libraries, and she was asking for help. (I hesitate to give her
name and phone number here, but if you’re local, contact me and I’ll let you
know how to reach her.)
You can’t just contact the school or school board and complain and expect a book to be removed. There’s a formal
process called a request for reconsideration. It’s a “reconsideration,” because
the book was “considered” when it was put into the school library. I expect there is a similar process in other Texas districts and in other states.
You’re allowed to submit the form if you live in the district, but there are a number of questions that make it
look like they’re weeding out community groups that are coordinating such
efforts. Here are the questions:
1. Have you reviewed the resources
in their entirety? (If not, please do so before completing and submitting
this form.)
I just want to note here that I have seen some of these
books, in person. I do not want to bring them into my home, and I do not want
to put the words and images into my head. I am debating how to help with this
project. Somebody’s got to do it. But at what personal spiritual risk?
2.
What
brought this material to your attention?
3.
What
concerns you about the resource? (Please be specific. Cite pages and the
like.)
4.
What
do you believe might be the result of using this material?
5.
Are
there resource(s) you suggest that provide additional information and/or other viewpoints
on this topic?
6.
For
what age group would you recommend this material?
7.
What
do you believe should be done with the material in question?
□ Reclassify library material.
□ Remove the material from the library.
□ Do not allow my child to use this material.
The project in our area was asking for parents with children
in the schools—since there is a preference given to parents whose children have
actually encountered the books, and the parent finds the problem after the
damage is done to the child. Just a concerned taxpayer like me is not their priority.
[This is why, when I vet school board candidates, I ask the question about who
do they answer to and in what order; it should be taxpayers, including parents, then teachers, who need to be facilitated in what we hire them to do.
They don’t answer to students; they are to educate them according to the
requirements set by the community. And they don’t answer to teacher unions at
all.]
Anyway, we can all help, but the advantage goes to parents
with current students in the district.
If you’re like me, you’re shocked that these books exist, aimed at children. Sexual profanity that I never encountered before adulthood (and some that is still new to me) are pervasive in books aimed at middle-schoolers. There’s instruction on self-harm—some of it illustrated. There’s depiction of adult-on-child sex, with apparent approval intended by the author. There are graphic novels depicting sex acts of multiple varieties.
These are in schools in my
district. They are probably in yours.
We have people working to gather data on which books exist
in which schools, so community members can target them. Each request has to be
done book by book, school by school, parent by parent.
If you’re wondering what the books are, there’s a book
review site called BookLooks.org, a nonprofit intended to help parents identify questionable books. They have a fairly sizable list of books they have reviewed and rated. I tried them out with a book I had read: Neanderthal Opens the Door to
the Universe, by Preston Norton. He grew up here, and I knew his family. The
book has received awards. There is much to be said about its merits: it is
engaging, creative, appealing, with a message about open-mindedness. It is also
profane and troubling. I do not recommend it.
The BookLooks Summary of Concerns says: “This book contains excessive/frequent profanity; derogatory terms; sexual activities; sexual nudity; controversial religious commentary; alternate sexualities; drug use and abuse; alcohol use; violence; suicide; and hate.” I would add that religious people are portrayed as particularly mean, bigoted, and hypocritical. The book review site also includes actual references, with page numbers, from the book, which could be helpful in filling out that reconsideration form. And then it includes a profanity count. Without actually using the words, these include a** 116 times, f-bomb 62 times, s*** 178 times, plus sexual slang for various anatomical parts, among others.
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| BookLooks.org rating system, found here |
This book was given a rating of 3, where 0 is safe for all
and 5 is for adults only. 3 and up are
recommended as minor restricted; in other words, there is reason not to have
them in the schools. My assumption is that this book is in middle school and
school libraries in your district. I don’t yet have a list of 100 or so books
that activists are focused on getting removed. Those are books like Flamer (also
rated 3), which I mentioned here. But it might be that any of the books rated 3 or higher (or even a lower rating, depending on age aimed at) on the BookLooks site might be on
your personal list to get rid of.
Question 4 on the reconsideration form might be difficult for a typical parent to articulate—what the result might be. As a judge said many years ago about defining pornography, “I know it when I see it,” a parent might want to say, “It just ain’t fittin’.” It should be obvious that we don’t give sexual or sexualizing content to young children. It’s just wrong.
But it is also grooming. (I wrote more here.) It is attempting to immerse a child
in a culture that accepts things that the child innately knows are unacceptable
and wrong. It can traumatize. It confuses the child. It can lead to experimentation with sex—which
for any school child is too early. It can lead to questioning that wouldn’t
otherwise happen, resulting in unhappiness, depression, body dysphoria or various
sorts. It can lead a child to discount the moral upbringing they get from their
parents.
It harms the child. And it harms the parent/child
relationship. We have schools to educate the children, not to usurp the role of
parents and to corrupt the children.
Groomers have a purpose. It is to lure children into a sexual lifestyle. Child traffickers do this. And pedophiles do this. Where this grooming has been allowed, it has indeed led to pedophilia. David Strom wrote a piece for Hot Air, “Groomers Everywhere,” in which he recounts the problem in Chicago area schools, referencing a CPS [Chicago Public Schools] Office of Inspector General’s report that “hundreds of Chicago Public Schools teachers sexually groomed, assaulted and raped CPS students last school year.”
The account gives this comparison:
To give you an
idea of the scope of the problem, the allegations of abuse numbered more than
600 in a single year in a single school district. The Catholic sexual abuse
scandals for the entire United States over 52 years included 11,000
allegations. That would mean that in the same time period the CPS would see 2
1/2 times as many incidents of abuse as the Catholic Church in the entire US.
Mark Levin referenced this article and added that you need to get your kids out of public schools.
He ended with this:
Everybody can’t
afford it. But the fact that we pay hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars
every year for these school systems, and there’s so little if any accountability,
and that parents are under attack by the Biden FBI, parents are under attack by
the media, is really grotesque. School choice is the answer…. Anyway, keep an
eye on your kids and what’s happening in your public school, ‘cause in many
cases it ain’t very pretty.
At our meeting last week, several people recommended two documentaries for informing you on this subject:
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| movie poster image from their website |
§ The Mind Polluters by Mark and Amber Archer
I watched Mind Polluters, which was free, and easy to stream; the other was going to require a DVD purchase, so I haven’t seen that yet. Mind Polluters was excellent, with plenty of good sources and examples, verifying what I've said above. They also recommended that you get your kids out of public schools.
I
pulled my kids out in 2000. It wasn’t because of this kind of material. It was
because the district schools failed to meet my children’s educational needs, and there were
safety issues as well. We happily homeschooled for a decade and didn’t miss the
public schools. It was a financial challenge, but not remotely as much as putting three
children in private schools, which wouldn’t have solved all our problems
anyway.
The
thing is, with your kids, you only have those years once. If a school fails
your third grader, that’s going to make his life worse as a fourth grader. The
lack accumulates. What good would it have done to work with the schools to try
to make things better? It would have been a gamble I couldn’t afford. And I
would have lost a bet that the schools would quickly improve; they clearly did not.
Today we've only talked about the sexualization. There is also the CRT problem, the instilling of racism and an alternate history that leads to hating our country, and adopting Marxism. These are often hidden in SEL (social emotional learning) programs, and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). If they find we have caught on, they change what they call things.
How
bad does it have to get before you as a parent say, “That’s over the line; I
don’t want my child exposed to that”?
Now that my kids are grown, I can be just a concerned
taxpayer. I can try to get better school board members. I can work for school
choice in the legislature. I can join in on a project like this local one to get obscene
books out of the schools.
Yes,
we need to work with the schools. But, for the sake of your kids right now, don’t wait. Get them to safety.
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