Calif. School District Forbids Parents to Remove Kids From Graphic Sex Ed Class

California passed a law in 2015 known as the California Healthy Youth Act, part of which expanded and overhauled sexual education classes to include information about homosexuality, gender identity issues and abortion, and which is just now being implemented in schools across the state.

The new sex ed course is intended to help students develop “healthy attitudes” with regard to such issues as “gender (and) sexual orientation” while also informing students about the effectiveness of various contraceptives and spurring an “objective discussion” about “parenting, adoption, and abortion.”

According to LifeSite News, there are some parents who don’t want their children being exposed to everything the curriculum offers.

There’s plenty to object to.

The curriculum includes a study guide about transgender issues and a “sexual health toolkit,” which teaches young students about such things as sex toys and anal intercourse, downplays such quaint notions as “abstinence” and “virginity” and relies heavily upon left-wing organizations such as Planned Parenthood and Advocates for Youth — which are pro-homosexuality and pro-abortion — as resources.

The 2015 law recognized that “parents and guardians have the ultimate responsibility for imparting values regarding human sexuality to their children,” and as such had expressly allowed for parents and guardians to “excuse their children from participation” in the courses as a whole without any sort of penalty.

However, if parents allow their children to take the course at all, they can only keep their children from some aspects, specifically dealing with the physical organs. Otherwise, the children must be exposed to every part of it, including sex toys, anal sex and homosexuality. And parents will be in no position to object.

So, having a kid learn about sexual health means having the kids learn about homexuality and anal sex, too?

That’s the intepretation the Orange County Board of Education — more specifically Orange County Department of Education general counsel Ronald Wenkart — has reached anyway.

That’s because a statement in the law specifically exempts from the parents’ opt-out power “instruction, materials, presentations, or programming that discuss gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, discrimination, harassment, bullying, intimidation, relationships, or family and do not discuss human reproductive organs and their functions.”

In a memo published in full by the San Juan Capistrano Patch, Wenkart indicated that students could only be excused from the portions of the courses that dealt directly with human reproductive organs, and all other information imparted by the courses was mandatory.

Wenkart did, however, suggest that parents retained the right to “advise their children that they disagree with some or all of the information” put forward in the courses and were permitted to “express their views on these subjects to their children.” Gee, thanks for the permission.

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Teaching Cultural Degradation to Children

While the pro-life agenda is anathema, the LGBT agenda is an integral part of the curriculum.

In California, sex education must align itself with progressive dogma — or else.

The Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) is conducting an investigation after what Fox News Sacramento called an “anti-abortion” video was included as part of a sex-education lecture at Sutter Middle School. What the series of videos actually depicted was animations of how abortions are carried out during various stages of pregnancy. They were presented by a pro-life organization called Live Action, and narrated by Dr. Anthony Levatino, a former abortionist turned pro-life activist.

During the presentation, Levantino urges viewers to “protect the pre-born.”

SCUSD spokesman Alex Barrios insisted the videos are “completely inappropriate for the classroom” and fail to “meet the district’s approved family life and sexuality curriculum.”

What curriculum? “California state law, the California Healthy Youth Act, requires that comprehensive sexual health education and HIV prevention education be provided to students at least once in middle school and once in high school, starting in 7th grade,” the district’s website states. “Instruction must encourage students to communicate with parents, guardians or other trusted adults about human sexuality.”

The instruction encouraging students to communicate with parents, guardians or other trusted adults about human sexuality is a bit rich when one considers that California is a state where children under the age of 18 who want an abortion are under no legal obligation to seek their parents’ permission to get it. In fact, they don’t even have to let their parents know they are having what amounts to a surgical procedure.

One is hard-pressed to think of a single other surgical procedure a minor can have without parental consent or notification.

Unfortunately, such twisted ideological priorities should surprise no one. Few things upset leftists who champion the “right to choose” — along with the right to usurp parental guidance and authority — more than the notion that one should be making an informed choice about terminating a pregnancy. Thus, any video that shows students exactly how abortions are performed is off limits.

Why? It might have something to do with a four-minute-long video released by Levantino in 2016 that went viral. “One-third of women who said they hold ‘pro-choice’ views on abortion had a more negative view of abortion after watching even part of the video, and nearly as many called for abortion to be more strictly regulated,” reported Life Site News. More compelling? “Even more pro-choice women, 46 percent, felt the videos should be shown in high school sex education classes,” it added.

“We all know that the subject of abortion is sensitive, complex and controversial, and I personally don’t think it belongs as a topic to go into in any depth in a seventh-grade class,” said a parent of one student who viewed the video. The parent further bemoaned the fact that what the children saw “cannot be unseen.”

It would be illuminating to know what this parent and others think of that same seventh-grade curriculum including a lesson entitled “Blue is for Boys, Pink is for Girls.” It is a lesson that “engages students in a discussion surrounding gender stereotypes and their origin,” and “connections around non-heterosexual orientations.” It’s followed by a lesson called “Sexual Orientation, Behavior and Gender Identity” that discusses “different types of sexual orientation and distinguishes between orientation, behavior and identity.”

In short, while the pro-life agenda is anathema, the LGBT agenda is an integral part of the curriculum.

And these are the “older” students. California is poised to launch a sex-ed program that makes an utter mockery of the indignation surrounding anti-abortion videos. As part of the state’s “Welcoming Schools” agenda, suggested reading for students at grade levels kindergarten through fifth grade will include “I AM JAZZ: READING A CHILDREN’S BOOK TO HELP UNDERSTAND TRANSGENDER TOPICS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.” It will be accompanied by another publication entitled “Sexual Health Guide,” subtitled “An Adolescent Provider Toolkit.”

That toolkit describes topics such as “anal intercourse,” “phone sex,” and other “common sexual behaviors.”

During a May 29 meeting at San Diego Unified School District’s offices, dozens of parents chanting “too much, too soon,” and “protect our kids,” made it clear to school officials — for the third time in two years — they were less than enchanted with the district’s Sexual Health Education Program (SHEP). “It’s not about sex education, it’s not about biological science, it’s about promulgating and pushing a world view upon them,” one parent rightly told the board, adding that “gender confusion, gender dysphoria is what you’re trying to promote.”

District officials insisted the curriculum was in compliance with the new California Healthy Youth Act and state mandates. Dean Broyles, an attorney with the National Center for the Law and Policy, disagrees, asserting, “There are only recommended curriculum, there are no mandated curriculum under the California Healthy Youth Act because it’s too new and a framework has not even been developed yet.”

In stark contrast, the abortion videos are a bridge too far and spokesman Barrios promises the district “will address this matter with the seriousness it demands.” That would be the same district that gives children access to graphic cartoons featuring characters named “Julie Melons” and “Miles Long,” naked in bed together.

Seriously.

Jenny Thomas is the science teacher who presented the videos. It’s her job to teach students about family life and human sexuality. She has apologized for the presentation.

California public schools are hardly outliers in pushing the progressive sexual agenda. At UC Santa Barbara, a student-operated sex information website addresses a variety of topics, including “Childhood Sexuality,” and “Talking To Your Child About Sex.” The former focuses on prepubescent children and urges parents to “keep their reactions to children’s consensual sexual activity and play positive.” Even when children are “touching each others genitals” parents should remain sanguine because “children are just exploring.” The latter topic in part urges parents to teach their children that watching pornography “is a normal habit, and that they do not need to be ashamed of it,” provided it is viewed in moderation.

Enough. America needs congressional hearings on the state of public school education, and one of the primary topics that must be addressed is why, in the overwhelming majority of cases, promoting progressive dogma is the default agenda.

In California, it’s a sexual agenda epitomized by the website “CALIFORNIA MINOR CONSENT AND CONFIDENTIALITY LAWS,” which details just how extensive the usurpation of parental rights has become in the Golden State. By law, the “health care provider is not permitted to inform a parent or legal guardian without the minor’s consent” — with regard to pregnancy, abortion, STDs and rape services for minors 12 years of age and older.

What undergirds this usurpation is a lowest-common-denominator presumption that a parent or guardian might be the child’s impregnator, disease transmitter or rapist. That presumption alludes to the greater discussion of cultural degradation — which alludes to the anything-goes “morality” that constitutes an integral part of the progressive agenda that contributed mightily to that degradation.

The same progressive agenda promulgated in public schools where a pro-life video warrants an investigation. Go figure.

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Withdraw the Obama Administration’s ‘Dear Colleague’ Letter on School Discipline

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), which does great work, has written U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, urging her to withdraw an Obama-era “Dear Colleague” letter giving school administrators “guidance” on how to comply with federal law when it comes to school discipline.

Threatening lawsuits if the administrators didn’t comply with the “guidance,” the 2014 letter coerced many school systems into adopting illegal racial quotas in their disciplinary decision-making.

The Obama letter utilized the “disparate impact” approach to civil-rights enforcement, whereby a policy that does not discriminate on its face, in its intent, or in its application is nonetheless deemed illegal if it has “disproportionate” statistical effects among different racial and ethnic groups.

A number of other organizations, including the Center for Equal Opportunity, joined on WILL’s letter to Secretary DeVos, which continues the steady drumbeat on this important issue from conservative groups. Here’s hoping that she withdraws the discipline letter soon, as she correctly did with similar letters by the Obama administration regarding sexual harassment on college campuses and transgender students in school bathrooms.

Certainly, there is no lack of reasons to withdraw the letter, which created both legal and policy problems. Procedurally, it violates both the Congressional Review Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. Substantively, as the WILL letter explains, the Education Department lacks authority to use the “disparate impact” standard in enforcing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in programs or activities that receive federal funds. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Sandoval that Title VI bans only “disparate treatment.” In any event, the letter’s hyper-aggressive approach violates other Supreme Court and lower federal-court decisions, including a ban on racial quotas in school discipline.

As a policy matter, there is overwhelming evidence that Obama-era policies culminating in this “Dear Colleague” letter pushed schools to avoid disciplining students who needed to be disciplined. It made avoiding politically incorrect numbers more important than maintaining school safety.

The victims of this unfair and unlawful policy are most likely to be well-behaving, minority students — and their teachers — whose classrooms become disrupted and dangerous. And it doesn’t do misbehaving students any favors either, since a lack of early corrective action may only encourage even more disruptive and potentially dangerous behavior. This is what some refer to as the school-to-prison pipeline.

So, kudos to WILL. And please, Secretary DeVos, withdraw that letter immediately and instead ensure that the Education Department follows good educational policy, Title VI, and the Constitution.

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