We Hear You: Public Schools, Private Beliefs, and Rising Inflation
Ken McIntyre /
Editor’s note: The Daily Signal’s audience isn’t happy with how school system leaders in Loudoun County, Virginia, responded to a rape in a girls’ restroom at one of its high schools, nor with the continuing rise in inflation, as evidenced by these letters from the mailbag at [email protected].—Ken McIntyre
Dear Daily Signal: As a retired police supervisor and parent of five children, I am outraged to think that any school official would ignore and try to conceal such a horrific crime alleged to have been committed in a girls’ room by a biological male wearing a skirt (“Virginia School System Deflects Charges It Covered Up Rape of Ninth Grade Girl by ‘Gender-Fluid’ Boy”).
I’m also very angry that schools now permit their restrooms to be used based on an individual student’s gender identity.
Our children’s minds are being corrupted by critical race theory and programs dealing with sexuality. Educators should focus on teaching the three R’s, science, and true American history.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has no business directing the FBI to police local school board meetings and treating parents as domestic terrorists (“State School Board Groups Disavow National Entity’s Call for DOJ to Investigate Parents”). If a school board member feels threatened, it is a problem for local law enforcement, not the FBI.
Under the Biden administration, America is in deep trouble.—Wayne Beyea, Mableton, Ga.
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School boards have always covered up and silenced what they didn’t want the parents and public to know. The training that school board members attend simply teaches them how to to smooth everybody’s ruffled feathers and quiet everything down.
The Loudoun County board members who said they didn’t know about the sexual assault in a girls’ restroom are probably not being truthful. I think they knew the next day.—Jerry Donaldson
Dear Daily Signal: The #metoo movement has done much damage to many men who have lost jobs with only a hint of some infraction. Then to hear, through Mary Margaret Olohan’s reporting, of the lack of outrage from these groups when girls are raped at school by a biological male wearing a skirt is unbelievable (“#MeToo Groups Silent Over Boy Allegedly Raping Girl in Loudoun School Girls Bathroom”).
Add insult to injury that the father of one of the assaulted girls is arrested and charged when the Loudoun County Board of Education would not listen to him. What father would not be distraught that his daughter had been raped?
Biological males have no place in women’s restrooms, locker rooms or prisons. Furthermore, they do not belong in women’s sports.
When are common sense and real science going to reassert themselves?—Victor Watson
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As a very conservative transgender person, I disagree with many of the left’s positions on transgender people’s rights, and especially their needs. If Virginia’s Loudoun County school district is not enforcing laws and blaming that on transgender rights, officials need to be charged as accomplices to the crime.
Real transgender people don’t act that way toward others. I understand how it might be difficult to know if a person is really transgender and not someone who uses transgenderism as an excuse to commit a crime. But people who really do suffer from gender dysphoria don’t often fit into the category of a rapist. They are more likely to become a victim rather than a criminal.
In general, we don’t go around hurting people. Of course, we have some crazies, just like the straight community has its crazies. But we all do not deserve that label. Most of us are law-respecting, law-abiding people who are tops in our chosen fields and just want to live our lives as normally as we can.
We don’t like being blamed for the left’s crazy and outrageous attempts to give us rights, any more than we like being made out to be villains and sexual predictors by the right. Please stop making us out to be responsible for straight cross-dressers and sexual predators who misuse our situations to prey on others.—Telane Jefferies, Las Vegas
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I was very naive to believe that the #metoo movement truly cared about victims of sexual abuse and assault. If these organizers truly cared, they would be outraged that transgender individuals—or those who claimed to be transgender to gain access the vulnerable women and girls— were attacking girls and women.—Nancy Mclellan
When Schools Undermine Families
Dear Daily Signal: The constitutional system that separates religion from government should not implement laws to teach any belief or ideology, or to advocate a specific lifestyle in schools and other educational institutions (“‘Are You Transgender?’: Virginia School Survey Asks Students About Gender, Sex, Intimate Family Details”).
Policies regarding homosexual and transgender individuals in public schools have concerned many families in Virginia. Teaching a child about a way of life comes under a parent’s responsibility; Virginia’s public schools must not become alternative places to reestablish a different faith in the child’s mind.
Adding the subjects of homosexuality and gender identity and teaching children to accept a lifestyle that is rejected by millions of Christians, Muslims, and Jews is not a society of multicultural diversity; it is brainwashing children.
Rejecting a specific lifestyle is not a definition of prejudice or bigotry, but a belief that each group embraces without crossing the boundaries of others. Curriculums at school must not contain lessons that teach doctrines for the purpose of changing students’ mentality and reeducating generations who have different beliefs because of their family’s traditional lifestyle.
Schools and other educational institutions must not take the form of “reeducation camps,” destroying traditional religious beliefs and place liberal ideology in children’s minds. A free society in a nation that protects freedom of speech and religious belief is not permission for individuals to cross the red lines of others.
Neither the government nor the public schools must intervene or be allowed to teach any particular belief, religion, or alternative lifestyle other than what individuals choose. As homosexuals have chosen their lifestyle and established a definition of life and human relationship, elected officials have no right to implement a policy to promote such a lifestyle in public schools and create conflicts in the minds of children with different beliefs.—Serwan Zangana, Roanoke, Va.
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I don’t see the problem with this survey of students in Virginia’s Fairfax County school system. Mary Margaret Olohan reports that the survey is anonymous and is varied by age (sixth graders are not getting sexuality and gender questions); the kids are told that they don’t need to answer anything with which they aren’t comfortable, and parents can opt their kids out.
The survey topics are pertinent and controls are in place. If it was mandatory and wasn’t anonymous, I would definitely have a problem with it. But, as it stands, it seems like a legitimate survey. If this was offered to my kids, I would allow them to take it.—Frank Godek, Mililani, Hawaii
Inflation, Supply Chain Concerns
Dear Daily Signal: In response to Tim Murtaugh’s commentary, I don’t know what a “high class problem” is supposed to be (“Biden on Energy Crisis: Begging Others to Save Him From Himself”). My wife and I are decidedly middle class and live frugally. Nonetheless, prices at the pump continue to increase and grocery goods are difficult to obtain.
We may shop and fill only two shopping bags, but are still spending upward of $100 at a time. I don’t think the rich are as affected as we “low class” people.
If Paul Friedman was correct that “inflation is too much money chasing too few goods,” the government subsidy for people not to work is making it worse. Not only are they pumping money into the consumer sector, they are discouraging employment in the production sector.
Approximately 3 million jobs are going begging, simply because employers cannot pay enough to make it worthwhile for people to shake off their indolent lifestyle and get back to work. We have to repeal the $15 minimum wage and put an end to the extended unemployment benefits.
Until we become a productive economy again, we have no hope of recovery. My wife and I certainly have not lived this long and worked as hard as we have to watch our country sink under the weight of bloated Democrat social programs.
And while I’m on the subject, I saw a video a couple of days ago of a Senate Democrat denouncing the Trump tax cuts as irresponsibly reducing revenue before cutting spending. When has anyone ever seen Congress eliminate spending programs? I can’t remember anything like that. It’s spend, spend, spend.
Not that long ago, Paul Ryan and others floated the idea that tax cuts should be tied to spending cuts, but to nobody’s surprise that went nowhere. Congress, led by the Democrats, is spending us to death.—Morgan Spector, Lancaster, Calif.
Dear Daily Signal: Having lived through the stagflation of the 1970s, I saw this in late January. Even then there were shortages at the grocery stores that weren’t there the previous month.
As your article states, retirees are going to be the ones hurt. I was in the Air Force then, so the stagflation didn’t affect me. It was President Carter’s lack of world leadership that concerned me then.
Now I’m retired and I am worried. I could see the shortages in March and April 2020. Slowly, as the year wore on, the shortages pretty much stopped. But since then, the Biden administration has mucked up everything.
The left is very adept at saying things that sound great and making an individual feel like a heel if he doesn’t go along. It is apparent if anyone knows history that these ideologues don’t care about people’s suffering, only that they implement their policies.
Just look at the aftereffects of the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Nazis, and more recently Venezuela, to name a few.—Philip G. Daspit, Florida
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The Heritage Foundation, The Daily Signal’s parent organization, would do well to publicize loudly, over and over, how inflation destroys those who live on fixed incomes. Heritage has a bigger voice than I by far and is a highly respected organization.
The retired and elderly form a formidable voting bloc in this country, and when motivated to go to the polls they can do a great deal to help right our sinking ship. This Biden administration is the enemy of every senior citizen. That message needs to be used as motivation.
Our nation’s future is at greater risk today than at any other time since the Civil War.—Wayne Peterkin, Evangeline, La.
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The supply chain issue has been an emergency for over a year and a half now (“24/7 Operations Might Not Be Enough to Solve Supply Chain Crisis”). It is getting dire, closing in on catastrophic.
Joe Biden hasn’t helped much, but this problem started under the watch of Donald Trump.—Dan Wall
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If the goal is the maximize the “need” for infinite stimulus payments in order to “justify“ tax increases, you put up barriers to people working and goods being shipped. All part of the plan.—Paul Levy, Carolina Beach, N.C.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.