Fed-up California parents participated in a “Sexxx Ed Sit Out” Tuesday morning to protest the state’s sex education curriculum, calling it “pornographic,” “age-inappropriate,” “highly biased and medically inaccurate instruction.”
In an open letter to principals, lawmakers, and state Department of Education officials, the grassroots effort organized by Informed Parents of California rebuked what’s being taught under the 2016 California Healthy Youth Act and the proposed California Health Education Framework.
“Children are taught negotiation skills for consent to sex,” the letter says, adding:
They are instructed in their rights to confidential reproductive health services and directed to local Planned Parenthood clinics for abortion, birth control and STI [sexualy transmitted infections] testing without parental notice. Some children have even been prescribed puberty blockers for gender transition, and sadly, parents have been so bullied by social workers they are afraid to speak publicly about it.
Under the California Healthy Youth Act, sex education would be expanded to include topics such as gender and sexual orientation, bullying and abuse, and birth control, including emergency contraception.
“The reason parents and teachers and school board members are protesting is the way this law is being implemented,” former California teacher Rebecca Friedrichs said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “Children are being instructed at school against the parents’ will and behind their back to do things that are medically risky and life-altering.”
Friedrichs, author of the book “Standing Up to Goliath,” has been featured by The Daily Signal in reports such as this and this for her Supreme Court battle against teachers unions.
Friedrichs said the new curriculum educates students in junior high and high school on how to use insertive condoms and dental dams for anal and oral sex. Friedrichs warns that schools may introduce the curriculum at any grade.
In coordinating the protest, Informed Parents of California instructed parents to take their kids out of school and gather in front of their local school district offices as a show of solidarity against the state-mandated curriculum. Parents were to submit a letter to the principal to explain their child’s absence.
America Figueroa, a mother of five who serves as the Hispanic spokeswoman for Informed Parents of California, said about 100 families from the three Desert Ridge Academy school districts in Indio, California, signed up to participate in the protest.
The proposed Health Education Framework, set to be adopted in May by the State Board of Education, says high school students “will explore and discover their identities, gender expression, and sexuality throughout their education and into and beyond their high school years.”
According to the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, parents may opt out only from topics such as “human development, pregnancy, family planning, and sexually transmitted diseases and not topics like sexual orientation and gender identity lessons.”
The public comment period for the Health Education Framework closed in January.
Although parents have written letters to lawmakers and attended school boards meetings, “parents are feeling completely ignored,” Friedrichs said.
She said some parents “are being harassed and bullied” by sex ed proponents at school board meetings.
This article has been corrected to reflect that Freidrichs said, “Children are being instructed at school … to do things that are medically risky and life-altering.”
