Pennsylvania School District Backs Down After Hiding Kids’ Gender Transitions From Parents

LGBT, , , ,

Our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) say a Pennsylvania school district has rescinded a policy that required teachers to hide students’ social transitions from parents.

The Chester County Intermediate Unit 24 School District had a policy mandating that staff use students’ preferred names and pronouns at school while keeping parents in the dark. Teachers who refused to go along with the policy faced disciplinary action.

After attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom and the Independence Law Center sent a letter outlining the policy’s constitutional violations, the district backed down and rescinded the policy.

This is good news, but the situation should never have happened in the first place.

We have written before about how pro-LGBT activists have used public schools to promote transgender ideology and gender confusion to kids in many different ways.

Schools have been hiding important information about students from their parents. A New York school district secretly treated a middle-school girl as if she were a boy without her mother’s knowledge or consent. A Massachusetts school helped an eleven-year-old girl “socially transition” without her parents ever being told. And earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with parents challenging California’s secret gender transition policy — a strong signal that these policies violate the law.

Public school students should not be taught to question their gender, and schools should not lie to parents about what their children are experiencing at school.

Arkansas has been a leader when it comes to passing laws that block radical pro-LGBT ideology in the classroom and help prevent schools from socially transitioning children. Arkansas’ Given Name Act and other good laws protect children and affirm parental rights in our state.

Last month, Family Council joined an amicus brief defending parental rights in a federal lawsuit before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, because federal court cases like it could affect schools nationwide. That’s why it’s important for us to stand up for students and parents in court.

Parents are not the enemy. They are the first and most important line of defense for their children. No school should ever be allowed to cut them out.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Trump Administration Cuts Millions of Dollars to Planned Parenthood Sex-Education Programs

Sex Education, ,

Late last month the Trump administration moved to eliminate millions of dollars in grant money to Planned Parenthood and other organizations teaching comprehensive sex-education to teens.

The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program traces its roots back to former President Obama in 2010. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded federal grant money to “evidence-based programs” designed to prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Under the program, organizations — including Planned Parenthood — were able to apply for federal funds to teach these teen pregnancy prevention programs.

But evaluations showed the programs generally turned out to be either ineffective or counterproductive.

For example, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest received $4 million to teach teen pregnancy prevention. An official evaluation later found that students were actually more likely to become pregnant after going through Planned Parenthood’s program — not less.

In other words, Planned Parenthood’s multimillion dollar sex-education program did exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do.

On June 26, HHS announced it would not renew most of the pregnancy prevention grants offered under this program.

The Daily Signal obtained a cancellation letter saying after reviewing the teen pregnancy prevention curricula, HHS “believes that some curricula normalize adolescent sexual activity and are not age appropriate, as they contain overly sexually explicit or pornographic content that is not necessary to achieve the TPP program’s statutory mission.”

The grant money comes to a total of $67 million.

Arkansas knows from experience that Planned Parenthood’s comprehensive sex-education is not the way to go.

In the 1980s and 1990s, public officials in Arkansas promoted comprehensive sex-education, but the programs failed to have a meaningful impact on teen pregnancy and abortion in the state.

But in 1997 the Arkansas Legislature and Governor Mike Huckabee began promoting abstinence education in Arkansas.

From 1997 to 2005, Arkansas’ teen birthrate decreased 17%, and Arkansas’ teen abortion rate plummeted a staggering 48%.

Governor Huckabee’s abstinence education model was so successful in Arkansas that it drew national recognition.

Given all of this, it seems like the Trump administration is making the right call by cancelling these teen pregnancy prevention grants.

The Daily Signal says that besides canceling these grants to Planned Parenthood and other organizations, “HHS announced two new grant opportunities that promote body literacy in place of radical gender ideology, abortion, and contraception. The opportunities will ‘focus on programs that do not promote material that depicts, describes, exposes, or presents obscene, indecent, or sexually explicit content, including content that normalizes or promotes sexual activity for minors.'”

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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State Library Board Advances Rules to Protect Children from Explicit Material

Decency, , , ,
Above: The book It’s Perfectly Normal sits on display in the children’s section of the Craighead County Public Library in Jonesboro in this file photo from 2024. The book contains inappropriate illustrations depicting nudity and sexual activity.

Last week, the Arkansas State Library Board advanced a proposal to help protect children from sexually explicit material in public libraries.

Arkansas is home to many public libraries all across the state, and the library board helps oversee them. But in recent years, parents and policymakers alike have expressed serious concerns about obscene and explicit children’s books that some librarians have placed on the shelves of their local libraries.

At its May 8 meeting, the Arkansas Library Board unanimously approved a proposed set of rules requiring public libraries to ensure children under the age of 16 may not check out sexually explicit materials without parental consent.

Under the rules, libraries would also keep explicit material separate from other areas of the library, and could not knowingly advertise explicit material. Libraries that fail to abide by the rules may not receive state funding.

These proposed library rules are a step in the right direction, because too many libraries in Arkansas have made headlines for promoting sexually explicit material to young children.

For example, the Jonesboro public library has been at the center of multiple controversies over its decision to place books with sexually explicit images in its children’s section and for failing to adopt a policy that separates sexual material from children’s books.

The library even went so far as to post on Facebook that it isn’t the library’s responsibility to protect kids from obscenity.

The controversy in Jonesboro escalated to a point that voters finally decided to reduce the library’s millage in 2022.

Other public libraries in Arkansas have included explicit children’s books in their catalogs and failed to separate sexual material from children’s material as well. Some of these books actually contain explicit images of minors engaged in sexual acts.

Families should not have to worry about what their children might see in the children’s section of a library, and taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize library material that is explicit or obscene. These new rules from the State Library Board could help address those concerns.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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