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Inside the campaign to cancel sex ed Rebecca Crosby
At the end of June, right-wing advocacy group Moms for Liberty held its annual summit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The summit included a session called “Comprehensive Sex Education: Sex Ed or Sexualization” led by conservative education activist Kelly Schenkoske. The forum was part of a larger effort to eliminate or reconstruct sex ed classes in public schools.
The session was closed to members of the media, but Popular Information obtained a recording of the presentation from True North Research.
During the session, Schenkoske strongly objected to the concept of “consent” being included in sex ed curriculum. She argued that teaching kids about consent is counterproductive and leaves children vulnerable to sexual exploitation. “[K]ids are often taught to be obedient.” Schenkoske said. “And to teach kids consent is a shift away from really strongly teaching, it’s okay to have those really strong boundaries and to say no, because not always do kids have that faculty to strongly say no.”
Schenkoske argued that sex ed classes are “teaching kids activities for how to consent to sexual acts [when]… the laws in that state may prevent them from consenting to some of these things.” She said the concept of consent is “confusing” and “there’s a benefit to teaching kids how to say no and to have those boundaries.”
Schenkoske does not appear to have a background in sex ed or any other form of education. She homeschools her children and recently stated on the podcast of Tim Pool, an incendiary right-wing pundit, that she holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She is also prone to conspiratorial thinking and extremism. On X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Schenkoske promoted several posts suggesting that the wildfires in Maui were a government plot due to Hawaii Governor Josh Green (D) stating that the state was thinking of “acquir[ing] that land.”
On August 15, Schenkoske promoted a post stating, “Diversity is segregation” and “Inclusion is exclusion.”
Schenkoske highlighted the days when sex ed only included “safety prevention, birth control options, [and] how to prevent… sexually transmitted infections and viruses.” She criticized “comprehensive sex education” for addressing topics like “sexual rights and sexual citizenship” and “sexuality,” which includes gender identities and sexual orientation. Schenkoske argued that “children do not possess the typical capacity to process all of this.” She said that topics like sexuality have no place in public schools.
Schenkoske also objected to curriculums that recognize LGBTQ people and relationships without treating them as abnormal. “[Heteronormativity] is the norm that a male and female relationship [is] the norm. But this idea is very much to remove or to get away from that concept,” she said
During the session, Schenkoske argued that comprehensive sex ed is “interconnected” and “integrated” with critical race theory (CRT) and social emotional learning (SEL). SEL focuses on developing “critical thinking, emotion management, conflict resolution, decision making, [and] teamwork.” Some SEL concepts, which until very recently were uncontroversial, are likely included in sex ed classes. CRT is a complex theory developed by law professors and taught in higher education settings. There is “little to no evidence that critical race theory itself is being taught to K-12 public school students,” but Schenkoske argued that the “ideas” of CRT are being “incorporated” into classes, including topics like “intersectionality, power and privilege.” (Those concepts are not exclusive to CRT.)
In an April 2022 interview with the Washington Examiner, Schenkoske accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of pushing comprehensive sex ed, CRT, and SEL “to create an unholy trinity of left-wing proselytization in today’s classrooms.”
Schenkoske and Moms for Liberty are not just holding forums criticizing sex ed. They are successfully altering sex ed curriculum to conform to their agenda. Earlier this year in Leon County, Florida, Moms for Liberty fought to postpone approval of the school district’s sex ed curriculum. Members of Moms for Liberty said the curriculum was “dehumanizing” and “harm[ed] children.” The group’s complaints focused on the fact “that the word ‘anal’ was used more than 30 times in the instructional materials,” even though the word was only used to “refer to the risks of sexually transmitted diseases.” The group also argued that “a video in the optional instructional” provisions “promoted masturbation” and “that the information for middle schoolers promoted sex.” The curriculum was eventually approved after the “optional provisions” were removed and “some of the wording that Moms for Liberty objected to [was] changed.”
Moms for Liberty members have actively opposed sexual education curriculums in New Jersey, Maryland, Montana, Wisconsin, and Texas.
When the audience started asking questions, things really got wild.
The session concluded with the opportunity for audience members to ask Schenkoske questions. “In Michigan, we voted on Proposal 3… we literally voted our parental rights away,” one audience member said. “[W]e have lost our parental medical rights of our children… the schools have all the things that they are able to pass out, the abortion pills, they are able to start transgender, trans, you know… Your child can go to the clinic between 2nd and 3rd hours and have their abortion pill… This is in our middle school and high schools.” Later the audience member said, “[a] boy can start the process of cutting his penis off right there in his high school on his lunch.”
These comments went unchecked by Schenkoske. “[Y]es, there’s other states that are making changes abruptly,” Schenkoske said. But the claims that the audience member made are not true.
Michigan Proposal 3, a ballot initiative approved in 2022, amended the state constitution “to provide that every individual has a right to reproductive freedom, including the right to make and carry out pregnancy-related decisions such as those concerning prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion, miscarriage management, and infertility care.”
Conservative opponents of the Michigan ballot initiative claimed that it would “repeal parental consent requirements,” and “allow children to undergo ‘gender change therapy without parental consent.’” Attorneys for Reproductive Freedom for All, the group behind the initiative, said these claims were a scare tactic intended to undermine support for the initiative. The group “argued that Proposal 3 would leave parental consent requirements untouched.” According to the Detroit Free Press, “[l]egal experts weighing in on the matter argue that parental consent laws in place regarding medical treatments for minors don’t conflict with” Proposal 3. Even if, in the future, a court heard a “legal challenge from a minor seeking gender-affirming care without their parents’ consent,” it is unlikely that courts would interpret the proposal as pertaining to gender-affirming care, “[b]ecause those backing the amendment have denied that it has anything to do with” it.
Another audience member told Schenkoske that Illinois has “put LGBTQ history into the grade schools,” claiming that “it’s generating conversations that are highly inappropriate because the kids don’t know what that is.” The audience member said that the children were then “asking about it,” causing the parents to “freak out.” The audience member said they were “telling people to homeschool” their children for history to avoid mentions of LGBTQ content.
The audience member was referring to HB 0246, which amended the U.S. history requirement for public schools in Illinois to “include a study of the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this State.” The law, which was passed in 2019, “mandates that by the time students finish eighth grade, public schools must teach them about contributions to state and U.S. history made by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.”
Schenkoske responded by equating instruction on LGBTQ history with sex ed, saying that “sexuality conversations” are invading every subject in public schools.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Popular Information is on hiatus the week of August 21. We will return to your inbox on Monday, August 28.
Yesterday, U.S. officials arrested Ismael Zambada García, or “El Mayo,” cofounder of the violent and powerful drug trafficking organization the Sinaloa Cartel, and Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of its other cofounder. That other cofounder, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, or “El Chapo,” is already incarcerated in the U.S., as are another of El Chapo’s sons, alleged cartel leader Ovidio Guzmán López, and the cartel’s alleged lead hitman, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, or “El Nini.”
In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said: “Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable.” El Mayo has been charged with drug trafficking and money laundering.
U.S. officials exploited rifts in the cartel to get Guzmán López to bring El Mayo in. The successful and peaceful capture of the two Sinaloa Cartel leaders contrasts with Trump’s insistence that the U.S. must bomb or invade Mexico to damage the cartels, a position echoed by Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance and increasingly popular in the Republican Party. Mexico, which is America’s biggest trade partner, staunchly opposes such an intervention. Opponents note that such military action would do nothing to decrease demand for illegal drugs in the U.S. and would increase the numbers of asylum-seekers at the border as their land became a battleground.
Trump seems to think that governance is about dominance, but that approach often runs afoul of the law. Today the Justice Department reached a $2 million settlement with former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who became the butt of Trump’s attacks after their work on the FBI investigation into the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives. Trump’s Department of Justice released text messages between the two journalists. Today’s settlement appears to reflect that the release likely violated the Privacy Act, which bars the government from disclosing personal information.
Tonight, speaking to Christians at the Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump made his plans to become a strongman clear: “Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians…. Get out, you’ve got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
This chilling statement comes after Trump praised autocratic Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán in his speech at the Republican National Convention last week and then publicly praised China’s president Xi Jinping for being “brilliant” because he “controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” It should also be read against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his “official duties.”
The Harris campaign reacted to Trump’s dark statements by ridiculing them, and him: “Tonight, Donald Trump couldn’t pronounce words [he mispronounced “landslide” as “land slade], insulted the faith of Jewish and Catholic Americans, lied about the election (again), lied about other stuff, bragged about repealing Roe, proposed cutting billions in education funding, announced he would appoint more extremist judges, revealed he planned to fill a second Trump term with more criminals like himself, attacked lawful voting, went on and on and on, and generally sounded like someone you wouldn’t want to sit near at a restaurant—let alone be President of the United States.
“America can do better than the bitter, bizarre, and backward looking delusions of criminal Donald Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris offers a vision for America’s future focused on freedom, opportunity, and security.”
Harris continually refers to Trump as a criminal in her speeches, but her campaign has taken the approach of referring to him and J.D. Vance as weirdos. On Tuesday, Minnesota governor Tim Walz said, “These guys are just weird.” Senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Brian Schatz of Hawaii recorded a video together about Vance’s “super weird,” “bananas,” and “offensive” idea that people with children should be assigned additional votes for each child, making their wishes count more than people without children.
As J.D. Vance continues to step on rakes, the “weird” label seems correctly to label the MAGAs as outside the mainstream of American thought. Today, Vance doubled down on his denigration of women who have not given birth as “childless cat ladies” but assured voters he has nothing against cats. In addition, a video surfaced of Vance calling for the federal government to stop women in Republican-dominated states from crossing state lines to obtain abortions.
Mychael Schnell of The Hill reported today that while MAGA Republican lawmakers like Vance, a number of House Republicans are bashing his selection as the vice presidential candidate. “He was the worst choice of all the options,” one said. “It was so bad I didn’t even think it was possible.”
“The prevailing sentiment is if Trump loses, [it’s] because of this pick,” another said, a sentiment that suggests Vance will be a scapegoat if Trump loses. Considering what happened to Trump’s last vice president after Trump blamed him for an election loss, Vance might have reason to be concerned.
Last night’s “Answer the Call” Zoom has now raised more than $8.5 million for Harris; the organizers thanked Win With Black Women “for showing us how it’s done.” Today the Future Forward PAC, which had threatened to hold back $90 million in spending if Biden stayed at the head of the ticket, began large advertising purchases in swing states for Harris.
Carl Quintanilla of CNBC reported that a week ago, those on a phone call of more than 400 people from Bank of America’s Federal Government Relations Team believed that a Trump victory was a “foregone conclusion.” Now that conviction is gone. “[T]here’s been a palpable sentiment reversal.”
The Harris campaign announced that it will launch 2,600 more volunteers into its ground game in Florida, a state where abortion rights will be on the ballot this fall, likely turning out voters for the Democratic ticket. The volunteers will write postcards, make phone calls, and knock on doors.
Today, Vice President Kamala Harris filled out the paperwork officially declaring her candidacy for president of the United States.
Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/us/sinaloa-cartel-ismael-zambada-custody-report/index.html
https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/mexico-surpasses-china-us-biggest-trading-partner-exports/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/10/gop-bomb-mexico-fentanyl-00091132
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/26/peter-strzok-lawsuit-settlement-00171498
https://www.vox.com/culture/363230/jd-vance-couch-sex-hillbilly-elegy-rumor-false
https://thehill.com/homenews/4793818-vance-vp-trump-house-republicans/
https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_Amendment_4,_Right_to_Abortion_Initiative_(2024)
X:
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KamalaHarris/status/1816998711056052463
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ArtCandee/status/1816935834500657185
NewsHour/status/1816964874120974349
Oh, no, it’s the sister again, for another slow news week. Let’s get to it.
→ Biden dropped out: Six years ago emotionally, but technically this past Sunday, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. He did it via X and promptly threw his support (and cash) behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Then he got Covid and hunkered down in Delaware—or depending on what hooch you’ve been drinking, died and was reanimated so he could appear before the cameras on Wednesday to address the nation. Joe’s family, including Hunter, sat along the wall of the Oval Office as he spoke. The president talked about the cancer moonshot, ending the war in Gaza, putting the party over himself, and Kamala’s tenacity, as Kamala’s pistol dug ever-so-slightly harder into his back. Right after, Jill, the First Lady of passive aggression, who apparently wanted to outdo her heart emoji, tweeted a handwritten note “to those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed.” I respect a First Lady who stands by her man and her energetic stepson. A First Lady who sees the high road way up there and says to herself, “If they want us out of here so bad, they can clean out the fridge and strip the beds themselves!”
→ Kamala is brat, Biden is boots, please God send the asteroid today: I’ve learned the hard way—and by that I mean my parents once asked me what “WAP” meant—that certain things should never be explained with words. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just that it embarrasses everyone.
That’s how I feel about the whole Kamala-is-brat thing. Brat is a good album about partying and getting older and having anxiety that was released earlier this summer by Charli XCX. But it’s since been adopted by too-online and very young people as a personality, and by Kamala Harris’s campaign as a mode to relate to those very young people. Her campaign is leaning into the whole green look of the album to try and win over Gen Z, and generally recasting her many viral moments—“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” “I love Venn diagrams” “What can be, unburdened but what has been”—as calling cards. It’s like when Hillary went on Broad City, only this time more cringe.
And now we have Jake Tapper and Greg Gutfeld grappling with the “essence” and the “aesthetic” and overall vibe of brat girl summer. We used to be a serious country. We used to make things.
Here’s the thing about Kamla: she is hilarious and campy, but unintentionally so. Any goodwill that her goofy dances or weird turns of phrase garner should be considered bonus points, not game play. Was there ever any doubt that Fire Island would go blue? We’ve been debating whether Kamala’s meme campaign is a good move for her prospects in the Free Press Slack, and here I’ll borrow from my older and wiser colleague Peter Savodnik: “There is nothing more pathetic than an older person who cares what a younger person thinks is cool.”
→ Boomer behavior: While Kamala’s campaign is being run by a 24-year-old twink with an Adderall prescription, J.D. Vance’s speechwriter seems to be a drunk Boomer who just got kicked out of a 7-11. Vance, appearing this week at a rally in Middletown, Ohio, riffed, “Democrats say that it is racist to believe. . . well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today, and I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too.” Crickets. Horror. Major “Thanks, Obama” energy. There was also a bit on fried bologna sandwiches and a lot of “lemme tell you another story.” The guy is 39 but sounds older than Biden.
Fresher, 35-to-60-year-old blood is exactly what we’ve been begging for. Let the Boomers boom, let the Zoomers zoom. Kamala and J.D.: act your age.
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