With the enforcement of a controversial recent state law, California public schools have stepped up their commitment to comprehensive sexuality education — even as academic results decline.

Shocked at explicit material introduced to their children, many parents are speaking out at local school board meetings and State Capitol rallies. On March 28, they held signs urging lawmakers to “Stop SeXXX Ed” and “Educate Don’t Indoctrinate.”

Their leaders include Rebecca Friedrichs, a mother of two and public school teacher for nearly three decades. “Kids are [being] exposed to casual attitudes about sex and sexually explicit content,” Friedrichs wrote in the Orange County Register on April 7.

“We K-12 teachers — who are mortified, by the way — are instructed to teach the kids sexual behaviors and protections that are too graphic to print. The law [adopts] medically inaccurate and age-inappropriate sex education curricula to indoctrinate children.”

Public schools in California currently rank 44th out of 50 states, according to analysis by U.S. News & World Report. Since 2011, state legislators have passed a series of increasingly progressive laws regarding sexuality education. Policies impacting K-12 students are expected to be finalized by the State Board of Education in May.

Friedrichs and her husband Charles lead For Kids and Country, a movement to restore excellence and safety in U.S. schools. She spoke in an interview from Orange County about the new sex-ed standards, the groups behind it and why parents nationwide should be concerned. It has been lightly edited for clarity.

Life Lessons

How long have you lived in Southern California?

Rebecca Friedrichs: I was born in Los Angeles, so I’ve been here my entire life. I taught kindergarten through fourth grade for 28 years in Anaheim, California.

Students in that lower-income Orange County neighborhood came from all over the world. They spoke 42 different languages in our school!

My understanding of being a teacher is that I’m a public servant. I am paid by the taxpayers and parents to educate and protect little children.

I am a legally mandated reporter of child abuse. Yet teachers are now being asked to turn the other way while children are abused in our schools.

The offenders in this case are our Legislature, the union I was forced to fund and some very powerful organizations who are degrading this profession. I’m deeply troubled by it all.

For three years, I actually served as a union leader trying to fight all this from the inside. All I got for my trouble was bullied. I want to protect the kids, protect my former colleagues who are teachers and protect parental rights.

“It Would Make Sailors Blush”

Why are you concerned about California law AB 329 which was passed in recent years?

Friedrichs: To start, this law was passed in a sneaky way. It states there was a survey and parents agreed with introducing comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) to their children. This is inaccurate and deceitful.

A friend of mine reached out to the gentleman who wrote the survey to which the law refers. None of the topics in the new curricula are in that survey. It asks questions like: Are you ok with teaching kids “the birds and the bees”? Parents were deceived.

Under this law, the state has approved six curricula to date. I’ve read all six, every one with content that would make sailors blush. Kids are being exposed to sexually explicit lessons against the will of their parents. Those who pushed these laws through our Legislature, without parents knowing it, made sure it’s illegal for districts to allow an opt-in model.

Many district administrators would like to be fully transparent about what they’re being told to teach kids. They’d say: Hey, parents, come on out. We’re going to show you all the content in this curriculum: every video, the 19 sexual protections like insertive condoms for anal sex and dental dams for oral sex. How do you feel about this, parents? Do you want to opt-in?

I’ve never met one parent who wants to opt-in, once they know what’s in the curricula. Parents all over the state, including here in Southern California, are pushing back and going to school board meetings. All of us are getting bullied and shouted down.

Some school board members I’m working with are saying, “Our community wants to write a different curriculum.” Yet when they push back, the ACLU threatens to sue them. It’s all coercion and a complete attack on parental rights, teacher autonomy and child innocence.

Devised by SPLC, Planned Parenthood

What interest groups are behind this newly introduced curriculum?

Friedrichs: The root cause of getting this into our schools are the state and national teachers unions. They have access. These unions work in partnership with multiple groups.

One is the Southern Poverty Law Center, who make it their job to call people like me a “hater” if I dare to push back. They also work with the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, SIECUS, Kinsey Institute, Guttmacher Institute — I’m sure I’m leaving some out. It’s an extensive collaboration of many powerful organizations.

A teacher like me is told that we have to teach these children where to find Planned Parenthood or other “women’s health” providers. We have to teach them how and where to obtain birth control, including the morning-after pill and abortion. We have to tell them they have to right to all of these things beginning at age 12, without their parents’ consent or knowledge.

What’s really troubling is how the law addresses if a teacher is “not qualified” to teach all of this. You have to read between the lines, because that means if a teacher refuses. Then the law says the “experts” at Planned Parenthood can come in and give sex-ed lessons to our kids. Really, they’re building a relationship with our children and telling them outright: We’re your friend. And you can go do this behind your parents’ back.

While I was going to high school, I knew someone personally who did this. She had two abortions without her parents knowing about it. The school nurse gave this student a bus pass, and she went to the local Planned Parenthood clinic. Years later, it has become a finely tuned system with this new law — and it has to be stopped.

Core Curriculum Adds Gender Theory

Does the law provide parents an opt-out provision?

Friedrichs: The Legislature made this really confusing. Parents can opt-out of specific CSE instruction, if they see a one-page letter that comes home with their child. If a parent signs that letter, and if it makes it back to the teacher, then the child is “opted out” of certain material.

However, the law specifies parents absolutely cannot opt-out of the gender identity piece of CSE. Under the guise of anti-bullying of LGBTQ students, they have brought in all the gender spectrum lessons with no one able to opt-out. This happens all the way from preschool to 12th grade, in any classroom for any subject area.

If your child is in a government-run school, he or she can be taught gender identity ideology. It goes like this to four-year-old Annie: When you were born, your mommy and daddy didn’t know your real gender. They assigned you as being boy or girl. But there’s really a whole spectrum of genders. I’ve heard people talk about 30 to 70 different genders; it’s ever changing.

They are telling children they cannot trust the identity they have in biology — and that their parents’ values are not true. It creates distrust between children and their parents. If they’re coming from families that affirm God created them as male or female, it’s an attack on their religious rights.

The Gender Unicorn teaches children that their biological sex is completely detached from their gender, their sexual attractions, & their romantic attractions. People are a collection of contradictory bits & pieces, with no internal harmony or coherence. pic.twitter.com/RPQRs8ho5p

— Nancy Pearcey (@NancyRPearcey) February 2, 2018

It’s really manipulative. A kindergarten teacher at a charter school in Rocklin near Sacramento taught a lesson about transgenderism. She read the book I Am Jazz to her class, then planned a surprise.

A little boy in the class went into the bathroom, changed his clothes and came out “a girl.” The teacher told kids they had to call him a girl name and use female pronouns. The children went home traumatized, crying to their parents: “I’m going to turn into a boy!”

No one can opt-out of unscientific challenges to the biological fact of gender. When teachers like myself are trained in this, we are mortified. When parents push back, they are bullied.

Back to Basics

You mentioned this new law goes beyond teaching basics of “the birds and bees.” Do you believe there is any role for sex-ed in schools?

Friedrichs: Twenty years ago, before I saw all this manipulation and the way teachers unions keep pushing their sexual agenda into the schools, I may have answered differently.

If only our schools were truly run by our communities, by parents and teachers who actually love our kids and aren’t pushing a political agenda. Then we could all decide on our own if we want to teach our kids some things in school, or whether to leave it to the parents. It would be the community’s decision, as it’s supposed to be.

Today, government officials in charge of our schools have intruded and gone off the rails. Some people with a lot of money, power and an agenda are now damaging little children. They are destroying my beloved profession and undermining parents.

At this point, No, I don’t think we should continue to teach any of it. Under these circumstances, leave it to the parents, because the schools cannot be trusted.

Follow the Money

You’ve objected to how union fees are entangled in this. What is your message to teachers?

Friedrichs:  Teachers, please get informed that you are funding an agenda. Behind our backs and against our will, the billions they’ve collected from us annually in tax-free dues advances this sexual agenda into our classrooms. Then they bully us when we push back.

Please read the documentation and websites for your union. They are using your money to push this agenda in national conferences, resolution documents — it’s everywhere. If you don’t like it, you recently gained new freedom. Thanks to ten California teachers and Mark Janus from Illinois who brought lawsuits to the Supreme Court, you are now free to pay those unions nothing.

Get informed and trust people who care about you and care about the kids, not a union who is there to use you.

Show and Tell

For people inside and outside of California, how do you encourage them to be involved?

Friedrichs: We need all heads out of the sand. And we need all hands on deck. This sex-ed curriculum is coming to a state near you, if it’s not already there. Read the California Healthy Youth Act, a shocking framework similarly introduced in Massachusetts and Florida.

Parents, you have more power than you think — for now. These forces are trying to take away your authority, so please use it and speak out. We need you. Attend school board meetings every month. Get involved at the curriculum level in your district.

If faith leaders and pastors could stand together with parents and teachers, we will win. We are trying to protect innocence here. Bullies cower when people stand together with truth. We just need to stop being afraid and stand up to them.

We need homeschoolers in this battle so badly. A lot of homeschooled parents think they’re safe. Yet the teachers unions want all children in government-run schools, and they’ll do it if they can get away with it. If parents want to protect their kids, they need to help us fight this.

The last thing I would say is vote your values. I know so many parents horrified by these lessons, but they’ve never bothered to find out who passed this law. They’re unaware of who is colluding with the teachers unions. Research that and vote your values.

 

Learn more about the new book Standing Up to Goliath by Rebecca Friedrichs, including in the video below. Explore The Stream’s complete education coverage and sign up receive top stories every week.