Free Republic

A school board candidate in Northern Virginia may have lost the election, but she’s not giving up the fight to protect children in her district. In a Facebook post, Fairfax County School Board candidate Priscilla DeStefano warned parents in the district that children as young as 6th grade would begin receiving graphic, highly inappropriate surveys on sexual activity, drug use, and more unless they take the time to opt out. https://www.facebook.com/PriscillaForFairfax/photos/a.111043596987758/120923609333090/ “We must be vigilant about what is going on in our schools,” DeStefano wrote. “I may have lost, but the fight is not over!!” “Starting this week, 6th, 8th,...

I live in Fairfax County, Virginia, which has the 10th-largest public school district in the nation, but I never focused on our public schools. My kids go to Catholic schools, and that was the center of our universe. I never focused, that is, until I heard that the Fairfax County School Board voted to let boys into the girls’ bathrooms. The vote was 10-1. Was there only one sane person on the Fairfax County School Board? I had to find out. So I began attending school board meetings. And there I saw moms and dads begging the school board to...

Netflix continually shows an absolute lack of regard for basic decency when it comes to the content they offer subscribers. Perhaps the single greatest offender among Netflix’s offerings is ‘13 Reasons Why,’ their smash hit teen drama laced with suicide, rape, graphic sex scenes, and more. Everything you want your children to be inundated with all in one convenient television series, right? 13RW goes beyond typical sin-glorifying entertainment, however. Centered largely around the suicide of Hannah Baker, one of its main characters, the show has prompted copycat suicides. According to the American Family Association, a young woman, Anna Bright took...

"I dare you... Hold up the textbook in front of the camera and show them a picture of what 10-year-olds are going to be asked to see." That was Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers's (R) challenge to reporters, when they asked him about his fierce response to the radical Left's sex ed. He pointed to a book, called It's Perfectly Normal, that isn't normal at all -- unless you're one of those rare individuals who think teaching anal sex to five-year-olds is a good idea. Arizona State Superintendent Kathy Hoffman's (D), Twitter profile shows a picture of the new officeholder...

Public schools are reopening for business across America, meaning it's time to get back to reading, writing, arithmetic ... and revolution. As usual in matters such as these, California is leading the way. On the first day of classes at Denair Middle School near Modesto, science teacher Luis Davila Alvarado handed out a worksheet from a transgender advocacy group titled "The Gender Unicorn" asking students about their "gender identity," "gender expression" and their sexual and emotional attractions. These are children. And yet the teacher did not ask permission to hand the worksheet out. Most parents were outraged. The school estimated...

**SNIP** In a recent study in Nature Climate Change, Danielle Lawson, a postdoctoral student at NC State University, and her colleagues found that putting middle-school children in a class about climate change could influence their parent’s views on the subject. The effects were the strongest on conservative fathers—significant because conservative white men have been previously shown to have the lowest levels of climate concern. Lawson called this a case of "intergenerational learning," or the transfer of behavior and knowledge from children to parents. She thinks their study was successful partially because ideology and political identity have become so conflated with...

July 26 2019 Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary Reading 1 Ex 20:1-17 In those days: God delivered all these commandments: "I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods besides me. You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the LORD, your God, am...

I am perennially asked whether I do or do not “believe” in autism. I suspect that on most occasions, it’s a test. Nonetheless, it’s a fair question that usually takes this form: “I know you don’t believe in ADHD; but do you believe in autism?” To be clear, it would be absurd of me to deny that there are children – plenty of them, relatively speaking – who frequently exhibit behaviors associated with the bogus diagnosis of ADHD (attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder). Those kids are problematic, for sure. But no one has ever proven that they “have” something. Childhood behavior disorders...

In New York City public schools, students can choose their classes, their sports, and their genders! Starting this fall, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza is making the Big Apple an even bigger news story by radically changing the city's policy on registered names, dress codes, bathrooms, locker rooms, and athletics. He says this is his way of celebrating Pride month. But "proud" is the last word most parents would use to describe the news. In this new Wild West of gender identity, Carranza is giving the green light to everything from unofficial name changes to unisex school uniforms. "Schools are safe...

Our defeat was all but inevitable, yet the transgender activists still showed up in matching shirts and waved multicolored flags. Their speakers outnumbered ours 4 to 1, but they still hissed and muttered ugly names at our side while we spoke. We had gathered for the Arlington County School Board’s meeting on June 18. For four months, the Arlington Parent Coalition had worked tirelessly to get our liberal school board and administrators to reconsider or delay the implementation of policies that would expand accommodations for transgender-identified students. Those policies were passed four years ago during the summer, when nobody was...

NEW YORK, July 5 (C-Fam) Are divorce, cohabitation, same sex marriage, out of wedlock birth and adolescent sex good for women? The latest report from UN Women considers them “a positive reflection of women’s empowerment.” UN Women calls family life “an ambivalent space for women and girls.” “Families can have a darker side: they can be places of violence and discrimination, spaces where women and girls are often denied the resources they need, where they sometimes eat least and last and where their voices are stifled and their autonomy is denied,” the report says, concluding, “As such, the recognition of...

Borderline Personality Disorder and Snowflake America In psychology, there’s a term called “borderline personality disorder”. Borderline personalities see themselves as victims, even though they’re not victims. Usually, they blame everything on their parents. Interestingly, in their failure to launch, they typically remain at home with their parents into their 20s, 30s and even beyond. This helplessness and failure reinforces their unhealthy narrative that their parents are to blame for everything. And yet: If their parents are so evil, aren’t they the last people they would wish to live with? Wouldn’t they make it the central purpose of their lives to...

A few weeks ago an Indiana mother wrote a letter to the Notre Dame University school newspaper, asking women not to wear leggings to Catholic mass. After sitting behind a group of girls in church with her four sons she wrote: I was ashamed for the young women at Mass. I thought of all the other men around and behind us who couldn’t help but see their behinds. My sons know better than to ogle a woman’s body — certainly when I’m around (and hopefully, also when I’m not). They didn’t stare, and they didn’t comment afterwards. But you couldn’t...

Houston Principal Doubles Down On Her Stance That Parents Need A Dress Code! Hear Her Reason Why!

“A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer.” - Hanna Rosin, The Overprotected Kid What could go wrong? For one thing  kids whose lives are micro-managed by helicopter parents from cradle through their first job interview never learn to manage risks on their own.Helicopter parents have been around at least since the dawning of the Millennials but I first reported on them  4 years ago. The post discussed pushback in Wales where some concerned parents built a park called “The Land” filled with junk where kids were still allowed to wander...

“You did what?!” Parents across Santa Ana couldn’t believe it. In one house after another, the answer to “How was school today?” was nothing like they expected. Moms and dads listened in disbelief as their middle schoolers talked about going to an “LGBT Fair” that no one bothered to ask their permission for. There were even people in drag, their 11-year-olds said, giving makeup lessons—right there in school. Townhall’s Kira Davis listened as one mom fumed about not knowing about the fair until after it happened. There wasn’t even an opportunity to opt out, she complained at last Tuesday’s school...

Figures were compiled by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution Of those arrested for politically-motivated offences, 84 per cent were men The majority, 72 per cent, were aged between 18 and 29 Of offences against a person, four out of five cases were against police officers The vast majority of left-wing protesters arrested on suspicion of politically-fuelled offences in Berlin are young men who live with their parents, a new report found. The figures, which were published in daily newspaper Bild revealed that 873 suspects were investigated by authorities between 2003 and 2013. Of these 84 per...

Two recent bills proposed by state legislators in Illinois and Iowa reveal a disturbing perspective on parental rights that’s becoming more prevalent in our country: the belief that parents cannot be trusted to care for their children. The Swiftly-Defeated Illinois Bill In Illinois, a little over a week ago, Democratic state Rep. Monica Bristow introduced House Bill 3560. That bill sought to amend the school code to require the Child Protective Service unit of the Department of Children and Family Services to investigate the home of a child being homeschooled “to ensure there is no suspected child abuse or neglect...

Save America and the Western World by teaching your children what Socialist Democrats are all about in the safety of their own homes Parents with school and university age children can make the Democrat-endorsed ‘Green New Deal’ a prime opportunity for a teachable moment, to turn the tables on socialists running amok in Congress. Children can be taught at home what they’re never taught in class that socialism kills human souls and human hope, that it has a proven track record of bankrupting entire nations leaving their populations to starve. Lessons need not be long, but short and to the...

On Thursday, the Health and Human Services committee of the South Dakota House killed a bill that would have protected the right of parents to refuse to consent to medical or psychological treatment for a child suffering from gender dysphoria if the treatment “would induce, confirm, or promote the child’s belief that the child’s sex or gender identity is different from the child’s sex presented at birth.” Proposed House Bill 1205 also provided that “no public authority or official of this state may take any adverse action against a parent for exercising this right.” That such a simple affirmation of...