Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network. This piece originally appeared in the Washington Examiner.
Last week, Maryland’s Democratic Party had a meltdown and started gaslighting the public about so-called “extremist” school board candidates running for office across the state, whom they allege want to push a political agenda.
And really, how dare school board candidates want to focus on reading proficiency, student test scores, and the budget instead of integrating the gender unicorn in kindergarten education?
For years, school boards with Democrat-endorsed majorities in Maryland have been working overtime to promote “Rainbow Clubs” in elementary schools, allow shared-sex locker rooms and bathrooms, and compel speech by mandating preferred pronouns.
But apparently, such politicization of public education does not meet the metric for “extremism” among the Maryland Democrats or, for that matter, the national Democratic Party under Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN). Rather, Democrats embrace and endorse it because it is their own brand of extremism.
With a mostly oblivious public, Democrat-endorsed school board members across the country have succeeded in pushing the Harris-Walz leftist extremism in our public schools. Now, however, the Democratic Party leadership fears roadblocks to their leftist agenda in public education as voters become increasingly aware of their local political landscapes.
Minority voters, in particular, are pushing back on the Left’s agenda. There’s a reason the effort to sexualize and indoctrinate our nation’s young children in their taxpayer-funded schools has a mostly white face. Minority parents overwhelmingly disagree with radical gender ideology being taught in schools. The Pew Research Center’s opinion polling, conducted in April, shows that 70% of black respondents and 62% of Hispanic respondents say that “gender” is determined by sex at birth.
The lack of enthusiasm among minority parents for the transgender indoctrination of their children in public schools is one of many reasons that black and Latino voters are leaving the Democratic Party in droves.
On June 6, 2023, for example, the racial divide on this topic was abundantly clear at a rally against the LGBT indoctrination of students in Montgomery County’s public schools. Video footage shows mostly minority parents advocating religious freedom and the right to opt-out their children from LGBT lessons in public schools. They held signs that said “Protect our Children” and “Restore Opt-Out Now.”
Meanwhile, the rainbow-clad alphabet people demanding the ideological indoctrination of Montgomery County’s children were almost all white.
It is telling about the state of Maryland’s Democratic leadership that they label the side rallying for religious freedom and opt-out options as “the extremists.”
Brenda Diaz is one of Montgomery County’s candidates in the November election who intends to fight for religious freedom in local public schools. Maryland Democrats laughably have labeled Diaz as an “extremist,” and they are paying canvassers to campaign against her. Her website, however, specifies that her priorities include “championing academic excellence, focusing on restoring safety, empowering students, families, and teachers, and ensuring responsible resource allocation through diligent oversight of our schools.”
What likely bothers Maryland’s leftists the most is that Diaz expresses the following sentiment on her campaign website: “[W]e will respect the inherent right of parents to guide their children’s moral compass and cultural beliefs.”
Maryland’s Democratic leaders have the right to spend money any way they see fit, but they should at least be honest about why they are putting it toward these local school board races. Like Harris and Walz, they believe that the government, not parents, should be responsible for the moral and cultural upbringing of children. And their money is used to fund candidates who will institutionalize this notion in America’s public schools.