By now you've undoubtedly seen the viral video clip of Shawntel Cooper, a mom in the Loudoun County (Virginia) school district, who joined an impressive horde of angry parents at a recent school board meeting to protest the corporation's plans to adopt a "culturally responsive" curriculum aimed at deconstructing "white supremacy."
To do so, the school has introduced some lovely texts to students, including a kindergarten book called My Princess Boy – the tale of a young boy who enjoys wearing dresses and playing with girl toys. And then there's Whatever: Or How Junior Year Became Totally F$@cked, which walks juniors in high school through the riveting crisis of a teen boy who got drunk and kissed another dude.
All part of dismantling white supremacy, you understand.
Anyway, if you haven't seen Ms. Cooper's power-packed one-minute speech, you can do it here:
Impressive, no doubt. But while everyone is busy sharing Cooper's mic drop, my attention is drawn to the statement from the school corporation. Tucked away at the bottom of most news stories about the controversy is a profoundly foolish declaration from the school that seeks to clarify and justify their actions, but in truth makes it abundantly clear how fundamentally dishonest this movement has become.
The corporation said that it had not introduced critical race theory to their curriculum and that they were merely advancing the good cause of "equity." Apparently, we're all supposed to ignore the obvious reality that equity over equality is the philosophical heart of the CRT crusade. But it actually got worse:
"In explaining LCPS' equity priorities, it might be helpful to state what they are not," the district fired back in their statement. "They are not an effort to indoctrinate students and staff into a particular philosophy or theory. What they are is an effort to provide a welcoming, inclusive, affirming environment for all students."
I don't know which administrator put the statement together, but if their goal was to pacify skeptics or throw their critics off the scent, that last line gave it all away.
The unspoken assumption behind any effort to "provide a welcoming, inclusive, affirming environment" is that there exists a "non-welcoming, exclusive, non-affirming" philosophy that must be rejected. The curriculum being adopted, therefore, seeks to train staff and students to reject that philosophy and instead embrace the particular one the school has decided is superior.
An example will make the point easier to grasp. Judging by the two books mentioned above that LCPS has introduced to its students, it is quite apparent that normalizing gay and transgender ideology is part of what the school considers necessary to achieve a "welcoming, inclusive, affirming environment."
So what is to be done with children from, say, traditional Christian homes? Those young people have been, and are continuing to be taught to love and respect their neighbor, but to understand that our individual feelings and desires often lead us down a destructive path that God has tried to protect us from enduring. They have been, and are being taught the Christian sexual ethic.
In a reasonable school environment, this would not be an issue. Students who believe either way would both be invited to learn their grammar, mathematics, and science in a facility designed to educate. Whether you believe the Holy Spirit or the spirit of the age when it comes to transgenderism, it will not affect your ability to learn trigonometry or the periodic table.
But notwithstanding their protests to the contrary, LCPS's own statement demonstrates they have willfully introduced curriculum explicitly designed to re-educate those with orthodox Christian views on sexuality. In the school district's eyes, the Christian sexual ethic is "non-welcoming, exclusive, and non-affirming." Loudoun County schools state openly that is what they are spending tax dollars to undermine and undo.
This, despite saying out of the other side of their mouths that they are not attempting "to indoctrinate students and staff into a particular philosophy or theory."
Just how dumb or how disengaged do they think the families in their district are anyway? Here's hoping a brigade of Shawntel Coopers prove otherwise.
