The Washington Free Beacon:
Controversial sex-ed curriculum draws ire from parents
Justin Thiel, 31, was ready to send his oldest daughter to kindergarten at the public school in his rural Nebraska town. He made a sudden change of plans once he read the new sex education standards adopted by the state.
“I signed her up for a Christian school the day I read the standards,” Thiel told the Washington Free Beacon.
The National Sex Education Standards, which provided a roadmap for Nebraska Department of Education, teach kindergartners the names of reproductive body parts and define gender identity and reproduction. Children in Grades 3-5 are taught about masturbation, hormone blockers used to transition pre-pubescent children, STDs, and the differences between cisgender, transgender, nonbinary, and “gender expansive.” Grades 6-8 are taught about abortion, contraception, and differences between vaginal, oral, and anal sex. Grades 9-10 must teach “reproductive justice,” which entails unlimited abortion access.
Dr. Susan Greenwald, a retired pediatrician in Nebraska who worked with childhood victims of sexual abuse for 35 years, said the standards are closer to “grooming” than age-appropriate education.
“The first thing out of my mouth was, ‘holy s***—what pedophile wrote this?'” Greenwald told the Free Beacon. “This is grooming 101. If you were a pedophile and wanted to teach your kid to be a victim, this would be what you use.”
The Nebraska curriculum takes a number of exact phrases and guidelines from the National Sex Education Standards’ Second Edition, which was released in 2020 by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Advocates for Youth, and Answer. The three groups rake in millions of dollars each year from the federal government and abortion-focused charities. State and local education departments from Nebraska to New York have adopted the curriculum, but parents, doctors, and government officials are starting to push back against lesson plans that focus on hormone therapy, abortion, and gender transition.
Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts (R.) is publicly feuding with the state’s department of education. The governor calls the curriculum unworkable and is hosting town halls across the state for hundreds of parents to voice their concerns about the sex education standards.
“The people pushing this are not the parents—they’re advocates,” Ricketts told the Free Beacon. “I tell parents, ‘Don’t settle’—there’s no fixing these standards. They have to be scrapped.”
