W³P Lives: 01/29/25

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Hollywood Wants to Die on DEI Hill

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall

This is my annual column where I complain about the Oscars and about how Hollywood has turned into complete crap. But it’s not just turned into complete crap this year – or, rather, continued to be complete crap. It seems to have misplaced its calendar. This is 2025, and we’re done with this woke nonsense. They seem to think it’s still 2020, and that wokeness is fresh and interesting. Well, it’s not. It’s stupid and it’s boring, and Hollywood seems intent on committing seppuku. Oh well.

You might think that after most of the people voting for the Academy Awards have had their houses burned down because of Democrat incompetence, they might rethink some of their premises. Nope. They have not learned anything. They have not changed. They can’t. They’re too emotionally invested in the leftism that’s destroying their industry as well as their mansions.

They are driving away their audience and are powerless to stop themselves. We used to be emotionally invested in the Oscars. When we were kids, everybody gathered around on Oscar night and watched the whole thing. It featured movies we knew about, that we had seen, and that were popular with people because they addressed subjects that normal people were interested in. And what subjects are they addressing this year?

Trans, trans, and more trans. An insanely stupid musical about a male drug dealer pretending to be a woman got 13 nominations. That’s the same number as “Gone with the Wind,” but the only thing “Emilia Pérez” has in common with “Wind” is that it blows. Did I mention that it’s a musical? Here’s a representative scene. Yes, that opus got 13 Oscars nominations.

Take that, normal people!

Oh, and even better, the dude pretending to be a woman in “Emilia Pérez” got a nomination in the Best Actress category. That’s right, a man took a Best Actress slot from a woman, meaning 20% of the Best Actress slots for 2024 went to a guy. And the cringiest part is that all the other women who are going to lose to this guy – because you know the Hollywood types are going to want to show us normals what’s what by choosing a man to be Best Actress – will smile with their teeth clenched tight as they pretend to cheer on this utter indignity.

But they brought it on themselves. They and the rest of Hollywood have decided to go down this path of bizarre perversions and niche characters, with the niche filled by weirdos, losers, and mutations. Oh, and this isn’t the only gender-weird Best Picture nominee. There’s also “Conclave,” about – Spoiler Alert! – a pope with a vagina or something. I don’t know for sure. I don’t want to know. I guess I just don’t appreciate art films.

One of the three movies anybody’s actually heard of the ten best picture nominees is “Dune 2.” It’s about a giant worm, and I’m not sure I want to get into the psychology of why Hollywood liked that. There’s the Bob Dylan movie “A Complete Unknown,” which I have heard is actually good. There’s also “Wicked,” which is a musical but not about castration. I suspect it’s just about wokeness. I don’t know. I didn’t see it. I’m a man.

As for the other movies? Who knows? Who cares? No one’s ever heard of them. I didn’t know about “Emilia Pérez” until a bunch of credulous goofs were on X getting giddy about the dude pretending to be a woman getting nominated. I didn’t even have any idea the Oscar nominations were dropping. No one cares, and that’s a real problem for Hollywood. Nobody’s going to the movies anymore, and do you know why? Because most movies not featuring grown men wearing tights are movies like these. They suck. Even 20 years ago, we would go to the movies and have like four choices of films you might conceivably want to see, and none of them featured showstoppers about carving off genitals to conform to the delusions of lunatics and deviants.

Understand that when conservatives lament the state of Hollywood, it’s not something we’re happy about. We don’t love Hollywood or the people in it – though there are a lot more conservative people in Tinseltown than folks generally understand. We loved going to the movies. It was great. There were incredible movies opening all the time. Now, I have to sit back and think about the last time I went to the theater, and I’m not happy about that. But I’m not going to spend my money on some overpriced perveropalooza.

And, it appears, neither is anybody else.

It’s not just the theatrical movies that suck. If you look at the streaming services, there’s almost nothing good on. You can flip through multiple streaming channels for half an hour and not find something that doesn’t seem woke, stupid, or insulting to your intelligence. Even the mindless stuff that you should be able to watch is always the same. How come every single show seems to be about somebody who used to be a special forces operator who is suddenly brought back into action and blah blah blah blah blah, and they always have a sassy gay friend? Or a sassy transsexual friend who everyone pretends actually is the sex the character is pretending to be? There’s a woke checklist, and you must hit all the boxes, even when it’s stupid.

Well, we’re tired of it, but maybe we can do better. We could make our own stuff the way that Andrew Breitbart taught us. What we’re missing isn’t talent. There’s a lot of conservative talent out there. We’re not missing intellectual property – I know some really good IP that somebody should pick up. What we’re missing are visionaries who can back up their vision with money and distribution.

In the past, I’ve talked to a lot of movie folks about my novels. They told me they’re conservative. They told me they’re excited about conservative content. But I worked as a lawyer adjacent to Hollywood long enough to know nothing matters until you put money in your pocket, and none of them have written me a check.

I’m not saying that somebody should go and buy my stuff, but they should buy someone’s conservative fiction and turn it into a movie or a show. There’s Matt Betley, Larry Correia, James Rosone, and Jon “@ExJon” Gabriel, to name a few. As writers, these guys have an audience. We conservatives are a huge potential audience for movies and shows, and we’re dying for material that doesn’t hate us. We’re even willing to look past the occasional lefty sucker punch to get it. Have you seen “Landman?” The same guy who did “Yellowstone” did it. It’s got the world’s most mortifying female characters – I think they’re actually meant to be funny because they’re so over the top – and it’s got a few hicklib moments, but there’s some red meat for conservatives every once in a while when Billy Bob Thornton lays down the fossil fuel facts on some pinko twit. People are eating it up. Now, just imagine some well-produced entertainment that doesn’t hedge its bets on its inherent conservatism.

Yeah, that would be awesome, and if there’s any time for that backlash to happen, it’s now. Remember in the ‘80s when Reagan came in and replaced a one-term Democrat dumbass? We got a decade of ultra-patriotic action flicks. Well, Donald Trump just replaced another one-term Democrat dumbass, and America is ready to enjoy going to the movies again. It’s ready for America to win. And it’s ready for some heroes who know which bathroom to use.

X22, And we Know, and more- Jan 29

Ep 3559a - [CB] Is Right On Schedule, Their Trap They Are Setting For Trump Will Boomerang On Them

Donald Trump and the American Character

posted by Steve McCann at American Thinker

The landslide election win by Donald Trump has left the Democrat Party, the Deep State, the legacy media, and the rest of the Marxist/Progressive establishment in a state of shock and surprise at the depth of the American electorate’s rejection of their statist ideology and attempts to transform the culture and society.

Uncharacteristically, this cabal was stunned into relative silence after the election, as they have been unable to process the reality that even with unprecedented levels of voting fraud and manipulation in recent presidential and midterm elections, they will never achieve what they believe is their birthright of permanent control over the levers of power.

Now that Trump is back in the Oval Office and delivering on his “America First” agenda, this cabal will revert back to the only tactics they know and ones in which they are still convinced will inevitably succeed. Therefore, over the next four years the American people will once again be subjected to never-ending childish name calling and constant legacy media propagandizing.

In their addled thinking they believe that it is only Trump’s bombast keeping them from achieving their goal of a one-party socialist America and by continuing to undermine and focus on Trump and the MAGA movement they will, in the next election, be back on the path of achieving one-party dominance.

This Marxist-inspired cabal is predestined to fail as the America they envision will never be accepted by the bulk of the citizenry. The leaders of the Democratic Party, the Legacy media, and the so-called intellectuals on the left appear to have little or no understanding of why Donald Trump has been able to marshal a significant majority of the American people to reject their socialist utopia and a transformed American culture and character.

Had these elites gone beyond their own sense of superiority and what they believe is their God-given right to lead, they would have understood the basic character of American society is unlike that of any nation in the world. And that at this point in the history of the United States, Donald Trump is not only the personification of the “American Character,” but has been the catalyst to its rebirth.

Throughout the history of mankind, strong centralized governments have dominated those societies whose makeup was primarily of a single ethnic group and who had little or no history of independence or popular uprisings. So too, those nations in today’s world living under various manifestations of Marxism or socialism are similarly formulated. A docile and willing public is essential for the acceptance of an authoritarian government.

In 1782, a French immigrant to the United States, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, wrote in his essays Letters from an American Farmer of his newly adopted country:

What then is the American, this new man? That strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country… Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.

The population of the United States has increased nearly a hundredfold (3.9 million to 340 million) since those words were first written 243 years ago. The “new race of men” now includes those from all corners of the globe and their labor and posterity have in fact caused great changes for the better in the world.

It has become a source of pride in American families to trace their ancestry and celebrate the courage and resolve of their forefathers, whether they came on the Mayflower or by steerage to Ellis Island, chose voluntary servitude in order to become Americans, or were entrapped in the inhumanity of chattel slavery.

These pioneers instilled into the American Character a fierce desire to be free, independent, determined to overcome any obstacles, and to be the final arbiter of one’s success or failure. Morality, religion, and the necessity of honor and integrity became fundamental building blocks of the nation. There resides deep within the soul of this country a deep mistrust of a powerful central government which stems from its founding and firsthand experience of two centuries of immigrants escaping oppression and determined to assimilate and from whom virtually all Americans today descend.

Over the past eighty years, as the United States has become the wealthiest and most powerful country on the face of the earth, another trait unique to the American people came to the fore: a genuine sense of generosity and fairness. Unfortunately, this characteristic has been exploited by the radical Left, who desire to transform the country into a socialist utopia by undermining the unique American Character.

The stratagem used was to foster guilt for one’s success, substitute government largess for individual self-determination, declare as rights those things that only government would guarantee, and, as a means of abetting the transformation of the culture and society, fling open the borders to near-unlimited illegal immigration to those whose only interest was economic exploitation not assimilation.

Meanwhile, as long as the future of the nation did not appear to be in jeopardy and it could, on the surface, afford this spending, far too many citizens simply chose to drop out of active participation in governance while others, in smaller numbers, chose to accept government benevolence while ignoring the attempt to transform the American culture and society.

That did not mean, however, that the basic character of the American people, as instilled by their forebears, had changed to become amenable to a massive central government controlling all aspects of their lives while jeopardizing the future of their children and grandchildren.

All the vast majority of the citizenry needed to rekindle the irrepressible American character was for someone steeped in the traits of American uniqueness to assume the mantle of unquestioned national leadership, and that someone was Donald Trump.

Thanks to Trump and his “America First” agenda and successes in his first term as well as the attempts to destroy and imprison him combined with the voting fraud, unprecedented dishonesty, unbridled spending, headlong drive to control the day-to-day activities of all Americans, and uncontrolled illegal immigration, the radicalized Left during the Obama/Biden administration has awakened many of those who chose to sit on the sidelines and merely observe while assuming the country was too big and rich to fail.

Now even the least involved citizens have begun to realize that the United States had embarked on a path that would have bankrupted the country, destroyed its culture, and left the nation vulnerable to those who wish it harm. It is now apparent to many that the survival of a great nation depends on its ability to remain master of its destiny.

The current iteration of the American Left (the Democrat Party, the Deep State, the Legacy media, and the rest of the Marxist/Progressive establishment) in their gross misunderstanding of Donald Trump and the unleashing of the American Character will never succeed in achieving their ultimate goal and will, in due course, fade into the annals of American history.

DOGE Has Been Quite Busy Since Inauguration Day

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) appears to be pretty busy since President Donald Trump took office on January 20.

The initiative, headed by entrepreneur Elon Musk, is dedicated to slashing government spending by eliminating unnecessary agencies and doing away with regulations.

President Trump established DOGE through an executive order issued on his first day in office to “implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

The agency has been documenting its progress in posts on X. The group recently claimed it is saving the federal government about $1 billion per day by “stopping the hiring of people into unnecessary positions, deletion of DEI and stopping improper payments to foreign organizations.”

DOGE is saving the Federal Government approx. $1 billion/day, mostly from stopping the hiring of people into unnecessary positions, deletion of DEI and stopping improper payments to foreign organizations, all consistent with the President’s Executive Orders.
A good start, though this number needs to increase to > $3 billion/day.

The agency also reported that the General Services Administration (GSA) has ‘terminated three leases of mostly empty office space, with tenants relocating to nearby buildings in the GSA portfolio.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/jeff-charles/2025/01/29/doge-saves-the-us-34-billion-n2651329

Disoriented Democrats Still Don't Know What Hit Them

posted by Byron York at Townhall

On Feb. 1, the Democratic National Committee will gather in suburban Maryland to elect a new chair. Every indication suggests they still don't fully appreciate what happened to them in the 2024 election.

The two main contenders are Ken Martin, who is head of the Minnesota state Democratic Party, which is actually known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Press reports suggest Martin is running a little ahead of Wikler. A lot of the discussion of the race involves internal party matters, such as the distribution of resources, and not the details of Democratic positions on various hot political issues.

It's on the big issues that the broader party is currently foundering, and there is no evidence they'll find their way anytime soon.

The fundamental question they face is how to focus and moderate their instinct to fight every single thing President Donald Trump does. The reason is obvious and simple. If some -- perhaps many -- of the things the president does are popular, then across-the-board Democratic resistance will serve to make Democrats unpopular. Some Democrats see the problem, and want to pick their spots to criticize, but others can't help themselves.

"There are going to be people that are going to respond to everything that Trump says and want to form some sort of narrative," Democratic Rep. Marc Veasey of Texas told the Washington Post. "I do think that we have to be careful on which fights we pick with him and what we choose to respond to. ... Otherwise, he is going to win to a certain degree if we're not really careful in that area."

On the other side, another House Democrat, Rep. Pat Ryan of of New York, argued that in Trump's first week in office, Democrats "set the terms of the fight ahead," by which he meant an ongoing billionaires vs. the people battle. He advocated constant political warfare. "If post-2016 was like a sort of street fight -- a little bit sloppy, a lot of wild swinging -- then I think 2025 has to be more like the close-quarters combat that I learned in the Army," Ryan told Politico Playbook, "which is like a mix of jiu-jitsu and judo and a few other things where you're using your enemies' mistakes against them."

What about those times, like now, when many Americans support what Ryan's "enemies" -- that would be President Trump and his supporters -- are doing? The answer is not clear. We'll see.

As this goes on, the Democratic Party's media/intellectual base is deeply worried. In an essay headlined, "The Right Is Winning the Battle for Hearts and Minds," the New York Times' Thomas Edsall -- employing classic Times language -- noted that, "The full-scale assault by the conservative movement on liberal domination of the nation's culture has begun to deliver key victories."

The Right has moved beyond old strengths like talk radio to new strength in podcasts and social media, Edsall said, to challenge the Left's domination of "academia, the literary world, the press, television, and streaming video." That's no small set of strengths on the Left, and no one should ever suggest that the Right has anything to match it. Nevertheless, Edsall suggests that the Left has been misusing its strengths for the wrong purposes, quoting a professor who said, "The big story from 2010 on is not Republicans growing more effective at messaging but Democrats growing increasingly out of step with the median voter as they catered ever more around the preferences of knowledge economy professionals."

As all this talk goes on, inside the Democratic Party and its supporting groups, there's one more thing to consider. As he starts just his second week in office, President Donald Trump is on a roll. On top of a barrage of executive actions, most notably on the border and immigration, Trump scored a victory over the weekend when the socialist president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, unexpectedly refused to accept planes from the U.S. bringing deported illegal immigrants back to their home country. Trump immediately responded with a threat of immediate retaliation -- tariffs, visa holdups and more. Within an hour, Petro caved. Trump looked strong, and his adversaries looked weak.

The episode appeared to vindicate everything Trump has been saying -- and Democrats have been denouncing -- about his strategy to deport illegal border crossers, especially those who have committed additional crimes. Will it profit Democrats to engage in political jiu-jitsu against that? Probably not. The party still has to figure out how to address the new president's successes.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

Welcome to

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature,

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of.

No politics or divisive posts on this thread.

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time.

Auction of Trillions in Federal Assets Emerges as Option To Offset Trump Tax Cuts

It would be a win-win for taxpayers, our children (who will be handed a lower debt obligation), and the American economy.

The federal government owns multiple trillions of dollars of federal assets — from land, to buildings, to patent rights, to mineral rights, to immigrant visas, to oil fields, to trucks and trains and unused office furniture equipment.

The government could earn well more than $1 trillion and perhaps as much as $10 trillion by selling off these assets that are simply hoarded (figuratively) in the dark and dusty basement of government buildings. These assets could then generate added annual tax receipts once they are utilized for productive purposes.

I’m not talking about selling the Washington Monument or Yellowstone National Park. The sales could and in most cases should be limited to American citizens and American businesses.

I’m referring to NON-environmentally sensitive properties that could be put to use growing our economy and using the money to retire some of our $35 trillion national debt.

It’s a win-win for taxpayers, our children (who will be handed a lower debt obligation), and the American economy.

Some of the most valuable assets that should be put on the auction block immediately are tracts along the electromagnetic spectrum. The spectrum contains the invisible airwaves that power cellphones, Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies — such as 5G communications.

In the past, auctioning spectrum rights to telecommunication firms and tech companies has raised more than $100 billion for the U.S. Treasury.

Congress could raise at least another $100 billion in another round of spectrum auctions. This would sell or lease space that the military doesn’t need and that other government agencies (such as local police and fire departments) are fine without.

This strategy would help stimulate the economy in two ways. First, as in the past, the revenues raised can offset any real or imagined revenue loss from the imperative of making the Trump tax cuts permanent.

A new report by the economic consulting firm National Economic Research Associates finds that auctioning 100 megahertz of midband spectrum that’s licensed for 5G will boost America’s gross domestic product by more than $260 billion and create 1.5 million new jobs.

On at least four previous occasions, Congress has used dollars raised from spectrum auctions to offset tax cuts in reconciliation packages. That’s exactly what they should do again.

“Effectively allocating spectrum to meet the ever-growing need is critical to promoting American innovation and protecting our national security,” Representative Richard Hudson, Republican of North Carolina, said at the first House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing of the new Congress on January 23.

Mr. Hudson, chair of the subcommittee, points out correctly that the American government has been conducting spectrum auctions for the past 30 years, and they have a track record of success.

They are much fairer than giving bureaucrats the power to decide who gets spectrum, which can lead to allocations that are politically or ideologically motivated, with the result that spectrum would be used inefficiently (or not at all) by beneficiaries.

Auctions are open and transparent, minimizing the risk of shady backroom deals. They ensure that the spectrum goes to those who value it most and can use it most effectively.

Anyone concerned about ensuring the uninterrupted connectivity of our electric grid system and our daily internet connection should be all for these auctions — especially as the world goes wireless, communicating less through cables and more through satellite beams.

This is also critical to maintaining our technology lead against the Chinese communist government. One Chinese news agency reported last July that “China’s 5G network now covers every city and town in the country, as well as more than 90 percent of its villages.” We are dangerously lagging behind, and without timely spectrum auctions, the gap will grow wider.

Auctions of the spectrum and other federal assets will drive progress and prosperity — and raise revenue to pay for tax cuts or retire our debt that is soon to eclipse $40 trillion. What’s not to like about that?

https://www.nysun.com/article/auction-of-trillions-in-federal-assets-emerges-as-option-to-offset-trump-tax-cuts

CIA Director Ratcliffe: Trump Admin Considering National Lab for AI, Similar to Manhattan Project

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse

The CIA and Intelligence Community working together with Silicon Valley tech teams to develop best in class AI systems, using references from prior nuclear weapon development, “The Manhattan Project.” Huh, what could possibly go wrong. {GO DEEP}

BREITBART – CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Breitbart News last week that President Donald Trump’s administration is considering creating a national laboratory akin to the Manhattan Project to help develop and steer the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

“When you talk about AI, one of the things I want to explore is whether we can expand and establish a national laboratory for the development of AI to help the U.S. government leverage emerging technology to make sure American leadership is that,” Ratcliffe told Breitbart News in his first interview as CIA director last week.

[…] Ratcliffe explained the idea for national laboratories dates back to the Manhattan Project, where the U.S. government helped scientists develop nuclear weapons that won World War II for the United States and allied nations. He said the recent announcement from Trump of “Project Stargate,” the half-trillion-dollar initiative to promote AI, could be expanded upon to include more public-private partnerships akin to the Manhattan Project that get the U.S. out in front of the nation’s adversaries on AI.

“You saw this initiative the president discussed—Project Stargate—which is the four-year, $500 billion AI infrastructure project that’s been proposed with all of our great technology companies,” Ratcliffe said. “We could expand on that with a public-private partnership where a government element could participate, and we’ve done this before—our constellation of national laboratories can be traced back to the Manhattan Project, which we used as a public-private partnership to develop the first nuclear weapon to win World War II. We need to be thinking about the ways we can do that to counter how our adversaries are using things like the cyber threats to their strategic advantage and putting our national security interests in a place where we’re able to harness the data and computational speed of AI to understand trends and events and threats and opportunities faster than our adversaries do.” (read more)

On Christmas Day last year, CTH predicted exactly this scenario {SEE HERE}; only we took it forward to its logical conclusion. You know, the part no one thinks about until the weapon is created…. Then, suddenly, as if on cue, this pops up:

[Source]

The system to classify Americans by personage is currently being developed inside the silos of the Intelligence Community, the Dept of Homeland Security and combined with the technological creations of those who are contracted to build it – like Palantir (Peter Thiel).

Within this matrix of categorized Americans there will be those who are not subjected to the surveillance, their constitutional rights will be protected, and they will be afforded all benefit of personage. However, there will be lower classes who are continual targets for it who do not have such protection. There is no way to avoid this caste system outcome; in fact, many components of it are already in place.

Peter Thiel (Palantir), Elon Musk (xAI, SpaceX), Larry Ellison (Oracle), David Sacks and a host of mutually aligned artificial intelligence builders stand to benefit financially from a technologically efficient Surveillance State. Their companies and their AI software products are the targeting tools within the DHS surveillance system itself. Do not be misled by their ownership of different companies within this construct, they are all mutually allied; factually, they are all friends in the same tech sector….

…. And now the CIA is directly saying, the IC should engage and support the emerging science.

There is no way to avoid being the target of an AI weapon once that weapon is created. However, unlike the mutually assured destruction within the nuclear analogy, there will be no threat of mutual application within the surveillance bomb.

There are going to be tiers of people who are not subjected to the rules of the Surveillance State. There are going to be tiers of people, powerful, influential, some intensely rich people, to whom the application of the surveillance does not exist.

I have already seen this ‘tiered’ system starting to come into place. I have witnessed firsthand the outcomes of the software being deployed within the design of their building.

I have witnessed real identities masked by the system as an outcome of their status. Facial recognition programs that black out search results based on arbitrary definitions and determinations of those who control the surveillance application.

Congress reauthorized FISA-702 only after ensuring the warrantless database searches could not be used against any member of congress or their staff.

In the private sector, I wonder how much it would cost to qualify and register for the “grey people” list?

Which candidate do we donate to? Vance ’28?

SCOTUS To Decide If Parents Can Reject LGBT Brainwashing For Their Children

To protect their religious beliefs and their children’s innocence, these Montgomery County parents are taking their fight to SCOTUS.

On Jan. 17, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Mahmoud v. Taylor, the case of three families against the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland: a Muslim family, a Roman Catholic family, and a mixed Roman Catholic–Ukrainian Orthodox family. This isn’t the start of a bad joke, but parents fighting to teach their children according to their sincerely held religious beliefs.

It all started in 2022 when Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) — the largest public school district in the state — approved a slate of queer-affirming storybooks for use in grades as low as kindergarten. The district promised parents the opportunity to review the books and the ability to opt their children out of those classes. Later in the school year, without explanation, MCPS reversed its policy, in spite of parental objections. The families filed suit, seeking a temporary injunction against the policy.

District and appellate courts denied the request. The appellate court ruled that, due to the scant evidence regarding how the picture books were being used, parents could not prove their children had been or were going to be coerced by the books. In the Supreme Court filing, however, the plaintiffs argued that “under the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning, parents cannot be heard until after the damage has been done to their children. But there is no unringing that bell — by then, innocence will be lost and beliefs undermined.”

Indoctrination by Board Book

Critics claim that by taking up the case, the SCOTUS has once again inserted itself into the “culture wars.” But the books in question affirm and validate LGBT culture, and the guidelines for teachers clearly lean in one direction.

Pride Puppy! is billed by corporate media as “An alphabet primer about children chasing their dog through a pride parade.” And yet, this book “encourages children to search for images of, among other things, the ‘intersex [flag],’ a ‘[drag] king,’ ‘leather,’ a ‘lip ring,’ a ‘[drag] queen,’ ‘underwear,’ and a celebrated sex worker.” MCPS pulled Pride Puppy! from the list last December, but most of the other books remained.

In Jacob’s Room to Choose, Jacob and Sophie attempt to use the school bathrooms. But in a study in confusion, the child named Jacob — who wears a green dress — gets kicked out of the boy’s bathroom, while Sophie — dressed in shorts and a checkered shirt — gets chased out of the girl’s bathroom. I’m still not entirely sure which child is Jacob and which is Sophie. The scandalized teacher returns to the classroom and teaches her students that feelings ultimately determine gender, and thus they should be free to use whatever bathroom they choose. As the new sign near the bathroom door says: “Use the bathroom that is comfy 4 u.”

In What are Your Words, a young, genderless child can’t decide what pronouns to use. “My pronouns are like the weather. They change depending on how I feel,” he (she?) declares.

MCPS also directed teachers on how to use the books. If a child were to ask, “He can’t be a boy if he was born a girl,” the teacher should say that “when we are born, people make a guess about our gender and label us ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ based on our body parts. Sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they’re wrong.” (The guidance has since been updated.)

The same guidance says that any child pointing out biblical teaching regarding marriage should have his “either/or” thinking “disrupted” while the teacher points to a female best friend who “is married to another woman.” It’s hard to see how this is not coercion of a kindergartener of the most egregious kind: pitting children against their parents.

The Right to Opt-out — or In

The plaintiffs do not want to ban the books from the school system, but they do want to direct their children’s education. This is not a new or radical idea. A number of states across the nation are contemplating or passing a parents’ bill of rights.

Opt-in and opt-out policies are standard across the U.S.: 38 states allow parents to opt children out of sex education. Four states require an opt-in notice from parents, while another six require a combination of both. That’s a whopping 47 states that put parents in the driver’s seat. The remaining three states are silent on the issue.

Generally, Americans favor keeping parents in charge. The 2024 Religious Freedom Index from the Becket Fund — which represents the plaintiffs — reported that “77% [of respondents agreed] that parents should be able to opt-out their children from curriculum on gender and sexuality … if it violates their religious beliefs.” And, “only 3% [of respondents] believe that such instruction is appropriate for pre-K or kindergarten-aged children.”

Maryland does have an opt-out policy for sex ed classes. But the education board placed these books into the English language arts curriculum. Evidently, for MCPS and the lower courts, the right of parents to direct the religious instruction of their children extends only to the “family life and human sexuality unit of instruction,” and nowhere else.

While corporate media reports on the lawsuit as simply another “culture war,” for parents it strikes at the heart of parental rights to educate their children in the basic tenets of their faith. The plaintiffs made this argument in the original filing.

Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, a Muslim family, contended that “‘gender’ cannot be unwoven from biological ‘sex’ — to the extent that the two are even distinct—without rejecting the dignity and direction God bestowed on humanity from the start.”

As Christians, the Roman (Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox) and Persak (Roman Catholic) families confessed that “what God has created by His design cannot be redefined or recreated by man” and that the correct expression of sexuality exists within marriage.

The Becket Fund For Religious Liberty believes parents should be in charge. “Cramming down controversial gender ideology on three-year-olds without their parents’ permission is an affront to our nation’s traditions, parental rights, and basic human decency,” said Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket. “The Court must make clear: parents, not the state, should be the ones deciding how and when to introduce their children to sensitive issues about gender and sexuality.”

https://thefederalist.com/2025/01/29/scotus-to-decide-if-parents-can-reject-lgbt-brainwashing-for-their-children/