Sex Ed: Are public schools using the cult-technique of shunning?

By Rubashov

A blog called “Chaos and Control” ran a story about what happens to children whose parents opt-out of the Murphy administration’s sex-ed curriculum mandates. The blog carried several photos of the room in which a child is banished while his or her classmates receive instruction on the finer points of masturbation or the joys of hormone blockers. Here is an example:

You can see all the photos and read the full story by subscribing to Chaos and Control.
https://chaosandcontrol.substack.com/p/kids-shoved-in-closet-literally

According to the blog, “the image above is allegedly the Martin J Ryerson Middle School (Ringwood NJ) closet (off the main office) where they keep the 6-8 grade opt-out kids.” The blog suggests that “some schools want to purposely make it uncomfortable or down right dangerous for kids to opt-out.”

The blog notes: “This is their view, 5 days a week, for a 45 min period, since school started in September. Parents have been told that an adult checks on the secluded kids to make sure they are OK, but someone at that school needs to explain how this is appropriate or even humane to do to a child.”

“This room wouldn’t even be appropriate for a detention, let alone a kid who’s only crime is to be opted-out of the NJ state Sex Ed classes. Apparently we need a child bill of rights to make sure the administrators of the schools use good judgment when handling our children.”

By nightfall yesterday, the Superintendent of the Ringwood Schools had issued a letter raising more questions. In his letter, which was ostensibly designed to reassure parents, the Superintendent spent many words on the former use of the room in an attempt to describe its size. As everyone who has ever dealt with a realtor knows, floor space is best described in square feet. What are the dimensions and square footage of the room in the picture above?

Is it larger than a standard sized prison cell housing one inmate? The American Correctional Association standards require a minimum of 70 square feet for a single inmate cell. How many children are housed in the room pictured above at one time?

The Superintendent took a number of curious “steps” to address the publication of the story. These included calling the Ringwood police department and filing a report. Why? Was it to report possible criminal activity by the school or was it an attempt to intimidate a journalist exercising her rights under the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights?

The Superintendent notes: “Action will be taken to secure the network rack behind a wall or partition. While the wall or partition is being installed around the (computer) network rack, students will not be in the room.” Does this mean the room’s current configuration is a safety hazard? Does it create the possibility for child injury and open the district to legal issues? His statement seems to suggest so.

What concerns us most about this situation is the psychological effect such physical isolation will have on the children of dissenters. The threat of shunning is a practice often used by cults to achieve conformity. Cults use this technique of isolating dissenters as a punishment for expressing non-conformist ideas. In our opinion, such methods should not be turned on public school children.

Instead, schoolteachers and administrators should publicly support the decision of the parents and the children of those parents. They should explain how dissent is an American tradition and forms the basis of the laws that protect conscientious objection to a variety of government prerogatives – including war.

Who knows, such knowledge might lead some future generation to stand up to our nation’s endless infatuation with armed conflict. Its fixation with violence. One can only hope.

Today’s Star-Ledger editorial explains why fewer and fewer read it

By Rubashov

In its editorials, the Star-Ledger has often referred to its predicament and has sadly complained about its declining readership. At the foot of everything its editorial board writes there’s a begging bowl: “Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.”

Editorials are something the Star-Ledger gives away for free. For the rare pieces of investigative journalism or in-depth news coverage – those are behind a pay wall – you need to give them money to read it. But nobody pays for the editorials.

And why would they?

The editorial board of the Star-Ledger is entirely predictable. Its writers are close-minded and lack any intellectual curiosity at all. As writers, they appear to lack the imagination to place themselves in the shoes of someone living outside the bubble they inhabit. They think in stereotypes. And they lie.

For example, in today’s offering by the editorial board, they claim it was Fox News that “fanned this whole firestorm” about school curriculum when, in fact (and as the personal testimony of parents reveals) it was the pandemic, the mandated school closings, and the consequent distance learning that did it. Parents saw what their children were learning. It was like taking a walk through the kitchen of an unhygienic restaurant. Nobody needs the media to tell you that you shouldn’t be eating there. It’s as simple as that.

If someone wanted to create a new bar game (along the lines of Quizzo) that gave players a topic and then asked them to guess the position on it taken by the editorial board of the Star-Ledger, it would be a dud. Nobody would ever fail to guess correctly. It would get boring – just like the Star-Ledger editorials.

The Star-Ledger is so predictable that it is boring even to the partisans it is trying to impress.

People enjoy reading different angles. They like an unexpected twist. That’s what makes mysteries so popular. Can anyone imagine Tom Moran as a mystery writer? What would the characters sound like in a Julie O’Connor novel? The average reader would have it figured out by page three.

We’re not sure if reading Star-Ledger editorials is a cause of dementia, but it can’t help. Maybe they should apply a warning label?

When they make an effort to get the reader’s attention, the editorial board relies on a prodigious amount of name-calling. A week or so ago, they were calling on people to travel to Pennsylvania to fight fascism. No kidding, like ISIS asks for volunteers to travel to Syria. But even after being jabbed with this fork, 99.9 percent of their readers went back to sleep. Hey, it’s not like Tom Moran is going to be there beside you when you get to Syria, er… Pennsylvania. He was just using a word he hoped would get your attention – if only for a moment.

The tone of the editorial board is a cross between a harridan, a karen, with a bit of church lady thrown in. As a rule, unpleasant, humorless, bathed in snobbery, pickled in certainty, always in a lather over something, screeching hysterically while trying desperately to remove an item unpleasantly lodged up the bunghole, and generally unhappy with life. Today’s editorial went further. It took on airs of official superiority. The editorial wasn’t only partisan, it went further and formally aligned the newspaper with the government. Now that is like Syria! Here’s what they wrote:

“Faced with the uproar over sex education in New Jersey, in which conservative critics continue to claim the state is ‘grooming’ children and stoke fears about the standards, the chair of our Senate education committee, Vin Gopal, took the high road.”

Our boys! Our flag! Our Senate education committee! By jingo!

No, it wasn’t the “high road”. It was the partisan road. It was the road of fear. There is as much “high road” in Trenton as there is “love” in rape. Everyone – from the denizens of “Trenton” to the average voter in every town and neighborhood across New Jersey – knows this. The editorial board suggesting otherwise is an insult to its readers.

The editorial board never once noticed that the legislation being pushed by “the chair of OUR Senate education committee” – Senator Vin Gopal – is in answer to a problem created by legislation that he earlier co-sponsored. And the editorial purposely obscured the controversy by focusing on the pretty words used in the language of the curriculum standards – instead of the realities of their implementation. The realities that parents saw first-hand and reacted to.

And the editorial board never noted the lack of transparency in the way Gopal’s “transparency” legislation was rolled out. In secret. In order to suppress public comment and – especially – comments from parents. He was shocked and angry when they showed up anyway.

Throughout the editorial, the Star-Ledger folks employ language in the way Pol Pot once did. It is the language in which the reality is the opposite of the words used to describe it. The word used is “transparency” but what it describes is opaque and unclear. The Star-Ledger, in common with government news organs throughout the world, promotes the literal view as opposed to the reality. It’s not a “death camp” – it is an “employment retraining center”.

Gopal lied when he claimed that the new curriculum has “nothing to do with ideology.” It is all about ideology, which is defined as “a system of ideas and ideals.” Gopal’s political allies at interest groups like Garden State Equality push their worldview, their “system of ideas and ideals.” Some would argue that aspects of it, such as the faith-based assertion that biological science can be altered by the exercise of individual will, give it a religious orientation.

There is nothing “wrong” in holding such a view, any more than it is to hold the view that water can be turned to wine or wine to blood. It is the imposition of these views that is at issue. The demand that we all have the same views and that it is the job of government to inculcate such views to all children – regardless of what their parents and taxpayers think about it. Gopal should stop lying about it. Talk about it, don’t lie about it.

But politicians like Vin Gopal never stop lying. It is their go-to drug of choice. And everybody knows this about them. And the media won’t cover that up. They can try, but they won’t.

As liars go, Vin Gopal is a politician.

Carly Sitrin (She/Her) is POLITICO’s Education Reporter… and she is “woke”

By Rubashov

There are few giveaways as plain as this one.
 
Carly Sitrin, a reliably Establishment reporter with roots in Boston’s PBS network, wrote a work of apology on behalf of New Jersey’s political establishment. It was an attempt to publicly forgive them for the damage they’ve done to the curriculum the state’s school children are learning from. But Sitrin went further. She attempted to blame those who noticed.
 
The word “transgender” didn’t even exist until the 1960s. Before 2012, in fact, there was no scientific literature on girls ages 11 to 21 ever having developed gender dysphoria at all. Despite what Sitrin and others would have you believe, this isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue – so put away those blue and red pom-poms. But it has been a growing concern among parents and reformers within the medical establishment, who have observed a ceaseless rise in the use of pharmaceutical and surgical interventions to treat children who express “discomfort” with their gender identity. That is a major departure from the past, when clinicians used “talking therapies” to help children adjust. Of course, the medication of children in general has for some time been a cause for alarm to parents and forward-thinkers in the medical community.
 
Then there’s the religion thing. The transgender movement is a faith-based ideology akin to religion. And just as some believe in trans-substantiation (that bread can be made flesh and wine made blood) those who subscribe to transgenderism believe that DNA can be altered, chromosomes undone, simply by the action of the will. They believe that an individual, born male, can will himself into being female – and vice versa.
 
The outward sign of adherence to faith-based transgenderism is the use of pronouns after your last name. If you believe, you use “preferred” pronouns after your last name. Carly Sitrin (She/Her) is a believer. And she advertises her belief on her LinkedIn page and such. She tells who she is and what she believes in. It is her faith and it is natural enough for her to defend her faith – even if that means placing faith before journalism. We should expect nothing different from her.
 
Numerous people on the Left have suffered the wrath of this new, thrusting, proselytizing faith. The author of the Harry Potter novels had to go into hiding because she suggested that women were there own thing. The author Camille Paglia suffered similarly. Feminists like Kara Dansky have been leading a fightback from the Left. Her book, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, has been burnt in public.
 
In her Politico story, Carly Sitrin (She/Her), asks parents to forget what they saw when Governor Phil Murphy sent all those kids home from school over the threat from COVID. Distance learning, the children at home, learning side by side with their parents, is what ignited the current debate. Parents saw, they experienced it first-hand. They cannot be made to unsee – no matter the efforts of Carly Sitrin (She/Her) and a hundred like her.
 
Carly Sitrin (She/Her) attempts to argue that if something isn’t spelled out in law, it isn’t mandated. She knows better. She knows that laws are often written very loosely. Heck, we argue over that with the Second Amendment.
 
Laws are written loosely so that the establishment bureaucracy can interpret them as broadly (or as narrowly) as they wish. The law (An Act concerning diversity and inclusion instruction in school districts and supplementing chapter 35 of Title 18A of the New Jersey Statutes), sponsored by Senator Vin Gopal and signed by Governor Murphy in March of last year, at the root of the current curriculum uproar is an example of such loose and subjective language:
 
C.18A:35-4.36a Curriculum to include instruction on diversity and inclusion.
1. a. Beginning in the 2021-2022 school year, each school district shall incorporate instruction on diversity and inclusion in an appropriate place in the curriculum of students in grades kindergarten through 12 as part of the district’s implementation of the New Jersey Student Learning Standards.
b. The instruction shall:
(1) highlight and promote diversity, including economic diversity, equity, inclusion, tolerance, and belonging in connection with gender and sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, disabilities, and religious tolerance;
(2) examine the impact that unconscious bias and economic disparities have at both an individual level and on society as a whole; and
(3) encourage safe, welcoming, and inclusive environments for all students regardless of race or ethnicity, sexual and gender identities, mental and physical disabilities, and religious beliefs.
c. The Commissioner of Education shall provide school districts with sample learning activities and resources designed to promote diversity and inclusion.

To understand how all that aspirational language will take form, we need to look at an earlier piece of legislation, also supported by Vin Gopal. It is called “An Act establishing the Transgender Equality Task Force to assess legal and societal barriers to equality and provide recommendations to Legislature.”
 
2.    a.  There is hereby created a task force to be known as the “Transgender Equality Task Force.” The purpose of the task force shall be to assess the legal and societal barriers to equality for transgender individuals in the State, and provide recommendations to the Governor and the Legislature on how to ensure equality and improve the lives of transgender individuals, with particular attention to the following areas:
     (1)   healthcare, including, but not limited to, access to healthcare providers that are trained in transgender medical issues, including sexual health;
     (2)   long term care for the chronically ill and senior citizens in the transgender population;
     (3)   education;
     (4)   higher education;
     (5)   housing, including, but not limited to, homelessness prevention and reduction for transgender youth and adults;
     (6)   employment; and
     (7)   criminal justice, including raising transgender awareness among law enforcement through training, and facilitating the appropriate placement of transgender individuals in correctional facilities based on an individual’s gender identity.
     b.    The Transgender Equality Task Force shall consist of 17 members as follows… a representative of the Department of Education whose duties or expertise includes protecting the rights of minority students or eliminating discrimination in the delivery of educational programs, policies, or initiatives
…one public member to be appointed by the Governor, who shall be a representative of a social service agency that provides services and supports to transgender individuals; a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union; a representative of Garden State Equality; and a representative of The Gender Rights Advocacy Association of New Jersey.
 
Note that the law is specific enough to include the special interest groups making the policy recommendations, but loose in its description of what those policies are. Fair enough, the latter might scare voters (like it has) and, as Ronald Reagan said, “Personnel is policy.” Government doesn’t write the textbooks or lesson guides. It just picks those involved that do. In this way, politicians like Phil Murphy and Vin Gopal can say, “Not my bad.” And writers like Carly Sitrin (She/Her) can try to cover for them.
 
Except that Murphy sent all those kids home and parents saw it with their own eyes. And they can’t unsee it.

Abigail Shrier is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2020). A graduate of Columbia College, University of Oxford, and Yale Law School, her work regularly appears in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and other publications.

Finally, we must applaud Carly Sitrin (She/Her) for getting Senator Holly Schepisi’s own consultant – the company that administers the Facebook page on which the good Senator has posted so much good information – to essentially attack her:

“New Jersey GOP strategist Chris Russell said those kinds of extreme right-wing buzzwords aren’t effective in the state and don’t resonate with the typical New Jersey Republican voter who leans more socially moderate, but he said Republicans should still find a way to tap into that parental outrage.”

Hey, put away those pom-poms, this isn’t about party politics. This is something much larger. It brings people who think of themselves as “Left” together with people who say they are “Right”. This is about children. It's about the future.

Republican Holly Schepisi sets straight Dems’ misrepresentation of curriculum

By Rubashov

Senator Holly Schepisi (R-39) stepped up, did the research, and delivered a knock-out punch to the excuses and misrepresentations being peddled by Democrats like Senator Vin Gopal and their media enablers. Senator Schepisi posted this earlier today:
 
There has been a lot of back pedaling and claims over the past two weeks that the dropbox link I shared with examples of "model curriculum" for sex-ed in New Jersey would never be implemented, wasn't intended for our schools and that teachers would never be encouraged to direct children to the amaze.org website. Some people have gone so far as stating that I am providing intentional misinformation. As I believe facts matter I have tied everything together. What my research has proven is that the "model curriculum" is in fact what would have ultimately been promoted for New Jersey schools. Parents stay involved, stay aware and continue to have your voices heard.
 
Amaze.org, Advocates for Youth and Answer at Rutgers are partners with Siecus.org which is Sex Ed for Social Change. Siecus partnered with advocates for Youth and Answer to create the Future of Sex Education which focuses on institutionalizing sex education. They jointly created the updated National Sexuality Education Standards in 2020 which standards were fully adopted by the NJ State DOE at their June 3, 2020 meeting. They also jointly created the “model curriculum” including the Amaze.org videos, to go along with the updated National Sexuality Education Standards which everyone is now backing away from. As an aside, Siecus advocates that Sex Ed in the US historically is a function of middle class white supremacy.
 
The State of New Jersey on its website has a link
https://www.nj.gov/education/standards/chp/index.shtml....
 
Under this link is a link to Rutgers' Answer Group. Answer is affiliated with Rutgers and is a partner with Advocates for Youth which creates the Amaze.Org videos.
 
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15546128.2022.2060888?src=
 
In a Star-Ledger op-ed published today, the Democrats trotted out four so-called “experts” to argue for the curriculum mandates that have so infuriated parents and taxpayers. Of course, they are anything but “experts”. Instead, these four are political operatives and lobbyists who earn their living pushing highly partisan policy positions that serve to deeply divide America.
 
They might sound left-of-center, but that is simply the heavy application of lipstick on a pack of porkers. These people represent the intersection of policy-for-profit and the corporate establishment.
 
Take “expert” Dan Rice, the executive director of Answer.  A fashion plate amongst the “playing at being Left” Establishment, he brags on his own LinkedIn page about “partnering with Trojan Brand condoms to develop and launch Sex, Etc. University – an online sexual health resource…” and “serving on the committees to update the National Sex Education Standards and the New Jersey Health and Physical Education standards.”
 
Wow, Trojan Brand condoms! Talk about product placement!
 
Then there’s “expert” Debra Hauser, the executive director of Advocates for Youth. She’s listed as a federal lobbyist.
 
“Expert” Elizabeth Coulter is the director of public health and policy with Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey. Her group lobbies the Legislature and promotes political candidates (with money) at elections.
 
And last, but certainly not least, is “expert” Christian Fuscarino – the executive director of Garden State Equality. His group directly profited from government, even while it lobbied politicians and handed out checks to candidates.
 
Some “experts”! More like partisan hacks who like hanging around corporate Establishment types.