[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 52 (Wednesday, March 22, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H1305-H1306]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 PUBLIC SCHOOL RADICAL GENDER IDEOLOGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak about an extremely 
important topic that is very current and very disturbing in our Nation, 
in our Nation's schools, and the relationship of parents and their 
kids.
  Mr. Speaker, during the COVID lockdowns, schools were closed, and 
much of the learning was conducted online, except for those courageous 
schools that did manage to stay open and teach their kids the normal 
way.
  During this time, parents gained a valuable opportunity to see 
firsthand what their children were being taught in public schools, and 
in some cases, what is in their libraries.
  What they found was very shocking to them. We heard a conversation a 
bit earlier about, Oh, this is banning books.
  If you see the content that is in some of the books, some of the so-
called educational materials, it is really nothing short of pornography 
that is being allowed to be in there.
  Mr. Speaker, when did it become okay for kids to be subject to that 
kind of material or the performances that are being brought to their 
libraries under the guise of openness where it wouldn't be really any 
different than what is going on in a strip club?
  You would get in big trouble should you take your kid to one of 
those. How is that allowed to be normalized these days?
  Rather than teaching children the skills that they need and the 
knowledge to become successful adults, these activists, whether it is 
teachers, counselors, superintendents, they are filling their heads 
with this woke far-left propaganda and pushing radical gender ideology 
on children as young as elementary age.
  In response to the backlash, teachers and public school 
administrators have attempted to keep this indoctrination and these 
agendas secret from their parents. Unbelievable.
  This included helping encourage students to keep secrets from their 
parents, hiding their lesson plans and curriculums, trying to ban 
recording in the classroom, obfuscating what materials are being shown 
to students, and shutting down parents who spoke out at public school 
meetings when they heard about this, even so far as having the U.S. 
Department of Justice refer to them as terrorists.
  They asserted time and again that parents did not have the right to 
be involved in their children's education. They claimed that once 
children walked through the schoolhouse door, those children belonged 
to the State.
  What is that? Where are the echoes of that coming from?
  In 2021, parents across the country revolted at school board meetings 
and

[[Page H1306]]

gathered to make their concerns heard in free assembly, a First 
Amendment protection.
  In Loudoun County, Virginia, a father of a young girl who had been 
assaulted by a biological male was arrested for speaking out against 
the school board's decision to hide the perpetrator's history of 
assault against young girls. That decision put his innocent daughter 
and countless other students at risk.
  In my own district in Northern California, a school district was 
caught secretly changing a young girl's name and pronouns and even 
encouraging that something was wrong with her body--she was in the 
wrong body--filling her head with falsehoods. The counselor who 
encouraged this activity allegedly manipulated the young girl to keep 
her transitioning secret from her own mother.
  In both cases, parents rightfully pushed back against these assiduous 
attempts of public schools to force woke gender ideology on their 
children.
  Unfortunately, parents across the country have been met with State 
force when they have tried to assert their rightful place as the 
supreme authority in their children's lives.
  The Department of Justice infamously circulated a memo calling 
parents who exercise these rights as ``domestic terrorists.''
  As Americans gradually become aware of the rotten corruption that 
permeates so much of our public school system, it became clear that 
Congressional Republicans needed to take action to support parents 
across the Nation and enshrine protections against government 
retaliation.
  Last Congress, I introduced two bills: one that prohibits doctors 
from performing gender reassignment surgeries on minors and another 
allowed victims of these life-altering procedures to sue those who 
pushed these surgeries on them as minors.
  These permanent, life-altering surgeries are being forced onto 
vulnerable children by radical activists. Mutilating a child's body is 
not medicine. It is not science. It is not affirming, nor is it care.

  As we have seen in the recent exposure of the inside workings of a 
Missouri clinic, children manipulated into undertaking these surgeries 
are not informed about the life-altering damage being done to their 
bodies. They are being rushed through the process, and in the worst 
cases are outright lied to by the people who are somehow going to make 
their lives better or more in order, and that they know better who 
should be taking care of them instead of their parents when this harm 
is being caused.
  Doing this to a child is immoral, and it should be punished with the 
full force of the law. Children whose lives are permanently altered due 
to these surgeries should be allowed to sue for damages and put parents 
back at their rightful place, their God-given right to oversee their 
children's education, their well-being, their health, and their bodies.

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