Last year, when the state board of education proposed new sex-education standards for teaching about issues such as sexual orientation, gender identity and consent, a retired pediatrician in this central Nebraska town reached out to Gov. Pete Ricketts and state lawmakers.
“This is NOT Sex Ed as anyone knows it,” Sue Greenwald wrote in a July 16, 2021, email obtained by The Washington Post. Lessons that met these standards, she wrote, would be “ ‘grooming’ children to be sexual victims.”
It was a shocking claim, and it was catching on — repeated by Greenwald, by members of the Protect Nebraska Children Coalition, agroup she co-founded to oppose the standards, and embraced by Ricketts (R) himself. The message also spread through screenings at libraries and churches of “The Mind Polluters,” billed as an “investigative documentary” that “shows how the vast majority of America’s public schools are prematurely sexualizing children.”
Grooming erupted as a national issue earlier this year, but this state in America’s heartland has been roiled by that attack on comprehensive sex education since last spring, providing a unique window into a newly inflamed debate. The unsubstantiated claim helped activate an army of self-described Nebraska patriots who rose up against the standards, took over the local Republican Party and propelled a wave of far-right candidates for local and statewide school boards, a Post examination found. Earlier this month, these activists were part of a broader, anti-establishment insurgency that toppled leaders of the state Republican Party.
They’ve always hated public education. It’s a government policy after all and is open to everyone even if you’re not white or rich. What’s not to hate? And teachers are unionized and predominantly female which makes them all the more hated. Now they are focusing on the curriculum, particularly the teaching of history, which they insist must be whitewashed and now we have the targeted campaign against gay teachers, trans kids and sex-ed on top of last year’s hysterical tantrum over masking and vaccines. It’s getting much more personal and it’s activating these brainwashed wingnuts to get involved.
They’re coming for public school teachers, don’t kid yourself. This one’s been percolating for a long time and it’s coming to a boil.