during a CNN investigative report At Moms for Liberty, a right-wing activist group known for attending school board meetings to oppose LGBTQ+ “teaching” by teachers, the news network’s crew visited the group in Colorado Springs. A note was passed from a mother at one meeting, which read, “We have the other side of this story. This is a hate group.”
The woman who wrote the note was a member of Neighbors for Education, a group formed to counter Moms for Liberty in 2021, which was successful in electing school board members who support her views. CNN report Members of Neighbors for Education and other moderate opponents of Mothers for Liberty have secretly attended group meetings in various cities to gather information.
“My kid thinks it’s a big deal because it’s normal for them,” said Naomi Lopez, a member of Neighbors for Education. “To my friends, they don’t care how my child identifies; They love them for who they are.
CNN also interviewed Darci Schoening, head of the El Paso County chapter of Moms for Liberty, who says she is aware that her opponents are infiltrating their meetings and that they are doing the same on left-leaning Facebook pages. have been
“What they don’t realize is that they are doing half the work for us,” Schöning said. “Because the more they post … you get parents who are sitting outside saying, ‘Oh, it doesn’t sound so crazy. I want to be a part of this.’
Schoening made several false and/or unsubstantiated claims during his interview, including that there is a coordinated effort by President Biden and teachers’ unions to turn more kids into trans and gay “so as to subvert conservative values” and “constitutional Values should be gradually eroded” rights”.
Schoening also claimed during the meeting that CNN attended that a book about “how two men please each other” was available for first graders, though he did not specify what the book was or for whom. The school had provided such a book.
“If you ask my kids, who are 7 and 8, ‘What are your pronouns?’ They don’t even know what that is,” Schoening told CNN. “When you ask that, you’re planting a seed in their mind, that they should probably identify as the other gender or that identifying as another gender is hip or cool — ‘Hey, my teacher’s asking me. Well, maybe that’s what I should be doing.'”
Lopez categorically rejected Shawning’s claim.
“It’s not happening,” she said of Shawning’s scenario. “We’re not going to go around saying, ‘Well, you know, I want you to think about it, what gender are you?’ When teachers meet new students, they ask how they want to be addressed, she said — a kid named Josiah who wants to be known by. A child can say they want to use a particular pronoun, and the teacher will respect that.
