А US school opened an LGBT club for sixth graders, secretly from parents

A California resident sued school authorities for the fact that two teachers who ran an after-school LGBT club taught her 11-year-old daughter to identify herself as transgender, forced her to adopt a male name and persuaded her to change her gender.

As it turned out, the teachers followed the Google queries of their students and took note of those children who showed at least some interest in gay or trans topics. Everything was done in secret from parents - and activists gave special instructions to children on this score. But there were no secrets from colleagues: a few months ago, both teachers held a closed seminar for California teachers on how best to attract children from conservative families to gay clubs.

And on the other side of America, in Illinois, the scandal around the "Satan Club", organised at a school for children from grades 1 to 5 with the aim of introducing them to a "scientific, rationalistic and not superstitious worldview”, does not subside. Students were given flyers saying that Satan would give them individual freedom.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, a teacher forced white fifth graders to apologise for their skin colour to dark-skinned students, and an elite school in New York, where John Kennedy studied, decided to remove the "racist" abbreviation A.D (since the birth of Christ) from its logo, and Michigan still can't recover after the statement of one of the mothers: according to her, a tray for "furry" children who consider themselves cats was installed in the unisex toilet of one of the state schools.

What's going on in general? The RUSSTRAT Institute has already spoken about the notorious woke agenda (wokenism) has long and firmly occupied American schools, including in the LGBT sphere, but are the things really so bad? And most importantly - what should we do if and when this outrage reaches Russia?

"Teachers persuaded daughter to change gender"

On January 19, 2022, Jessica Konen, a resident of the California city of Salinas, sued the Spreckels Union school district for the behaviour of two Buena Vista high school teachers, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki. According to Konen, in 2019, they recruited her sixth-grader daughter to join their school's "Equality Club”.

There, Caldeira and Baraki told an 11-year-old girl that she could be bisexual and transgender, although at that time she did not even understand the meaning of these words. The teachers urged the sixth-grader to change her name to a boy's and specifically instructed her not to tell anything at home about her new identity, because "you can't trust your mother”.

Then Caldeira and Baraki slipped on the child articles on how to hide their transgenderism from their parents and demanded to read them, Jessica claims. Without her knowledge, the school drew up a "gender support plan" for her daughter, in which teachers were instructed to address the child by a new name and with male pronouns, as well as to allow the child to go to the teachers' toilet.

All this time, until the autumn of 2021, Konen did not know what was going on, and she attributed the changes in her daughter's behaviour to her personal characteristics. In December, Jessica came to a school meeting to handle this situation, but she was not even allowed to finish an emotional speech supported by other parents in the hall. And then she went to court, enlisting the support of lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, who at one time was the vice chairwoman of the Republican Party of California. There is a usurpation of parental rights on the part of teachers and the school, Konen summed up, and demanded $10,000 in compensation.

Here it is necessary to understand the rules of the game, according to which the trial is currently unfolding. Konen and Dhillon do not speak out, and they cannot speak out against the sexual minorities themselves, of which there are a dime a dozen in the most "rainbow" state of America. The essence of their claims is not even excessive gay propaganda among heterosexual children, but hiding important information from parents who have an absolute right to know what schools teach their children. This right has been repeatedly postulated by the US Supreme Court, and now it has been violated.

"Equality Club", later renamed "You Be You”, is also not some kind of illegal den of perverted teachers, but a completely official institution created to solve the problems of schoolchildren with non-traditional sexual orientation. With all the tolerance to perversions in the USA, the local "bluish" teenagers often feel like outcasts among their peers, and sometimes they really have nowhere to turn for help. It was for them, in theory, that similar clubs were created, which in the United States are called Gay-straight alliances (GSA).

In reality, everything turned out to be completely different, Konen claims in her lawsuit: “Equality Club” did not deal with any help. Up to the point that classes were held there not after school, but instead of lunch - specifically so that parents would not suspect anything because of the long absence of children. The very membership of schoolchildren in the club was secret and kept hidden from their parents. And the case of Konen's daughter, as conservative journalists managed to unearth, is far from being the only one.

"It's better to start with other people's children"

So, how did Konen find out about the real reason for the changes that happened to her daughter? Well, it's just that Caldeira and Baraki blabbed themselves - just not somewhere in a bar or in a chat, but at a conference of the California Association of Teachers held in Palm Springs on October 29-31 under the intricate title "2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference, Beyond the Binary: Identity & Imagining Possibilities”.

At this conference, Baraki and Caldeira held a seminar called "How we run a GSA in Conservative Communities", during which they dumped their know-how on their colleagues. How to hide gay propaganda from parents. How to instruct schoolchildren whose families are against membership in such a club. How, using distance learning, to monitor students - what are they looking for in Google search? How to recognise the sexual orientation of sixth graders by their behaviour in the classroom. And how to properly attract to the club those kids who do not want to go to it at all.

All this rich experience of seduction of minors, which was shared by two schoolteachers, became public thanks to a leak from the conference. It was published by Abigail Shrier, author of "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters". By the way, one of the accused teachers, 52-year-old Lori Caldeira, has a son who was also born as a girl, The Daily Mail found out the other day…

"Always remember that youth are the drivers of change," Caldeira said at the conference. “If you want to bring a new world into existence, it seems—a good place to start is with other people’s kids.”

And I don't care about anyone's opinion, because I'm on a permanent contract at school, the activist continued to confide. Opponents can be angry as much as they want, but they can't fire me for running the club! After all, I am dealing with the topic of human rights and justice, and the California Teachers Association has provided me with all the necessary tools and resources for this, Caldeira said.

It is not surprising that the teaching environment came to the defence of the colleagues who got caught. The Spreckels Union school district, although it sent Caldeira and Baraki on leave during an internal investigation, still stated that the "You Be You" club was and remains a vital part of the culture of their schools and that it will certainly reopen to students.

The California Department of Education also has feathers on its snout: back in 2019, it developed a guide for teachers on how to talk to schoolchildren about their sexual problems in secret from their parents. In its booklets, there are such references to the "new normality" in sex, for demonstrating which to a child in private in the same United States, you can easily go to jail. Another school district in the state has released an LGBT awareness program for four-year-olds (!).

And the liberal press is heavily insisting on the fact that the teachers ... are not to blame for anything at all. Like saying that the legislation of the "Golden State" protects the right of students to privacy in relation to gender identity - and therefore it was not only optional to inform parents, but also illegal. In addition, California teachers are not prohibited from discussing gay topics with schoolchildren at all, the defenders of Caldeira and Baraki say. As there is no norm preventing students from monitoring online activity through GoGuardian, an online application that is used in thousands of American schools.

"Let me get this straight,” conservative Americans complain in response. “You can’t have sex with a 16⁄17 year old because they are to young to consent. They aren’t able to make a mature decision because they are young. Yet an 11 year old can make a decision they want to change genders and that’s accepted by the same adults ??? A 11 year old is mature enough to make those decisions ???? There are doctors who prescribe drugs to these babies that forever will alter their bodies because some parent thinks it’s ok their 11 year old wants to change genders ??? The world is going mad.”

Yes, the American world has gone mad. According to the latest survey carried out by the Gallup Institute, a record 62% of US residents are satisfied with how the rights of LGBT people in their country are taken into account. The institute itself assesses this as proof of the transition of the gay community from the category of outsiders to the mainstream. Another "achievement" is that 70% of Americans (55% of Republicans and as many as 83% of Democrats) support gay marriage, the same Gallup claims.

At the same time, 5.6% of Americans consider themselves to be LGBT - this is also a historical record. The figure is not so scanty, considering that among the surveyed representatives of generation Z (born 1997-2002), 15.9% consider themselves gay, lesbian, bisexual or transsexual - every sixth one.

There are also other figures: according to the US Census Bureau for 2021, only 85% of American adults were able to identify themselves as heterosexuals whose current gender identity fully corresponds to their gender at birth.

"Children come to us with questions"

How should we, the residents of Russia, relate to this? It's the easiest way to say about the Americans "It serves them right!" - in the holy confidence that this plague will never come to our country. What is much more difficult is to personally check school textbooks and programs of your own children, monitor the endless reform of education and coordinate with other parents.

And it can be very difficult to get into the personal life of your own child. For many parents, it is not even possible to delicately ask what they are passionate about. What networks they view, who are they subscribed to, which sites they visit. You always secretly hope that nature will take its course and that your child will somehow sort everything out by themselves. "Modern kids know everything better than us!" we reassure ourselves.

Meanwhile, the standard defensive reaction of gay-lesbian-trans activists in American schools is the phrase "Children come to us with questions”. This is also stated in their defence by Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki: like saying, we were just answering the students, we were the only ones in the whole world talking to them!

"We just give answers to your children's questions!" is the slogan of all those promoting the LGBT agenda, be it developers of sex courses for seventh graders or producers of Hollywood cartoons, who always have something to say on this score. The White House, which adopted in 2021 a real manifesto of ideological colonialism, also has answers - a Memorandum on the promotion of the rights of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender, Queers and Intersex People (LGBTQI+) around the world.

"The United States belongs at the forefront of this struggle — speaking out and standing strong for our most dearly held values <...> using the full range of diplomatic and assistance tools and, as appropriate, financial sanctions, visa restrictions, and other actions," the memorandum says.

It is not just about protecting "oppressed minorities", but also about promoting the legalisation of same-sex marriage around the world and about humanity's "breakthrough view" of gender identity. This will certainly be followed by new attempts to promote LGBT ideology among minors. Washington plans to consolidate all this at the level of international law - with severe punishment for violators. Only a strong state with not eroded notions of good and evil can resist this onslaught.

So what should we, ordinary parents, do? To begin with - talk. To not be silent. To discuss uncomfortable topics with your children, seeking their trust in the first place. To have discussions with each other. To organise your own conferences. And look for answers to the most difficult questions - without waiting for them to be helpfully slipped on to us by Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki.