IS IT TIME TO SEPARATE SCHOOL AND STATE?

Compare and contrast.

First up, Common Dreams contributor Jon Queally files a report from Glendale, California.

Far-right fascist groups and homophobic parents instigated violent clashes outside a local school committee meeting in the town of Glendale, California on Tuesday evening which resulted in defenders of the district recognizing June as Pride Month being punched, kicked, pepper-sprayed, and thrown about as police failed to maintain a peaceful situation.

While the Glendale Unified School District board met inside to hear from community members and parents prior to a vote, the overflow crowd that gathered became increasingly confrontational.

Here's Megan Fox from Pajamas Media, reporting on the same noisy but mostly peaceful protest.

In California, the Glendale Unified School District faced criticism over declaring the month of June “Pride Month,” to be celebrated in schools all the way down to the elementary level. Parents of the largely Armenian community weren’t happy about it and showed up to the school board meeting in force. Clashes with helmet-wearing Antifa erupted outside the meeting, where arrests were made.

That story reports on a similar protest from Montgomery County, Maryland.

In Montgomery County, Md., the Muslim community showed up in force to protest the opt-out policy adopted by the school district. Every student is now required to learn the LGBTQ propaganda and will not be allowed to opt-out.

Asra Nomani wrote on Twitter, “Montgomery County Public Schools recently refused to allow parents to opt out of indoctrination that relates to issues of sexuality and gender. As a Muslim feminist, I don’t agree with many of the conservative interpretations of my Muslim community, but I do believe and they believe in the integral right of parents to parent. During the Obama administration, Muslim groups aligned with far-left interest groups that actually contradicted the socially conservative beliefs of many Muslims. This was not going to sustain itself, I knew.

Is it schooling, or is it a cult belief, and if so, whose cult belief? Ms Fox offers one perspective.

Parents of faith need to band together now and force school districts to stop indoctrinating our kids with false doctrines and cult beliefs. Gender and queer theory is based on nothing but faith and should be classified as a religion. In fact, at the Montgomery County protest, a small group of pro-LGBTQ counter-protesters from the Unitarian church stood with a sign and a member of their clergy. It appears that their beliefs are supported by religion; why should that be taught in public schools if Catholicism, Islam, or any other religion is not?

Mr Queally, another.

The Republican Party and other far-right political actors have increasingly targeted local public schools in their effort to gin up opposition to trans youth and promote a culture war that seeks to equate common-sense love and acceptance of LGTBQ+ children and adults with some kind of leftist "indoctrination" that should be opposed.

Lost amid the noise, any discussion of whatever reading, mathematical, or social studies standards the rainbow curriculum maintains.  I suppose a columnist can refer to parents by some sort of pejorative; that's not recommended for school board members, who, in many districts, can be turfed out.