How Activists Use Your Tax Dollars To Sexualize Kids At School

Federal grants are funding the interest groups spearheading efforts to “queer” education around the country. These groups are hijacking laws with sensible-sounding aims and attempting to create revolutionary changes in sexuality.

Federal programs such as the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) and Title V Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) funnel money to state health and welfare departments. Seeing that there is money to be captured, education nonprofits such as Education, Training and Research (ETR), Planned Parenthood, and others develop curriculum and training to deliver the “prevention” programs. Then state health and welfare departments bypass state departments of education and local school boards by providing these curricula to public health agencies, which then provide “sex ed” curriculum directly to schools.

These nonprofits push the theory that sexual repression is to blame for sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancy and they hold that greater and earlier openness about sexuality and more inclusivity will prevent all evils. Their curricula encourage sexualizing children as a preventive measure. They believe they occupy the moral high ground: opposing their sexualization of children means encouraging disease, suicide, and unwanted pregnancy.

ETR provides a case study for how this perverse federalism works. ETR’s Reducing the Risk curriculum promises to teach abstinence, but instead delivers a Planned Parenthood-endorsed “LGBTQ inclusive” curriculum that queers education with an emphasis on “gender identity, sexual orientation and behavior.” ETR advocates for teaching elementary students “porn literacy” and shows teachers how to teach “kink and power, pleasure, sexual identity, sexual acts and sexual exploration in relation to pornography.” It also delivers an “LGBTQ centered” curriculum that takes sex education beyond condoms to dental dams, sex toys, and perilous transgender radicalism.

Nearly every state agency that has accepted SRAE and PREP funds has purchased ETR’s curriculum. ETR’s new LGBTQ-centered program, developed with Planned Parenthood, is already operating in 16 states.

Idaho as an Example

Idaho offers an example of how increasingly radical content can be smuggled into school programs while avoiding public scrutiny. Under the two programs PREP and SRAE, Idaho had around $2 million in federal funding in both fiscal years 2021 and 2022.           

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare uses such funding for ETR’s queer-focused Reducing the Risk curriculum through its Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program. The department then directs local public health districts to recruit schools to implement the program. Idaho North Central Public Health District, for example, has a webpage promoting Reducing the Risk, which includes links to ETR’s trainings on porn literacy and queering sex ed. Another district resource, Sex etc., takes students to articles such as “Transgender Men Can Get Pregnant, Too,” surveys about masturbation, and Amaze.Org videos featuring cartoon depictions of porn and abortion. What parent thinks to check their local public health district’s website to learn what their child is taught about sex in schools?

Programs in Many States Partnered with Planned Parenthood

In addition to Idaho, the federal government reports schools and health departments in Montana, Florida, Arizona, New York, Utah, South Carolina, and Alabama, among many others, have adopted ETR’s LGBT-focused programs such as All4You, Making A Difference! and Reducing the Risk.

Planned Parenthood facilities often partner with state agencies to help implement these programs in schools. For instance, Planned Parenthood of South, East, and North Florida offers ETR’s Reducing the Risk curriculum in Duval, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties in before- and after-school, in-school, and community-based settings.

Action Needed

Schools are accepting curricula from interest groups pushing the sexualization of our children. Not only should citizens demand that their school districts take a proactive role in discovering what state-recommended resources are being used, but state legislators should analyze federal programs with stricter scrutiny to ensure that they do not corrupt our children.

Anna Miller is education policy director at the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s Center for American Education. Scott Yenor is a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.

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