Oregon’s Portland Public Schools (PPS) district is teaching kindergartners that boys can have vulvas and girls can have penises, and older students are being asked to take a six-part pledge to advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transexual issues as part of a health-class curriculum required by the state.
The district’s “health education, gender, and sexuality” curricula teaches children in kindergarten through fifth grade about transgender ideology, sexual orientation, and the role of “white colonizers” in trying to “erase cultures,” including what are now called “queer” or “trans people.”
A PPS faculty member reportedly leaked a PowerPoint of the curriculum, which has since been shared through conservative social media.
PPS claims the curricula comply with Oregon Department of Education Health Standards adopted in 2021, which require that all lessons be based on science, medically accurate, and age-appropriate. The department also requires that gender identity and sexual orientation be taught in the classroom.
In one slide for kindergartners, cartoon images of kids with male and female genitalia are labeled as “person with a penis” and “person with a vulva” instead of “boy” and “girl.”
“Any kid can have any type of body,” the presentation states, adding that “boys can have vulvas and girls can have penises.”
A first-grade lesson on “names, genders, and pronouns” teaches that “gender is something adults came up with to sort people into groups.”
“Many people think there are only two genders, girls and boys, but this is not true,” the presentation continues.
“Some people say gender is different than assigned sex [and] oftentimes the word ‘male’ is used to mean boys/men and the word ‘female’ is used to mean girls/women. This makes things confusing because that is mushing assigned sex and gender together,” it adds.
A fourth-grade lesson teaches that “bodies don’t have genders, only people do, and any gender can have any body.”
“Genders are like outer space because there are as many genders as there are stars in the sky,” the lesson claims.
“There are many sexes and many variations within the different sexes [and] calling sex ‘biological’ erases that it is a social construct, meaning that people made it up,” it further states.
Students are also taught that white colonization has taken over and eliminated “places, cultures, and identities of indigenous people.”
“When white European people colonized different places, they brought their own ideas about gender and sexuality. When the United States was colonized by white settlers, their views around gender were forced upon the people already living here. Hundreds of years later, how we think and talk about gender are still impacted by this shift,” the document reads.
The documents show that students learn about “dominant identities,” with an example being a white, rich, Christian boy. Those with “less power” should describe themselves as having a “non-dominant identity.”
The curriculum asks older students to take a six-part pledge to learn more about LGBT words, watch more movies with LGBT characters, learn more about the history and leadership of black trans women, practice pronouns and correct themselves, and attend meetings of the LGBT clubs in their school.
Portland Public Schools stands behind its curricula.
“We make certain that our curriculum is LGBTQ+ inclusive for students who identify as transgender, gender non-conforming, gender-queer, and queer to create a safe and inclusive environment for all of our students.” Families may “opt-out” of any components of a sexuality education class, PPS Public Records Officer and Media Relations Officer Ryan Vandehey wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
At the same time, Vandehey claims that the PPS curriculum is being misconstrued.
“PPS is aware that there is misinformation regarding our sexuality education classes in the media space,” Vandehey claimed.
“Much of the information is inconsistent with our curriculum,” he added.
Vandehey initially told The Epoch Times in a phone call that he would “gladly provide additional materials to correct the record.”
Two days later, he indicated that he would no longer be working with the media.
“I’m not handling media responses right now,” Vandehey explained in an email. “If you would like to obtain pieces of our curriculum, you will need to file a public records request.”
PPS has not responded to any of the three emailed requests for those records.
