A major educational publishing company offers books on transgenderism for children as young as kindergarten.
Promoting books on that topic is so harmful it should be considered “child abuse,” a psychologist told The Epoch Times. And in at least one Florida community, people speaking at school board meetings have argued for and against offering the books to youngsters.
Perfection Learning, a 97-year-old company, owns seven educational publishing companies. It also publishes the advanced placement test study books many high school students use to earn college credit early.
The company’s Essential Voices book collection offers teachers a 29-book kindergarten classroom library, including books “My Two Dads and Me,” by Michael Joosten; “My Two Moms and Me,” also by Joosten, and “Neither,” by Arlie Anderson.
Books that teach gender can heavily influence how kids see themselves, according to psychologist Leonard Sax, of Chester County, Pennsylvania.
“Twenty years ago, people assumed that gender identity, whether you’re male or female, was more fundamental than sexual orientation,” Sax said. “Well, that turns out not to be true.”
He’s concerned about books such as “Neither,” recommended for 5-year-olds.
In the story, a world of blue bunnies and yellow birds sees the hatching of a green bunny-bird hybrid. Birds and bunnies portrayed as bigots call the new creature a “Neither.” The Neither soon leaves its binary homeland for the rainbow-splattered “Land of All.”
The American Library Association selected “Neither” for its 2019 list of recommended pro-LGBT books.
The first-grade library by Essential Voices offers 28 books, including “Call Me Max,” by Kyle Lukoff, in which a girl decides to be a boy named Max.
“When a baby grows up to be transgender, it means the grown-up who said they were a boy or a girl made a mistake,” the book explains.
The collection also features and “Daddy, Papa, and Me,” by Leslea Newman, and “Julián Is a Mermaid,” by Jessica Love, in which a boy decides he wants to dress like a woman.
The company’s 29 titles for second-graders include “10,000 Dresses,” by Marcus Ewert, about a boy named Bailey, who wants to wear dresses.
“Bailey, what are you talking about? You’re a boy. Boys don’t wear dresses!” the mother in the book tells her son.
“But… I don’t feel like a boy,” Bailey responds.
When Bailey’s mom, dad, and brother don’t affirm he’s a girl, Bailey runs down the street to a “big girl” who does.
The collection for second grade also features “Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag,” by Rob Sanders, and “This Day in June,” a book about celebrating LGBT pride by Gayle E. Pitman.
“Stella Brings the Family,” by Miriam B. Schiffer, tells a story about a girl and her two fathers. “In Our Mothers’ House,” by Patricia Polacco, details life in a lesbian family.
The 30 books 12th-graders receive include several sexually explicit options.
In “Americanah,” a novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is about a tennis coach who pays a new immigrant for sexual favors.
“Give Me Some Truth,” by Eric Gansworth, includes a girl in a relationship with a man twice her age.
And “Burned,” by Ellen Hopkins, explicitly describes a girl’s confusion about sexual touching.
Support for Essential Voices
In Florida, the Jacksonville Area Sexual Minority Youth Network (JASMYN) fought recently to include the Essential Voices classroom library collection in schools.The organization’s Instagram page called on supporters to attend a Duval County School Board meeting and speak out in favor of having Essential Voices book collections.
“Let the School Board know you want the Essential Voices Collection back on the shelves,” JASMYN told supporters on its Instagram page.
“The district simply cannot partner with the organization given their use of program materials that the district believes to be inappropriate for use with children,” DCPS school superintendent Diana Greene wrote in a Nov. 29, 2022, statement, after the card-game post was brought to her attention.
“The surveys that they’re doing basically say, ‘Hey, are you gay? Are you sure you’re not gay?’” Bernhardt said.
JASMYN also assists in HIV and STD prevention programming, teacher training, student care coordination, and conducting parent courses on how to support LGBT teens, she said.
“They’re trying to raise a generation of people that support the lie that ‘I was born a woman. But I can decide I’m a man,’” Bernhardt said.
Video of a Dec. 6, 2022, school board meeting showed Bernhardt and supporters of JASMYN speaking to the school board.
Katie Hathaway, a local parent, called for the return of the Essential Voices book collection, noting that the school spent $3 million on Essential Voices books for its classrooms. She called the collection’s removal a “book ban.”
“I am concerned our district is making reactionary and impulsive decisions based on a vocal minority that doesn’t reflect the diverse population of our district,” Hathaway said.
Jeannina Perez, the national director for activist group MomsRising, said more than 100 local families supported JASMYN. She also voiced concern about “book bans.”
“I’ve heard many parents and students speak in support of this program,” she said.
JASMYN CEO Cindy Watson also offered comment at the meeting.
“The images associated with the adult card game were used in a program for young adults to destigmatize HIV testing and promote proper condom use and sexual safety,” Watson said. “Be clear—these activities were never used with minors. Once alerted to the social media posting, JASMYN immediately removed the images and set in place a more stringent social media protocol to ensure that our media is suitable for all age groups.”
Depressed and confused children
Over the last 20 years, psychologists have discovered gender identity is shockingly malleable, Sax said. They’ve learned that if a little boy reads certain books, watches certain videos, and learns from certain teachers, he will likely say he is something other than male, he said.
“Almost every culture of which we have any record has taught girls to be women and boys to be men. We don’t do that,” he said of modern American culture.
This lack of guidance leaves children depressed and confused, he said. Psychological research finds gender confusion, depression, and anxiety correlate, Sax said.
“Kids are being subjected to a massive experiment. What happens when we tell kids that ’male‘ and ’female' don’t matter, that you can mix and match however you like?” he asked. “I think we’re finding out that what happens is an explosion in anxiety and depression among American teenagers.”
Exposing children to stories of gender confusion leads to more gender confusion, some experts agree.
‘Child Abuse’
Teaching children to question their gender identity “is child abuse,” Sax said. “It’s causing kids to be uncertain, where they should be constant.”If a generation gets raised with a radical understanding of gender, many kids will live it out, he said.
“[Books]in the kindergarten bookshelf [of Essential Voices] are really harmful.”
But gender confusion is only one part of this generation’s many mental problems, said Sax. The biggest damage to kids comes, not from reading confusing books, but from complete immersion in technology.
“I don’t see any kids with books.”
