Parents opposed to an aggressive new sex education curriculum in Wisconsin suffered assaults on both their persons and their sensibilities from a hostile crowd supporting the change.
“Pure hatred. Pure, unbridled hatred,” says Scarlett Johnson, a Wisconsin county chair for grassroots group Moms for Liberty.
“Seething hate would be an appropriate word,” concerned parent Paul Bruno told The Lion about the crowd supporting the Wauwatosa school board in its approval of an aggressive new sex education curriculum stretching down to kindergarten. It was approved 6-1 on Monday.
Johnson, among the contingent of opponents of the early-age sex ed curriculum, which includes lessons on gender fluidity and alternative sexual lifestyles, was actually physically struck by one supporter. She said she was grabbed from behind and slapped on her shoulders several times without provocation. Police were called and offered an arrest, but Johnson declined.
Alexandra Schweitzer, president of the Wisconsin chapter of No Left Turn in Education, said Johnson’s attacker had actually swept her own child out of the way and toward the street before assaulting Johnson.
Bruno said he also witnessed a large man purposely crowding Johnson’s space as she was being interviewed by the media. The burly man proceeded to complain bitterly that the petite Johnson had touched him.
In an extended interview with The Lion, Johnson described a chaotic and belligerent scene in which supporters of the sex ed curriculum booed and shouted at her and other opponents constantly, sometimes profanely, and in attempts to prevent her group from being interviewed by the media.
A well-known activist for concerned parents, Johnson said two children actually came up to her and said, “I hate you, Scarlett!” She said at least one of the children was rewarded for it with a high five from a parent.
Johnson has become a battle-scarred veteran of the culture war in schools. But, she said, “I’ve never experienced something like this.”
After holding up signs promoting childhood innocence and opposing pornography in schools, Johnson says “right away we were told ‘You don’t belong here. Get out of here. You’re racist. You’re fascist, you’re homophobic, you’re transphobic.’
Inside the board meeting, speakers opposed to the sex ed curriculum were booed and shouted at lustily, sources tell The Lion.
Meanwhile, Schweitzer said a supporter outside the building utterly shocked the conscience by telling her that children as young as 2 should be encouraged not only to pleasure themselves sexually but to pleasure their little friends, too.
The woman told Schweitzer that if she had a 2-year-old girl, she should teach her “that she can do that not only to herself, but to her friends.
“She said that to me while we were standing outside before we went in for the meeting,” a still-incredulous Schweitzer said. “She actually said to me that she believes that children should be able to pleasure each other.”
Schweitzer says she asked a police officer standing nearby if he’d heard what the woman had said about having toddlers pleasure each other. “And he said, ‘Yes, ma’am, I did. And she has a right to freedom of speech’.”
But it’s promoting child abuse, Schweitzer said. “It’s pedophilia. It’s child endangerment,” she said of the woman’s notion.
If nothing else, it raises the question of what some people think the age of consent to sexual touching should be. How could another toddler consent to such touching – particularly when children that young surely don’t know what’s appropriate and what isn’t?
It’s also unclear how the woman’s radical point of view would square with even the broad sex education lessons approved by the Wauwatosa school board. The concepts to be taught in the curriculum include appropriate and inappropriate touching and the giving of consent in “healthy relationships.”
Moreover, one of the signs of early childhood sexual abuse is a child’s exhibiting of “adult-like sexual behaviors, language and knowledge,” according to Stop It Now, a child sex abuse prevention organization started by a survivor.
All the hatred for concerned parents aside, Bruno says the main issue is what schools are teaching about sexuality – and that they are then encouraging students to take those teachings out into the world.
I’m kind of against teaching a new science that is not really understood or agreed upon, and having our kids be advocates for it,” he said, adding that it appears the schools have two goals in promoting woke theories: “Indoctrinate kids and have them indoctrinate us.”
Bruno said he’s stepped into this battle reluctantly, as many parents have across the nation.
I’m the kind of person that wants to be left alone. I want to spend time with my family, grow my business. But this is a hill I am willing to die on,” he said.
Indeed, he says, he’s now going to run for school board.
