Danger ahead — your local school board

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

If you entrust your children to the public school system, think again. If you wonder where your kids are getting absurd notions about themselves, look no further than your local school board. If it’s anything like what we have in Arlington County, Virginia, education is not its objective; indoctrination is.

Smug. It’s the only word I can think of to describe our school board’s attitude at its most recent public meeting. Their self-congratulatory remarks were about “safety, inclusion, diversity” to protect the alphabet soup of sexual proclivities they proudly defended. That those proclivities could lead to incalculable physical and emotional problems in children was irrelevant to their social agenda.  The Board’s focus was championing the rights of the “transgendered,” blithely ignoring CDC reports of HIV rates among the “transgendered” exceeding the national average. The effects of puberty blockers or the deleterious and life threatening consequences of surgical alteration don’t exist. Likewise, that “gay” persons, as reported by the CDC, are subject to opportunistic infections, infections increasingly resistant to antibiotics, is likewise brushed aside. The progressives COVID mantra “follow the science” is now “ignore the science”.

What an education should be was never considered. What happened to improving scores, the effectiveness of the curriculum, or the quality of textbooks? None of those vital areas even surfaced in the minds of the Board. Although they did insist they would not allow Washington, i.e., Trump, to dictate to the schools, all the while holding out a hand for federal money. Most of those who spoke were sycophants in toadying agreement with the board’s vacuous humbug. Many in the audience, and in the crowd demonstrating outside, looked like refugees from the seventies minus the love beads, aging hippies with a perpetual grudge.

There were three dissenters, however. One mother spoke out about how a deviate had been allowed in the girls’ locker room, where he exposed himself, and that nothing had been done about it. Calling himself a woman exculpated him and the Board from responsibility for teenage girls’ safety. Next, a psychiatrist enunciated the need for separate lockers and restrooms for the sexes, then a young woman, an athlete, I presume, called for keeping males out of female spaces and sports. All three were met with silence from the Board and an audience filled with vocal “transgender” advocates. That a young woman might be facing a rapist in the restroom was of no concern to the true believers of sexual plasticity. 

Finally, the main event, Lt. Governor Winsome Sears, the Republican candidate for governor in this Fall’s election, took to the podium, summarizing her executive credentials before bluntly reiterating that there were only two sexes, forcefully insisting that males masquerading as females should be barred from women’s events as well as the Ladies’ Room. She pulled no punches; one could feel, however, the resentment from an audience wallowing in its own malicious ignorance. Sears should make this a salient point of her campaign: that the left wants to normalize deviancy and punish normalcy. The rest of us must make our point to the education establishment that our children should not be subjected to dangerous distortions of reality from delusional school boards.

Lt. Colonel Civil Affairs, USAR (ret) served twenty-six years in the regular and reserve components of the US Army. He was civil military liaison for the 260th Military Police, DC National Guard, State Public Affairs Officer, Commander of the Public Affairs unit and a counter-drug intelligence analyst. Transferring to the 352 Civil Affairs Command as monuments and archives officer, he became the Command Public Affairs Officer in Iraq as well as liaison to local Iraqi leaders and acting Secretary to the General Staff. He was instrumental in recovering photographic artifacts of the Iraqi Royal family while in Baghdad. He was wounded in action in an ambush in Feb. 2004 for which he was awarded the Purple Heart.
In his civilian career he worked primarily in Army Public Affairs and for the Air Force as historian to the presidential wing in the early Reagan administration and later for Air Force Legislative Liaison covering congressional hearings and assisting in preparing testimony for senior leaders.
His essays and reviews have appeared in the scholarly and popular press including Asian Affairs and the Washington Times. He is co-author, with Ali Wahab, of The Iraqi Royal Family, a Collection of Photographs Recovered from The Ruins of the Zuhur Palace, 2004.
A native New Yorker, he holds a BA with honors in history from Findlay College (Ohio) and an MA in history from The Ohio State University. He is a graduate of the US Army Command & General Staff College and was graduated with distinction US Naval War College with a MA in National Security and Strategic Studies.

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