| Have you heard? Ron DeSantis is outlawing saying the word “gay” in Florida! One caveat, though—the bill, which is expected to be signed by DeSantis any day now, doesn’t actually mention the word “gay” at all. Or ban anyone from using any adjectives of the sort… At least, not if you actually read the text. In reality, this law would prevent public schools from teaching gender orientation and sexual preferences to children ages Kindergarten through 3rd Grade. It also prevents schools from witholding information from parents about their child’s mental, physical, or emotional health. It also gives parents the right to sue schools violating these rules. Unsurprisingly, recent polling shows 63% of parents are on board with the legislation’s actual contents. That hasn’t stopped the media from launching an embittered smear campaign against the law, nicknaming it the “don’t say gay” bill: a term that’s stuck pretty well, false as it may be. So why is it, given tech and media’s constant obsession over “misinformation” and “fact checking,” that our TVs and social media feeds have become home to blatant falsehoods? Maybe—just maybe—it’s that the truth isn’t actually what people are after. It should be pretty simple: regardless of your convictions on LGBT issues, as a parent, it is your right to approach these highly sensitive topics with your children as you see fit. But when a higher power (i.e. a Governor) recognizes our rights to self-manage these issues within our own families? Well, the establishment doesn’t like that very much. That’s what makes the dishonest framing of this bill by the media, teachers’ unions, and online lefty keyboard warriors so telling. This hoopla goes a lot deeper than any single issue: it’s about your right to parent your own children. And as we’ve seen repeatedly, the aforementioned forces are willing to lie to transfer that power to the state. The sad reality is, for all the lip service on “embracing your truth” and “being yourself,” the public schooling system doesn’t respect autonomy at all: not child’s, and certainly not yours as a parent. In today’s world, if your beliefs happen to contradict the latest intersectional groupthink, that makes you the hateful enemy… and your children a target for re-programming. Don’t take it from me, though. Take it from someone who’s seen the system from the inside. John Taylor Gatto was a public schoolteacher in New York State, and he was good at his job. So good, he received a prestigious Teacher of the Year award during his 26-year career. However, in 1999, he penned Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal announcing his resignation from a job he could no longer keep in good conscience. It was a powerful piece that I recommend everyone read. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts from his surprise resignation, titled I Quit, I Think: “I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can’t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true. Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents. An exaggeration? Hardly. Parents aren’t meant to participate in our form of schooling, rhetoric to the contrary. My orders as schoolteacher are to make children fit an animal training system, not to help each find his or her personal path.” Gatto’s ideas eventually became a book called The Underground History of American Education, and that book became the inspiration for The Tuttle Twins and the Education Vacation. In this story, Emily and Ethan take a break from the drudgery of public schooling, and learn that there’s a lot more to life than the standard K-12 experience. | 
