The Agenda of the Parents Rights Movement

Beyond the headlines and viral videos, here's a breakdown on what actions I see them focusing on

When the pandemic started, I think many of us were surprised by the strength of the anti-vax and anti-mask movement in America. A deep web of conservative organizations activated to propel a grassroots push that tapped into pre-existing feelings of discontent. People’s distrust of expertise and science combined with a seething resentment for ‘Washington elites’ provided the perfect storm for the right’s newest culture war. 

A portion of that movement has morphed into the “parents rights” movement. The mama bears who opposed vaccinating, masking and school closures have moved on to CRT, gender ideology and book bans. 

Moms for Liberty (M4L) is just one of the far right education advocacy organizations focused on this messaging, but they have been incredibly effective at building a public conversation on these issues and creating the specter of widespread public support. And they were only founded in 2021! Organizations like Moms for America, No Left Turn and Parents Defending Education are the tip of the spear for a much larger anti-public eduction effort that’s been going on for a long time and is backed by major GOP funders. (Eg: Trump Education Secretary Betsy Devos’s rise to power was fueled by a push for religious charter schools). 

I think what we are seeing is that they are taking the roadmap developed in their battle to outlaw abortion and applying it to this issue.   Because when there is a war to fight, especially one for the souls and safety of children, it galvanizes people to act in a way no other framing can. Teachers have been begging parents to volunteer in schools for years, library boards have struggled to get members! But now that there is a war to fight in (and drama for the media to cover) its got legs.  They are focused on narratives not policy issues. Their major donors are propping up grassroots organizers and cultivating and supporting messengers. 

The right has excelled at taking culture war positions only supported by a minority of Americans (abortion bans with limited exceptions & unfettered access to all types of guns), making them feel louder and more saturated than they, and turning them into red lines for the Republican Party. 

Even as a very active reader of news, I feel overwhelmed and confused by all of tactics being used. Here is a (non-exhaustive) breakdown of the type of actions I see coming from the M4L crowd (sanctimonious fauxpulism?  DeSciples? Christian nationalism? I’m not sure what to call it):

1. Stacking boards and elected positions

2. Controlling kids’ access to information

3. Going after teachers/staff

4. Legislating to defund and privatize public schools

5. Litigating to allow religious control

6. Messaging about parental control

7. Focusing on biblical conservatism

Stacking boards and elected positions:

• We’ve seen MAGA and election-denying extremists becoming more systemically entrenched over the last 7 years (best exemplified by the bargain between Kevin McCarthy and MAGA that got him the speakership).  But this new christian nationalist campaign (with their political leader being DeSantis instead of Trump) has taken a much more down ballot approach. 

• Step one is taking over school board and library boards.  These spots have been low-resourced and not particularly competitive positions in a lot of communities, they are low hanging fruit.  They offer an opportunity, particularly for moms who have no prior political experience, to enter into the pipeline in a way that is accessible. Moreover, it’s an industry where one very loud person can create huge amounts of problems.  I’ve heard countless stories about a library’s position on a book being changed because one parent intervened.  Or people from out of town coming to speak at School Board meetings giving the impression of community support for an extreme position. 

**However the culture war candidates did not do as well in the 2022 cycle as they would lead you to believe. **

• Ballotpedia (nonpartisan) looked at all the school board raises where contentious culture war issues were raised (CRT, gender ideology & closures) and found that joyful warriors only won in 30% of those races. In contrast, people who supported teaching slavery and acknowledging gay peoples existence won in 45% of the races.  (The rest were unclear to Ballotpedia researchers).

  • Example: In Virginia’s Loudoun County, seen by many as one of the proof of concepts for how this form of activism can work, the M4L candidate won in one district (Tiffany Polifko) but failed in another. (Lauren Shernoff) The losing m4L candidate spent a shocking $66,073. 

  • But now, a billionaire’s son has started a PAC to fund culture war school board candidates in Northern Virginia and provide them with support like a campaign manager and graphic design. 

Controlling kids’ access to information

• Information is power and a lot of the actions we are seeing from the right are about parents wanting to control their children’s exposure to information. 

• Book Bans: The entry point for a lot of people into this ideology is discussion of exposing children to sexually explicit books. One of the amazing things about libraries is that they are connected to wider systems, so you can go to your local library and order a book from anywhere within the system.  Parents are being provided lists of books that they are told have explicit content and then going to libraries and schools and saying we don’t want our child to be able to access this.  The lists are expansive, and though the viral instagram posts often focus on graphic sex, the lists include books about race and lgbtq+ issues. You can go to booklooks.org to see a list of books with pull quotes on why they object to them. 

  • eg: Frederick Joseph’s book, The Back Friend, was just banned for Middle Schoolers and put on a restricted list for High Schoolers in Spring Branch Texas, despite overwhelming support for keeping his book.

  • eg: In Florida we’ve now seen that Teachers are shutting down their in-class libraries out of fear of criminal prosecution. Last year, the State passed a law mandating that all reading material in schools to be selected by an employee with a valid education media specialist certificate. 

  • eg:  Emma Straub was uninvited from giving a talk at a Houston, TX high school because (after the Uvalde shooting) she used the word fuck on social media.

  

  • eg: In Jamestown, Michigan this summer, they voted to defund the library and harassed librarians until they quit, because they library had one copy of the most-banned book of last year, Gender Queer, in the adult section.

• Controlling curriculums: Parents are trying to gain more control over the information taught to their children, and are trying to influence curriculums by them by mandating what can be included in textbooks (this is explained well in the podcast Teaching Texas), by passing laws like Florida’s don’t say gay bill or the Stop WOKE Act.

  • eg: In Florida, rejecting AP African American Studies because it "includes queer theory” or teaches “critical race theory.” Fox News host Jesse Waters say that black history is okay until around 1960, but then it becomes political indoctrination.

  • eg: in Texas a law requires teacher to teach both sides of issues, causing one school district to mandate teachers provide both sides of the Holocaust.

• No Feelings: We’ve previously talked about the effort to go after Social Emotional Learning, which groups like Moms For Liberty say promotes anti-white racism.

  • eg: M4L says “The problem is these skills are delivered to students through an “equity lens” aka the viewpoint of someone who believes America is systemically racist & oppressive.”

  • eg: A M4L chair in Florida wants funding for mental health services in schools cut. “Right now, Pinellas County schools have $140 million allocated for mental health, and I talk to teacher after teacher after teacher and they say, ‘We are not mental health counselors. We want to educate these children and get them ready for the next grade,’” Dubach told the group of legislators. “They don’t want anything to do with mental health. That is up to the parents, their doctors, and all of that stuff is at home.”

• Abstinence only eduction: For those of us who grew up in the 90’s, we remember the fierce battle over abstinence-only education. Everyone knew it was a failure, you either provide young adults good information to help them act safely or they are going figure out what they are going to figure out (especially with access to the internet today).

  • eg: a lot of the book bans are about sexual content in books. In North Dakota, a legislator has proposed banning sexually explicit books from the library.

  • eg: In North Carolina, legislators have proposed that sex ed be opt-in, not opt out.

  • eg: An organization in Michigan, called the Great Schools Initiative, is push a comprehensive opt-out form for parents. The organizations is connected to the Thomas More Society which is a Catholic culture war organization that focuses on fighting abortion and marriage equality.

  • eg: In Tampa parents pushed to cancel sex-ed because it wasn’t abstinence-only. “State Statutes specify abstinence be taught as the expected standard for sexual activity. Anyone reading this curriculum can plainly see that abstinence is paid lip service. All the vignettes and the role plays students are to participate in are focused on having sex. Not one [of the lessons] give any attention to the benefits that are in addition to not getting pregnant or contracting STDs.” The also argue it “normalizes gender confusion for impressionable 12-year-olds”

Going after teachers/staff

• We’ve seen an increase in pushing for legislation controlling what teachers can say, parents getting heated over what they do and don’t want teachers to teach, attacks against teacher for being groomers or pedophiles, and now an extension of cancel culture where M4L chapters aim to get education professionals, especially Superintendents, fired. All of this creates a super difficult environment for teachers who are already underpaid and understaffed. (In Florida more thank 100k students do not have a full time teacher).

  • eg: The well known Florida “don’t say gay” bill that prohibits classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity, and the Stop WOKE Act which says you can’t talk about things that make people feel guilty about their race.

  • eg: In South Carolina the county’s first back Superintendent was fired after an Moms for Liberty takeover of the school board.

  • In Florida, a Superintendent is under investigation because of a letter sent by Moms For Liberty complaining that the Superintendent’s personal views influenced a letter he sent to teachers.

  • Timeline of Florida superintendent removals and resignations instigated by M4L takeovers of the school boards.

    • Alachua County Schools: Carlee Simon, fired on a 3-2 vote in March 2022

    • Volusia County Schools: Scott Fritt, fired in April 2022

    • Orange County Schools: Barbara Jenkins, retired July, 2022

    • Brevard County Schools: Mark Mullins, stepped down under pressure, Nov. 2022

    • Sarasota County Schools, Brennan Asplen, fired, December 2022

    • Broward County Schools: Vicki Cartwright, fired Nov. 2022, reinstated Dec. 2022, and re-fired January 23rd, 2023.

  • eg: In Virginia, new policies require students to use facilities that match their sex-assigned at birth and require parental consent to change names or pronouns.

  • eg: In Florida, they’ve stoped participating in the national chid well-being survey that asks questions about sexual orientation or mental health. M4L groups want parental consent to be required before any child is asked to fill out any survey.

  • eg: In Arkansas, a bill has been proposed to make library and school employees criminally liable for disseminating obscene content.*see below for the effort to change what “obscene” means - ie: sex ed.

Legislating to defund and privatize public schools

• “School choice” aka vouchers is a massive political issue - the idea is that parents should be able to put their child in a private school and move the taxpayer money that would have gone to the public school over to the private , religious or homeschool to pay for the child’s education. Those schools are not required to provide the support and services public schools do.

  • eg: In Florida, a strong voucher bill that would cost the State’s taxpayers $4 billion over the next 5 years is being pushed though the legislature. ($1.3 billion in this year)

  • eg: In Utah, despite opposition from nearly every education organization in teh state, the legislature just passed a bill to fund vouchers for 5,000 students. Despite the fact that the last time the legislature passed a voucher bill it was recalled by voters, they are prohibited from doing a recall this time. Democrats said “H.B. 215 fails to support students and weakens public education by redirecting public funds to private institutions without any safeguards, protections against discrimination, and transparency.”

Litigating to allow religious control

• When Roe was overturned a big part of the discussion was - what’s next? We expect States like Texas will begin passing laws that test the strength of the constitution’s privacy clause. The laws will be passed and then challenges will be brought up through the courts to determine the constitutionality. Will it protects gender affirming care? Or marriage equality? To what degree will biblical conservatives be able to enforce their religious views on the rest of us?

• The Johnson Amendment says that in order to maintain tax exempt status, 501 (c)(3) non profits, including churches, are prohibited from participating in political activities. Trump repeatedly tried to get rid of it, but it still stands. Congress has likewise tried to get rid of it and failed.

• A note - some conservatives also want to overturn the judicial precedent that defines obscenity. In 1973 the court created a test for what is obscene called the Miller Test, and Utah Senator Mike Lee wants it redefined to be anything that is purient that depicts a sex act that lacks serious artistic/scientific value.

Messaging about Parental Control

• I have a theory that one of the reasons for M4L success was their t-shirt “I don’t co-parent with the government.”

• Over the last 30 years many of the social bonds that held our small communities together have been dissolved, people are not attending religious or civic institutions at the same rates, and now with social media, parents feel even less control over the information their children have access to.

• The movement was able to tap into this intense fear some parents have about losing control over their children. 

• Masking and vaccines were the start to this narrative, but when I see moms posting online, the train of thought is often along the lines of: I want to control what my children learn. 

A focus on Biblical Conservatism

• There is a growing push for a strain of conservative activism called “biblical conservatism” aka Christian nationalism.

• According to Pew “The vast majority of White evangelical Protestants (81%) say the U.S. should be a Christian nation.”

• These are folks who believe America was founded as a Christian nation, and want biblical principals taught in schools. There is huge overlap between groups like Moms for Liberty, churches and other religious organizations. And one of the most common refrains I see in Instagram comments is the need to bring god back into schools.

Conclusion

There’s a lot more to discuss here (hopefully in the comments!).  One thing I did want to point out is that I do see the language evolving, so we are now seeing “woke” instead of CRT, and anti-trans/anti-lgbtq+ issues have now been grouped as a fight against “gender ideology.”  Chris Rufo, architect of a lot of this messaging and key DeSantis ally has said that main messaging leading up to 2024 will be about “gender ideology.”

Big picture, the efficacy of their messaging and amplification scheme is leading to a perception of large-scale community support for radical ideas. This normalizes stances that are harmful to members of a community, providing an implicit approval for people to take even more extreme public stances to test the waters. 

Maligning public schools, making it harder for teachers to do their jobs and schools to function effectively also promotes the larger agenda of legislating vouchers.  The more vouchers that are used to send kids to private schools, the less funding the public schools will have and the worse they will become - further driving people to the private and possibly religious, schools in their area. It all comes together as an effective multi-faceted plan to defund and privatize public education. 

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Best,

Emily