Tensions boiled over Tuesday night outside a California school board meeting where officials were discussing efforts to celebrate Pride month, with parents and activists squaring off against masked Antifa members.
The clash came outside the Glendale Unified School District’s headquarters, where parents, many from the Los Angeles County city’s Armenian and Hispanic communities, were blasting board members for promoting a pro-LGBTQ agenda to young children. Other speakers, including a man in a skirt and high heels, showed up in support of the district’s pro-Pride agenda, according to reports.
“All of these fake people [pointing to several masked crowd members] are going to go away, and we’re going to vote every one of you [pointing to the school board] out,” one father warned, according to The Daily Signal.
The issue has roiled the district in recent days, with many parents, including those from ethnic communities, pulling their children out of school in protest. Some elementary schools only had a 40% attendance rate on June 2, The Daily Signal reported.
Outside the meeting Tuesday, three people were arrested as parents confronted members of Antifa clad in masks and pink bandanas. It was not known who was arrested, but Glendale Police said the suspects “exceeded the bounds of peaceful assembly.”
Armenian parents have not been the only ethnic community protesting the LGBTQ+ agenda.
Parents told board members inside and media covering the confrontation outside that they opposed pushing the pro-LGBTQ agenda on children.“Bringing in curriculum for K-6 on gender ideology, that is what we’re against,” Any Torosyan, a parent from Glendale, told KTLA.
“I graduated from Glendale in ‘96, and I have two daughters,” one father told the board. “My daughter is afraid to change in the locker room because she knows another guy could come into the room. When I asked the principal, he told me there were no cross-gender bathroom policies.”
One teacher who works in the district told the board that children know they are transgender by as early as 3 years old, and that they are being persecuted.
“I am also a community member who volunteers extensively in South LA and work with the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles with queer/trans youth in large groups, and so I deal with a lot of their trauma related to the hetero-normative, Judeo-Christian, patriarchal, imperialist, capitalist system that oppresses them.”
“Recently, intentional and harmful disinformation has been circulating about what is being taught in our district and the ways we serve our students,” Glendale Unified School District said in a statement. “This includes disinformation about LGBTQIA+ curriculum, sex education, and supporting transgender and gender non-conforming youth.”
“The option to opt out pertains only to certain curriculum, including development/maturation and sex education. Parents/guardians may not opt their child out of any lesson referencing LGBTQ+ individuals and history, as dictated by the FAIR Act,” the statement adds.
The California FAIR Education Act was passed in 2011. It requires instruction in history/ social science to include lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans in the teaching of California and United States history.
The California Department of Education’s California Healthy Youth Act, which took effect Jan. 1, 2016, mandates that K-12 curriculum incorporate the LGBTQ agenda.
“Instruction shall affirmatively recognize that people have different sexual orientations and, when discussing or providing examples of relationships and couples, must be inclusive of same-sex relationships,” it states. “It must also teach students about gender, gender _expression_, gender identity, and explore the harm of negative gender stereotypes.”