(LifeSiteNews) – Seventy percent of Americans oppose letting educators indoctrinate children into LGBT dogma, according to a new poll.
On September 16, The New York Times published the September poll it conducted with Siena College covering a range of issues.
To the question, “Do you support or oppose allowing public school teachers to provide classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity to children in elementary school,” 70% percent answered “oppose” with just 27% supporting it. Notably, even a majority of Democrats (53%) said they opposed it as well.
The findings indicate that the problem of taxpayer-subsidized teachers proselytizing to captive, impressionable audiences about controversial values remains a potent issue for conservative candidates to seize upon, as first demonstrated last year when Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin ousted Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia.
Youngkin defeated McAuliffe last November in part by riding a wave of discontent with leftist radicalism on race and sexual matters in public schools, and upon taking office set to work addressing that discontent.
On Youngkin’s first day, he issued a series of executive actions, including a ban on the promotion of critical race theory (CRT) in public schools and a request for an investigation of the Loudoun County School District over allegations it covered up student rape. Most recently, the Virginia Department of Education unveiled rules to guarantee parental notification and review of potentially controversial classroom materials touching on sex.
During the 2021 campaign, McAuliffe had set the tone of the pre-Youngkin status quo by declaring, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” a sentiment echoed last month by Democrat Texas gubernatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke.
Another Republican who has taken the lead on the issue is Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Last year, he announced a state curriculum overhaul that would “expressly exclude unsanctioned narratives like critical race theory and other unsubstantiated theories,” because “our schools are supposed to give people a foundation of knowledge, not supposed to be indoctrination centers, where you’re trying to push specific ideologies.” As a result, Florida has rejected scores of textbooks that fell short of state standards, prompting publishers to revise them.
Earlier this year, DeSantis signed a curriculum transparency law requiring public schools to make classroom materials available for parental review, as well as a parental rights law that bans schools from teaching children in kindergarten through third grade about transgenderism and other sexuality-related issues, limits discussions of sexuality for older children to “age appropriate” content, and requires parents to be informed of any changes that could affect their child’s physical, emotional, or mental well-being.
This summer, DeSantis took the unusual step of endorsing 30 like-minded candidates for local school board races all over the Sunshine State, 25 of whom won. Those races transformed the ideological composition of five school districts representing the counties of Miami Dade, Martin, Clay, Sarasota, and Duval.