'Peak gaslighting': Desperate California teachers characterize parental rights candidates as untrustworthy



The prospect of greater transparency and restored parental involvement in children's education appears to have panicked a gang of teachers from California's Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

Parental rights advocates emphasized to Blaze News that this desperation is yet another signal the tide is turning in favor of parents.

English teacher Matt Armstrong of Newport Harbor High School and a multitude of fellow travelers in the district released an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times' Daily Pilot on Thursday blasting those candidates now seeking election to the NMUSD board of trustees who would dare protect parental rights.

Although Armstrong and the op-ed's signatories refrained from naming the candidates outright, they appear to have been referring to Philip Stemler in Trustee Area 3 and Amy Peters in Trustee Area 6.

"We understand that it's fashionable in some circles to criticize public institutions and vilify teachers," wrote Armstrong and company. "With that in mind, the undersigned teachers and I want to make clear that proclaiming 'parental rights' is code for two goals: to lord over our community's teachers and to censor materials available to students."

According to the opinion piece, parents "have not been deprived of any rights" but threaten to upend Democratic laws intended to keep parents in the dark about consequential decisions regarding their children and to foist racial and LGBT propaganda on children.

Corey A. DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Culture Project and executive director at the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, told Blaze News, "Their claim that parents haven't been deprived of any rights is peak gaslighting. California politicians are fighting to keep secrets from public school parents"

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) ratified the so-called AB 1955, the so-called SAFETY Act, in July.

'They think they own other people's children.'

The law, first introduced by gay Assemblyman Christopher Ward (D) and championed by the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, prohibits school districts, county offices of education, charter schools, and state special schools from introducing or enforcing rules, regulations, or policies that require employees to disclose to parents "any information related to a pupil's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression."

On account of AB 1955, parents in NMUSD are precluded from challenging the district's policy that requires educators to hide a child's so-called "transgender or gender-nonconforming status" from their parents when "appropriate."

Armstrong and company alleged in their op-ed:

If elected, these people will overrule the qualifications and experience of the educators in our schools by adopting policies intended to challenge California law. They would use their position of public trust on our nonpartisan local school board to pursue a partisan agenda to upend the California SAFETY Act. Such grandstanding will subject our district to costly litigation on a losing case. This is where 'defending parental rights' will lead us.

According to her candidate statement, Peters, a mother of three and former educator, not only wants to address the suboptimal academic outcomes in the district and its "poor fiscal health" but to "work to restore the partnership between parents and educators, and to ensure that transparent and response governance and leadership is prioritized."

The Daily Pilot indicated that Peters has been openly critical of AB 1955.

"I don't think we should be keeping that information from parents," she said at a recent forum hosted by the Harbor Council PTA at Back Bay High School. "The secrecy that's happening on school campuses drives a wedge between schools and parents and teachers and children."

Stemler, a father of two and San Bernardino County deputy district attorney endorsed by Newport Beach Mayor Will O'Neill, similarly emphasized the need for transparency in his candidate statement, noting further that "when it comes to the issues facing today's students, family is the solution, not the problem."

Stemler added, "Parental and family involvement is vital for student success. We must end policies driving a wedge between parents and students."

Both Stemler and Peters have reportedly expressed an interest in challenging state laws that undermine parental rights.

"The blizzard of state laws and regulations that are governing our schools are the reason why you need someone like me, who has experience in court and litigating and standing up for what's right," said Stemler.

After warning that if parental rights advocates were elected, choices over what students read might be localized, Armstrong and company claimed, "Those who 'fight for parental rights' don't really care about your rights or your children."

Blaze News reached out to Peters and Stemler for comment but did not receive a response by deadline.

DeAngelis told Blaze News that the claims in the op-ed "raise serious red flags. Government school employees attacking parental rights in education are the ones who cannot be trusted."

"They think they own other people's children," continued DeAngelis. "It's time for parents to hold these tyrants accountable at the ballot box."

'They look at parents as dangerous and think they should get out of the way.'

Alvin Lui, president of the parental rights advocacy group Courage Is a Habit, told Blaze News that the "gas-lighting tactics" employed in the op-ed are now customarily advanced by government educators and administrators in K-12 — by those convinced "it's the parents that shouldn't be trusted; that they're the ones that know better."

Lui noted that the mounting pushback from parents across the nation is partly the result of such brazen anti-parent sentiment in the school system.

"The schools aren't even hiding how much they disdain parental rights," said Lui. "[Educators] believe that they know better than the parents. They believe that their values are better, that the parents are backwards or bigots. ... They look at parents as dangerous and think they should get out of the way."

This op-ed is another "great example of why more parents should push back even harder," added Lui. "It's a classic manipulator tactic: DARVO, which is deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender. That's exactly what they're doing."

Like Lui, DeAngelis noted a silver lining about the current battle in the schools.

"The good news is parents have woken up and they're never going back to sleep," DeAngelis told Blaze News. "The power of parents scares the defenders of the status quo more than anything else. That's precisely why teachers unions have resorted to attacking parents who want more of a say in their children's education."

DeAngelis added that the U.S. Supreme Court "famously ruled in 1925 that 'the child is not the mere creature of the State.' California politicians would be wise to remember those words today."

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'There can be ZERO dissent': Parental rights advocate blasts Newsom's law forcing schools to keep kids' transitions secret



California Democrats and the LGBT activists among them have ramped up their years-long campaign to drive a wedge between parents and their children.

Alvin Lui, president of the parental rights advocacy group Courage Is a Habit, told Blaze News that the state has long sought to keep parents in the dark about their kids' manifestations of gender dysphoria and efforts to transition at school. However, some school districts have in recent months bucked the trend of secrecy and grooming at school and have instead clued in parents.

The Chino Valley Unified School District under the leadership of Sonja Shaw, for instance, became the first district in the state to embrace a policy last year whereby school officials must inform parents if their kids request to use the bathroom intended for members of the opposite sex as well as if their confused children ask to use names and pronouns that don't correspond with reality or their official documents.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta took legal action against Shaw's district on Aug. 28, 2023, claiming it violated privacy laws regarding transvestite students. In October, a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge blocked the district from enforcing some of the related policies until the case was resolved.

On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) went a step further, ratifying Assembly Bill 1955, which forbids districts like the CVUSD from engaging in such transparency.

Lui, who moved his family out of California upon observing how similarly radical policies were transforming the state, indicated, "AB 1955 was passed solely in response to several school boards being flipped because parents were waking up and in order to discourage good teachers and counselors who still respect parental rights."

The law, first introduced by gay Assemblyman Christopher Ward (D) and championed by the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, prohibits school districts, county offices of education, charter schools, and state special schools from introducing or enforcing rules, regulations, or policies that require employees to disclose to parents "any information related to a pupil's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression."

'The children must be the state's at all costs.'

Contrary to the spin from Newsom's office, educators in all districts must now effectively keep parents in California in the dark about their child's sexual confusion and gender dysphoria unless the mentally compromised minor in question consents to looping them in. School employees in the meantime can hook the child up with possibly pro-transitioning counselors and activist resources.

AB 1955 — which Elon Musk has cited as cause to move two of his major companies out of the state — also shields employees from consequence if they have worked to conceal a child's confusion from their parents.

Courtesy of Courage is a Habit

Assemblyman Ward affirmed Lui's characterization of the law this week, indicating that it will force compliance from those school districts that have tried to keep parents clued in to what's happening with their children at school.

"Politically motivated attacks on the rights, safety, and dignity of transgender, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ youth are on the rise nationwide, including in California," Ward said in a statement. "While some school districts have adopted policies to forcibly out students, the SAFETY Act ensures that discussions about gender identity remain a private matter within the family."

"This is what communism is," said Lui. "There can be ZERO dissent. The children must be the state's at all costs."

Lui is not alone in his understanding of the threats AB 1955 poses.

Journalist Michael Shellenberger, whose think tank Environmental Progress published the damning WPATH Files, noted Tuesday that the new Democratic law "makes children vulnerable to irreversible and lifelong medical abuse and mistreatment. And it is all based on the pseudoscientific idea that some children are born into the wrong bodies and that we can change a person's sex through drugs and surgery."

In pushing through AB 1955, it is clear that Democrats chose to ignore the ever-growing mountain of evidence indicating so-called "gender-affirming care" is not as advertised.

England's National Health Service appointed Dr. Hilary Cass in 2020 to lead an independent investigation into the U.K.'s sex-change regime and its youth-facing services. Following a penetrating, multi-year investigation, Cass — an esteemed British medical doctor who previously served as president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health — revealed that so-called gender science was effectively rooted in pseudoscience.

Blaze News previously reported that among the many damning revelations about the sex-change regime in the Cass review was its finding that there was "no clear evidence that social transition in childhood has any positive or negative mental health outcomes, and relatively weak evidence for any effect in adolescence."

While "social transition" of the kind Newsom and California Democrats want to hide from parents apparently had no discernible impact on mental health, the Cass review further revealed that those children so groomed were much more likely to undergo sex-change medical interventions at a later stage.

Contrary to the core claim of sex-change activists, such medical interventions do not lessen the risk of suicide. A peer-reviewed study in BMJ Mental Health revealed in February that "medical gender reassignment does not have an impact on suicide risk."

Besides underscoring the "weak" and unreliable nature of the evidence in support of "gender-affirming care," the Cass review also indicated that clinicians "are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity."

California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus Chair Susan Eggman, evidently immune to the scientific insights raised in the Cass review, BMJ Mental Health, and elsewhere, said AB 1955 was "life-saving legislation."

"Safe and supportive schools for all our children should be our top priority. And at the end of the day that's what this bill does, ensures our K-12 campuses remain safe and affirming places for our youth no matter how they identify," stated Eggman.

Those cognizant of the fallout of so-called "gender-affirming care" and supportive of parental rights aren't buying what Eggman and other California Democrats are selling.

'Moms and dads have both a constitutional and divine mandate to guide and protect their kids.'

Shellenberger stressed on X, "What Gavin Newsom has done is actively prevented schools from informing parents that their children have been put on a medical pathway."

"This is an outrageous attack on the rights of children and parents. Children have a right to go through puberty. No adult should be able to block their puberty. And parents have a right to know if their child thinks that they are the opposite sex or were born into the wrong body," continued Shellenberger. "The new law creates the grave risk that activist teachers, students, and outside groups will convince their children that they were born into the wrong body, and hide their 'social transition' from parents, which will lead to harmful medical mistreatment."

Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council, denounced AB 1955, noting, "Moms and dads have both a constitutional and divine mandate to guide and protect their kids, and AB 1955 egregiously violates this sacred trust."

California Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R), who unsuccessfully attempted to advance legislation requiring parental notification in schools, said in a statement, "Today, Governor Gavin Newsom defied parents' constitutional and God-given right to raise their children by signing AB 1955, which codifies the government's authority to keep secrets from parents."

Essayli noted that the bill's ratification is "immoral and unconstitutional" and promised to challenge it in court.

Already, the Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit challenging AB 1955 on behalf of the Chino Valley Unified School District and several Californian parents with children in the system.

Blaze News previously reported that Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) and 15 other attorneys general recently filed an amicus brief on behalf of their respective states asking that the U.S. Supreme Court take up a case regarding schools' covert efforts to transition children into sexually confused transvestites behind their parents' backs.

If the Parents Protecting Our Children, UA v. Eau Claire Area School District is taken up by the high court and the plaintiffs succeed, then there is a strong likelihood that AB 1955 and comparable laws across the nation will fall.

Human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali also condemned AB 1955, writing, "It is truly terrible news for children and for many Americans a key reason not only to flee California but also the Democratic Party. The madness and mass child abuse really has to stop."

Lui emphasized that while children are now at greater risk in California, particularly in those districts that once resisted the preferred policies of the sex-change regime, the problem is not limited to the Golden State.

"Parents must understand that public K-12 have already been keeping transgender secrets from parents in ALL 50 states through school counselors and 'mental health' Trojan horses," said Lui. "This isn't just a California or New York thing. Moving to another state doesn't get you away from it any longer. That is the fallacy that gives parents a false sense of security."

"I certainly advocate for all Americans to leave California, but whichever state you land in, you will still have to fight for and protect your children," added Lui.

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