Biden condemns bare breasts at White House — but sex content is fine in schools?
Call me old-fashioned — a prude even — but I was shocked to see the antics on display at this weekend’s “family friendly” Pride event on the White House lawn.
At first I thought I was looking at a topless woman shaking her breasts but soon realized it was a trans activist named Rose Montoya.
Montoya, a biological man, had undressed and was shaking breast implants for the camera.
Standing beside Montoya was another trans person, a bare-chested biological woman posing to show off scars from an elective double mastectomy.
A third person was there just slapping his or her own breast tissue around.
All three were guests of a president who promised to “restore honor and decency to the White House,” described by its own website as “the People’s House.”
Well, the people are embarrassed.
The White House is, predictably, in damage-control mode, putting out a statement of condemnation and promising not to invite Montoya back.
It assures us the behavior “is not reflective of the event we hosted to celebrate LGBTQI+ families or the other hundreds of guests who were in attendance.”
But this condemnation is at odds with the administration’s complete refusal to condemn far more sexual and vulgar content that is becoming ubiquitous in school classrooms and libraries.
Books that direct children to sex apps, teach terms like “rimming” and “strap-on” and explain how to use sex toys are provided to students in middle schools.
Planned Parenthood materials that promote puberty blockers are given to fourth- and fifth-graders, potentially setting them on a path towards infertility and despair.
Amidst nonstop accusations of being anti-LGBTQ and “hateful,” parents of middle schoolers have asked why schools are suddenly so hell-bent on exposing their children to graphic depictions of oral sex and anal sex.
Why must written text be riddled with profanity and vulgarity to be “inclusive”?
The administration could have responded by condemning such graphic content, much like it condemned Rose Montoya.
But instead, President Joe Biden, his education secretary and his press secretary (in coordination with both national teachers unions) have smeared and defamed parents and child-safeguarding advocates who voice their concerns.
They not only characterize concerned parents as “book banners”; they’re organizing strategies to oppose them directly.
Biden last week announced he’s hiring “a new coordinator to protect LGBT students from book bans.”
NewsNation’s Zaid Jilani put it this way on Twitter: “On the one hand the White House says this behavior is inappropriate on the White House lawn, but when parents say they don’t want explicit images in their 2nd grader’s book, the response is typically for WH+allies to call them names and disregard their objections.”
If the Biden team invited children to the White House to learn about oral sex, dildos and testicle removal, the country would rightly rise up in outrage.
No one could tolerate such an obscene violation of childhood.
Yet the administration allows and encourages lessons promoting such content in public schools, vilifying anyone who opposes them.
So while it’s a refreshing change for the Biden administration to condemn the inappropriate behavior of a topless trans activist at a White House event, it rings hollow to the parents who get called hateful bigots and “book banners” for not wanting their young children exposed to sexually explicit content at school.
The debate over books and school curricula has been so dishonest and misleading when it comes to the actual content, and many parents have reached the limit of what they will tolerate.
Perhaps now that the White House has finally shown itself to have limits, we can have a more honest conversation about how to safeguard children in school.
Erika Sanzi is director of outreach for Parents Defending Education
