August 2, 2024 by Joseph Klein

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/kamala-harris-the-anti-parental-rights-candidate; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

When it comes to America’s children, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president, has taken Hillary Clinton’s collectivist message in her book “It Takes a Village” to heart. During a late-night talk show in 2022, for example, Vice President Harris referred to “the children of our country, of our communities,” failing to acknowledge the critical importance to children of the parents that are raising them. This San Francisco ultra-liberal progressive believes that the government should have more say as to what is best for a child’s education and upbringing than the child’s own parents.

While serving as San Francisco’s district attorney, Kamala Harris sought to criminally prosecute parents for their children’s truancy. By 2009, DA Harris claimed that her office had prosecuted about twenty parents. In the run-up to her election as California’s attorney general, Ms. Harris successfully advocated for the passage of a statewide anti-truancy bill under which a parent of a truant child could face a severe fine or one year in jail. “We are putting parents on notice,” Ms. Harris said at her 2011 inauguration. “If you fail in your responsibility to your kids, we are going to work to make sure you face the full force and consequences of the law.”

Parents should be responsible for their children’s school attendance but criminalizing parents’ lapses in this regard is beyond the pale. Lying about her record on the truancy issue shortly before announcing her failed candidacy for president in 2019, Harris wrote that her efforts to address truancy were all about “trying to support parents, not punish them.” Threatening parents with fines and jail time is a strange way to show support for parents!

As vice president, Kamala Harris was in lockstep with President Biden in sharply criticizing Florida’s common sense Parental Rights in Education law. Vice President Harris vowed that “we’re gonna stand up against a law that says ‘don’t say gay,’ basically restricting kindergarten through third-grade teachers in Florida to be able to love openly and teach what they believe is important for people to understand.”

Ms. Harris completely misrepresented Florida’s law. It does not say ‘don’t say gay’ or anything comparable. There is nothing in the law that prohibits kindergarten through third-grade teachers in Florida from being able to “love openly.” But parents sending their children at such a tender age to school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic should not have to put up with classroom indoctrination of their children in transgender and sexual orientation ideologies.

Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law protects the primary role that parents should play in shaping the education, emotional development, and socialization of their children. It prohibits kindergartens through third-grade teachers in Florida from teaching their impressionable young students about gender identity and sexual orientation. The law also requires, among other protections for parents, “school districts to adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in services from the school regarding a child’s mental, emotional or physical health or well-being.”

The Supreme Court has concluded, in a line of cases stretching back to early in the last century, that the “liberty” specially protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment includes the right of parents and guardians “to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.” The Supreme Court made clear back then that “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

This is still the law of the land under the Constitution today. But left-wing progressives, now led by the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for president, Kamala Harris, want to change all that. As far as they are concerned, parents should get out of the way and let the state take the lead in their children’s upbringing.

Among Ms. Harris’s most ardent supporters is the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). This teachers’ union, the second largest in the country, is led by Randi Weingarten, who wrote that “tuition vouchers and tax credits, and private, for-profit charter schools…actively destabilize our public schools.”

To protect the jobs of her union members, Randi Weingarten is willing to deprive low-income parents of the opportunity to take advantage of the same educational choices for their children as more well-off parents have. Many of these union members were slackers during the Covid-19 pandemic, refusing to resume in-person classroom teaching with AFT’s support while private schools were already providing their students with such in-person classroom instruction.

AFT has committed itself to working with such transgender activist groups as GLSEN, whose Chair of the board Wilson Cruz has endorsed Kamala Harris for president. “Kamala Harris is committed to our community in ways that go beyond mere words,” he said during an “Out for Kamala Harris LGBTQ+ Unity” call. “She lives and breathes this fight every day, and I’ve seen it up close.”

GLSEN’s and other LGBTQ+ activist groups’ “fight” includes encouraging school staff to keep parents in the dark about their children’s desire to change their gender identity in school unless the children consent to disclosing this information to their parents.

 “Unwarranted disclosure of a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity without the student’s consent – especially to parents — breaches trust between the student and school staff,” GLSEN’s Model Policy for “LGBTQIA2S+ Young People in K-12 Schools” advises. (Emphasis added) “Notification of parent(s)/guardian(s), staff, and peers about the student’s name, pronoun and/or gender marker change will be guided by the student.”

GLSEN and the American Civil Liberties Union prepared a document entitled “A Guide for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students.” It advises these students that it is within their power to decide whether their school may “out” them by disclosing information about their gender identities they had shared with school personnel, even to their parents.

Kamala Harris’s home state of California is the first state in the nation to pass a law prohibiting school districts from requiring school personnel to notify the parents of a child concerning the child’s gender identity expression in school. “Policies that require outing pupils without their consent violate pupils’ rights to privacy and self-determination,” the law states.

California’s Governor Gavin Newsom signed this bill on July 15^th. Within hours after President Biden announced his decision to withdraw from this year’s presidential race, Governor Newsom endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

These two progressive politicians rose through the ranks of San Francisco politics. Mr. Newsom was elected to serve as San Francisco’s mayor in 2003 – the same year that Kamala Harris was elected to serve as San Francisco’s district attorney. They both served two terms in their respective positions before moving on to higher offices.

As governor of California, Gavin Newsom has presided over California’s steep decline. As vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris has been a part of an administration that has presided over America’s steep decline. Both are progressives committed to a woke agenda that includes subordinating the role of parents in their children’s education and upbringing to the government.

If Kamala Harris is elected president of the United States, the war on parents’ rights will be among the major priorities of this ultra-liberal California progressive’s administration.