How years of Oregon law have sexually degraded children in school
As parents across America become increasingly aware of how children have been systematically indoctrinated and sexualized with gender dogma, Oregon stands out in how it has done so through years of misguided legislation.
The notoriously liberal Pacific northwest state has unconscionably sacrificed common sense instruction and the basics of education in favor of highly sexualized pseudoscience that is harmful to children. In light of current figures and the disturbing trends they illuminate, it is useful to review the past 15 years of legislative history and how public funds have enacted and enabled policies that have proven so destructive.
Indeed, these laws have formed over the years a dangerous and insidious framework that have allowed for the widespread exploitation and indoctrination of youth. Just how have Oregon state agencies accomplished this?
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For starters, Oregon’s Department of Education spends millions of taxpayer dollars on LGBTQ2SIA+ education initiatives each year. In conjunction with the Governor’s office, it has lowered or removed the Essential Learning Skills requirements to accommodate the state’s plummeting academic performance scores. Oregon is currently ranked 46th in the nation for overall academic performance and 49th for high school graduation rates.
In the last 14 years, it has pushed for more robust comprehensive sex ed curricula and increased education initiatives for LGBTQ2SIA+ inclusivity and acceptance. This, in my view, begs an important question: is the sharp decline in Oregon’s education performance correlated to fast-tracking students into a radical sexual ideology?
Mandatory comprehensive sex ed laws were passed in 2009 purporting to increase youth awareness of the dangers of unprotected sex, how biology works, and what the term “sexuality” means. But that neutral-sounding approach has rapidly devolved into teaching children how to have oral sex or use household items to sodomize themselves and partners. So long as they consent, of course.
Under Oregon’s Revised Statute 326.300, the Governor is Superintendent of Public Instruction, which was enacted in 2011 on the heels of the passage of mandatory Comprehensive Sex Ed law. This is a staggering amount of power for a governor. It is no coincidence, then, that the string of progressive-left governors Oregon has had in recent years has incubated an environment whereby students are no longer educated in reading, writing, and math but indoctrinated into dozens of gender identities.
Unfortunately, many parents remain unaware of these laws and the rotten fruit they have produced, and how their taxes are being used but have, to varying degrees, gone along with the notion that they don’t know what is best for their children. Many are afraid of being called a bigot if they object. Meanwhile, their kindergartners are being taught that there are “as many genders as stars in the sky” and their teens are trying to outpace each other with wokeness on Snapchat.
Another way Oregon law has contributed to the sexualization of children is through the Department of Human Services' promotion of web resources from amaze.org whereby children are instructed on such things as transgenderism, pornography, and masturbation.
The state government websites link to the group’s YouTube channel which hosts over 180 videos on inappropriate topics and damaging messages about consent and how normal it is to look at porn as an adolescent. Unsurprisingly, the Amaze web resources never mention to kids to ask their parents or trusted adults before changing their pronouns or identifying on the LGBTQ2SIA+ spectrum.
Following 8 years of advancing Comprehensive Sex Ed, the Reproductive Health Equity Act (RHEA) was signed into law in Oregon in 2017. Under RHEA’s provisions, schoolchildren at any age can be given contraception, and children as young as 14 can be given “mental health counseling” without parental consent at school-based health clinics.
In some clinics, students as young as 15 can receive permanent contraception as advertised by the Oregon Health Authority. These procedures, so long as the student is accessing care in an SBHC or similar provider like Planned Parenthood, are free to the students (paid for by taxpayer dollars) and are confidential.
Oregon law actually prevents parents from accessing student health records and their child could obtain a vasectomy or tubal ligation without them ever finding out about it. If the child seeks “gender-affirming care” for gender dysphoria they could be referred to a doctor who could administer puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones or begin taking them by prescription from a provider within an SBHC. Students who are fast-tracked into a transgender identity are also seeking body-disfiguring surgical procedures at alarming rates.
Two years after the RHEA was signed into law, far-left lawmakers made yet another push for use of taxpayer dollars to support this ever-advancing LGBTQ2SIA+ ideology in 2019. The Student Success Act was named to establish a path forward to creating more successful students in Oregon schools through tax-funded programs to the tune of $2.1 billion on a biannual basis. But that money came with numerous radical sexual and gender theory strings attached, hidden from plain view unless one looked carefully.
Utilizing funds from a corporate tax, one-third of funds are directed to create new education initiatives focused on minority groups including LGBTQ2SIA+ as early as kindergarten. The SSA requires that students be taught about LGBTQ lifestyles, the infinite possibilities of gender, and how to protect themselves against STIs and other sexually transmittable conditions. Older students are encouraged to ignore their parents' beliefs and moral values and to explore their own gender expression privately at school without their parents' knowledge through the use of so-called “transition closets.”
These “transition closets” have been established by teacher sponsorship to provide clothing, makeup, and accessories at school to allow children to change after their parents drop them at school. Students wear the wardrobe of their choosing — to appear more like the opposite sex or in keeping with some kind of “gender identity” — during the school day to begin the process of social transition. Right before the day ends, they change back into the clothes their parents sent them in in order to keep parents, who may disagree with this practice, uninformed.
The SSA also provided funds for a newsletter on the success of LGBTQ2SIA+ students, which routinely shows how interwoven the education policies are with this larger idea and gives teachers additional ideas about how to promote the ideology even further.
Proponents of these various laws and the funds that implement them often say that among the desired outcome of these education policies is the reduction of “stigma” that surrounds LGBTQ2SIA+.
Far from reducing stigma, the hyperfocus on LGBTQ2SIA+ content in Oregon schools isn’t producing the effect it purportedly set out to accomplish. Students are flunking out of school at astonishing rates even as they self-identify among the growing list of letters in the sexual acronym.
Given the state’s abysmal academic performance numbers, it is hard not to wonder whether ODE’s and the state legislature’s incessant push of this ideology, flagrant spending, and deeply misguided priorities has itself fueled this breakdown.
David is the Director of Civic Engagement with the CHANGED Movement, a global network of people who have left the LGBT. As a resident Oregonian, he enjoys spending time outdoors with his family when he is not working to uphold First Amendment rights for people who are looking for inner healing and change.
