The group of parents has injected conservative politics into classrooms and reshaped the 2022 midterms.
“You suck. And that’s what I’m going to say when I find you and shove it in your mouth.”
Brandy Howard was reciting for me the opening line of More Than We Can Tell by Brigid Kemmerer, all from memory. “I don’t want my son thinking that that’s acceptable to say or how to treat women,” she told me. “Let’s not make it OK.”
We were sitting at Oaks Coffee House in Chattanooga, Tennessee, approximately four minutes from the front lines of Hamilton County’s culture war. Every month, concerned parents pack the school district’s ruthlessly antiseptic boardroom for the local school board meeting. Those who tend to crowd the right side of the room demand an end to masking and vaccine mandates, the removal of classroom literature they describe as pornographic, and the elimination of curricula they believe is infused with critical race theory. Often, they wear matching navy-blue T-shirts whose backs declare that they “do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.” The fronts simply bear their group’s name: MOMS FOR LIBERTY.
When I visited the monthly meeting in March, one of the Moms for Liberty members, Loretta Lowe, let loose. “Talking about sex, reading about sex—basically anything related to sex—is not needed in the lives of children,” she asserted. “I’m confident that the new policies will remove the grooming from the schools.”
The left side of the room erupted into half-stifled gasps of disbelief. “Audience, please,” one of the eight board members present chided in a weary voice.
Across the no-man’s-land of the center aisle sat another group, one that predates Moms for Liberty by approximately three years. They are Moms for Social Justice, and they stand accused of supplying obscene literature to the students of Hamilton County.
Across the United States, similar scenes play out in beige boardrooms. Groups of furious parents demand an end to Covid-19 mask and vaccine mandates, critical race theory, and “obscene” literature in schools. Many of them wear the same blue T-shirts seen in Chattanooga.
All of them—knowingly or not—are part of the best strategy to win the midterm elections since the Tea Party movement in 2010.
Read More at The New Republic
Step out of your Leftist bubble with these readings:
L. Rossiter, THE LIBERAL MIND
M. Charen, SEX MATTERS
S. Rhoads, TAKING SEX DIFFERENCES SERIOUSLY
R. Cohen, COMING OUT STRAIGHT
M. Levin, LIBERTY AND TYRANNY, MEN IN BLACK
J. Riley, PLEASE STOP HELPING US
I was raised in a liberal home in a liberal place. I did my own thinking and chose conservatism. Decades later, I’m still glad I did. Care to dialogue?