Marjorie Taylor Greene says LGBTQ-inclusive school curriculums are ‘child abuse’
The far-right Republican conspiracy theorist attacked Critical Race Theory and decried LGBTQ sex education
Far-right conspiracy theorist and Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has claimed that teaching LGBTQ issues to children is “child abuse.”
Greene, who supports the QAnon conspiracy theory and has repeatedly attacked LGBTQ rights, made the claim in a tweet, which also included video of testimony from a 14-year-old girl addressing her school board in an Indianapolis suburb.
In the video, the youth says she is a “trauma child” who has “been in counseling as long as I can remember because I was adopted from foster care at age 4.”
“The things I have learned along the way are being challenged now when my science or math teacher is trying to teach me how to be emotionally,” she says. “And why are they teaching me about sexuality and how to identify?”
The girl tells the school board that sexuality should be a private matter, only discussed at home or between students and their counselors. She then questions how she can have white privilege, given her experience of abuse when she was younger.
Greene quote-tweeted the video and used it to fuel the ongoing right-wing panic about critical race theory — an academic concept that Education Week describes as being centered around the idea that “racism is a social construct, and that it is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.”
The Georgia Republican urged an unspecified entity to “BAN Critical Race Theory & STOP sexualizing children NOW with tax payer funded [sic] education.”
“Teaching racism and promoting sex, homosexuality, & normalizing transgender to children is mental/emotional child abuse,” Greene ranted.
Listen to this child. 💔
Every single person needs to hear her.
BAN Critical Race Theory & STOP sexualizing children NOW with tax payer funded education.
Teaching racism and promoting sex, homosexuality, & normalizing transgender to children is mental/emotional child abuse. https://t.co/eOUMa2ASIm
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) June 27, 2021
Republicans and right-wing media have been increasingly attacking the concept of Critical Race Theory, which they seem to believe is being widely taught to K-12 students, despite Education Week pointing out that “much scholarship on CRT is written in academic language or published in journals not easily accessible to K-12 teachers.”
Education Week notes that conservatives are now using CRT as a catch-all to attack various issues, with one far-right organization blaming Critical Race Theory for “the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, LGBTQ clubs in schools, diversity training in federal agencies and organization,” and more.
As for LGBTQ education curriculums, a number of states currently have so-called “No Promo Homo” laws, which govern LGBTQ content in classrooms. They discourage or punish teachers, whether in sex ed, history, or literature classes, from presenting homosexuality in a neutral manner — let alone a positive light — and compel speech by requiring them to regurgitate pre-approved statements condemning homosexuality.
Lawsuits have been filed in several states with No Promo Homo laws, prompting some politicians to repeal them, while Alabama earlier this year passed a law reforming the state’s sex education standards to remove anti-LGBTQ language.
Greene’s anti-LGBTQ remarks should come as no surprise, given her history of bigoted comments.
She has called the Equality Act — a landmark piece of legislation that would enshrine nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people into federal law — “evil and “a direct attack on God’s creation.”
Greene also recently complained about U.S. embassies flying the LGBTQ Pride flag, calling them “hate America flags,” and placed an anti-transgender sign outside her congressional office to “troll” Democratic Rep. Marie Newman, whose daughter is transgender.
Greene protested a Drag Queen Story Time event in Georgia prior to being elected to Congress, claiming it was “brainwashing” children. She also wrote on her social media, “Trans does not mean gender change, it just means a gender refusal and gender pretending! Truth is truth, it is not a choice!!!”
In February, Greene was stripped of her House committee assignments in a bipartisan vote, after previously suggesting that school shootings in Sandy Hook and Parkland were staged and claiming that a plane didn’t strike the Pentagon on 9/11.
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