Parents -- many of them Armenian immigrants -- protested a Pride assembly at a Los Angeles elementary school, reports Clara Harter for the Los Angeles Daily News. They traded insults and punches with demonstrators supporting the event. (The video shows a red-shirted man with a stick charging white-shirted anti-pride protesters, who wrestle him to the ground.)
“Stop grooming our kids,” shouts a group of parents. “No hate in the 818” yells back a group of LGBTQ+ advocates.
These chants rang out for hours outside Saticoy Elementary School on Friday morning, June 2, where a group of predominantly Armenian parents protested a Pride-themed book reading that described same-sex marriage and counter-protesters defended the school’s right to teach grade school students about forms of sexuality.
A parent group opposed plans to read The Great Big Book of Families, which describes many types of families, including those with same-sex parents, reports Harter. "Tensions escalated when a transgender teacher’s Pride flag was found burned outside a classroom on May 22."
The parent group says it had nothing to do with the burned flag, and claims to be concerned only that LGBTQ topics are inappropriate for young children.
“Do you think a four-year-old can understand what is LGBTQ? This is grooming,” said Manuk Grigoryan, a father of four Saticoy Elementary School students. “I’m not homophobic, I’m just saying it’s my child, let me teach my way about the birds and the bees.”
Most Saticoy students come from working-class Armenian or Hispanic families, and many parents have conservative values. One father vowed to pull his kids from the school, and urged others to do the same.
"Do you think a four-year-old can understand what is LGBTQ? This is grooming,”
Grooming? Is he talking about Florida Rep Matt Gaetz?!?
Everyone should pull their children from California's state schools, at least until Governor Newsom and his Democratic supporters stop trying to dictate the curricula of our youngest children; instead, families need to understand the need to educate their children outside the reach of such micromanagers, and in keeping with best practices worldwide, which we practise, and propose for expansion, in One World School.