Patriot Parents

First note, Happy Black history month - despite the common conception that Black history can only be acknowledged in February, I hold to the notion that our American history is common to every shade of skin, and can be celebrated every single day. Segregating Americans by color is racist, and I refuse to do it. In other news, I'm happy to report that SB233 has passed the House and looks like it is on its way to being signed into law by the Governor. Last month, some children spoke out against this legislation, but I think they misunderstood its effect and its importance. We are blessed here, in Forsyth County, with one of the top 3 county school districts in the state. But not every one of our 159 counties in Georgia is so lucky. Representative Mesha Mainor of District 56 noted this when she changed parties last year over school choice - her district has some schools with only a 3% reading and math proficiency. That's failing 97% of the time, which is completely unacceptable. It is for these children, stuck in a cycle of poverty and poor education, that SB233 was intended. Giving lower income families $6500 vouchers to apply to either private school, or home school, sets up a system of incentives that no longer allows failing public schools to continue to fail without consequence. All too often, school choice and public schools are seen as diametrically opposed to each other. But there is a distinct difference between defenders of good public schools, like we have in Forsyth County, and bad public schools, where only 3% of students are proficient in math and reading. Everyone in favor of good public schools should also be supporting policies that give children the opportunity to leave bad public schools. I firmly believe that even if every parent in Forsyth County was offered vouchers, the quality of education in our schools is strong enough to keep the vast majority of them in the public school system - I certainly would for my family, and I'm proud we have public schools here that could thrive even in direct competition with alternatives. Our example of high performance should be the standard expectation for every child in the state, and SB233 helps meet that goal. With that said, I'd like to ask the board to offer their support for SB365 and SB154, which will help improve the systems of incentives that protect our children from age inappropriate materials. SB365 is actually modeled after our library checkout notification system started in 2022, which, along with our sensitive book permission system, adopted by the Board in response to parental concerns, seems to be a good compromise worth adopting statewide. SB154 simply removes the exclusion on distribution of harmful materials to minors for our school libraries. In order to mitigate our risk of liability, we should add contract language for any book distributor providing us with materials, that holds them strictly accountable for only providing age appropriate materials. If we stop the problem at the source, with acquisitions, we won't have to worry about screening all of our materials after the fact. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to buy lunch for anyone who disagrees with me.

Last month, we heard the tale of a mentally ill high school social studies teacher, who in 2018 brought a gun to school to commit suicide by cop. Before his third period class arrived, he barricaded himself in his classroom, and fired a single warning shot when the principal tried to talk him down. After he was stopped by good guys with guns, he was convicted and sentenced to two years of prison, and assuming he is still alive today, he has four more years of probation left. This story was presented as a stark warning against allowing responsible, law-abiding teachers, from exercising their right of self-defense. We are supposed to somehow believe that if we allow good, mentally healthy, responsible adults, carry firearms at school, that this will somehow magically create more mentally ill murderers who will target our schools. Try as I might, I cannot see the connection. In 2016, a radical islamic jihadist, murdered dozens of people at the Orlando Pulse nightclub, a prominent gay establishment. In response, I joined other volunteers in Operation Blazing Sword, dedicated to teaching firearms safety to the LGBTQ community, for free, so that they could learn how to responsibly exercise their god given right to self-defense. Living close by to Hollywood, California at the time, I had the privilege of sharing my firearms expertise with over a dozen gay couples, and during this time I became an NRA Certified Instructor in a number of disciplines. Now, if we banned responsible, law-abiding gun owners from carrying firearms when working in nightclubs, do you think that would make them a more attractive, or less attractive target to mentally ill or religiously deranged psychopaths? In Forsyth County, we are blessed to have armed officers on every campus. The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, and one good guy is much better than zero good guys. If we want to deter mentally ill maniacs from targeting schools, the best way to do that, is to make them less certain about their odds. I want bad guys to have to worry about every responsible adult in a school, not just the one resource officer open carrying. Now, of course, training is key in order to responsibly carry. Even more so when dealing with our children. But I would honestly feel safer, in this room if everyone was responsibly armed, rather than only our sheriff's deputies. Not because I doubt their bravery or their skill, but because they are not invincible, and if a wild band of antifa or military age male illegal immigrants decided to attack these offices, we'd all be glad for every armed citizen here. With all that said, I'd like to ask the Board to commit to piloting any teacher concealed carry program offered by our legislature, but to keep completely confidential which school it is being piloted at. Whether or not a single teacher signs up, just the possible threat, of one more responsible armed individual, at even a single school in our district, will provide a protective effect against any would-be murderers, by making our schools less attractive targets. Murderers want easy, unarmed targets. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to buy lunch for anyone who disagrees with me.

Last month, Dr. Bearden shared his plans to retire this coming November. My family wasn't here for the first six years of his leadership of this school district, but we've certainly been grateful and impressed by the last four years of his tenure. As a refugee from the People's Republic of California in 2020, I was eager to live in a free county, in a free state, and Forsyth was at the top of my list. The first year my children started at North Forsyth and Silver City Elementary, I paid close attention to the Forsyth County Schools website. Long before the woke CRT/DIE/SEL culture war was in full swing, I reached out to the district with concerns about their DIE programs, both for staff and students. As someone who watched California schools go woke and corrupt, I was determined to do what I could, to prevent that same tragedy in my new home. And amazingly, I found hope. My concerns were listened to, both by Forsyth County staff, as well as my wonderful school board representative Darla Light. After bringing sunshine to the toxic nature of some of the materials put out by the organizations linked to on the DIE webpage, things started to change for the better. I know that the words "diversity", "equity" and "inclusion" have a gravitas to them that has been weaponized to inject racism, sexism and inappropriate sexuality into our schools. But I found that despite tentative steps in the woke direction, our district was only doing so with the best of intentions. Once alerted to the dangers of this hateful ideology, hiding behind cunning language, decisive, and underappreciated action was taken by Dr. Bearden and the Board to halt programs that were not in line with the best interests of our children and our community, while still holding onto the spirit of compassion that motivated the first steps down the wrong path. As the culture wars have ramped up, I've seen Dr. Bearden maintain a calm and collected composure, while being attacked by both left and right - and if any of my comments over the past three years have seemed like attacks, I sincerely apologize. I fully recognize that even though he might not make the same decisions that I would make, that Dr. Bearden is truly interested in doing the right thing for our district, its staff, and its families. So, thank you Dr. Bearden, for being a leader who has had to endure attacks that were not fair, and not kind, for years. Thank you for being a leader who has gracefully threaded the needle between compassion and propriety. I appreciate you, my family appreciates you, and we will miss your leadership when you go off to bigger and better, and hopefully less stressful and contentious opportunities. Filling your shoes will be difficult, but in closing, I would like to humbly ask the Board to consider prioritizing internal candidates rather than searching for an outsider to take the reins. I've had a long career in a large bureaucratic organization, and I've found that leaders that have worked themselves up the ranks regularly outperform newcomers. And even though I know that Mitch Young disagrees with me on a great number of things, he is a genuinely passionate and talented leader who has earned his stellar reputation. Our district would be lucky to have him move up the ladder. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to buy lunch for anyone who disagrees with me.

I was very grateful last month to hear my dear friend Pat talk about what made a good and intelligent person - I passed her test with flying colors, with disagreement only on the scientific question of gender dysphoria. Sadly, her test implies that muslims are bad and unintelligent for their beliefs, which I think shows a distinct lack of commitment, to both diversity and inclusion. Having a welcoming environment for people who worship sexual deviance, and people who worship Allah, is obviously a challenge. But if we keep sex and sexuality out of the classroom, and treat school like a professional setting, it allows those differences to coexist, and not come into conflict with each other. Sexual morality is a conversation to be had at home, not at a place of work. And my dear friend Pat might not see school as a place of hard, earnest work, for children to learn the skills they need to succeed in higher education, and the workplace. She seems to think, it is simply an extension of family, and that the kitchen table topics she has in her home ,should be part and parcel of every muslim child's experience at public school. It's easy to understand how she could come to that conclusion - school has historically been a place of support for the ups and downs of puberty and adolesence, and has over time extended to assist those with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses. And if you truly believe that we must expose children to every form of kink so they can reject islam and fully realize their socio-sexual identity, well, of course you'll want to be a groomer. But my kids aren't her kids. And they don't belong to the schools, teachers, or staff either. We don't have the right to insert ourselves into the deeply personal and private conversations, that muslim families have about sex and sexuality. Those discussions should be up to the parents to have outside of our professional school setting. And this goes both ways - I would be just as concerned with a muslim teacher, expressing their diverse sexual viewpoints at school, preaching that all gays are going to hell, and should be thrown off buildings to kill them, as I would be with a woke teacher preaching that every sexual kink is completely normal, and exploring those kinks have no negative consequences. To answer my dear friend Pat's other question, reading a book about a gay character isn't going to turn you gay, and reading a book about a straight character isn't going to turn you straight - what you want is an *interesting* character that represents universal human traits, not superficial fashion choices, and trying to promote books focused on deviant sexuality is as superficial as you can get. Unless, of course, you're talking about Alan Turing. The man who literally saved the world from Nazis with his cryptography work, was chemically castrated through hormone therapy simply because he was gay. It should shame us that today, we have normalized this same kind of chemical castration for young homosexuals swept up in the trans hysteria. Once again I would humbly ask the Board to make sure that any students who present with mental illnesses regarding gender dysphoria, be treated with respect and care, and are immediately referred to the mental health counseling necessary to help them accept their perfectly healthy natural born bodies. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

On October 7th, Hamas terrorists executed the most barbaric and vicious attack against Jews since the Holocaust. Taking advantage of the Jewish sabbath, they rampaged through border towns, killing, raping, mutilating, and kidnapping innocent civilians, including a 3-year old American child whose parents were murdered in the attack. This may seem impossibly distant, and completely unrelated to matters of education, but sadly, it's closer than we think. Across our country, at prestigious universities everywhere, we have seen students offer comfort, support, and sympathy, not to the Jews who were savaged by barbarians, but to the barbarians of Hamas who now use human shields in Gaza to protect themselves from the righteous punishment they deserve. These students, steeped in the most twisted image of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity you can imagine, wave banners like "Queers for a Free Palestine", even though the Hamas agents they're supporting believe their god Allah demands they kill all homosexuals. They have been so thoroughly brainwashed by the ideas of "white fragility", and "black lives matter", and "critical race theory", that they have decided, despite the identical skin color of Jews and Arabs, that one of them is "white", one of them is "black", and therefore, we know who is wrong, and who is right. This systemic racism against white people in our country is shameful. And a very recent example illustrates this perfectly. You likely haven't heard of Jonathan Lewis. He was 17 years old, and died this past November 8th in Las Vegas. His death was due to being lynched on November 1st by 15 violent racists. Had his race been different, or the race of his attackers had been different, you might have heard of him. But he was white, and his murderers were black. There was a time, long ago, in this country's history, when a mob of white men killing a black man was just another day that ends in "y". As the South became more and more Republican, it became less and less racist, and thank God those days are far behind us. But today, that same casual race hatred is becoming more and more prevalent, even though the colors have been swapped. In our Diversity, Inclusion and Equity programs in Forsyth County, we must remain vigilant against those who would use it to encourage hatred and division. We must actively proclaim that white heterosexual male students are just as diverse as black homosexual non-binary two-spirit transgender students. We must work to include young christian women just as much as we work to include young muslim men. We must be ever wary of the casual hatred generated by victimhood mentality. We've done a fairly good job in Forsyth County avoiding the toxic Diversity, Inclusion and Equity propaganda that has infected many of our higher education institutions, and I sincerely thank the Board for that. I would humbly ask the Board to continue this good work, so that we do not open our community to the hate and violence we now see that comes from a woke mindset. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

Last month, there was concern that some teachers were unfairly being described as "groomers" or "pederasts". Both of those things are immoral and shameful, so it's understandable people might feel offended if they are unjustly accused. To help clarify things, I thought we might offer a few ways of knowing when you might be a groomer, so that people can avoid being confused with these evil predators. If you think that tom-boys are boys, you might be a groomer. If you think it is important for teachers to know, what kinds of things sexually excite the children they teach, you might be a groomer. If you think it is important for children to know, what kinds of things sexually excite the teachers they learn from, you might be a groomer. If you think children who have not yet experienced their natural sexual development, can make medical decisions that will leave them with permanent sexual dysfunction, you might be a groomer. If you think children should have school clubs based on sexual identities or sexual attraction, you might be a groomer. If you think a child's cross-sex ideation should be kept secret from their parents, you might be a groomer. If you think it's important to teach a child that a family with two mommies is perfectly normal, but don't want to tell them that fatherless homes are bad for children, you might be a groomer. If you think that adult men need an actual measurable medical reason to get a testosterone prescription, but teenage girls only need to express a psychological desire for it, you might be a groomer. If you believe children should be exposed to books with graphic sex, and they should be comfortable about talking about sex around adult strangers, without their parents present, you might be a groomer. If you support drag queens reading to young children in libraries, you might be a groomer. If you support taking children under 18 to drag queen shows, you might be a groomer. If you can't tell the difference between Mrs. Doubtfire cross-dressing in a caricature of a nanny, and Ru Paul's Drag Race where they are caricatures of strippers, you might be a groomer. When we normalize the discussion and expression of personal sexuality at school, we end up with young girls and boys bragging casually about their sexual exploits, destroying the learning environment of those children who would like to concentrate on their academics. Sexuality should be a private matter, not a public concern, and our staff and teachers should model that modesty by deferring sexuality questions to parents, and keeping sexuality discussions outside of school. I'd like to ask the board to consider getting rid of school clubs that are based on race or sexual identity. It may be perfectly appropriate to have an "anti-bullying club", but a club exclusive to straight white males and their allies is divisive, and unnecessarily centers student sexuality in the eyes of staff and teachers. School is a professional space, and when you bring explicit sexualization into that space, you are creating a hostile work environment for everyone. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

Last month we had a dramatic farewell speech from a troubled child, who had spent 13 years in Forsyth County schools. Their perception was one characterized by sorrow and anger, and sadly, I believe that they are not alone in their deep seated resentment against the world at large. But it doesn't have to be that way. Sorrow can come to us all, but how we react to it, is what determines whether or not we move forward with hope, or retreat into resentment. When we are taught to believe, that the solutions to our problems depend on forcing others to change their behaviors, we are creating learned helplessness, rather than resilience. When we are taught that our own actions are the largest part of solving our problems, we gain the tools of success against adversity. Larry Elder often quotes his father, who said, “You get out of life what you put in it. You can’t always control the outcome, but you can control the effort. No matter how hard you work or how good you are, sometimes things will go wrong. Character is about how you react when they do.” Now, this isn't to say that depression isn't a thing, or that cross-sex hormone treatments can't exacerbate mental health issues. Thankfully, here in Georgia, it is now illegal to chemically sterilize mentally ill children, and it could be that much of the resentment expressed last month, was a direct byproduct of medical malpractice. There are more and more notable cases of detransition coming to light as time goes by, and as those lawsuits move through the courts, we may hopefully hold the doctors and hospitals involved, accountable for their pediatric experiments. That all being said, I have great hope for the future, and I want to give my sincere thanks to the Forsyth County School District for some great work. I was pleasantly surprised to hear my 4th grade daughter talk about a wonderful anti-bullying book being read in her class that she was really enjoying. "Way of the Warrior Kid", by the navy SEAL Jocko Willink, has no sexual content, does not focus on superficial identity groups, and promotes a strong, health positive narrative with the perfect dollop of brazilian jiu jitsu. It is exactly the kind of book that both liberals and conservatives should want their children to read in school, and should become required reading for all fourth graders in our district. I am grateful and proud that the school district my children attend, has teachers who share books that reduce resentment, and empower children, and focus on personal responsibility as a virtue. This is exactly the kind of education everyone, regardless of their own intersectional identities, should want for our children. There are plenty of great books out there that handle challenging topics without being graphic. There are plenty of great books out there that resonate with everyone, and touch on universal human character, rather than crude stereotypes of feminine and masculine. These are the books we need to fill our libraries with. I'd like to ask the Board to please make Jocko Willink's "Way of the Warrior Kid" a fundamental part of our anti-bullying programs, and again, adopt specific policies that let parents have a role in getting good books into our school libraries, in addition to the policies we have that help them get age-inappropriate books out of our school libraries. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

I don't believe in God, but I love the people I go to church with every Sunday. I can't understand being attracted to a man, but I love and appreciate my gay friends and family, not to mention my wife. I regularly challenge myself to connect with people I disagree with about the fundamental nature of the universe - but sadly, it has been very difficult to find the grace and space from the woke left to make these kinds of connections. Here's what would be nice to hear from our woke friends: "Jere, you're right, some content is too explicit for some children. But it's deeply important to us, to have the historically marginalized given some attention, so that the future isn't filled with the same injustices as the past. We'd love to work together to find books that we can both agree on, so that you get the controls over explicit materials, and we get to support kids who might not feel normal." Maybe such an expectation of grace is too much. Perhaps the people pushing explicit materials to children are afraid of showing vulnerability, or maybe their hearts are so filled with resentment, that they cannot believe their opponents are engaging in good faith. I'm still genuinely interested in understanding, and reaching across the divide, and my monthly invitation of a free lunch has no expiration date. But I also understand that if people feel like they are on the side of righteousness, in a war worth fighting, it's easy to dehumanize the people you disagree with to keep your rage burning powerfully against any self introspection. And on this they're right - this is a culture war being waged. I mean, I'm not saying that the head of the American Library Association is a marxist lesbian fighting for communist solidarity, but the head of the American Library Association says she is a marxist lesbian fighting for communist solidarity. The long march of the left through our institutions has happened in the shadows for decades, and while we may have argued that the changes have been small, or the impact has been minimal, it's hard to continue doing so when leading presidential candidates get indicted by rogue Fulton County DAs for disagreeing with the woke narrative on election integrity. As corrupt as the rich men north of Richmond are, our fight ends up somewhere closer to home - even closer than we think. It's not just our local school board that becomes an arena for cultural battle, it's each one of our individual souls. It's having the willingness to have uncomfortable discussions with people you disagree with. It's taking a leap of faith and forgiving someone for baking swastika gingerbread. It's about talking with each other, instead of past each other, about the problems of the past and the promises of the future. It's about moving from our culture war, to a culture peace, no matter how delicate that peace may be. And so to promote this kind of woke-conservative reconciliation, I'd like to ask the Board to support and institute parental involvement, from all political sides of the aisle, in the process of adding new books to our libraries. We have focused so much on getting individual explicit books out of the hands of children, we've lost track of building consensus about the books we can agree should be in the hands of our children. I believe that if we can work together when choosing which books actually get into our schools, we can fight a whole lot less about getting inappropriate books out of our schools. And maybe, just maybe, build some peace. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

**NOTE: Had to overdub the first sentence of the speech, since the mic wasn't working at the time. Last month, a wonderful woman who sincerely disagrees with me shared a history book, and a thoughtful letter regarding the efficacy of transgender treatments for children. The book, "Blood at the Root", recounted the treatment black republicans had at the hands of white democrats in the early 1900s. The author noted the lack of legal remedies given the statutes of limitations, but also wanted to ignore those legal protections, and championed the idea of using federal force to redistribute resources from innocent citizens who had nothing to do with the horrors of the past. Sadly, while the author did a fine job in reporting on the brutal historical record of Forsyth County in the early 1900s, he learned the wrong lesson. Black republicans in Forsyth County were driven out in 1912, because white democrats found them collectively guilty for the death of Mae Crow. The author and his supporters want to hold white people collectively guilty today, for the past crimes of long dead white democrats, by the same evil, racist rationale. Even worse, their racism is used as a cloak of virtue, insisting that the problems of people of color can only be solved by white saviors. The author states bluntly, "Accept that white supremacy was invented by, and for the benefit of, white people, and so the difficult work of dismantling it falls to us." As a proud American of color, I reject this racism. White supremacy has never had any impact on my life, and it never will. I do not depend on white people for my worth, and I won't live in fear of invisible micro-aggressions that can only be detected with an electron microscope. "White saviors" need to leave us alone and stop pretending that our skin color is what defines us, nearly 60 years after Dr. King's proclamation of our character. In thanks for the gift of the book, I brought a book to share as well, "Irreversible Damage" by Abigail Shrier. In her letter, my kind new friend talked fondly about a female-to-male transgender friend of hers who at the age of 24, was very happy with their lifelong commitment to medical intervention. Of course adults should be able to choose for themselves, whatever hormonal or surgical treatments they're willing to pay for - installing horns, or removing fingers, or adding additional breasts might be odd, but adults have every right to creatively mutilate themselves. That said, my two daughters are under constant social pressure to see transition as a cure for the natural trauma of puberty - the social contagion of trans identity, particularly for girls, is truly a public health crisis. And the well-intentioned notion of "affirming" only makes this crisis worse. In Europe, standards of care are now recognizing that gender dysphoria is a mental illness, not a physical one. Ironically, this mental illness, where the first thing prescribed are puberty blockers, is actually cured by puberty in most cases. I humbly ask the Board to make sure that our school system refers children who suffer from gender dysphoria, to proper mental health treatment, and that we avoid the firmly discredited "affirming care" model that endangers our young girls and boys. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

It was nice to see all the beautiful rainbow hand fans last month, sharing the symbol of god's covenant to noah, representing the christian virtue, of accepting that our bodies don't need to be hormonally or surgically altered to match our personalities. God loves us, and we should love ourselves, as we are naturally born. And this is the principle that people like Cindy Martin, and her mama bears are fighting for in our school district - a principle of love and acceptance. The profane and ideological books, being pushed in our school libraries aren't being pushed for no reason - they are there to promote an agenda that is sexist, homophobic, and grooms our children for pederasty. The "gender confusion agenda" is about destroying a child's natural sense of self, not discovering it. And the books being promoted are the worst possible representation of LGBTQ people imaginable - instead of showing that there are perfectly normal, conservative, conscientious, well-adjusted, republican gays, lesbians, or transgenders, the books that are promoted are from the most depraved, racist, sexist, obscene and perverted child groomers. If you want to pick a German role model, why not choose Mozart instead of Mengele? If you want to pick an African American role model, why not choose a man who overcame brutal poverty like Clarence Thomas, instead of a privileged private school brat like Ibram Henry Rogers who thinks that babies are naturally racist? Recently, the blockbuster film "Sound of Freedom", which dives into the disturbing world of child sex trafficking over open borders, has brought forth a public awareness to a very disturbing crisis. Yet despite the incredibly challenging material, the film still manages to keep a PG-13 rating - proving once and for all, that graphic sexual content isn't necessary, even when addressing the most difficult and troubling topics. Which is just like Cindy Martin said, it's not about the books - it's about the ideology being pushed. The books are just tools of indoctrination, a naked attempt to subvert the principles of western civilization and the american constitution by using the liberal principle of free speech to defend the predatory principle of pederasty. Sadly, this ideology has already marched through many of our cherished institutions. The SPLC has become a racist hate group that demonizes white and conservative people, the ACLU is now fighting against free speech instead of for it, and government agencies like the CDC and FBI are creating pandemics and crimes, instead of preventing them. Now, I'm more than happy to hear a rational discussion on why I'm wrong on this - and I've invited, time and time again, my fellow speakers who disagree with me, to continue these conversations, so I can truly understand their point of view. But there seems to be a genuine fear of discussion, from the people supporting making rated-R or even rated-X material available to our children. I humbly ask the Board to apply the same standards they would for showing movies in the classroom, to stocking books in our school libraries. There is no topic or issue, no matter how controversial, that cannot be sufficiently taught with PG-13 media and materials. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof murdered 9 innocent black christians. Dylann was a radical white supremacist, and after intense media focus on a picture of him with a Confederate flag, a whole host of actions were taken: state flags were changed to remove General Lee's battle flag, retailers stopped selling confederate flags, and even the Dukes of Hazzard was taken off of TV. Small fringe groups like Aryan Nations spoke up in support of Dylann, but they were all bark and no bite. On March 27, 2023, Audrey Hale murdered 6 innocent christians, three of them only 9 years old. Audrey was a radical LGBTQ activist, and in contrast to the treatment Dylann got in the media, Audrey's radical LGBTQ anti-christian terrorism hasn't resulted in mass removal of pride flags, or the censoring of "Will and Grace" reruns. On the contrary, large groups of Democrats have actively protested in support of her radical LGBTQ violence. But should we judge groups based on the worst examples of individuals in those groups? Can we have enough grace to admit that the Confederate flag is a symbol of heritage, not hate, for the overwhelming majority of Americans who like Bo and Luke Duke? Can we be open hearted enough to admit that just because two LGBTQ activists raped and trafficked their adopted children, that it doesn't mean that every homosexual is a predator, or that every Democrat supports more sexual content in our school libraries? All too often, we separate into our respective tribes, and demonize the other. Instead of addressing the strongest arguments of the people we disagree with, we strawman their weakest ones, to make them look as foolish as we can. So let's find our common ground. The people who are concerned about sexual content in books aren't trying to bully children who are different - they're trying to protect the rights of parents to protect the innocence of their children. And the people who are fighting against what they see as "book bans" aren't really trying to make sure that graphic underage sex is portrayed to everyone's children as early as possible, they're just worried that some children might feel like they don't fit in just because they're different than normal people. As a school district, we can, and should, be able to meet both of these needs. We should be able to protect our children from overt and covert sexualization in our schools, and we should be able to protect our children who aren't run-of-the-mill normal from bullying, through fair and effective enforcement of behavior standards. You can have two things. So please, I humbly ask the Board, let's adopt policies that restrict the sexualization of children in our schools. No adult employee should be asking my daughter what her sexual preference is, either directly, or through some inappropriate "identity" survey. No adult employee should be asking children, going through an already difficult puberty, what their so-called "gender-identity" is, even if they aren't behaving in sex-stereotypical ways. Let girls play with trucks, and let boys play with dolls, without sending them down a road of confusion. And most of all, let's put into place strong policies against *adding* sexualized content to our libraries, that are just as thorough and strict as the policies we have to use to *remove* sexualized content from our libraries. Any book rated "18 years and up" should be required to go through that process, in public, with full accountability. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

This has been a difficult month, with the fourth recent radical trans mass murder incident, ending the lives of three innocent 9 year olds, and three innocent staff at a Christian school. Even if it is just a coincidence, the fact that my daughter just turned 9 made it particularly painful to witness, and my heart and prayers go out to all of the families affected by this evil. Predictably, the same way the Zulocks in Oxford, Georgia were able to leverage their LGBTQ activism into raping and prostituting their adopted children for years, the mass murdering trans monster in Tennessee has been elevated as an LGBTQ hero, absolved of her evil in the name of sexual identity. This cannot stand. People need to be aware of the incredible dangers of poisonous cross-sex hormones, and the irreversible damage they cause. And people need to prioritize the protection of innocent children, above the radical ideology that wants to expose them to every sexual kink and preference as early as possible. Take for instance our disagreements on books - either the graphic sexual content of a book is trivial, and can be ignored, or the graphic sexual content of a book is vital, and must be preserved at all costs. Proponents of graphic sexual content in our school libraries keep telling us to "trust them", and that "the work as a whole is what is important, not out of context passages". If that's true, they should not object to demanding clean versions of these books from publishers, omitting any objectionable sections. Publishers have regularly been doing this, removing words like "fat" and "ugly" from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and censoring the name of Twain's main character in Huckleberry Finn to read as "Slave Jim". If these truly trivial parts of books can be addressed by publishing clean versions of classic American literature, there's no reason why significantly more damaging and sexually inappropriate parts of books can't be fixed the same way. Unless, of course, our darkest fears are correct, and the woke left really wants to groom our children with inappropriate sexual content. They would object to that characterization, but sadly, once you decide that you're interested in the sexual thoughts and preferences of children, and believe that you're obligated to explain in graphic detail the world of sexual kink, in order to build a society that includes more than just plain old hetrosexual missionary position, you're a predator who feeds on destroying the innocence of children. I would ask the Board to pursue a policy where books with graphic sexual content are immediately rejected for purchase for our libraries, with publishers required to provide clean versions that are age appropriate. I would also ask that parental objections to graphic sexual content in books, by default, have the book removed until the publisher can provide a clean version with that content scrubbed. If there is literary merit to the books in question, surely they can survive the modification of a few passages. Unless, of course, our progressive librarians and media specialists actually want to make the case that inappropriate graphic sexual content is the core of literary merit, and openly admit their intention to destroy the innocence of our children. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

First of all, Happy Black History month. Some people believe that we should segregate Black and White history, but I believe we can celebrate our shared Black History all year long. Just like we can celebrate our shared Caucasian History all year long, which, we now know, includes the famous Caucasian, Angela Davis, whose ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower. Last month, one of the speakers seemed to be very upset at representation regarding "black" or "white" historical names, as if some kids turning down Hubbard Town Road will feel left out because William Merida Hubbard wasn't the same skin color as they are, but then they'll feel right at home on Dawson Forest Road since William Crosby Dawson shared their skin tone. Honestly, I had to look up both men - I had no idea if either William was white, or black - and apart from intensely dedicated history buffs, I'd bet fewer than one in ten thousand Forsyth County residents know who these Williams were. The woke white obsession with racial representation, in things as mundane as street names, is founded on a pernicious racist principle - that we can be judged, and judge others, on their skin color. It insists that we must first and foremost, look at someone's skin color, and then decide if we can relate to them. It ignores character. It ignores culture. It centers race above all other considerations, and teaches our children to internalize a color-focused dehumanization. The speaker who complained about racial representation looked like a white woman, but she seemed to relate perfectly fine to Otis Redding, despite not having his skin color. Ironically, it's quite likely, that she has some slave ancestry in her family tree, the same way Angela Davis has some Mayflower ancestry in hers. And this is true of all so-called "black" and "white" people - our skin color is not the sum total of our worth, and the assumption, that we have more in common with strangers with our skin tone, than our own family that might be lighter or darker, is denialism in its worst form. We need to let all of our children know, that we are first and foremost fellow humans, and every example of human potential is a representation of our own potential, no matter what that human looks like, or what we look like. It is the racist hyper focus on skin color that leads to the dreaded "white savior" complex, where the health problems of black women become something that can only be fixed by the beneficent interventions of woke white people. When you embrace a "disparate impact" theory, where black obesity, or black fatherlessness, can only be solved by white people, you take away agency from black people, and foist unearned virtue upon their woke white knights riding to their rescue. Black people are not a monolith, and we don't need white people to solve our problems. Nothing stops a straight black girl from seeing herself in Elvis, and nothing stops a gay white boy from seeing himself in Aretha Franklin. The dire insistence that we need to measure, and track, and consider every little thing by skin color, makes more racism, not less. So if you truly want equity amongst humans, stop measuring them by skin color, and treat them like the unique, diverse individuals that they are. Diversity is the natural state of being, no matter what your skin color is. And the ultimate inclusion, is to drop the artificial barriers that separate us from our common humanity. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

As a professional, you don't talk about sex at work. You will be punished for harassment if you do. But parents are being told that if you're a professional teacher or librarian, in a K12 school, you're not just allowed to sexualize your students, you're obligated to. The real question is - "how easy should it be for kids to get graphic sexual content?" Here's the problem that the graphic sexual content promoters don't understand, as they giggle at people reading racy book passages, that would be prohibited in any other professional setting - in the name of sexual exploration, by a few kids that may be ready (or think they're ready) to engage with graphic sexual content, they're threatening most kids, and parents, that are not ready. Parents who are vigilant in avoiding TV, and filtering the internet at home, and putting parental controls on their kids' phones, are now faced with another challenge - monitor every book your school library. On the other hand, parents who want to trans their kids, or expose them to pornography, or the latest woke novel written by a victim of child abuse explaining how they became queer thanks to parents that neglected them, have a much easier time. All they have to do, to allow their children the fullness of perversion and depravity that exists, is nothing. Porn will flow through the unfiltered internet, on smart phones, in adult public libraries, on the TV, with no extra effort on anyone's part. And with all due respect to teachers who have spent years earning their degrees, and studying methods of education, or keeping up with the latest psychological trends, you do not have the right to decide that any child, other than your own, is ready for graphic sexual content. Even if you're right, and the child is perfectly ready and capable to read about deviant kink, rape, sex torture, and pedophilia, without experiencing trauma, it is not your decision, and it is not professionally acceptable. If a teacher believes that a child must be exposed to graphic sexual content, because without presenting them graphic bestiality, or incest, or MILFs, that the child will somehow be harmed, then they need to clear it with the parents first. And if parents don't agree, after earnest attempts of persuasion, they have to honor the parents' right to decide. Of course, some parents are a danger to their children, and this presents special problems. Just recently, prominent LGBTQ activists in Georgia, William and Zach Zulock, were caught raping their two adopted boys, from ages 6 to 11. These two predators were able to get away with grooming and sexualizing innocent children, and even prostituting them out to other pedophiles, for years. And because they wrapped themselves in the banner of diversity, inclusion, and equity, nobody caught them until google found pictures of them raping their children on the account of one of the people they sold their children as sex slaves to. Now certainly, conservative LGTBQ couples protect their children from overt sexualization, and protest Drag Queen shows for children, and oppose sexually explicit content in school libraries, so just being LGTBQ doesn't mean you're endangering children. But if you're so hell bent, on making it easier for children to access sexual content, without first recognizing the rights of parents, not only are you being unprofessional, you're adding to the danger. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

Last month, we got to hear some pretty racy passages from books in our school libraries. We may even get to hear more today. Some of those passages were read dramatically, others in a flat, clinical tone. Unsurprisingly, there were some appreciative, older liberal men in the audience, who thought these readings were very sexy, and wished that their sex education classes, when they were in school, included content like that. They could imagine themselves as younger, more lustful young boys, and how such graphic sexual passages would pique their interest so much more than your standard diagram of the fallopian tubes, or the vas deferens. Is that the standard we want, though? Should we be indulging the fantasies of horny old liberal men, and exposing our children in schools to sexual kink and explicit sexual content? In Japanese we have a word, "sukebe", which means "pervert" or "dirty old man" - is it really appropriate to use the "dirty old man" standard for what books we allow in our school libraries? I don't have anything against dirty old men - lord knows, I'm sure there are some who think I'm a dirty old man - but us dirty old men have had the time to grow, and experience the world, and find ourselves, on our own terms. The gift of innocence isn't something we can grant to our children, but it is something that we can steal from them. Parents who want to steal the innocence from their own children, at early ages, are more than welcome to buy them as many pornographic books as they want. If they want to read them bedtime stories about children being raped, or engaging in kink, rather than the standards like Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat, it is within their authority to do so. And they can worry about explaining their actions to Child Protective Services if any abuse complaints are made. Insisting that pornographic books be available to all children, of all ages, in school libraries, is improperly imposing upon the parental prerogatives of those who wish to give their children room and space to grow out of their innocence, on their own. To put it bluntly, nobody is advocating banning books - concerned parents are just asking to add another layer of filtering before they get to our children. There are millions of books that publishers "ban" by not publishing. There are millions of books that distributors "ban" by not distributing. There are millions of books that retailers "ban" by not selling. And millions of books that librarians "ban" by not stocking in libraries. Asking sexually explicit materials to be filtered out of our community school libraries is not a form of oppression, or an infringement on any of our constitutional rights. It is simply the acknowledgement that young children are not adults, and that the fantasies of dirty old men should not be used to groom our children into precocious sexualization. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

Tonight I'd like to share the story of Chloe Cole. Chloe began identifying as transgender at age 12. Although alarmed, her family, friends, school, and medical care providers, all supported her gender identification, and worked to affirm her as a boy as quickly as possible. At age 13, Chloe was put on puberty blockers. At age 15, Chloe had her healthy breasts removed. At age 16, Chloe realized it was all a mistake - a mistake with now irreversible consequences. Before the affirmation care Chloe got, she had a perfectly healthy body. Her mental perception, was that she required hormonal and surgical intervention to fix her gender dysphoria. But as we all know, our mental perceptions change over time, especially as we pass through the turbulence of adolescence. Sadly, in the case of Chloe, she now faces infertility, or, even if she is able to have a child, she'll be unable to breastfeed, because of the radical mastectomy that she underwent. One might blame Chloe's parents for allowing this damage to be done to their daughter, but they were caught in a terrible emotional blackmail - "would you rather have a dead daughter, or a living son?" Given that kind of threat, it's easy to understand how loving parents, can be convinced to put their children through all kinds of risky and dangerous medical interventions. Let me be clear - people with gender dysphoria deserve our compassion, respect, and most importantly, mental health support. They are real people, with real pain, and as children of God, deserve our love. But in the name of endless compassion, we are doing severe, irreversible physical damage to children, when we affirm the delusions of those who are suffering from mental health issues. The vast majority of children who experience gender dysphoria, end up growing up as healthy, intact, gays and lesbians. A policy of affirmation only puts these homosexual children in grave danger of great harm. Whenever school staff discover students who identify with gender dysphoria, parents should be informed, and those students should be immediately referred to mental health professionals, who can help them overcome their dysphoria without doing permanent physical harm to themselves. They should be protected from bullying, both in and out of school, but they also desperately need responsible adults, to help them overcome their mental health issues through reliable therapy, rather than through violent hormonal and surgical procedures. I humbly ask the Board to consider making it district policy to prioritize getting our youth with gender dysphoria the mental health treatment they need, so that they don't ever suffer the same irreversible damage that Chloe Cole has suffered. Partnering with LGBTQ clubs and organizations in our schools may be especially helpful, so that gay and lesbian children who experience temporary gender dysphoria are helped to grow up whole and healthy. I know that this is a sensitive topic, and people who support affirmation-only for gender dysphoria, will feel very defensive about alternatives to hormones and surgery. But we cannot change boys to girls, or girls to boys, and pretending that we can makes everything worse. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

As Thanksgiving season comes upon us, I'd like to focus on gratitude. I'm thankful for the Board, and their work in combating the sexualization of our children, and their clear understanding that parents have an inalienable right to protect their children. I'm thankful for the election victories of Wes McCall and Mike Valdes to the Board of Education, and I'm thankful that our Georgia elections were less corrupt than those in Arizona, and that our Forsyth County elections were less corrupt than those in Fulton, Cobb, and DeKalb. I'm thankful that none of my children ever did crack cocaine with hookers, while being protected by the Secret Service, or sold political favors to China and Ukraine, or lost three laptops with homemade porn on them. I'm thankful to live in a free state, in a free county, in a free city, which does not hold to old racist ideals, and truly believes that all lives matter. I'm thankful for our county sheriff deputies, and all their work, to protect our freedoms, and to hold criminals accountable. I'm thankful for the 3 Supreme Court justices, appointed by the first president to enter office in support of gay marriage, Donald J. Trump. I'm thankful for the question of abortion being handed back to the states, and I'm thankful for the preservation of the 2nd amendment, including constitutional carry legislation in Georgia. And I'm anticipating being thankful for the end, of the abjectly anti-asian, and racist policies, of affirmative action in college admissions. I'm thankful that my family has been able to escape the People's Republic of California, and the terrible oppression that continues there to this day. I'm thankful to live in a place that isn't a wretched hive of scum and villainy called "Los Angeles", in a place that actually has green trees, fluffy clouds, and real seasons. I'm thankful that my family wasn't forced to take an experimental vaccine with dangerous side effects, and that our schools were some of the first to re-open in the country, and some of the first to eliminate mandatory masking requirements that have interrupted academic growth in states that abused their citizens. I'm thankful for all those friends and families I have met in Georgia, and who have made me, and my family feel welcome. I'm thankful for the buddies, who have taught me how to use climbing tree stands, grow my own ghost peppers, drive offroad 4 wheelers, reload ammo, and actually use the tow hitch on my truck. I'm also thankful for all of the Board of Education employees, here in this office, and out in our community, who clearly understand the importance of teaching our children traditions of personal responsibility, individual accountability, persistence, and resilience. And last, but not least, I'm thankful for those who have disagreed with me, and who come to speak each and every board meeting, representing opinions I'm still eager to understand more fully. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

Over 4 million new books are published every year. Amazon lists 32.8 million books for sale. If we were to pick the top 1% of these books, we would have over 300,000 - and our school libraries only have room for a fraction of that. It was claimed last month, that the Supreme Court decided that children have a 1st amendment right, to have any book they want in their school library - but this is obviously impossible. Our libraries can't even hold a fraction of the best books written, much less all the books any individual student may be interested in. All libraries represent a carefully curated selection, and can only hold a very, very small number of books compared to all of those available out there. Left-wing woke organizations want to be in charge of curating those selections. They want books that sexualize children, and books that demonize Martin Luther King's dream of a colorblind society. Rather than addressing the concerns of parents who are worried about inappropriate sexual content in libraries, they insist that the only parents who should have a voice, are those who want more sexual content, at earlier and earlier ages. Instead of embracing the ideals of racial equality of treatment, they demand racial equity of outcome, imposed by unequal treatment based on skin color. The "Forsyth Coalition for Education" claims to be representing parents, but thus far are unwilling to talk with parents who don't agree with their point of view, although the invitation has been extended time and time again. We all have to live together, and taking away the voices of concerned parents is much worse than taking away the hyper-sexualized voice of a colored-transgender-muslim-non-binary-furry author from our school libraries. Hyper-sexualized content can still be found in our larger public libraries, and even on amazon.com, but we can keep our schools a safe space for our young, innocent children. If as a parent, you feel it is important that your kindergartener learn about sexual fetishes, you can still give those books to your children, even if those books aren't in our school libraries. Also last month, a speaker said, "Schools can and must be safe places, even for difficult topics." And largely, I agree - but we have to go further. We need to have safe places for *both* sides of difficult topics. All too often, "difficult topics" are only presented with the politically correct answer. Youth with gender dysphoria must always be affirmed. The United States is systemically racist, and white people are fragile. Sexual kinks must be celebrated at all ages. I would ask - can we invite doctors who oppose the surgical and hormonal mutilation of mentally ill youth to school? Can we have a real conversation about black on black violence? Can we have a real conversation about the damage pornography and sexual content can do to children? Is there a safe space for black men who wear "white lives matter" shirts? Can we address the difficult topic of voter fraud in the 2020 election, or the deadly side effects of ineffective vaccines in young people? Will we give safe space to talk about a president, who used his drug addicted son, to launder money through Ukraine, and is now bringing us to the brink of nuclear war? Or maybe, just maybe, we need to be a little more focused in school. Maybe we should emphasize reading, writing, and arithmetic, and create spaces outside of school where difficult topics, under the guidance of loving parents, can be addressed. Maybe we could even have parents who disagree with each other, get to know each other, and talk about these difficult topics, and find ways to share both sides with their children. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

I'd like to acknowledge the recent East Forsyth controversy - it is indeed problematic, that any student, or staff at our schools, would ever write, or speak out loud, in any context, the racially charged word that is never allowed. It is further problematic that our children were able to post and view videos of this, spreading this evil word over and over and over again - Every person on the internet, who ever played that video, should be very ashamed of themselves. The social media companies who hosted this hateful content should also be held accountable, and I ask the board to make sure they are blocked from all school networks. Left and right, conservative and liberal, republican and democrat, capitalist and socialist, I'm sure that we all agree the slang "C-word" for white people needs to be abolished once and for all from public view. And if there are any Nabisco Saltine C-word packages in any of our schools, I expect them to be thrown out, or relabeled "Nabisco Saltine Dry Biscuits". Moving on to things that we might not agree on. Last month, we heard from a speaker who believed that somehow, removing sexually explicit books from school libraries is a violation of the rights of parents who want their kids to see sexually explicit materials at a young age. I would love to have a chance to talk with them further, to better understand their position, because it is genuinely confusing. Maybe their point was, that the one and only line of defense for children should be their parents - that nobody else should bear any responsibility, for the exposure of children to indecent and explicit materials. And further, those parents who *want* their children to see pornography and childhood sexualization will suffer harm if we deny their 6 year olds the "intellectual freedom" to view porn at school. Or maybe they believe, that children should be so perfectly trained by their parents, before they get to school, that they aren't traumatized or tempted by sexually explicit materials. And given a world where porn can spill out of any cellphone or computer with a click of a button, I suppose I can understand the importance of developing this kind of resiliency, by raising our children with a strong moral foundation, that understands that men and women are different, yet equally valuable, and that sexual activity is a sacred thing that should be private, monogamous, and ideally, heterosexual. But even if it *is* important that parents protect their children, and teach them to be resilient, does that really justify introducing them to sexually explicit materials at inappropriate ages? Did the speaker last month really believe that *all* sexually explicit materials are appropriate for *all* ages? I shudder to think of the kind of person who would knowingly and willingly expose a 6 year old to the graphic details of various sexual fetishes, or even the graphic details of standard human sexual activity. Of course, it's possible that they just weren't speaking clearly, and that they too, believe in the sacred values of chastity and monogamy, and also understand that what is appropriate for a 16 year old might not be appropriate for a 15 year old, or a 6 year old, or an immature 17 year old. Without the chance to have a long, respectful conversation together, I can only hazard a guess as to what they really meant. I am grateful that we live in a state and county that has made it a priority to protect our children from inappropriate sexual materials, and thank the Board for their work to do so. And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

At our last meeting, we heard an impassioned plea for more indoctrination in our schools and libraries, insisting that the board was "here to serve" our students. This may sound like a perfectly reasonable statement, but we have to be very careful - our schools may be the place where our students learn, and grow, but schools, administrators, teachers and staff are in service to parents, not children. And of course, there is a reason for this - children may very well be able to express their needs, even at their youngest ages. They may cry for food, or a diaper change, or for attention. But you don't expect an infant to know the best way to get food from the store, to the fridge, to the bottle, and finally to their mouth. The "WHAT" is a question that children can help us answer. The "HOW" is a question children simply don't have the experience or wisdom to judge. This isn't to say that there aren't immature adults, or very mature children - exceptions abound in the wide swath of humanity. But there really is no evidence that the brave, dutiful children, who have come to speak to the Board for these many months, actually have wisdom to share on the "HOW". The three "WHAT"s identified last month were: improve mental health increase feelings of safety reduce bullying on the basis of identity The first two "WHAT"s are great - we all want students to be more resilient and mentally healthy, and we all want students to feel safe from violence, hypersexualization, and abuse. But the third "WHAT" exposes a lack of wisdom - we want to reduce *all* bullying, not just one type of bullying. The child who is being tormented, simply because a bully was in a bad mood that day, is no less worthy of help, than a child who is being tormented because they wore a MAGA hat to school. We can improve mental health without leftist Diversity, Inclusion and Equity programs. In fact, those regions of our country that have pushed these programs the most, have the worst mental health outcomes. The rate of transgender identification, self-harm, and suicide, within leftist jurisdictions is significantly higher, than in other all other areas. While nobody doubts that leftist adults and children want better mental health, the evidence actually shows that their ideas make things worse. This also goes for school safety and bullying - the most violent schools are in cities dominated by leftist governments. Policies put in place in the name of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity have included giving violent students more lenient punishments, depending on their skin color. This gutting of disciplinary power in some regions, has led to attacks not only on students, but teachers and staff as well. Again, nobody doubts that our leftist adults and children want safer schools, but the evidence actually shows that their ideas make things worse. Now, I don't doubt that there are children in our schools who are suffering. Their stories of bullying, and struggles with mental illness are certainly sincere and real. But their prescription for fixing these problems is poison, not medicine. We cannot stop being victims, by wallowing in our victimhood. We cannot unify our diverse population, by dividing people up into skin color, religion, or sexual preference. And we cannot improve our safety, by encouraging a lack of personal responsibility. I would like to thank the Board again, for its strong focus on giving our children what they NEED rather than what they simply WANT, and for understanding that our schools serve the parents of students, first and foremost. Thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

Happy July, the birthday of the greatest country ever, The United States of America! Some people believe that our country is not great, but rather, inherently systemically racist. But no one can point out any country they think is actually better. In the year 2022, we still have active slavery across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. We have government racism in India with Scheduled Castes and Classes. No European country has nearly the diversity or inclusion that is the basis of America, and despite an ever expanding federal government, no country in the world, has ever had as much freedom as we enjoy. Of course, the history of our country, like any other country, is filled with bad things. Democrats, chasing Black Republicans, out of Forsyth County in 1912. Democrats, building their party power, on the backs of slaves. Democrats, founding the KKK, and imposing Jim Crow laws. Democrats, destroying black families, with welfare programs discouraging black fatherhood, or the careful placement of abortion clinics, to reduce the black population. But more than any other country, our history is filled with good things. Republicans spilling their blood on the fields of the Civil War to free the slaves. Strong protections for the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms. Grand victories in both World Wars, against the fascists, and victory in the Cold War, against the oppressive communist Soviet Union. Even in 2022, under the most corrupt president and congress in history, we can be grateful for a Supreme Court willing to stand against executive overreach, to stand for unborn lives, and to protect our right to keep and bear arms. So what will we focus on? Will we wallow in what makes us angry, and resentful? Or will we rejoice in what makes us feel gratitude, and hope? I choose to let go of resentment, and forgive our Democrat brothers and sisters, rather than holding them eternally responsible for the sins of their fathers. Even as an atheist, I see the incredible value, in the idea of forgiveness, and repentance, and atonement, and I know that a focus on gratitude makes all of our lives better. So let me declare how grateful I am for Forsyth County, its school board, its superintendent, its schools, its people, and its freedoms. As a refugee from the People's Republic of California, I am grateful to live in a state that ended its lockdowns in April of 2020, instead of continuing them until July of 2022. I'm grateful to live in a state that respects the 2nd Amendment. I'm grateful to live in a state that protects our school employees and school students from ideological indoctrination. In California, children are regularly abused with sexually explicit content, sexual grooming by teachers, medical procedures performed without the consent of parents, and state supported indoctrination to try to turn children into far-left activists. In Georgia, we have strong support for laws that criminalize such behavior. That being said, I understand that the fight will never be over. There will always be some reason, to encourage people to be resentful, rather than grateful. There will always be some ideology, trying to push its way into our institutions, to crush our freedoms. But there will always be good, grateful people, willing to stand up, and take their turn resisting the forces of resentment. Thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

Last month, we heard a tragic story of bullying, concern that progressive policies were being rejected by the public, demands that teachers be given unconditional respect, and an argument that sexually explicit books were required, to teach critical thinking to students. Today, let's talk about critical thinking, about critical thinking. For some people, critical thinking is simply, "let me criticize the things I disagree with." If I don't like religion, I'll criticize religion. If I don't like white people, I'll criticize white people. If I don't like individual freedom, I'll criticize individual freedom. Some teachers may think they're teaching critical thinking, when all they're doing is pushing one dogmatic view. Insisting that boys, can be hormonally and surgically transformed into girls, and because of these mentally ill children, all of our children, must be exposed to sexually explicit materials on the topic, isn't teaching critical thinking at all, it's pushing ideology. Critical thinking requires challenging your own dearly held assumptions. It's the christian who tries to understand the atheist. It's the feminist who tries to understand the struggles of men. It's the diversity, inclusion, and equity staffer who tries to understand, the colorblind philosophy of MLK. It's the country music fan who tries to understand gangsta rap. Of course, power enters into the equation too - critical thinking can be most important when exercised against ingrained and powerful cultural forces. But we cannot fool ourselves into believing that we are the underdogs, in order to justify our bias. Today, the woke leftists have control over incredibly powerful institutions, in media, education, government, and private enterprise. They have strict, if contradictory, articles of faith, that are not allowed to be questioned. We're not allowed to talk about non-affirming treatments for gender dysphoria. Or anti-white racism. Or the four slave states that fought for the Union, and didn't free their slaves until well after the Civil War was over. Or the dangerous side effects from experimental pharmaceuticals, or how Fauci funded gain of function research in Wuhan. Or anti-male sexism in schools, family courts, and corporations. Or about protecting women's sports from mentally ill men. We are admonished to #BelieveAllWomen, but we can't define what a woman is. You can have a book, filled with inappropriate sexual content, that explores the specific truth, of anti-gay discrimination. You can also have a book, without inappropriate sexual content, that explores the universal truth that nobody should be discriminated against. A good teacher should be able to pass on critical thinking skills, and universal truths, without sexually explicit material. One of my daughter's teachers, spent several weeks in English class covering Will Smith slapping Chris Rock over a joke. This could have been an excellent opportunity to teach critical thinking, but sadly, not only was it clear what point of view the teacher had herself, she promoted her point of view as the correct one. The entire experience would have been so much more compelling and useful to the students, if they couldn't tell what her perspective was - or, even if they could tell, if she had argued strongly against her own biases. I'd like to ask the Board to support teaching critical thinking in our classrooms, by instructing our teachers how to effectively argue *against* their own biases. If they are pro-abortion, have them steel-man the pro-life position. If they believe in BLM, have them argue that all lives matter. At the end of the day, if our children can tell what their opinions are, they're doing it wrong. Thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

For the past few Board Meetings, several speakers have promoted systemic islamophobia, pushing for explicit sexual content in our school libraries. In Islam, explicit sexual content is haram, forbidden. Homosexuality is also haram, punishable by death under sharia law, or requiring forced hormonal and surgical conversion therapy for both gays and lesbians. Diversity, inclusion and equity obligate us to combat this islamophobia - making sure that depictions of the Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him, and other haram topics, such as explicit sexual content, or the glorification of immoral sexuality, are kept out of our school libraries. The attempts of white liberals to push their sexual agenda in our schools is an offense to Allah, and all the POC muslims who follow him. It is a crass exercise of woke white privilege. Personally, I'm a fairly extreme liberal atheist, but I understand, that even though I might be fine with my children being exposed to sexually graphic content, I can't make that choice for other parents, and neither should our schools. We need to make sure that our shared government schools are places that respect the wide diversity of viewpoints our community has, including conservative islamic viewpoints. I might be willing to draw a picture of the Prophet Mohammad, and post it on a website, but it would be wrong of me to insist that our government schools provide picture books with the Prophet's likeness. Ultimately, our teachers and administrators work for the parents of our community, and the students are given, in trust, to be educated in a manner that is consistent with the family values each individual family has. Even though conservative parents may be eager to see the best selling LGBTQ children's book "Johnny The Walrus" as a part of our elementary school curriculum, those parents who have decided put their children through hormonal and surgical conversion therapy, may find this book offensive to their worldview, since it depicts gender transition as abuse disguised by compassion. As messy and imperfect as government schools are, we can only support diversity if we're willing to compromise with each other towards consensus. Curriculum and books need to strive for the most bland and neutral point of view, erring on the side of caution. As much as I love Mark Twain, I understand that some people are so sensitive to the n-word that they would censor Twain's classic anti-racist works. As much as I may appreciate Charlie Hebdo, I understand that cartoons of Mohammad would be offensive our POC muslim families. For those families that would like to have ideological content for their children, which are otherwise banned from school libraries in the name of consensus, there's always amazon.com, or public libraries, or the entire internet. No child is ever going to be prevented from consuming books their parents want them to read - and no parent should be afraid that their child can pick up a book from their school library, that they can't read out loud at a Board of Education meeting. I'd like to ask the Board to commit to developing an "opt-in" program for adding books to our school libraries, and to have books reviewed by both liberal and conservative parents, before they are placed in our libraries. We should be exerting local control over our libraries, rather than simply getting book lists from partisan, ideological, and biased national institutions. Thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

I am not a wizard. I do not have a lightning bolt scar on my forehead. I do not live on Privet Drive. Yet the tale of Harry Potter resonates deeply with me, and I see myself in that story, and in all of the characters. Last month, a child spoke eloquently about how obsessed she was with the Harry Potter books. But then she demanded that our libraries include stories of and by people, based solely upon their superficial characteristics. Sadly, she missed the most important lessons we can learn from J.K. Rowling's works. Spoiler alert, Dumbldore is gay. It has nothing to do with the plot, and nothing would change if he was straight. J.K. Rowling wrote an amazing, inclusive narrative that resonates with all people, and not once did she depict graphic sexual content. This doesn't erase gays, but it teaches us something profound - what sex you're attracted to is the least interesting thing about you. Wearing a badge of LGBTQIAAPXYZ tells us nothing important about you at all. There are two universal truths we all grapple with. First, is that we all share a common humanity. Everyone has problems, and everyone craves love, even if the details differ. Everyone is going to suffer, and die. The grand narratives of humanity apply to all of us. The other universal truth is that we are all unique individuals. There is no protagonist in any book that can perfectly represent you, unless that protagonist *is* you. There is no teacher that can perfectly represent you, unless you *are* that teacher. Every trans person lives a different life, every east indian person lives a different life, unique from all other people who you might group them with. Some people try to find a middle ground between common humanity, and unique individuality - but this leads us to toxic tribalism, the worst of both worlds. It denies humanity to those outside our group, and it destroys our individuality by insisting we prioritize group identity over our own individual identity. The demand that books be judged by the demographics of their authors, rather than by the value of their contents, is a consequence of this kind of bigotry. Instead of asking the question, "do these books in elementary and middle school libraries contain inappropriate sexual content", the woke will ask, "what victimhood group do the authors of these books belong to"? I am an excessively open and tolerant parent - I talk about very explicit adult topics with my kids at ages that other parents might not. But that's my prerogative, not the school district's. It is reasonable for me to have the expectation, that I don't have to test every school water fountain for contaminants and diseases, and it is reasonable for others to have the expectation, that they don't have to review every book their child picks up in the library for filth. I might choose differently than others on when to raise adult topics with my children, but the choice belongs to parents, not hyper woke librarians, nor national organizations in other states with political agendas. I understand the Board is working on the problem of age inappropriate books as fast as they can, but I'd like to ask them to commit to the principle that in the future, our school libraries will be as clean and safe as our drinking water. I'd also like them to commit to the principle that we should be encouraging our children to be able to see themselves in all others, from boring straight white males, to fancy interstellar wizards of color, rather than demanding token demographic role models. Thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

Last month, we heard a lot regarding age-inappropriate sexual materials in our school libraries. We had a bunch of very concerned mothers asking for greater consideration of their parental prerogatives, and we also had some very concerned children worried about author diversity. The claim that the sexually explicit books were actually being targeted because their authors were minorities, just isn't believable. There are all sorts of minority authors with conservative viewpoints that would be warmly welcomed by concerned parents. Dave Rubin, Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell, Dinesh D'Souza, Candace Owens, and Ben Shapiro are all well respected minority voices, and their books are not at all sexually explicit. These gay, black, female, immigrant, and jewish voices represent a wide swath of superficial diversity metrics, but also represent strong, conservative values. If there is a concern with a lack of diverse authors, let's join together in identifying books from minority authors that are not sexually explicit, and represent conservative values. As for access to sexually explicit materials, let's acknowledge the fears of both sides. If you put parents in control of what is age-appropriate, you could see some parents abuse that control. Some parents might groom children into underage sexual activity by normalizing underage sexuality. Some parents may repress their children's exploration of sexuality and sexual identity. Some parents may even go so far as to hormonally and surgically abuse their children before their age of consent, leading to permanent body changes, sterility, and other negative health outcomes, for children who would otherwise live happy homosexual or gender non-conforming lives. If you put schools in control of deciding what is age appropriate, you could also see some schools abuse that control. Some schools may groom children into underage sexual activity by normalizing underage sexuality. Some schools may destroy an age of innocence, by forcing unwanted explorations of sexuality and sexual identity on children unready for those burdens. Some schools may even go so far as to promote the hormonal and surgical abuse of children before their age of consent, leading to permanent body changes, sterility, and other negative health outcomes, for children who would otherwise live happy homosexual or gender non-conforming lives. Both options can lead to very bad outcomes, and by recognizing that, we can at least have some common ground between both sides. Despite the risks either way, the only rational path forward is putting parents in control. My father had a trick to keep me and my brother from fighting - he'd give us a candy bar, and have one of us split it in half, and have the other one choose which half to take. This worked no matter who split it, and no matter who chose which half. With an education system currently dominated by left-wing activists, people on the left might think it a great idea to take away parental control. But once that precedent is set, and the pendulum swings back the other direction, leftist parents are going to be very unhappy with conservative education systems imposing controls on their children. Ultimately, this can be solved fairly with technological parental controls, giving parents notification, and opt-in mechanisms for specific library books for specific ages. This isn’t a perfect solution, but it is one that works no matter whose ideology is dominant in the school system, protecting everyone from potential abuse. Until such a system is in place, I respectfully ask the Board to work on expediting and prioritizing the removal of sexually explicit materials from our school libraries. Thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.