Vice President Kamala Harris spearheaded an effort last year to push sexualized content and other liberal ideals in schools on behalf of the Biden administration.
Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, visited a dozen schools in seven states with the promise she would “bring thousands of students together around the fight for reproductive freedom, common sense gun safety laws, climate action, voting rights, LGBTQ+ equality, and teaching America’s full history,” said a release by the White House about the campaign.
She has claimed her opposition to content restrictions is an issue of personal freedom and civil rights, trying to avoid the main objection lobbied against such material by many parents and education advocates: The books almost universally contain sexual content with LGBTQ themes aimed at young kids or political propaganda disguised as history.
While the Biden-Harris campaign visits last year were targeted at universities and colleges nationwide, the White House made clear its intent to mobilize both college students and “young people” in order to return explicit and politically charged content to all classrooms.
“The Vice President will highlight how the Biden-Harris Administration has delivered for young people, outline the work ahead to protect fundamental freedoms, and hear directly from students who are organizing on the frontlines of these fights,” said the White House announcement.
Harris has also suggested that those who wish to place age restrictions on adult content and controversial ideologies such as Critical Race Theory in schools are “extremist.” She also exaggerates the age restrictions as “book bans.”
“Extremist so-called leaders want to divide our nation by banning books, censoring American history, and taking away access to reproductive care. Know this: @JoeBiden and I will never back down in the fight for freedom and liberty,” Harris wrote on X.
“And yet, today, extremists pass book bans – book bans, in this year of our Lord 2024 – while they also try to erase, overlook, and rewrite the ugly parts of our past,” Harris said in comments at Selma, Alabama praising the “innocent people in Gaza,” in a further attempt to put parental rights in opposition to civil rights.
Harris made similar comments at the White House in commemoration of Black History Month this year.
“And yet, today, we see extremists who pass book bans – book bans in this year of our Lord, 2024. And these extremists not only try to erase the past but to rewrite it,” said Harris from the East Room.
Harris echoed the theme at a Biden campaign event in San Francisco, which raised more than $3 million from just 300 attendees, with ticket prices ranging from $3,300 to $250,000, according to the San Francisco Examiner – an event that included California’s Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and former Mayor Willie Brown, who previously dated Harris.
Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff, has also made similar claims in support of bringing inappropriate content back to school classrooms and libraries, under the guise of civil rights.
“I met with several women who are active in Families Against Book Banning. We can’t allow MAGA Republicans to ban books and prevent the teaching of America’s full and true history,” wrote Emhoff on X.
The Harris-Biden-Emhoff language is part of a deliberate attempt to paint conservatives as “extremists” threatening Americans’ “personal freedom,” said the liberal Atlantic.
Harris has repeated the talking point that parental rights are in opposition to civil rights, using remarkably similar language time after time.
“Extremists, so-called leaders, who want to distract and divide the nation as they ban books, as they reject history of America, history classes, as they criminalize doctors and nurses and attack the sacred right to vote…,” Harris told the winter meeting of the Democrat National Committee in 2023.
But which books?
A photo accompanying the Atlantic article likely signals what Harris really has in mind.
The photo, courtesy of The New York Times, features books that contain mature sexual content with an emphasis on LGBTQ stories, including: This Book is Gay, Lawn Boy, Gender Queer, Fun Home and All Boys Aren’t Blue.
Originally published by The Lion. Republished with permission.
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