Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has continued to push forward with his pro-parental rights agenda as he campaigns for state lawmakers ahead of this November’s elections in the state.
Youngkin’s administration recently slammed the Fairfax County Public Schools’ decision to defy the state’s guidelines against radical gender theory.
“The law requires the Virginia Department of Education to provide model policies and requires school boards to adopt policies consistent with those provided by the Department,” his administration said in a statement. “The Fairfax County Public Schools policies diverge from VDOE model policy guidance and perpetuate a false notion that FCPS knows what’s better for a child than a child’s parent. The Fairfax County school board is expected to follow the law.”
Youngkin also took a shot at teachers unions during a recent event in Georgia, saying that the organizations are literally designed to be “a political organization” that his administration has to “battle every day.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Virginia's recovery:
"I don't think there's any better example of bad leftist policies that weren't working and then common-sense conservative policies that do work…"pic.twitter.com/deE3gi3lHq
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 28, 2023
Youngkin also said during a separate recent interview that the government’s policies about parents should be common sense, “parents are in charge of their children’s lives.”
“The kids don’t belong to the state. They belong to the parents and to families,” he said. “And they have the ultimate say in decisions that that child is going to make with a parent, not with a bureaucrat. And finally, at the end of the day, these are the exact same school systems that fought us on allowing parents to decide whether children wear a mask or whether sexually explicit materials could be removed from the curriculum, or that schools were going to stay shut for a long period of time, unnecessarily long, which resulted in massive learning loss.”
Youngkin’s continued push to advance parental rights comes as Democrats have attacked him over the issue, including Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA).
“You think about the DeSantis model. Governor Youngkin has often talked about Governor DeSantis of Florida as kind of a role model for him as governor,” Kaine said. “Look you see efforts underway in Virginia in some local school jurisdictions to ban books, pull books out of school libraries, to pull books out of the public library system.”
The Daily Wire has previously reported how schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, removed a book titled “Gender Queer: A Memoir” from library shelves due to its highly graphic nature.
Youngkin has also faced attacks from local media over the matter, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch, whose editorial board argued that it was “just difficult, if not impossible” to see how “removing sexually explicit books and focusing on who gets to use what bathrooms are going to help any student or school improve academically.”
The editorial board mocked those who don’t want their children to be taught about “gender-switching athletes stealing lacrosse scholarships from pigtailed, cisgender girls,” and downplayed the national security threats posed by Chinese-controlled TikTok.
“It’s difficult, if not impossible, to see how removing sexually explicit books is going to help why student or school improve academically”
A real argument from the @RTDNEWS editorial board against Youngkin’s parental rights efforts. https://t.co/H1ckvBpUkw
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) August 27, 2023
