Recently, an Enfield, Connecticut public school administered a sex questionnaire to eighth-graders using pizza toppings to identify their sexual likes and dislikes. The assignment asked students to create their own pizzas using a variety of toppings to indicate sexual preferences. Olives, for example, were to represent giving oral sex, and cheese was the code word for kissing.

Blaze Media reported the atrocity on February 10, quoting the questionnaire as follows: "Now that you know this metaphor for sex, let's explore your preferences! Draw and color your favorite type of pizza." Blaze further wrote that the assignment — which included an image of an empty pizza dough round — instructed students: "What's your favorite style of pizza? Your favorite toppings? What are your pizza no-nos? Now mirror these preferences in relation to sex!"

The students were to color their pizzas by inserting the toppings of their choice, creating a picture that revealed to teachers and administrators their most personal sexual information. But as one parent later noted to the local NBC News affiliate: "This assignment is prompting kids to become sexually active before their time."

When details of the assignment came to light, parents were outraged. They contacted Parents Defending Education, which documented the particulars on its Connecticut chapter website. Then they showed up en masse at the next Enfield school board meeting to voice their objections. Using the familiar pattern of public school districts administering an odious assignment then claiming it was done in error when parents push back, Superintendent Chris Drezek told the angry crowd that the survey had been posted by accident.

According to Patch.com, the superintendent claimed: "The simple truth is it was a mistake. I know there are some who may not believe that, I know there are some who don't necessarily want that answer, but... there was no hidden agenda, there was no secret cabal to indoctrinate kids on something. They sent the wrong document. None of us are happy that it happened, and no one feels worse than the person that did it. I owe it to that person to stand up here and tell them, I've got your back on this one. I'm moving on, for them and for the 5,000 kids we've got to worry about."

But most parents weren't buying it. One mother caused a ruckus when she delivered several pizza boxes to the podium desk where parents and citizens are allowed to speak. Another mom eloquently testified:

Since when has it become acceptable for a teacher to ask a student what his or her sexual wants, desires, and boundaries are? Maybe our board members would like to answer these questions as our eighth-grade students were asked to do. No? Do you object and find it incredibly uncomfortable? When we reached out for clarification, we were informed that the incorrect version of this assignment was posted in the curriculum and inadvertently used in the classroom. The coordinator claimed to have caught the error but failed to post the edited version. Why didn't the teachers catch it? Do they just blindly follow the curriculum and not question the morality of the assignments required for the unit? Why didn't the curriculum committee catch this? What is their role if not to oversee the curriculum and make sure these types of mistakes don't end up as homework for our children? This type of assignment, whether an accident or not, is unacceptable.

But the Enfield questionnaire is nothing new, although the pizza concept may be unique. The focus on leading school children to develop an inordinate fixation on sex has been in place for decades, and as Education Reporter has often described, the assignments and surveys have become increasingly pornographic. The good news is that, with the help of parents' groups that are popping up like spring flowers, they are being exposed as never before, and more and more parents are closing ranks to fight back.

Pornographic books

Another area of parental concern involves the pornographic and otherwise objectionable books assigned to students and available on both school and public library shelves. In Wyoming, the attack on parents protesting pornographic library books became so intense that a county commissioner ended up resigning over his public anti-parent rants.

According to conservative news source WorldNetDaily (WND), the national pro-family organization MassResistance began documenting the Wyoming situation nearly a year ago, and is now reporting on the departure of Campbell County Commissioner Daniel Reardon. Wyoming MassResistance activists described in a February 9 online post that Reardon compared parents to Nazis during a meeting last summer, where parents adamantly objected to what they considered pornography in the public library. Reardon further accused them of "ignorance and hate."

"When it comes to arrogant anti-family public officials, parents don't have to just sit and take it," the MassResistance activists wrote. "But they have to be willing to take a very strong stand and be persistent.

"Like most areas in Wyoming, Campbell County is quite conservative," the post noted. "But unfortunately, liberals and RINOs have been elected to key positions. Last summer, local MassResistance parents began complaining to their County Commission about the pornographic and obscene LGBT books for children and teenagers appearing in the public library. Some of the graphic homosexual books for young teenagers are sickening even for adults."

County Commissioner Daniel Reardon "was particularly hostile to the idea of shielding children from obscenity and LGBT pornography," the post read. In a July email, Reardon "smeared parents" for objecting to a transgender performance for children at a local library. Then, during a County Commission meeting on August 12, "Reardon suddenly launched into an angry rant against the parents in the room."

He defended library staff and the bureaucratic "processes that are in place" for book selections and pointed out that forms are available which allow parents to challenge the selections. He claimed that "'censoring' LGBT books (i.e., homosexual pornography) was equivalent to censoring books on guns, the military, blacks, or religions other than Christianity.

"Then he really went off the rails," activists reported, blaming parents for "not doing their jobs" and "not supervising what their children are reading in the library." He said parents need to "stop talking about censoring, taking books out, burning books, and going back to the days of the Nazis."

When one parent angrily shouted out that the commissioner was lying about parents, Reardon "had a Sheriff's officer escort the man out of the room." He then scolded parents: "Don't tell us we're not doing our job. We are doing our job."

Reardon's outburst was obviously meant to intimidate and silence parents, but MassResistance relates that it had the opposite effect. Parents continued speaking out at commission meetings and aired their concerns on social media. Last October, the commission banned all public comment in order to keep parents from complaining at the meetings, which caused more outrage.

Then on January 5, 2022, without prior notice and just weeks after the library board chair departed from her position, Reardon abruptly resigned from the commission, citing fears of COVID-19 and the fact that he had moved to another county. His relocation, however, had taken place well prior to his resignation.

Wyoming MassResistance activists note that Reardon's successor, commissioner Don Hamm, is more in tune with their views. According to parents who met with the three potential replacement candidates, "Hamm was right on their wavelength regarding the library problems."

Campbell County parents fully expect the commission to repeal its ban on public comment, once another of the family friendly commissioners becomes the new chairman this month. And they are hopeful that even bigger changes may be ahead.

'Too Woke' for San Francisco

Parents are even rising up in an unlikely location, the liberal/progressive city of San Francisco. Fox News reported on February 16 that residents had voted the previous night to recall three sitting school board members. The city's mayor, London Breed, conceded that school board President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga, and Commissioner Alison Collins — "pushed progressive politics rather than act in the best interest of children during the pandemic." Pundits observed that the city's policies had become "too woke" for San Franciscans.

The board members were criticized over a variety of issues, including a failed attempt to rename 44 schools honoring historic and public figures whom it claimed were guilty of "racism" and "sexism," including Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Some parents complained about the elimination of merit-based admissions and the board's general lack of concern for education. Fox News Contributor Leo Terrell accused the board's policies of "harming children," and noted that "parents have had enough." He added that board members "were playing woke-ism, renaming schools, and keeping children at home" without a scientific basis for doing so. He stressed that "the damage has been done—these kids have been damaged."

The Independent Journal Review reported that ousted school board president López whined that the recall was the "consequence" of fighting for racial justice. But many parents disagreed, including Asian Americans in particular. After board members labeled them "white supremacists," they turned out in droves to help oust the offenders.

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