First graders who can “discuss, identify, and explain important LGBTQ+ symbols” will be considered “prepared graduates” under the newly implemented standards.
Colorado’s new LGBTQ social studies standards, which include first grade lessons on LGBTQ history, transgenderism, and the rainbow flag, is age-inappropriate and pushes a radical agenda, some parents in the state complain.
“I don’t want my first grader learning anything about LGBTQ issues at all in school,” a Colorado father of a first grader who asked to remain anonymous told The Daily Signal. “If there was no agenda, then it wouldn’t be taught. For the schools or the district to have an agenda is the same to me as indoctrination.”
The Colorado State Board of Education approved the new social studies standards in November 2022 to take effect in fall 2024. The standards incorporate the “historical and civic contributions of LGBTQ+” in first through 12th grade history and civics curriculum.
The Colorado Department of Education did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
In first grade civics, the education department recommends children read “Sylvia and Marsha Start a Revolution,” the story of two black transgender “women” who “helped kickstart the Stonewall Riots” and “dedicated their lives to fighting for LGBTQ+ equality,” according to the description of it on Amazon.
Other in-class reading includes “The Story of Pete Buttigieg—Mayor Pete,” a children’s biography of the first openly gay presidential candidate, now the federal secretary of transportation, and an article about the current governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, who is gay.
“Indoctrination to me means that the schools feel there is a necessity to override parenting, given there’s inherently going to be some inconsistencies with many families’ parenting and instruction to their children, and any school’s social agenda of this sort,” the first grader’s dad said.
Colorado state Rep. Brandi Bradley opposes the standards because they teach children a “false narrative” and lead them down a path “to lifelong sterility and mutilation,” she said, referencing transgenderism.
“This is child abuse, plain and simple,” Bradley, a public school mom, told The Daily Signal. “It’s pedophilia. It’s sexual perversion.”