CPAC: Parents, GOP reps speak out against CRT indoctrination

In a Friday townhall session hosted by Candace Owens titled "Pupil Propaganda," she and a panel of four discussed current topics regarding schools from across the country, including pornographic books, masks, teachings on gender, and more.

The panel consisted of Virginia mother Stacy Langton, North Carolina Rep. Ted Budd, Illinois Rep. Mary Miller, and National Review editor Deroy Murdock.

Talking with Langton, the Daily Wire host and the parent discussed finding pornographic books in her son's school library in Virginia.

"I had seen a couple of stories on the news about some parents taking these pornographic books that they had found in their children's, you know, coming home with their backpacks, or whatever. And I thought, well, is that a thing now? And that's something I should be worried about it? Should I be looking at what's going on at the high school?" Langton asked.

She continued on to say that she looked these books up in her son's library and found that they were indeed there. She took the books to her local school board meeting and read them out loud, showing photos from these books. "And they didn't like that very much," said Langton.

"Did they not like that the books were there? Or did they not like that you discovered that the books were there?" Owens asked.

"They didn't care that the books were there, they didn't like that I brought it to the public's attention," Langton responded, who said she felt it was her duty as a parent and as a Christian to bring this forward.

"This shouldn't be going on in our schools, we actually have obscenity laws in the state of Virginia, every state has them. And you cannot present this type of material to children. It's actually listed on the American Bar Association's website as proving we cannot show sexual images to children under the guise of even education. So I had a duty as a parent to bring this to the awareness of other parents," Langton said.

Owens shifted to talking with Budd about concerns parents have regarding masks in schools, especially when a large number of states have dropped their overall indoor mask mandates, and concerned parents speaking out at school board meetings.

"Well, what we're seeing is more engagement than ever from parents," Budd noted. "We've pretty much  — school boards for a long time, people were not engaged, they would look to the federal races, the State Senate, the US Senate and the State House. And now they're coming out of the woodwork, great parents, Mama Grizzlies, to run for their school boards. So this is fantastic."

In terms of the US House, Budd said that they are seeing legislation come forward recognizing the rising instances of psychological damage, depression, anxiety, and self-harm in these children.

"We're seeing a rise of this, double the amount of self-harm cases from our adolescents and down. We're seeing a 25 percent increase of children that are five to 11 that are calling [with] self-harm and having clinical depression. This is very, very wrong. I mean, it's destructive to our children," Budd said.

Turning to Miller, Owens asked her, in regards to psychological damage, to talk about what's happening in the classroom in terms of the "trans agenda" in classrooms, and teaching kids to pick their gender.

Miller started by talking about when she asked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona about how many genders there is.

"He sent out an order to all public schools stating that if a teacher or student says that there's two genders, that they're guilty of harassment, which is setting up our teachers to be fired, and our students to be disciplined," said Miller, who added that Cardona deflected her questions on gender.

"To me this seems like active child abuse," said Owens. "We are purposefully teaching children the wrong ideas," questioning later how this isn't a matter that the police should be involved with.

"Your kids coming come confused about their gender, that could lead to, you know, divesting psychological consequences," she added.

"It's really about grinding down every institution that has made our country great," said Budd.

Turning to Murdock, Owens asked him to speak to the differences he's seen in the education system compared to the '60s and '70s.

Murdock said that he grew up in Los Angeles, recited the Pledge of Allegiance, and learned history. He mentioned that topics like sex education and gender did not come up until junior high school. "And the stuff that's going on now that I hear about is just completely alien, this is dropped out of the planet," he said.

Murdock continued on to state that children today learn more about "hating themselves," racism, and "it's a totally different agenda.

"And it doesn't seem to be about learning skills so you can succeed as a citizen, or learning how to aid your country," he said. "I described the current government school system as a system of institutionalized challenges. I think that's terrible."

"And what's happening with race, I always say, like, the left has gotten so progressive, that it's become regressive, right?" said Owens.

"So they said, oh, we've got to break away from black Americans being systematically deemed underprivileged," said Owens. "So what we're going to do now is we've gone so far, we're gonna tell them that systematically that they're underprivileged, and white people forever been privileged.

Owens continued on to ask if black parents are recognizing "how generous" this way of thinking is, "and that their children are not learning anything of value that will help them become, you know, productive human beings in the future."

"I think you're seeing more black parents speak out at school boards, you see some videos of people at their school boards, black parents coming out saying things like excuse, my little girl's not a victim, my little boys aren't oppressed," said Murdock.

Continuing on, Murdock said that when people say how oppressed black people are, and how white people are oppressors, "Does anybody remember that we actually had a black president in this country for not four years, but for eight years?" he asked. "Does a racist country let that happen?"

Owens then pivoted back to talk with Langton about an organization she founded called Mama Grizzlies. Langton said the biggest issue she's currently working on is getting a labeling system for books, to prevent something like the pornographic book incident from happening again.

She said that, mirroring rating systems like the music and film industries, they want to get a rating on books they dubbed the "paw prints parental advisory."

"And that's because there's going to be some effort to sort of close a loophole that we have in some of the laws in this country, in every state that are exempting these types of materials in libraries. And that's how these radical librarians are getting away with this right now," said Langton.

She continued on to say that in the 1970s, it was intended for sex education to be taught, but not in the x-rated way it is now.

"So until that loophole can be closed on the legislative front, if we label the books, at least then parents won't be shocked when something is coming home in their backpack, it'll have a label on it, the paw print warning, and then you know, they would know, 'Whoa, there's something in this book,'" said Langton.

The conversation then steered towards talking about the legislative front of this battle, and what needs to be done.

Budd said that the Department of Education plays too large of a role in making these rules, and that this needs to be kept as local as possible. He also stated that the Department of Educations needs to reduce funding to schools that are teaching critical race theory.

"I don't think the Department of Education needs to be strong and it needs to be abolished," said Owens.