The war against children’s innocence continues to shamelessly push the boundaries of age when it comes to exposure to sexual content. Schools are embracing Drag Story Hour for children, adding pornographic “children’s literature” to school libraries, and encouraging children to question their gender, and even socially transition, without parental knowledge or consent. This is a nightmare for American kids.

The government has neither the intrinsic right nor the responsibility to engage with children about their sexuality. That is a role by nature delegated to the parental authority. In the last several years, the government  and its officers have adopted the “caretaker” model in regard to children, taking the old schoolteacher understanding of in loco parentis to the extreme of eliminating the parental role altogether.

Children ought to be in school learning how to read, write, make friends, use their imaginations, and just be kids. They should be given the space necessary to learn, make mistakes, and grow in a safe environment, and not be forced to confront sexual topics before they’ve even developed sexually.

The Stop the Sexualization of Children Act will prohibit the use of federal funds for any activity or literature that depicts sexual content to children under the age of ten. This includes drag story hours, drag shows, sexual literature, and topics involving gender ideology. It gives parents a private right of action against any federally funded entity that exposes their young children to lascivious content, and any entity guilty of two or more violations in five years will lose its federal funding for three years.

The bill states the fundamental truth that, “parents and legal guardians have the right and responsibility to determine where, if, when, and how their children are exposed to material of a sexual nature…” It is not the responsibility of the government or any person unrelated to the child to determine when it is appropriate to introduce a child to such intimate and private topics.

American Principles Project is proud to endorse the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act. We believe this legislation is essential to protecting our children’s innocence and ensuring their grounding in a healthy and wholesome childhood.

We need the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act to protect kids from harm:

• Children are being prematurely exposed to mature sexual content.
  • Books like “Gender Queer,” whose language is censored on adult platforms such as Twitter, are placed and kept in school libraries against parental wishes.
  • This behavior grooms children by normalizing otherwise outrageous interactions with strange adults, desensitizing children to healthy relationships and boundaries, and putting them in the path of those who would take advantage of their naivete.

• This bill will put a stop to the abuses already happening nationwide.
  • In New York, $207,000 was spent on arranging Drag Queen Story Hours at 34 different public elementary, middle, and high schools.
  • Schools across the country have begun to hold an annual Jazz & Friends National Day of School and Community Reading, where they encourage kids to read books about trans-identified children.

The Stop the Sexualization of Children Act is not the perfect solution and end goal, but a stepping stone. Ideally, we should be able to protect all minors from predatory sexual grooming, and we encourage every member of Congress to consider a bill that goes farther to protect children beyond the age of ten from exposure to things like radical gender theory in the vulnerable early teen years. But until such legislation is introduced, we must protect as many children as we can. We cannot afford to wait any longer while more children are brainwashed and seduced by the system. We encourage all members of Congress to cosponsor this legislation, and we urge leadership to call it for a vote next year.