Victory For Parents -Transparency In Schools – Representative Ken Ivory – Huge victory for parents in Utah! Children are being exposed to horrific material in schools. A recent bill passed in Utah protects children from this material and provides more transparency in schools. Representative Ken Ivory joins us to discuss this issue and the victory this bill gave. Tune in today!

Air Date: 04/12/2022

Guest: Representative Ken Ivory

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live. We are taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Thanks so much for joining us. We’re glad you’re here. And we hope you visit our website as well. That’s wallbuilderslive.com. That’s the place where you can make a one-time or monthly contribution, which helps us to reach more people with the truth. Those finances matter, folks. It’s the fuel in the tank. It’s what allows us to train more pastors and legislators and young people and all the different things we’re doing here at WallBuilders to make sure we can save our constitutional Republic. And we appreciate you coming alongside and being a part of that.

My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach, here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders, and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. You can catch all three of us in Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. That’s the new course we came out with last year that has exploded all across the nation; over 12,000 constitution coaches now hosting it in their home and at their church and wherever we can get citizens together to talk about a biblical worldview of how this should work and then how do you do it under our particular constitution? How do you become a good biblical citizen with a positive influence on your neighborhood, your state and our nation?

In fact, if you’d like to see biblical citizenship in-person, we’ve got a lot of the folks that star in that series that are going to be together in Dallas at the American Journey experience. That’s going to be pastor Rob McCoy, David Barton, Tim Barton, Mark Meckler, myself, Rick Green, also Kirk Cameron, Allen West, Brad Stein, just a lot of folks that are going to be there in person to share with you and have a biblical citizenship opportunity in-person, but also be able to get a coach training. So you’re going to have a chance to be trained on how to be a Constitution coach and do those things in your home and at your church. So be sure to check that out on our website today at patriotacademy.com. We would love to have you there in Dallas with us on April 22nd and 23rd. It’s the biblical citizenship weekend. It’s a Biblical Citizenship in Modern America course, but live and in-person.

Alright, David and Tim, we’ve got Ken Ivory state rep from Utah going to be with us a little later in the program, actually, a great piece of legislation passed there on transparency in what’s going on at the schools, especially with this radical sexual agenda and all of these crazy books they’re putting in the libraries and making available to literally the children. And so we’re finally beginning to defeat some of that, and Utah may be leading the way on this.

David:

It’s interesting that over the last 18 months we’ve seen a lot of stuff come to light about what’s going on in schools that parents didn’t know about. And so we’ve seen a lot of parents running for school boards, just every year a lot of states have elections, some every two years, some every year, but we’re seeing elections. And just all across the nation, there’s an uprising, parents didn’t like what was happening with the critical race theory, they didn’t like what was happening with a lot of stuff that was going on. And one of the things that is really stood out is you’re teaching my kids what about sexuality? Wait a minute, kindergarten, you’re teaching how to change genders and kindergarten?

Tim:

And certainly, something that’s been in the news big time now has been for Florida, where with what Governor DeSantis did by signing this piece of legislation and all of a sudden, Disney comes out being so woke and this is terrible, because you’re saying that we can’t teach kindergarten through third grade kids about different kinds of sexuality and gender identities and they can’t even say gay, which actually isn’t even part of the bill, but right as part of the slogan they’re using to try to show how hateful and racist this is.

Now, wait a second, you’re talking about kindergarten through third grade, like we’re talking children, and the only thing the law says is that you actually can’t include in your curriculum, actually, in your curriculum, part of your lesson plans for the day to cover things on different sexual preferences and human sexuality and gender identity. And there’s actually teachers who have quit over the last couple of weeks, literally, teachers have quit, they’ve gone on social media posted.

 

They’ve had videos crying and screaming and literally throwing fits on social media from Florida because they’re not allowed to teach this anymore, which is very revealing, that if this is what teachers were wanting to do, that this is why people have talked about that this is kind of grooming what they’re doing. I mean, this is some crazy, terrible stuff. And now, there’s a tension of this because what’s happening in Florida, but it’s not just Florida which is really kind of the point of where we’re going today.

David:

And actually the word you just use, Tim, grooming is really important because that has become a buzzword. I’ve heard more of that in the last month than I’ve heard in the last 10 years. And so trying to get a current handle on grooming, I looked up definition and here’s a good definition for what it means. “Child grooming is befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child to lower the child’s inhibition on sexual issues. It’s used to lower minors and to further sexual conduct and practices.” But the key word here is ‘lowering inhibitions’. And so that’s what grooming is, it is getting on prep for all sorts of law in your moral standards. And don’t think there’s objective moral standards. It’s desensitizing. And I’m just immediately reminded George Washington that religion and morality is the foundation of the nation. And if you attack religion and morality, you’re destroying the nation. And that’s what they’re doing. They’re grooming these kids, Tim, the word is out there, the word you used, and they’re trying to remove their moral inhibitions on anything. And so we’ve seen a legislator, Ken Ivory in Utah really take this on. This is the biggest piece of legislation we’ve seen the last several years addressing this issue. And I think it’s going to be a model for the nation.

Rick:

Ken Ivory, our special guest, stay with us, folks, we’ll be right back on WallBuilders Live.

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Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. It is great to have Representative Ken Ivory from Utah with us. You’ve seen him in Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. So all you coaches out there, all you folks that are having your biblical citizenship classes in your home or at your church, you know, Ken brings the heat in that course, explains things in such a powerful way in a simple way where even guys like me can understand it. Ken Ivory, good to have you on, bro, thanks for coming back.

Ken:

Rick, great to be with you always, brother.

Rick:

Well, I appreciate you, man. Appreciate all that you’re doing. You know, big, big victory here on actually getting parents not just involved, but giving them the tools they need to keep an eye on what’s happening in their local schools and get some of this sexualized content. Goodness! I mean, first second, third graders they’re putting this stuff in front of. It’s unbelievable. You guys just had a big victory in Utah. Tell us about it.

Ken:

Yeah. You know, it really was outstanding. Rick as you know, I was in for nine years, stepped out for a couple years, came back in appointed in November, so I’m kind of behind the gun. And I had a whole bunch of parents come to me and ask me, do you have any idea the stuff that’s in schools, and we’ve been trying to petition the school districts to get this out? I said, well, show me what you’re talking about. Because we had our Governor and others going, oh, my gosh, we don’t want to be booked burners. I said show me what we’re talking about.

And Rick, it’s just ghastly. I mean, it’s ghastly the kinds of things they’re trying to pass off for literature and for cultural materials. It’s just flat out X-rated. I mean, just there’s no way that this could not be full on X-rated, it fully satisfies the criminal statute for pornographic and indecent material in the state. And we have people in the schools going, oh, my gosh, you’re a book burner if you want to get this stuff out of schools.

And so, I was pretty exercised by that. We opened up a bill. We started working, in fact, we connected through David with Michael Ferris at the Alliance Defending Freedom. And Michael was great. He helped us a lot with some of the early versions of the bill and comments throughout. And so we pulled together what was H.B. 374 sensitive materials in school and dude, it was a battle. Every step of the way procedurally, substantively, the type of defense that was just really intense, you wouldn’t think that it would be hard to get something like that through. But it was a flat out…

Rick:

Yeah. You would think this would be one everybody’s jumping on board and going, oh, of course, I want to be for protecting the kids from this stuff. But no. It’s no longer secretly done or just the subliminal messages. I mean, they are in your face with this stuff, and they don’t back down. And I mean, even in the legislature, you had to fight to get this done.

Ken:

You’ll appreciate this stuff. So there’s a website stoputahporn.com that these parents put together. I mean these parents, bless their hearts, these moms and dads across cultural, political, ideological lines, they’re like, I don’t want my kids seeing that stuff in school. I don’t want them exposed to that. Stoputahporn.com is a website these parents put together, and in there you can see the books and see the images.

Rick, when I was presenting this on the floor, I was thinking how am I going to help them understand and how graphic this is without repeating what it says and without showing the images? And I was really concerned about that because I don’t want to be distributing and repeating what these things are. And it’s just graphic.

So I got a little brown paper bags. And I put the flyer in the little brown paper bags and put a warning label on it, and handed that out to all the committee members. And I handed it out to everybody on the floor, the little brown paper bags and if you want, and they’re looking at it, and they’ll pull it out just barely and shove it back in. During one of the hearings, we had a parent sent this flyer to someone on the Education Committee, and one of the members on Kansas side of the aisle actually told the parents, I sent this material to our legislative council, and they said, you better stop sending this to me because you’re distributing pornography by sending these images to me. Think about the irony, right? Think about the irony.

Rick:

Oh, my goodness! It’s okay to distribute it to our kids, but don’t distribute it to these adults at the Capitol. And it kind of reminds me, Ken, I mean, I don’t remember where it was, but in one of the school board meetings where parents were standing up, a parent started reading from this type of book that was at this school, and they gavel him down. And how dare you talk about that kind of stuff in public, yada, yada, yada? Same thing, right, this is doubled standard, we’re going to shovel it into our kids. But we’re going to admit that it shouldn’t be in the public square. Well, anyway, go ahead.

Ken:

No, it really is, right. And what do you do as a parent? You don’t want to be perpetuating this. But somehow we have to really get out how graphic and how far down the road this is. And Rick, what we found in the course of all of this, there was a Supreme Court case about 40 years ago, PICO is the name of the case, P-I-C-O, and three Judges on the case gave their opinion about whether or not summary judgment was appropriate.

The case was sent back saying, hey, there were disputed issues of material fact and it was sent back. Doing that, three of the Judges said, well, we think this is what the standard should be. You know, as a lawyer, right, three judges on the Supreme Court does not make a majority.

Rick:

Yeah.

Ken:

But three judges weighed in on what they think the standard in school should be. And they basically said, the students have a right to receive this material. Now, the schools can keep out whatever they want, they can decide whether to put books on the shelf or not put books on the shelf, they have limited shelf space. And so of course, they can do that. But if it ever sneaks over the wall, you can’t get it out. Three judges said that and that’s what all the school people have been following. That’s what the Library Association follows. It’s completely ludicrous.

But that’s what they’ve been basing these things on. And they’re trying to get that established as black letter law. And so to bring these kinds of challenges and then we really need to look, the next step is to look at how in the world are they even improving these things coming into schools and making sure that we get that process looked at? Because as it stands right now, if it sneaks over the wall, it’s like pulling teeth to get it out. So there’s a bunch more work we need to do on this.

Rick:

For most places, and Utah’s probably not that different from most states, what is that process at the local level? Does the school board get involved in each of those books? Or are they only get involved whenever somebody brings it to their attention? And like you said, once it’s already in then it’s super hard to get out?

Ken:

Right. And Rick, think about the things I keep wondering what materials are being taken off the shelf for this stuff. We’re probably jettison George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to put this stuff on the shelves because there’s only limited shelf space. Right? So to your question, what the process is we’re still drilling down on that and we don’t exactly know. As near as we can tell, you’ve got these massive book distributors and they put together packages of books. And so they’ll say, hey, here’s your first to third grade package of books and these are all award winning books. And they do it, Rick, they’ll take these books out. They’re just graphic and vile and they’ll give him some award. You know, somebody somewhere will give him an award.

And then the other thing we ran into is, is oh, my gosh, you’re racist. There was a black author and there was a Latino author, and there was an Asian author, and you’re banning these books because they’re black, Latino or Asian. I had an African American gentleman come up into the minority caucus meeting and say, look, I am offended that you would try to say this is racist, that there are not more any other literature representative of African Americans than this. That just completely offends me.

And Rick, I was so embarrassed. The minority caucus just shouted him down and ran him out of their caucus meeting. I went in there in good faith with this gentleman. I think, he would maybe connect and they just shouted him down and said, oh, this is literature and you’re trying to ban literature and that book saved my life and things like that. It was really very, very sad to think that these types of materials that we’ve got the criminal standard for what students could access on their devices in school and we say, look, if you access on your device, this is indecency, and this is pornography, and that’s criminal. But that didn’t apply to the same materials that the school provides. And so we just took that same standard and said, well, let’s apply that to the materials for the schools. If it’s good for the students, it’s good for the schools. And it’s all we did, you know.

Rick:

So that’s essentially what the legislation does, it takes that same standard?

Ken:

Takes that same standard and says, look, if it’s indecent pornographic for students to access it on their devices, it’s indecent pornographic for you guys to provide it.

Rick:

And so those that then empower the parents in a district to basically take this legislation, and go to the school board and say, listen, we know you’ve got these books in the library or wherever accessed at the school that violate this standard?

Ken:

It does. So what we did is we put a prohibition. So we define sensitive material, and we use this standard that was applied to the students and now we apply it to schools and call it sensitive material. Then we describe what is a school setting, and we defined that really broadly: assemblies and whether it’s written or if it’s online, or if it’s a live presentation, everything is called school setting and sensitive material. And so then that’s prohibited. We exempt out the health material and the medical material, the college and career technical material, we exempt that stuff out. And then we require the state school board to talk about every challenge, what policies they put in place, challenges and where the books removed, and they’ve had to come back to the November interim committee to government operations and education and explain what they’ve done.

And then we also went to our attorney general’s office and, and said, hey, you got to give them some guidance and some training on where the line is on this stuff and keep the sensitive material out. So that’s step one. And it’s a good step. It’s a big step. But what we’re finding, there’s a whole lot more we need to do. We need to really look at how this stuff is getting in the first place, because that’s their game. The game is if they can get it over the wall, then it’s almost impossible to get out. The ACLU comes in and sues.

Rick, get this, I had a school district superintendent come in and testify on the bill. And he said, we removed a couple of books and the ACLU came down on him like a ton of bricks and said, we’re going to sue you forever and take all your school budget for taking those books out. You know, because they would talk about their standard and their process and technicalities of getting rid of the books. And so by putting this blanket prohibition and it gives that school superintendent a safe harbor to go in and take those out. So he was begging for it, say, no, absolutely, we need this. So that was a good thing.

But next step, we really got to drill into how are they getting these books in on the shelves and deal with that process a lot better, and then look a little bit more deeply at the process for parents. And originally, I had a private right of action in the bill and we got all kinds of opposition on that. So we scaled it back a little bit. But if this doesn’t work, then that’s something we need to look as step two.

Rick:

Well, in fact, you mentioned the whole idea of training and informing the school employees that are in the position of making these decisions of what the law is. And we tend to assume that they know when this kind of stuff gets passed or how this thing works. And you and I both, and of course, David and Tim and I have for many years fought this battle on separation of church and state and religious expression and that sort of thing in the schools.

And I can remember 20 years ago, one of the school districts in my legislative district not wanting to allow ‘In God We Trust’ posters, the national motto on their campus because the attorney advising the school board knew so little about the issue and knew so little about the First Amendment and the court cases and all that because that’s not his area of expertise, right, that he was advising him, oh, just stay away from this, just don’t touch it and we don’t have to have to deal with it.

And so I think that’s what’s happening here. A lot of these schools and the people making these decisions aren’t necessarily the evil ones with the agenda one to shove this down our kids. But they’re actually naive. They don’t know the law. And they’re scared of the ACLU coming in and suing them and so they’re just rubber stamping and they’re in the air and they’re putting it in. So I think you’re onto something there too in terms of the training. And I’m not defending the public schools. Believe me, you know where I am on that. But I think you hit something there that I think can be something that each state could look into to try to limit how much of this damage is being done.

Ken:

Yeah, I think you’re right. We’ve put so much on the teachers and you’ve got a lot of really good conscientious teachers that are just trying to do their best and they got kids that have been pulled out for two years with COVID that haven’t socialized. I mean, they’re really dealing with a really, really challenging situation, Rick, I mean, it is tough. And then in a lot of schools, they’ve done justice reform and reformative justice, those kinds of things with what they call the end-the-school-jail-pipeline. And they’ve taken away any of the disciplinary measures that schools have. And so now they’ve got a really intense situation with a lot of students that haven’t socialized.

So yeah, the teachers and administrators are very overloaded. But to your point, ACLU comes in just loaded for lawsuits, and they don’t want that. And they’re not really sure what the standard is. Give you a perfect example. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had in a high school right here in my district, we had kids with Turning Point USA, I mean, high school kids, this is great kids want to stand up for liberty. They had a little table at lunch and they had some posters. And one of them said, I love America always. And the other one was socialism sucks.

Now I don’t teach my kids I don’t like the word sucks personally. I think that’s a little, we can use better language than that. But it’s not like it’s a bad word. Socialism sucks. And I love America always. They came  and took the posters down and said, because they’re partisan and not showing the other side, they took their posters down and took their table down and made them close shop basically. So we went in, and we’ve been working on that one as well. In fact, we got Alliance Defending Freedom working on that issue as well. Those are great folks.

But yeah, I think you’re right, they just don’t understand they haven’t been trained. There’s so many issues out there. And so we’ve got to come in and take the approach as parents, as leaders, as legislators, take that approach of teaching first, helping them understand, I mean, clearly, this is not good to have these materials in there. And then we got to call them to account, right. We’ve got to put it on them, make the demand and see how they’re going to act. And then if they don’t act at that point, well, then we’re going to have to get a little more prescriptive in how we act.

And so hopefully, they’re going to take this opportunity to clean these things out of the shelves in Utah schools. And we’ll look at how we block these things from getting in the first place. If they don’t, we’re going to have to ramp it up a little bit. Hopefully, we don’t have to go there. But we’re ready to do that if we need to.

Rick:

Well, and I think, the mama bears are ready too, brother. I mean, they’re all over the country saying I’m ready to fight this battle, you’re talking about the heart and soul of my kid. And that’s one of the encouraging things we’re seeing across the country. And even as you mentioned, the Turning Point thing, I mean, they have done such a phenomenal job of firing up a new young generation to get involved and to understand the principles of liberty. And I’m so impressed with the things that they’re doing over a turning point. So man, I’m with you, brother. This is good stuff. I think folks should be encouraged by this passage in Utah, let’s get it done in other states and give parents the tools they need to fight these battles at the local level. As always, Ken Ivory, I appreciate you, brother, and appreciate you fighting for truth.

Ken:

Hey, you always bless my life to be in your orbit, brother. So, House Bill 374, if they’re interested, Utah House Bill 374. And if they got any information or if they need any more reach out to me, they can get to me through you and happy to help in other states. But Rick, keep up the good work. I’m so grateful for what you and David and Tim and others do to stand on this year. You’re warriors around the state that are teaching people.

We own this government, right. Most revolutionary thing that ever happened in the history of the world was that the people are sovereign, governments exist to secure the rights of the people. And then we created a brand new kind of government that never existed in the history of the world before since. We created two governments, not one that balance each other. And we gave few undefined powers and national government, get numerous and indefinite powers right at home at the state where it’s accountable, where it deals with our unique communities, and it’s up to us, the people, to train our state legislators to understand they’re responsible for that balance, their number one job that secures our rights. So keep up the good work, my friend. I’m sure grateful for you. You’re in my prayers all the time.

Rick:

Right back at you, brother. That’s Ken Ivory, state representative from Utah. Back now with David and Tim Barton. And of course, guys, we’ve worked with Ken for years, he’s been to the ProFamily Legislators Conference many, many times and brought other legislators from Utah, but so glad to see him with his victory in Utah.

Tim:

Yeah. And  I think it’s interesting, even as he’s explaining that when he was trying to figure out a way to do with some level of decency, help people on the committee in these different areas, know what was actually being taught to students, and so, covering it up with a bag so that it’s not quite visible and kind of  warning label, look at your own risk. But then even when you have the legislative council saying, hey, if you send an email with this on there, they’re not telling Ken this, telling somewhere in opposition, if you send this, you are distributing pornography, and that can be a problem for you. This is literally what is being taught in schools.

And we get so often public school teachers who listen to our program and we’re so grateful you listen, and we know there are some incredible Christian warriors and champions out there in public school who are fighting to make a difference and we’re so grateful you’re there. However, we also recognize so much of the evil that is happening in public school. And actually, maybe tomorrow we can get into the reality that this is not only happening in public school, it’s kind of being embraced in education across the board.

And unfortunately, Christian schools and public schools, certainly university, but these are the challenges we are seeing articles on a daily basis of some of this nonsense coming out. Some of the things we can find encouragement in is the fact that there’s guys like Ken Ivory working in states to help do things to protect students, to remove some of these things from the curriculum, to protect them from the library. There are people fighting to make a difference. But the reality is parents need to wake up and recognize that this stuff is out there, it is in schools and parents need to get involved in the process, show up at your school board meeting, show up and let your voice be heard. We have to protect our kids from this kind of nonsense.

Rick:

Alright, folks, out of time for today. Make sure you check out our website today at wallbuilderslive.com. You can learn more there about the program and all the different activities we have going on. Also, want to encourage you to visit patriotacademy.com. If you would like to join us for the Biblical Citizenship in Modern America live and in-person weekend, April 22nd, 23rd at the American Journey experience, not only will you hear from Pastor Rob McCoy, David Barton, Tim Barton, Mark Meckler, Brad Stein, Kirk Cameron, Allen West, I mean, I’m forgetting people, there’s so many that are going to be involved that weekend. But not only that, you’ll get to do a tour of the American Journey experience, which is absolutely amazing. Hope you’ll check that out at patriotacademy.com today, it’s April 22nd and 23rd and it’s almost full. So get registered today. Thanks so much for listening. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.