PERRY: GOP legislators plunge into delirium with a threatening letter to parents

Brace yourself, Colorado.

You’ve witnessed the ludicrous faux-fight over White children in public schools supposedly being taught to hate themselves for how minorities and gays were treated by American settlers and beyond.

The circus is about to move out from the realm of the far-right fringe that’s been creeping around school board meetings. The mainstream Republican Party of Colorado is entering the center ring in an effort expand this fear-mongering nonsense.

In a signed letter last week to “Colorado Parents” from Republican members of the Colorado House of Representatives, GOP state lawmakers offered this threat: “For years, Republicans have been warning about a radical leftist takeover of our children’s educational institutions, and those fears are finally being realized.”

More accurately, for decades, hysterical, far-righteous types have wailed about liberal teachers trying to brainwash innocent children with evil notions about equality for women, tolerance for non-Judeo-Christian religions, understanding and acceptance of homosexuality and the danger and toxicity of racism.

Mostly, teachers remain overwhelmed just trying to get kids to learn to read, master a few math skills and keep their masks over their noses.

It’s all “radical,” perhaps, if you live in a commune where select women are forced to prominently wear a red letter “A” on their chests. But in a state where the governor is gay with husband and children, and in a town where the chief of police is gay, local Muslims run a large community center and make up part of the legislative coalition, and the death of Elijah McClain at the hands of Aurora police still permeates the public air, this is real life, not some kind of secret cabal.

Not so long ago, former Aurora-area state GOP Sen. John Andrews would not stop trying to get the state to force every public school to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

That really happened.

Andrews’ antics, however, paled to the side show by former GOP State Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt. While this Colorado Springs Republican, a former Navy chaplain, aka Dr. Chapps on his YouTube channel, made a living — really — railing against liberals trying to bend the minds of children, his speciality defamation was against gay and lesbian people.

In 2014, Klingenschmitt stated that then-Congressman Jared Polis — who is Jewish, openly gay and now Colorado’s governor — wanted to execute Christians. He went on in his Colorado Springs clerical career to compare President Barack Obama to a demon that causes cancer. In 2015, after the Boy Scouts of America lifted their generations-old ban on gay scoutmasters, Klingenschmitt said it would lead to a hike in child sex assaults. He ended his stellar career in politics by insisting that gay men should be banned from teaching because they are immoral.

Back then, most Colorado Republicans at least brushed all that off as at a little crazy talk and some even pushed back, pointing out that it was all wrong, hurtful and dangerous.

Not anymore.

Clearly taking their lead from national Republicans, these state lawmakers believe they can gain some of the political ground they’ve lost in Colorado by parading around the very stuff that has cost them so much political ground in Colorado.

Like Donald Trump and his far-right allies, these Colorado state lawmakers want you to believe that educators at your local schools are trying to bend history and young minds. They believe teachers are secretly trying to create an alternate reality in history and social studies classes about people of color in this country.

These Republicans are apoplectic in warning parents that history teachers here and across the country reveal an American history where minorities have been the targets of slavery, horrifying massacres, lynchings, red-linings and uncompromising discrimination.

My memory of learning about “American Indian” history in school was that everybody ate corn and turkey at a big community feast to create the first Thanksgiving back in the 1600s. From there, George Washington crossed the Delaware River and then we got electricity. In between, the “Indians” got their own nations, called “reservations.” Black people got civil rights and pinko commie hippies got kicked out of the country for protesting the Vietnam War.

In college, history teachers filled in the blanks for me.

And now, I have an opportunity to regularly talk with educators about how history curricula are compiled and how they’re delivered to students.

Contemporary history and social studies curriculum doesn’t focus on telling you how it was, it seeks to answer questions about why things are the way they are.

Japan, with a massive economy and worldwide edge on innovation, has no nuclear weapons and no real military to speak of because of how World War II played out.

Local high-school curricula that complete the picture aren’t anti-Japanese or pro-American. Teachers just seek to answer the question about why Japan is so different from other Asian powerhouses.

Likewise, there is not now nor has there ever been a movement in public education to make White Americans feel guilty for the ways Black people were treated by slave owners and their proponents.

But public education has evolved and teaches even young children that our communities and our nation are a collection of people from all over the world.

Out here, we call this “Aurora.” 

Colorado Republican lawmakers said in their letter to parents they are incensed that children as young as first graders explore how they are similar and sometimes different from their classmates because of their race, their ethnicity, religion, ability, gender and family structure.

“Children in these early grades are not equipped to engage with complex topics like these, topics that often confound even adults,” lawmakers say in their letter.

Maybe these Republican state reps are “confounded” by the idea that some of their peers are Black, or gay, or speak something other than English when the go home at night, but the kids are all right. They can, should, and do handle knowing that their pal Brian has two moms, either because his parents are gay or because they’re divorced and remarried.

Kids in Aurora, even the youngest, learn and can handle that some of us celebrate a new year in February with lucky dumplings, others in the fall with apples dipped in honey and still others in the summer, with solemness.

Education based on facts and reasoning creates tolerance and understanding, something this letter clearly is warning about and asking Colorado parents to politicize and fight against.

The letter goes on to lament how lacking the mastery of civics has become among the general population, something I can’t agree with more.

A perfect example is the myth among a vast majority of Republicans who think that Donald Trump could or did actually win the 2020 presidential election, or that the vice-president legally had the power to overturn the election and was wrong in not doing so. Or maybe that Constitutional scripts prohibiting the government from adopting one religion over another doesn’t apply to lawmakers who want to post Judeo-Christian “commandments” in schools and public places.

Rather than stoke unfounded fears about the purpose and effect of public school history and social studies education and curricula, I suggest Republicans actually shadow their kids in school, read the textbooks and learn something.

Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com