A Florida activist group has created a new program to push back against conservative parental rights organizations working to prevent the sexual grooming of children.
Equality Florida held an event on Aug. 15 to announce the start of Parenting with Pride, an initiative that will push back against Moms for Liberty, a conservative group that is advocating for parental rights in education and the limiting of sexual material available to children in schools.
Parenting with Pride used the press conference to call for the protection of LGBTQ students and teachers, as well as an end to bans on books that teach kids gender theory, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
“This is what Florida families really look like,” the Sentinel quoted Brandon Wolf, spokesperson for Equality Florida, as saying. “For years, parents and families just like the ones behind me have been under assault. … Politicians have waged war on these families turning their classrooms into political battlefields and descending school districts into utter chaos. But today marks a turning of the tide. Today marks a rise in the resistance against that agenda.”
Moms for Liberty, which has chapters throughout the U.S., has more than 120,000 members and has been the tip of the spear in the battle over parental rights. As a champion of conservative causes, the organization has drawn the ire of the political left.
In June, the advocacy group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) added Moms for Liberty to its “hate map,” a directory that purports to track groups threatening minorities and members of the LGBTQ community. Soon after, an analysis showed that the SPLC exaggerates reported “hate groups” by 267 percent.
“As we watch anti-government groups like Moms for Liberty rise to prominence with seemingly endless funds and direct lines to our state’s far right legislators, their influence has caused Florida to pass some truly heinous laws,” Jen Cousins, co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read project, said during the event. “The so called ‘freest state in America’ started banning books about queer families, including the much-loved board book about penguins called And Tango Makes Three.”
Wolf said parents of LGBTQ children must stand up and voice their concerns.
“No more attacks,” he said. “No more using our classrooms as political battlefields. No more using our kids as pawns.”
