Portland School District Indoctrinates Students To Become LGBTQ Activists In K-5th Grade

Portland’s public school system is indoctrinating its students to become queer activists as early as kindergarten through 5th grade.

Documents obtained by journalist Christopher Rufo show that from as early as kindergarten, students are taught the tenets of radical queer gender theory. They are taught that ideas about human sexuality are “colonized,” that white colonizers from Europe forced their views on other people and cultures, and that current discourse around sex and gender is still affected by colonization. The curriculum instructs children to experiment with their own gender expression, and to commit by as early as fifth grade to become queer activists.

The curriculum begins in kindergarten. Several PowerPoint presentations obtained by Rufo, entitled “Understanding Our Bodies: Kindergarten Health Scientists,” exposes children to talking about their genitalia, by framing it in the context of “being scientists to know about our bodies.” The presentations then show graphic drawings of male and female genitalia. The presentations place particular emphasis on the word “BODIES,” and refer to either a “person with a penis” or a “person with a vulva,” because, according to the presentations, “Any gender and kid can have any type of body.”

In first and second grade, students are indoctrinated into the basic tenets of queer theory. It teaches students to think about gender as a social construct. “Gender is something adults came up with to sort people into groups,” one of the presentations reads. Another presentation, entitled “Our Names, Genders, and Pronouns,” encourages children to present their gender pronouns.

Another presentation teaches students that “[g]ender is like outer space because there are as many ways to be different genders as there are stars in the sky!” In another presentation, students are exposed to gender pronouns, including transgender pronouns like they/them and ze/zir. “Or you can make up your own,” it states. It also says that students can go by more than one set of pronouns.

In third through fifth grade, students are introduced to “LGBTQIA2S+” concepts. Students are also taught to use gender-neutral terms for people: “girls and boys” is replaced with words like “learners,” “y’all,” and “folx”; words like “mom and dad” are replaced by “parents,” “family,” or “your adults”; and the honorifics “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” and “Miss” are replaced by the gender neutral “Mx.” In another presentation, students are introduced to the concepts of “cisheteronormativity,” which is used as a means of “oppression for nondominant” sexual and gender identities.

“Being straight and cisgender (cis) are both dominant identities,” the presentation says. “The culture, systems, and assumptions that everyone is straight is called heteronormative. The culture, systems, and assumptions that everyone is cisgender is called cisnormative. Therefore, the culture, systems, and assumptions that everyone is straight and cis is called cisheteronormativity.”

Finally, students are asked to make a “commitment to change” according to the tenets of queer ideology. The six commitments students are asked to make are: “I commit to learning more about what LGBTQIA2S+ words mean and how they have changed over time”; “I commit to learning about the history and leadership of Black trans women”; “I commit to practicing pronouns and correcting myself EVERY time”; “I commit to attending QSA/GSA and being a leader at my school”; “I commit to watching and reading books, movies, and TV shows that have LGBTQIA+ characters”; and “I commit to being my full self!”

The Portland School District is home to more than 49,000 students across some 79 schools in the city of Portland, Oregon.