*Please be advised, the link referenced in this article contains graphic content.
In March, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed SB-5395 into law, mandating comprehensive sex education (CSE) for grades K-12. At the time of signing, Washington was at the start of a strict, state-wide lockdown, and schools were shut down. This gave concerned parents and educators time to innovatively organize and resist CSE despite the lockdown.
For weeks, parents and volunteers from Washington Parents Rights in Education put on masks, gloves and rain ponchos to run drive-thru petitions in parking lots of businesses and churches across the state. Relying on social media and word-of-mouth, they hoped to collect 139,000 signatures to request that the issue be turned over to the voters in a referendum in the upcoming election. They gathered more than 246,000 verified signatures putting Referendum-90 on the November 3rd ballot.
Jennifer Heine-Withee, organizer of Washington Parents Rights in Education, said, "This is not just a general sex ed. This is grossly inappropriate and highly sexualized content." Parent groups in the state purchased sample curricula approved under SB-5395 and published excerpts and analysis* so that voters can see what the children of Washington would learn in schools. At Abstinence Clearinghouse, we believe that parents are the primary sex educators of their children-not the public school system.
To read more about Referendum-90, click here.