March 17, 2022
by Julie Quist
PDF version of article
Presentation to Becker School Board by Julie Quist (PDF)
Becker School Board & CPL in the News!
On Monday, March 14th, people arriving to hear the presentation to the School Board at the Becker High School Performing Arts Center were greeted by a lobby filled with chanting, protesting students. Their central chant, “No other side, To our pride!” summed up the entire evening.
That slogan captured the emotional outrage percolating in Becker for weeks, outrage baked into a major article in the nearby local daily, The St. Cloud Times and picked up by other media outlets around the state and country. Headlines in numerous publications said a ‘hate group’ was being allowed to speak to the school board. It was the talk of the town having been repeated hundreds of times on social media postings. The young people’s emotions had been whipped into a frenzy.
Two local residents, Betsy Armstrong and Chris Klippen, both accomplished attorneys and former Becker school board members, along with myself representing the Child Protection League (CPL), gave a public presentation to the school board that was continually drowned out by chants, yells, slurs, and catcalls from protesters. The adults in charge didn’t clear the theater. They did not control the mob.
Our presentation offered balance and counterpoints to an 80-minute presentation OutFront MN had given to the Becker School Board several months earlier. OutFront MN is a politically charged gender activist group which considers itself the arbiter of what is true about gender fluidity and gender identity policies. Many school boards across the state use them as a final authority, and no supplemental information is ever provided. Transcript of the OutFront presentation (PDF) to the Becker school board.
The young people’s drumbeat chant demanded complete censorship of all information other than what OutFront MN had provided. No other information should be allowed to challenge the “truth” that gender is a continuum of identities unrelated to biological birth; that gender and sex are separate; that people can cross over from one gender to the other, or people are neither gender, both genders, or can change genders on any given day. Their perceived gender is based upon personal feelings.
Their demand is that we must all affirm the shifting feelings of others and also affirm that this gender continuum is true. Thus, scientifically based information to the contrary must be shouted down.
Not only are challengers not to be allowed to challenge and questioners not allowed to question, but challengers and questioners must also be labeled haters. To the enforcers of their “truth,” any challenge to their new social concept of human sexual identity is hate.
The Becker school district is in crisis. And it’s not only Becker.
When education is no longer a pursuit of truth, a pursuit of knowledge, and a pursuit of information, it ceases to be education. It is something else entirely. It’s indoctrination.
Students are literally being taught to close their ears, their eyes, and their minds to information that doesn’t conform to their already accepted conclusions. Instead, they are taught to denigrate, intimidate, and agitate. This is a public mockery of education. March 14th was an unfortunate display of this crisis in education.
Critical thinking requires information. Without information, students lack the tools to think and to draw their own conclusions. They become highly vulnerable to manipulation by adults and easily caught up in mob mentalities.
The media closed itself to information as well. Not once did CPL receive a single phone call or email asking for any background information. Nobody inquired to substantiate facts or accusations. Instead, everyone ran with a ten-year-old fake news story from Rolling Stone magazine and the “hate” label of a long-discredited leftist activist attack group, the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC traffics in labeling any person or group who disagrees with them as haters. One sample: Controversial presentation at Becker school board draws outrage from LGBT groups
Closing off information and free and open expression of differences leaves only power. The loudest and the strongest get to decide what’s true and what we get to hear. Censoring the “other side” denies everyone access to the information they may need to discern reality.
The Thought Police are ruling our young people, locking them into a prison of permissible thoughts. They are teaching them to refuse to listen, to investigate, and to question. They are teaching them to mindlessly follow. They are shackling the brains of our youth.
It’s time to unlock the prison doors. Liberate our kids. Stamp out the Thought Police.
Let our children think!
Becker School Board & CPL in the News!
Following the March 14 meeting, the news media picked up the story. Interestingly, CPL was never interviewed for any of the articles and each article fed off the next one touting the same incorrect information. (See below articles discrediting the Southern Poverty Law Center)
- Becker School Board Meetings (note the March 14 meeting had “technical difficulties”)
- Becker students, teachers raise concerns as school board allows anti-LGBT presentation March 10, 2022
- Minnesota school board clears anti-LGBTQ+ hate group presentation March 12, 2022
- Controversial presentation at Becker school board draws outrage from LGBT groups March 14, 2022
- Becker students protest as anti-LGBT group presents to school board March 15, 2022
- LGBTQ students mount protest March 17, 2022
- Commentary: In Becker, there is ‘no other side to our pride’ March 19, 2022 by Julie Quist
- Gender Justice was beyond troubled to hear that the Becker Public Schools school board invited an anti-transgender and anti-gay hate group to speak at their March school board meeting. March 21,2022
Note: Keep in mind, the presentation at Becker made no recommendations about what their gender policy should be. - Letters to the Editor March 24, 2022
- Support for students who shouted down speaker offering school board presentation on transgenderism March 25, 2022
- MN Child Protection League board member shouted down during presentation on transgender issues March 29, 2022
- NCAA looks to phase in rules for transgender athletes March 31, 2022
- Matt is Back from On The Ground April 6, 2022
Julie Quist exposes the ‘Gender Unicorn’ they teach our children. She was recently ridiculed for delivering a presentation at a school board meeting in Becker, Minnesota. April 6, 2022 Audio: Julie Quist at 31 minute mark - Two Becker school board members resign following anti-LGBTQ presentation April 18, 2022
- Becker school board selects 2 new members to fill vacancies May 3, 2022
Articles discrediting Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
The following articles confirm that the Southern Poverty Law Center that has morphed into a left leaning, bias organization.
- Southern Poverty Law Center Settles Lawsuit After Falsely Labeling ‘Extremist’ Organization
- SPLC denounced as ‘thoroughly disgraced’ after labeling pro-life, family organizations as ‘hate groups’
- The Southern Poverty Law Center is Ensnared in a scandal that threatens its survival
- The SPLC’s Fall From Grace: How a Civil Rights Group Became a Threat to Free Speech
- Exaggerating Hate Pays: Scandal-Plagued SPLC Has Millions in Offshore Accounts, Half a Billion in Assets