Quick answer
What are gender secrecy policies in schools?
Gender secrecy policies are school rules that require staff to keep a student's new name or gender identity from the student's parents. In the documentary America's Moms, Defending Education says it has counted more than 1,100 public schools, serving 12.3 million children, with such policies.
For immediate release · Wrong Speak Films · — Who gets the final say over a child's education — parents, or the school? America's Moms follows parents who showed up at school board meetings, in courtrooms and in state legislatures to answer that question, and the backlash they faced for doing it.
Parents at school board meetings — and the FBI memo
The film revisits the 2021 memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland that directed the FBI to look at threats around school board meetings, which parents saw as treating them like domestic threats. It includes congressional testimony from an FBI whistleblower who says he was sent to a school board meeting parking lot to record license plates — after attending meetings himself as a parent.
Gender secrecy policies
A panel on law and policy describes "gender secrecy" policies: rules that require school staff to keep a student's new gender identity from parents. Defending Education says it has counted more than 1,100 public schools, serving 12.3 million children, with such policies.
Parents tell what this looked like in their own families. One mother tells her school board that staff changed her daughter's name, gender and email in school records without her. Abigail Martinez describes how California took her 16-year-old daughter from her home after she did not affirm her daughter's new identity — and how she lost her daughter.
Mahmoud v. Taylor and opting out
Speakers celebrate the Supreme Court's decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Montgomery County, Maryland case that lets families opt their children out of lessons on gender and sexuality, and say more cases on parents' right to know are on the way to the Court.
Teachers unions and school choice
The film puts footage from the National Education Association's convention next to parents and officials who say teachers unions have pushed politics into the classroom, and state leaders who credit school choice with giving families a way out.
Questions
- What did Mahmoud v. Taylor decide?
- In the film, parents and lawyers describe it as the Supreme Court ruling that lets families opt their children out of classroom instruction on gender and sexuality that conflicts with their beliefs.
About Wrong Speak Films
Wrong Speak Films is an independent documentary film production company founded by author, speaker and filmmaker Adam B. Coleman, also the founder of Wrong Speak Publishing. Its documentaries include America's Moms, Not Standing Alone and The Illegal Highways.
Press and interview requests: contact Wrong Speak Films.