‘Radical’: Parental rights advocates sound the alarm on Biden DOJ, FBI cozying up with LGBT activist groups

(Daily Caller News Foundation) – Education and parental rights advocates are sounding the alarm on a new White House initiative to have federal law enforcement and national security agencies work “hand-in-hand” with LGBTQ activist groups.

To celebrate Pride month, the White House announced that the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, FBI Field Offices, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Community Relations Service (CRS) and the Civil Rights Division will work with LGBTQ communities “victimized by hate crimes” to increase the reporting of such incidents, which may potentially include “misgendering” or separating sports on the basis of biological sex, according to a Thursday press release. The latest initiatives may be used by the federal government to target and silence parents who are fighting against gender identity lessons and initiatives within the classroom, the advocates told the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

“This is certainly something for all parents to be concerned about,” Laura Zorc, the director of Education Reform for Building Education For Students Together, an organization focused on increasing parental rights in education, told the DCNF. “I see it as another way to weaponize the federal government against parents. My chief concern is a repeat of 2021, where the Biden Administration and DOJ united with far left entities, like the teachers union. They will use their power, and this pipeline for ‘LGBTQ hate reporting,’ to target anyone that objects to their coercion and antics that limit our ability to disagree.”

Federal law enforcement has been used to tamp down on issues, such as education, that do not align with the Biden administration’s plans.

In 2021, the National School Boards Association sent a letter to the Biden administration comparing parents at school board meetings to “domestic terrorists,” which caused Attorney General Merrick Garland to direct the FBI to “use its authority” on people who protested at school board meetings. In March, the House Committee on the Judiciary found that Garland had “no legitimate basis” to issue his order and that his directive was “very poorly received.”

In total, the FBI opened 25 “guardian assessments,” or tips, into “school board threats,” with six being handled by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, according to the committee’s report. The FBI opened a tip into a mother because she was a gun owner and a member of a “right-wing mom’s group” while another tip was opened into a father because he “rails against the government.”

As a part of the White House’s initiatives, the DOJ will partner with local law enforcement to increase the amount of officers who are trained “on engaging with transgender individuals,” the press release stated. The DOJ will also work with LGBTQ communities “victimized by hate crimes”  to help “improve the reporting” of such incidents.

The DOJ’s “LGBTQI+ Working Group” will meet quarterly with the Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division to discuss how to address LGBTQ discrimination, the press release stated. The Biden administration will also appoint a new Department of Education position that will be in charge of combating the banning of books from schools that parents and parental rights in education advocates have deemed pornographic.

The new position will serve to “address the growing threat that book bans pose for the civil rights of students,” the press release stated.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will host bi-monthly “threat” briefings for LGBTQ organizations and offer resources for local leaders, the White House press release stated. The DHS, the DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will work “hand-in-hand” with LGBTQ activist groups to provide “safety resources” so the “organizations can remain safe spaces for the community.”

“Instead of protecting children and female athletes from harm, the Biden administration is now retaliating against people who reject radical gender ideology by expanding avenues for them to be charged with hate crimes,” Jessica Anderson, Heritage Action executive director, told the DCNF. “Parents across the nation should be concerned about the extreme lengths Biden’s DOJ and LGBTQ activists will go to force their agenda on children and target those who stand up for traditional values. This ‘partnership’ is just another example of Biden weaponizing federal law enforcement agencies against conservatives and parents who don’t buy into the Left’s narrative.”

US President Joe Biden, US First Lady Jill Biden, and Australian-US singer-songwriter Betty Who arrive for a Pride celebration on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on June 10, 2023. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

In June 2022, the Department of Education (ED) proposed changes to expand protections under Title IX, a landmark civil rights law intended to curb sex-based discrimination in federally-funded education, to require all sex-separated spaces, bathrooms and locker rooms to be separated on the basis of gender identity rather than biological sex, if the rule was to change.

The ED proposed additional changes in April to Title IX which would prohibit public K-12 schools and colleges from adopting a “one-size-fits-all-policy” that bars students from joining sports teams on the basis of gender identity.

Throughout the country, parents are turning to school board meetings to retaliate against gender identity curriculums and policies which separate sports teams and bathrooms on the basis of gender identity, rather than biological sex; in California, carrying posters reading “parental choice matters” and “stop grooming our kids,” parents protested the showing of a video to elementary school students which explained that “some kids have two mommies, some kids have two daddies.” Muslim and Christian parents pushed back against a Maryland school board that does not allow parents to opt their child out of LGBTQ lessons.

“The politicization of law enforcement under the current administration makes the new partnership among the White House, FBI, DOJ and LGBTQ groups very worrying for parents who do not march in lockstep with the radical left,” Kimberly Fletcher, founder and president of Moms For America, a coalition of mothers working to promote family values, told the DCNF. “In recent years, the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center has maligned Moms For America as a ‘hate group’ simply for standing up for liberty and parental rights, the Biden administration has sent law enforcement after parents at the behest of the teachers’ unions, and White House officials have worked hand-in-hand with Big Tech to censor speech on the internet. This new ‘partnership’ will just open another front in the administration’s ongoing assault on constitutional principles and individual liberty.”

The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.