NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T he Pennsylvania State Education Association, a teachers’ union, is taking an aggressive step toward intensifying the culture-war battle over gender ideology in the state’s public schools. In late April, the Norristown Area School District held a press conference at which PSEA and district officials celebrated the implementation of the union’s “I’m HERE” badges among staff.
Along with displaying the pride flag, the badges include a QR code that will take students and staff to the website of the LGBTQ caucus of the National Education Association. The website includes a “resource toolkit” with links to other sites that provide not only purportedly supportive information to LGBTQ kids but sexual content as well. Among the vivid examples is a link to the Teen Health Source website, which includes how-to advice for sex acts. For anal sex, it tells kids to “make sure that the person being penetrated is relaxed” and to “use lots of lube!” When engaging in bondage, it prudently advises teens, “Make sure that the ties don’t cut off blood to any part of the body.”
But beyond bondage advice and guides on how to “organize like a sex worker,” NASD superintendent Christopher Dormer and the PSEA officials at the announcement repeatedly claimed that the badges were markers of safety for certain students. Alan Malachowski, president of the PSEA Mideastern region, put the issue in harsh, if not hyperbolic, terms. “This isn’t just about supporting teenagers, this is about life and death,” he said after noting Trevor Project statistics, since debunked, about suicidality rates among “transgender and non-binary” youth. And a disclaimer on the “I’m HERE” website says, “If you are not a safe person or do not support LGBTQ+ youth or issues, please do not wear or display the ‘I’m Here’ badge.”
In effect, PSEA officials and the superintendent are giving staff a choice between wearing the badge, thereby branding themselves “safe,” and not wearing it, likely making themselves appear as a bigot or even dangerous. This is hardly a fair request by some of the most powerful officials in an educator’s professional life, especially when one considers the faultiness of the suicide claims.
A 2022 study in the journal European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, for example, found that suicidality among “sexually diverse adolescents” varied negligibly when compared with youth with similar mental-health comorbidities. And another 2022 study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that “70 percent of pediatric patients are diagnosed with autism, ADHD, or some other mental-health problem prior to receiving a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.” In other words, the suicidality that Malachowski referred to is usually a by-product of preexisting mental-health problems — problems that the badges ignore.
Not all of the press conference was so bleak, however. Despite the implied criticism of noncompliant staff that they were inducing suicide, the theme pushed by Dormer was one of “inclusivity.” He declared that the district worked hard to ensure “inclusivity, equity, and belonging” and repeatedly uttered the phrase “all students,” though he simultaneously gave a nod to the obvious exclusionary nature of the pride flag.
“It is my hope that all of our staff will voluntarily participate to wear the ‘I’m HERE’ badge to show that we want to provide safe spaces with safe people willing to support all students and all staff, and in particular our LGBTQIA students and staff,” he said. After all, the badges are for a particular subset of students who identify with one of the letters in the acronym LGBTQAI — making any claim that they’re a sign of welcoming for “all students” an oxymoron.
After asking to preview questions, Dormer did not respond to a request for an interview. The PSEA also did not respond to a request for comment.
One can’t blame him given what the badge reveals about culture-war activism by unions in public schools. To the PSEA, adopting the badges appears to be a marker of one’s adherence to the left-wing cultural values it advocates: a wearable symbol of allegiance cloaked in the vocabulary of safety. “And we are so proud that the Norristown School District is progressive enough to say, ‘We’re just about keeping kids safe,’” Malachowski said.
Seeping out of that sentence is an underlying truth that government-sector unions such as the PSEA have shifted their focus far beyond mere workplace collective-bargaining negotiations and even beyond involvement in partisan politics. They’re wading into bald-faced cultural activism and using the power they’ve amassed over public-education institutions to proselytize to children. To say these actions are controversial would be an understatement.
The badges sparked outrage among parents in the Hilliard City School District in Ohio when they were implemented in September. After the initial backlash, the district superintendent there claimed that the website was only for “adult learning” and advised staff to cover the QR code. Parents are suing the district nonetheless, claiming that the badges amount to indoctrination by public-education staff and facilitate inappropriately “intimate conversations about sexual behaviors” with minors. In national media, the parents have amazingly been labeled the aggressors in the culture war enveloping their district.
It’s yet to be seen if the activism of PSEA and its allies in the NASD will spark similar outrage among Norristown parents, an increasingly blue suburb of Philadelphia. If it does, though, one can be sure that they too will be called aggressors, if not dangerous. The truth is plain nevertheless: The PSEA is actively injecting left-wing ideology into schools and even pushing staff to bear a controversial symbol on their bodies. It’s difficult to imagine a more aggressive way to instigate a culture-war battle in a school district.