Three years ago, the parental rights revolution kicked off in Loudon County, Virginia, empowering parents all across the nation to stand up for the integrity of their children’s education and fight back against the pervasion of Critical Race Theory and gender ideology in K-12 classrooms. Now, less than five months out from Election Day, New Jersey Democrats might be laying the groundwork for yet another parental revolt in the Garden State—a move that could once again turbocharge the parental rights movement and have seismic effects on races up and down the ballot this November.
Earlier this month, the New Jersey Assembly Education Committee voted by a margin of 7-1-1 to advance Bill A3446—dubbed by Democrats as the “Freedom to Read Act”—which holds that “students have a right to access a diverse range” of content in the classroom. The bill also protects the ability of “school libraries and public libraries to acquire and maintain materials without external limitations.”
The legislation specifically states that “library material shall not be removed from a school library because of the origin, background, or views of the library material or those contributing to its creation” and prohibits any “censorship” of materials in school libraries. It also allows a school’s or district’s board of education to “have discretion in selecting, purchasing, or acquiring library material for inclusion in the school library.”
To many voters, at first blush, the framing of this legislation may appear inoffensive—and perhaps even admirable. No American of good faith, after all, is setting out, as the legislation claims, to baselessly “target” or “harass” librarians or otherwise impede the learning of American children.
But in reality, the legislation is a thinly-disguised attempt to enshrine legal protections for activist-minded educators to allow children access to inappropriate content and materials that push gender confusion and alternative sexual lifestyles on children. The law is entirely predicated on false narratives of so-called “book bans,” which arose following efforts from conservative leaders to pass laws to remove graphic sexual, pornographic, and other inappropriate content from school libraries and K-12 curricula.
As Jersey Conservative put it in a recent column, the bill is simply an attempt to “intimidate parents into silence by placing the full might of the law disproportionately on the side of government librarians.”
But despite Republican voters’ near-universal support for the cause of parental rights, only one of the three Republican members in New Jersey’s Assembly Education Committee voted against advancing the bill. One Republican abstained from voting, and the third joined the Committee’s six Democrats in supporting it—thereby allowing the bill to advance under the guise of bipartisanship and preventing Republicans from even waging a public relations battle over the legislation.
While the reasons behind the lack of Republican unity on the bill are not immediately clear, New Jersey Republicans have a clear and much-needed opening to usher in the next stage of the parental rights movement—the same movement that propelled Glenn Youngkin to the Virginia Governor’s Mansion in 2021. Youngkin’s victory notably made him the first Republican to win a statewide race in the Old Dominion in more than a decade, and gave Republicans in other left-leaning states good reason to believe parental rights is a winning issue.
“The parental rights movement has the strongest potential for grassroots organizing in New Jersey today,” the Jersey Conservative column continued. “And while the state’s Democrats seem to understand this (and are concerned by it), New Jersey Republicans are openly resisting the movement.”
Although the New Jersey legislation has thus far failed to elicit the same national media attention that helped put Youngkin over the finish line in Virginia three years ago, there appears to be the foundation for yet another parental rights revolution in the Garden State—if New Jersey Republicans, the conservative media ecosystem, and grassroots parental rights groups are willing to take advantage of the opportunity.
Though some Republicans may question the efficacy of a renewed parental rights effort centered in New Jersey, a historically deep blue state, conservatives have reason for optimism. The most recent general election poll conducted in the Garden State shows Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by a mere seven points (Biden carried the state by 19.5 points in 2020). And in 2021, incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy beat Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli by a resoundingly slim three point margin.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has recently pledged to expand the electoral map to states like New Jersey, as showcased by Trump’s May rally at the Jersey Shore that drew a crowd estimated at 100,000 people. Given how close recent statewide races in New Jersey have been—and how motivating the parental rights issue has been for Republican and Independent voters—conservatives there have every reason to make the anti-parental rights platform of New Jersey Democrats a major campaign issue.
If Republicans make clear to voters that Democrats are seeking to distribute sexually graphic content in their children’s classrooms for the purposes of promoting far-left gender ideology, 2024 could quickly emerge as the next chapter of the parents’ rights movement.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
