Senate Democrats recently voted down an amendment aimed at notifying parents at Department of Defense (DOD) schools if their children want to transition genders.
“When our brave men and women are fighting on the battlefield, their children must be protected from government-funded indoctrination,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said in a statement.
The amendment would have required DOD schools to notify parents of any matter relating to their child’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being, and ensure that legal adults are aware of the healthcare support their minor dependents receive.
Blackburn cited a July 2021 report by the Daily Signal that said there is video evidence from the Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA)’s Equity and Access Summit in May 2021 that showed a seventh grade language arts and high school humanities teacher telling other teachers to protect children from parents who do not know about their child’s “transition.”
Another presenter at the summit, an English and drama teacher in Stuttgart, Germany, said to “out” children to their parents would be “unsafe” and put them “at risk” at home, and school might be the only safe place for them to be their authentic selves with their chosen “safe” adult, the report said.
The other Blackburn amendment would have required the DOD to brief Congress on its spending on DEI initiatives.
“These proposals are not controversial. Democrats should be happy to support them and help refocus the energy and effort at the Defense Department where it belongs – on fighting our adversaries,” Blackburn added.
The amendments were to the annual defense authorization bill for 2023 that authorizes DOD activities and spending, known as the National Defense Authorization Act. Senate Democrats voted down the amendments during a committee meeting last week on their draft of the NDAA, known as a markup.
The markup will be introduced in the Senate, where it will be considered, then later meshed with the House’s version for final passage in both chambers, before being sent to the president.
“The U.S. military must focus on confronting the New Axis of Evil – Communist China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. These regimes do not care how woke our military is or what our soldiers’ pronouns are,” Blackburn said.
“Pentagon leaders should be spending their time learning lessons about their disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, not promoting critical race theory and wokeism,” she said.
Breitbart News reported in February that since President Joe Biden took office, the military has spent at least 5,889,082 man hours on climate change and DEI-related activities, according to Senate Republicans.
Follow Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong on Twitter or on Facebook.