In this episode, Jenny Beth sits down with Tina Descovich, CEO and Cofounder of Moms for Liberty, to discuss the nationwide movement empowering parents to reclaim control over their children’s education. Tina shares how Moms for Liberty grew from a local grassroots effort into a powerful force with over 300 chapters in 48 states. They cover critical issues like parental rights, gender ideology in schools, the truth behind comprehensive sex education, teacher union influence, and how everyday moms are winning school board elections. If you care about protecting kids and restoring academic integrity, don’t miss this conversation.
In this episode, Jenny Beth sits down with Tina Descovich, CEO and Cofounder of Moms for Liberty, to discuss the nationwide movement empowering parents to reclaim control over their children’s education. Tina shares how Moms for Liberty grew from a local grassroots effort into a powerful force with over 300 chapters in 48 states. They cover critical issues like parental rights, gender ideology in schools, the truth behind comprehensive sex education, teacher union influence, and how everyday moms are winning school board elections. If you care about protecting kids and restoring academic integrity, don’t miss this conversation.
X/Twitter: @TinaDescovich | @Moms4Liberty | @jennybethm
Website: https://www.momsforliberty.org/
Tina Descovich (00:00):
And teacher's unions have been putting their members on school boards for as long as you and I have been alive. If the teacher's union has placed you on the school board, the negotiations for the biggest part of the billion dollar budget, you have a member of the Teacher's Union negotiating with the teacher's union for the biggest part of our budget, the salaries of teachers, and that's unethical if you ask me.
Narrator (00:23):
Keeping Our Republic is on the line and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author of filmmaker and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she is most proud of is Mom To Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:55):
Today we are joined by Tina Kovich with Moms for Liberty. She's one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty. She runs the organization and she is a huge defender of freedom and parental rights. I'm really glad that you're with us today, Tina. Thanks for joining me.
Tina Descovich (01:11):
Of course, Jenny Beth, happy to be here with you to talk about Moms for Liberty anytime.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:16):
So tell the audience a little bit about how you decided to start Moms for Liberty.
Tina Descovich (01:22):
Wow. Well, I served on a school board from 2016 to 2020, and we'd like to say that we saw behind the education curtain when we served, because I started Moms for Liberty with a couple other school board members at the time, and we were seeing things from 2016 to 2020. We were seeing parental rights being stepped on in some districts gently and others dramatically. And then when 2020 happened, all of America saw behind the Education Curtain, they all saw parental rights getting stepped on. They all saw First Amendment rights getting stepped on, parents mics were getting shut off, they were getting thrown out of school board meetings and families were seeing the quality of the education being streamed into their living room, into their dining room tables with classes. And so everyone started to wake up and have the same concerns that I was having.
Tina Descovich (02:12):
And it was a frustrating time serving on a school board to capture people's attention about education from presidential debates that never mentioned education to local media, covering our county commission every single meeting, to never covering the school board meetings and the very important things that were happening. I just saw a time, an opportunity to capture America and show them what's going on in education. And so we came together and we launched in January of 2021. And I'll just say one more thing about this. Our plan was, I know I wrote our five-year business plan and it was in five years we would be in all 67 counties in the state of Florida. And we can talk a little bit more about where we are now, but I promise you that five-year plan went out the window in about two weeks.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:02):
That is amazing. And you lit a match and just a fire took off across the whole entire country from just the spark that you had because so many people, you're right. During 2020, we saw what was happening in the classrooms and some of us saw it ahead of time with our own interaction with our children and what was happening with the school system. But what we didn't realize, and this certainly happened with me, I thought the issue that I was seeing was a one-off situation that was a problem with a particular counselor and a couple of teachers in my kid's school. What I didn't realize is no, no, no. This is systemic. It is planned and it is happening all across the country. And for me, that's what I learned the most from what was happening with COVID. And I think that that is why people are like, yes, I want a group where I can go defend my children against what's happening in the classroom. And you filled that need for people.
Tina Descovich (04:07):
Yeah, it's really quite remarkable. Even I was astonished to as we grew and to more areas of the country learning that it's happening everywhere. And early on the media would come and do interviews and they kind of expected that we were creating the issues at the national top level and then telling everyone, go find these issues in your community and report back. It really is not what was happening at all. People were reporting up. And then you learned that inner city, New York City schools were teaching radicalism, but also Des Moines, Iowa. That was early, late in 2020, early in 2021 that I remember just looking at the website and going through it BLM in schools. So Black Lives Matter in Schools was being taught in Des Moines. And again, I expect it in New York City, not in Des Moines, Iowa. And the problem with the Black Lives Matter in schools curriculum is it has nothing to do with Black Lives or Black Lives mattering. It has 13 standards that they are supposed to follow and it's globalism and supporting transgender identity and all of these things that have nothing to do with actually being black. And so I was shocked and awakened, and I think all of America is now.
Jenny Beth Martin (05:20):
Yes, I think that's right. When you were on the school board, what were the things that shocked you the most that made you think you needed to start Moms for Liberty? What were the most shocking, alarming things you learned?
Tina Descovich (05:33):
So I am in a very conservative county. We're 60% red practically if not every single elected official throughout the county. And it's a pretty large county. A half a million people is probably a Republican or a very conservative Democrat if there are even any. And so things here weren't terrible. However, in about 2018, remember I served 2016 to 2020, these gender support guides started appearing in districts around the state of Florida in conservative districts. And they essentially said to teachers and school administrators and counselors that not only can a student pick their own new name and new pronoun, they could pick the restroom they wanted to use to identify within their gender. And this is all common conversation now, but in 2018, it was a little bit shocking. They could pick which locker room they wanted to change in and which gender they wanted to spend overnight field trips with.
Tina Descovich (06:30):
And when my friend in a conservative county called me who was on a school board to tell me in 2018 that her district was using this and that it never came to the school board. And those are major policy changes that should have gone to the school board, should have been debated publicly and voted on, but that these gender guides were just being put in as guides, not policy. And she found out that it was in her district. I remember the conversation in 2018, I remember saying, oh, I'm sorry that happened to you, but it would never happen here in my county, not in Brevard County, Florida, our superintendent, he's conservative. Our whole board is conservative. We would never, many of our teachers are, it would never happen here. And she laughed at me and I was pretty confident in what I was saying. And I came off the board in November, and it was within I think 60 days that a teacher sent to me the gender support guide in our school district that was the same exact one that was appearing all around the state. And now through Momster Liberty, I know all around the country and it's being fed in through these NGO nonprofits that are highly funded, very aggressive and have been working on this probably for more than a decade.
Jenny Beth Martin (07:46):
Yeah, I'm sure that they have. In my own school system in Georgia, my kids were coming home in middle school talking about how there was a friend of theirs who was a girl who thought she was a boy or a boy who thought she was a girl. I don't remember. I don't remember which it was, but I remember them talking about this. And it was a friend, so it was a person who they were friendly with. And I said, I'm not going to tell you to quit being friends with this person because middle school's hard enough. I'm not going to be a bully to some middle school kid. And I said, be friends with them, but remember, you two are twins, you're boy girl twins, and you've known since you were old enough to start pointing at one another when you were taking baths together as a little kid.
Jenny Beth Martin (08:42):
The difference in a boy and a girl and boys are boys and girls are girls. So as long as you remember and understand that you can keep being friends with the person. And then we just kept seeing more and more things creeping in around the entire country in our own county. Obama, back before he left office, he was saying that the locker rooms had to be open so the kids could go to whichever bathroom they chose to go to. And that was very alarming. I called my school district to ask if that was happening, and they just sort of hemmed and hawed and would not give a straight answer, I'm sure, because they knew if parents understood what was actually happening, parents were going to be irate, and yet they had to do what the federal government was telling them or they weren't going to get the federal funding.
Jenny Beth Martin (09:32):
So that was a problem. And then another problem that I experienced with my kids when they were in high school, I was just looking up a text message I sent after this meeting, which was in July of 2018. The counselor said, they don't teach Brit lit anymore because it's a bunch of old white men and they don't teach Brit lit anymore because Plato, who was not British at all, and Shakespeare are no longer important and the newer writings are more important. And I just was sitting there going, the newer writings are based on things that the older writings taught us to begin with. And if you're saying that old writings don't matter, then how do you explain the Declaration of Independence or the founding documents to our children? How do you explain that if you're just sitting there discounting that if it's old, it doesn't matter.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:30):
And the counselor did not have a good answer when she said that Brit lit wasn't important because it was dead old white men. I told her I was offended that she was complaining about white men to my white son who would later become a white man. And he had no control over it at all because that's how he was born. And she shouldn't be shaming people for how they are born. And this is, it's an even more conservative area than where you were at the time. It was voting like in the 80 percentile for Republican. And I just was blown away, but I just kept going, oh, it must just be a little pocket. This counselor must be a problem. No, no, no. It was going on everywhere in the entire country. And you have exposed that, and you're empowering parents to be able to push back with the tools they need to help protect their parental rights and make sure nonsense isn't being taught.
Tina Descovich (11:27):
I think that's the amazing thing. I mean, I have so many stories over my years of having children in school, the same thing, the light bulb going, you're like, what? My son, I've saved the project that he did. He's 24 now, but in seventh grade, this was the first time I was like, something isn't right. He did a project, he got a hundred percent, I think he even got extra credit. The teacher wrote, great job. He brought it home. I was like, oh, good job, honey. I opened it up and I look at it and it was a wanted poster for Christopher Columbus, and I was like, huh? And it said, wanted Dead or alive, Christopher Columbus for Crimes Against Humanity for stealing land and all of these things. And I really didn't know much about. I just remember thinking, we have Columbus Day. I always thought Columbus did good stuff.
Tina Descovich (12:19):
So what it started unusual Tina fashion is I bought every book I could find on Christopher Columbus. I read some of the translated actual writings from his journey. I want to know if I've been lied to my whole life, what is going on here? And I learned, no, I haven't been lied to my whole life. He was an inspired man who came here, and there's some discrepancies to our cute little 1492 Columbus sail, the ocean blue, but we still celebrate him as a hero who came over here and did all these great things. And yet he was learning that he should be wanted and put in prison dead or alive basically. And I pulled it back out, I don't know, a year or so ago for a TV interview I was doing. And I looked at it and it actually said wanted, and I didn't even notice this the first time around, wanted by Queen Elizabeth.
Tina Descovich (13:08):
And so it made it sound like that was his queen. The Queen of Spain is the one that sent him. And so it was wrong historically on so many levels and he got over a hundred on it. And so that was the first moment. And I have a hundred stories like that. One of the thing that has bothered me the most, because you're talking about getting rid of old white literature, was when they got rid of cursive during Common Core. That was another moment for me where I went into the teacher who I adored. She was a great teacher. He was in, I think fifth grade. I wrote him a note on the counter in cursive and he said, mom, I can't read cursive. What do you mean you're in fifth grade? And shame on me for not knowing My son couldn't read cursive, but just like most parents in the country, you send them to school thinking they're learning the things you learned because that's how education has been for a long time.
Tina Descovich (13:56):
So of course I went down, I saw the teacher, we had this conversation and she said, well, everything's on computers now. And we type, and it's more important that they learn to type than they learn cursive. So it's been pulled out of the curriculum. I lost my mind because in my pastime I do genealogy. I research historical documents of my family, and I started thinking about the founding documents. If our kids in America can't read cursive, they can't read history. And so my mind was starting to be opened and more opened. This is feeling a little bit intentional. This is feeling like we are under some kind of attack. And obviously where we are now, Jenny, and I'm assuming all of your listeners do, but the good news is parents are just like you and me all across the country. And we know that because when we put cast the net for Mom's for Liberty, they came flooding in like, oh yeah, I saw this, or Oh, I have a problem with this. And we connect them and they collaborate and they learn it's everywhere. And we realize, then we dig and we pull back, oh, it's funded through here, or there's billions of dollars behind this. Oh, all of the really nasty stuff is tied to Planned Parenthood. Nobody's shocked about that. And so it's just a remarkable time to be alive. It's an honor to be in this position just kind of clearing the path so all these moms can come forward and dads and speak up.
Jenny Beth Martin (15:17):
Well, tell people what you are doing with Moms for Liberty and if they want to be involved, how are they going to get involved with Moms for Liberty?
Tina Descovich (15:28):
So we are in 48 of the 50 states now, and I'll just say we launched January 1st, 2021, and within two weeks I told you we were going to be just in Florida, but within two weeks, Barbara called from Nassau County New York, and she said, I have to start a chapter. You have no idea what's going on here. And then Jen called from Anne Arundel County, Maryland. I have to start a chapter. And so I looked at my co-founder and I said, I don't know anything about education in New York or Maryland. And she said to me, it's not our place to hold this just in Florida. Parents need it everywhere. And that was probably some of the best advice she's ever thrown out there at me. And I was like, okay, we'll figure it out. And so now we have 320 chapters in 48 states and a chapter covers a county.
Tina Descovich (16:12):
We have 130,000 moms that are actively engaged on our membership roles that are attending meetings and doing the work we're doing. Our mission statement is to defend parental rights at all levels of government. And so they do this beautifully. They start at the school board level. We have them check the school board agendas in their communities, look for things that are concerning and then make a battle plan to attack or change it. And then since then they've now formed legislative committees. Each chapter gets a vote. They put together legislative agendas. And so we've impacted 55 bills in 14 states that either are about education or parental rights. We moved on to getting involved in 2022 in school board races, and so far we have won, our endorsed candidates have won 501 school board seats, which sounds amazing and we love to celebrate it, but there's 13,000 school districts in the country, so we have a long way to go there. So we do so many things, Jenny Beth, but really it's just the moms on the ground in their community taking action to save our country.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:13):
That is so very important. So what are some of the projects that you're working on right now? This year and next year?
Tina Descovich (17:20):
For this year, we have two focused states. So last year we had four focused states, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Wisconsin. You can maybe guess why those were four important states last year, but we looked at those specifically and we actually for the first time, made an effort to grow. For the first three years, moms celebrity has just grown organically. We've never put a dollar into marketing. It's all been through social, word of mouth or free press basically. So we took actual money and invested in growth in those four states, and we ended up targeting 200 to 250,000 people in each of those states. And then we worked to turn out the vote on the issues that we care about, and we did hyper-local messaging. If we had moms in the community or ambassadors on the ground, they would tell us in this school, at the end of the street, there is a man wearing a dress as a fifth grade teacher.
Tina Descovich (18:13):
And so we would push that out to the community and say, did make sure you vote for the candidates all the way up and down the ballot that are going to fight this kind of stuff. And we did a lot around Title IX because of the Biden Title IX rewrite, letting parents know what that meant and which candidates supported and didn't support a lot of this gender ideology in schools. And so ultimately we ended up turning out 92% of those 200,000 in each of those states between 92 and 94%. And so we learned last year that we can impact elections too. It's just remarkable. All levels of government is what we're doing. So this year we picked two states, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Pennsylvania have all of their school board races throughout the entire state. This year it's very important to us to get quality conservative parents that are focused on defending parental rights on school boards instead of teacher union leaders.
Tina Descovich (19:07):
And so we're focusing on growth and then ultimately by November turning out the vote for school board candidates that our people want to get behind. So that's some of the biggest stuff we're doing this year. We're really excited about something in the more short term. June 1st is the 100 anniversary of the Supreme Court affirming parental rights. So they voted in Pierce versus Society of Sisters 100 years ago on June 1st that parental rights were in education were extremely important and that parents actually got to direct the upbringing of their children in education. And so we're going to be putting a couple events together. I think in DC we're going to be relaunching our parental rights pledge, which we've had President Trump sign and a lot of senators and congressmen we're going to highlight them for signing and really try to push that out and get all elected officials engaged in supporting parental rights.
Jenny Beth Martin (19:58):
What's in the pledge?
Tina Descovich (20:00):
It's very simple. You can go to moms for liberty.org/pledge and you can see the wording of it. It says that you will without pulling it up and reading it, but that you will defend parental rights at all levels of government in policy and in other decisions that are being made in your sphere of influence. And so there isn't a lot to it. There's some people that like the VA Ram Swami and Winsome Sears in Virginia, those are two people that come to mind when we have set it in front of 'em, they read it and just signed it. There's not a lot of elected officials that do that. Most of them say, let me get my staff to review it. Let me take this home and ponder it. But it is so clear and so short, and both of those individuals when they saw it, they said, oh, this isn't a no brainer. This is so simple. This is so clear. I easily sign this.
Jenny Beth Martin (20:49):
So it seems like a really easy call to action for people who are listening right now to pull up the pledge@momsforliberty.org slash pledge and then go talk to the elected officials who you know, whether they're at the school board or county commission or state legislature or Congress and ask them to just, can you just sign the pledge right there on the website?
Tina Descovich (21:11):
You can. I recommend printing it out. It's more of a ceremonial thing too that you can be proud that you have gotten them to sign it. They can be proud that they've signed it. We have a place on the website that shows you, you can click on your state and see all of your elected officials in your state that have signed it already. So you can go check right now and see there's some states where no one has signed yet. So that would be a great place to start. And then if you've gotten them to sign it, you can go back there and upload it for us so that we can add it and have an actual copy or you can reach out to us or they can submit it too. They can sign it online and submit it to us too.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:50):
That's great. And it's simple. It's not that difficult, but it's something that then reminds them. They are going to make sure that they are affirming parental rights and as they're evaluating whether it is legislation at the state or federal level or resolutions and the other things that a school board or a county commission would be passing, that they're paying attention to that and that they're putting parental rights ahead of the state and local government rights.
Tina Descovich (22:23):
The same landing page has a proclamation that you can bring to your school board where they can adopt it, saying that they are a school board that will defend parental rights also, which is we're going to start pushing more for that this year around the June 1st celebration. Ideally all 13,000 school districts in America should be willing to stand and defend parental rights. And then the last thing that's on that page is model policy from parental rights.org for states to adopt a parental bill of rights. I think 17 states, I'll have to double check that number, have a parental bill of rights, but that means there's a great deal of states that don't have a parental bill of rights yet.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:01):
Tina, how do you recruit candidates to run for school board and what kind of training do you do for them?
Tina Descovich (23:11):
So wonderful questions. So sometimes members of our chapters that have been part of this movement and fighting the things that they're concerning in their school district step forward. And so those are easy. Sometimes we have to go out and do a little digging and ask the community to step up. So there's multiple ways. Sometimes people just run and then come to us for endorsements. We do have a process for all of this, which is wonderful. The first year we endorsed in 2022, we had no processes. I think we had endorsed, I want to say almost 500 candidates nationally with no processes in place, and we ended up winning over 200 of those races, which is remarkable for no money at all. At that time, no processes. We couldn't even keep track that well of lists and who was running and where it was coming in from because we had very little staff.
Tina Descovich (24:03):
We were mostly volunteers, but now we've put in place a process where candidates fill out a questionnaire. The questionnaire is evaluated by the chapter. They do an interview making sure the candidate is viable. Hopefully they'll hold a forum. It's not required, but they'll hold a forum with all the candidates in their district and then they vote as a chapter. So only our chapters can endorse in school board races. So you have to have a Mom's Liberty chapter in your community to receive a school board endorsement and they vote and then they send that into us. The national team doesn't approve or deny. We just support at that point. We help push out the endorsement. We send all the endorsements over to our pac, and often the PAC will get involved and actually help the candidate by running ads and texts and doing different things to help them get elected.
Tina Descovich (24:50):
It's been really fun to watch this process develop and teach our chapters how to find and vet good candidates and put them forward and then learn how to support them. Also, we have created, to my knowledge, the only toolkit for school board candidates. When I ran for school board in 2016, I googled what does a school board member do? There was nothing out there. How do I run for school board? There was nothing out there. Who can I hire to help me with my campaign? There's no one because there's no money in school board races. Some of these races, a $5,000 budget is a lot. Some of these, the most I've seen has maybe been here in Florida where they're huge races and it's 20, $30,000, but you're not going to pay a consultant six figures like you can in congressional races. And so nobody wants the work of running school board raises.
Tina Descovich (25:37):
And so we have a toolkit that's available for free. It teaches you everything, how to calculate the votes you need to win, how much money do you need to raise for your district and the size, the number of votes you actually need. It even has tools on how to create your campaign logo and your campaign signs. It has how to handle the press. It does all types of things. And on top of that, we hold winning workshops around the country for people that want to learn how to run for school board or help school board candidates win. And so we're really invested on getting better candidates, quality candidates, and good parents on school boards across the country. And you can find that by going to momster liberty.org/candidates.
Jenny Beth Martin (26:17):
Very good. I think that's so important. There are a lot of people who run for these local offices and they want to run because they care about the country or they care about their local community or both. And they step up, they put their name in the ring and then they don't have any idea how to run a campaign at all, and they wind up floundering, especially if it's a challenge campaign, if they're running against someone who is an incumbent. So having some guidance so they learn how to campaign is extremely important.
Tina Descovich (26:49):
Well, and you're often running against the teacher's union, which is a well-oiled machine with lots of funding and support. They've got their call banks, they know how to knock doors. They've been doing this for decades. I mean, teachers unions have been putting their members on school boards for as long as you and I have been alive. And I want to make it very clear to everyone because the average person, when you say, oh, I'm running for school board, or I'm going to serve on a school board, the first question is, oh, you're a teacher. And my head explodes because that's the worst thing you can have on a school board. First of all, the skills it takes to be on a school board have nothing to do with what you're doing in the classroom. The school board is managing a budget, they're making creating policy.
Tina Descovich (27:30):
These are all things that teachers not necessarily have ever done or have training on. Here in my county, we have a billion dollar budget. That is a big job to understand and manage that and do that. But not only that, if the teacher's union has placed you on the school board, the negotiations for the biggest part of the billion dollar budget, you have a member of the teacher's union negotiating with the teacher's union for the biggest part of our budget, the salaries of teachers, and that's unethical if you ask me. So running against the teacher's union is challenging and hard. We have so far to go, so much more money to raise and put behind these candidates and so much more has to be done in this area.
Jenny Beth Martin (28:12):
Well, it's so good that you are doing that. And you're right, it doesn't make sense for someone who is a teacher and is a member of the union to be on the school board and then negotiating the salary for the union members. It does create a bit of a conflict of interest. I think that a lot of school or some school districts around the country won't allow you to run for school board if you're a teacher in that local district, which makes sense.
Tina Descovich (28:40):
Well, you have to resign here. You have to resign to sit on the school board. You can't serve as a teacher and be on the school board. But they've been a teacher for 20 years. They've been a member of the union for 20 years. They're representing the union up there for all purposes.
Jenny Beth Martin (28:57):
And I am sure that there are some who would not and would be very conservative, but you've been in that environment for so long that you have to be able to look beyond the environment that you've been in within the school building and the union itself to look at the whole entire community, the budget process and everything else. That goes into being a school board member.
Tina Descovich (29:25):
Yes, you can take our training and you can sign the parent pledge to prove you're going to stand with parents and then we can consider it.
Jenny Beth Martin (29:32):
Exactly. That is smart. Now, Tina, a minute ago you said something that it seemed a little bit offhand, but I want to really delve this. You said that you found that as you were learning more things, you found a lot of the funding leading to gender ideology in your school district was coming from Planned Parenthood. Is that correct? Did I hear that properly?
Tina Descovich (29:57):
I'm not going to say our school district, but school districts around the country. Yes. I don't have the numbers at the top of my head, but we had that webinar last night, which you can find@mfourlu.org. It was comprehensive sex ed 1 0 2. We had a 1 0 1 class a week ago where we brought in experts that latest us all out, Jenny Beth. And it is almost shocking. I mean, it almost feels like a conspiracy theory, but I wish he would've had a chalkboard last night and really drew all the lines and laid it all out on how it's happening. And I've learned so much. I was in Poland last month speaking against gender ideology because they, a side story here. They have a new national leader for education that has just taken hold. So starting September 1st, they're going to be infusing gender ideology in Polish schools, and they are, they're like 85% Catholic there.
Tina Descovich (30:54):
They are shocked by what's happening. And so I went there to talk to them about that. But what I learned while I was there is the International Federation of Planned Parenthood and their role with UNESCO and the UN and how this is happening all around the globe. It's not just in the United States. Planned Parenthood has its tentacles as far as remote villages in South Africa and other African countries. I've learned that by talking to people from those countries. And so of course it's in every community in America because it's in every community in the world and they're capitalizing on getting these gender clinics into schools. And if that's too extreme for some communities, then they're opening healthcare centers because they're just about healthcare and they're helping children with gender ideology. But the biggest thing they're doing that's most concerning to me in this is the comprehensive sex ed.
Tina Descovich (31:49):
They're responsible for 85% of sex ed taught in America, and they're 100% behind comprehensive sex ed. And if people are listening and thinking, comprehensive sex ed just sounds like a really thorough sex ed class, you are wrong. You need to go learn about it, and you need to learn about it right now because it is teaching gender ideology in the standards. It says by the end of second grade, children have to understand that they can be a boy or a girl, neither or both. And so it is the most insidious type of sex ed, and it teaches by sixth grade all types of sex. Sex that is normal, and then sex that you and I can't even imagine. And so those lessons are being taught, and I don't know how deep you want to get in here, but yesterday they were showing pictures of freshmen at Columbine High School. We've all heard of Columbine High School, were given a wooden penis to practice putting condoms on, and then all the other paraphernalia that went with this lesson. And so it is mind blowing.
Jenny Beth Martin (32:50):
It is mind blowing and it's taking away the innocence of children. And I'm not saying that there are some children who are not going to be exposed to very graphic sex at some point at a young age from the environment that they may be growing up in. That does happen and it should not happen. We should want to protect their innocence as long as we can because once it's gone, all that's left is the rest of the burdens of being an adult. And it is mind blowing that these are the kind of things that they are teaching and they're trying to drive kids into what we would probably consider very deviant behavior and trying to normalize what just a few years ago, people would consider deviant behavior.
Tina Descovich (33:52):
Yeah, when you really look at all those threads and the connections, it goes back to Alfred Kinsey, and if you want to dig into his work, when I first read his book, all of this I've been exposed to since launching Moms for Liberty. And when I first saw the gender bred person, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Genderbread person, it's a drawing of a genderbread person. It explains gender ideology to children. It was being used all over the state of Florida, and it used to be@genderbreadperson.com or.org or something. And the first time I went to look it up shortly after launching Moms for Liberty, when somebody sent it to me, it had a beautiful writeup of how this helps children find their true selves. But right on the front page, it said, our research is based on the great work of Dr. Alfred Kenzie.
Tina Descovich (34:39):
And I'm embarrassed to say that I've never heard that name before in my life until that day. And so then I go down the rabbit hole of Googling Dr. Alfred Kinzie, and I am shocked and astonished. And so then I order his books. And in true teen of fashion, I went and found original copies from a used bookstore. I didn't want them altered in any way. I wanted to see the actual work he did. And when you look at that work that he did and those studies that he did on infants, bringing them to climax so that he could prove that a man or a woman could make them climax, the man should have been in prison.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:14):
And
Tina Descovich (35:14):
Yet he's celebrated, I think in Indiana. There's a whole Alfred Kinsey Institute at a college there. He has celebrated. And so all of this is built around the work that he and others, some really other sick people during those few decades started. And we're celebrating it and we're pushing it on our smallest children. And I think if people knew, knew the roots of this and what it's trying to do, they would stop it in its tracks. But we're sold normal everyday moms and dads are sold. Well, it's compassionate to understand that there might be some gender issues and it's compassionate and kind to affirm otherwise they might kill themselves. And I think most teachers, they've been told that, and so they think they really have to affirm to protect kids. Somebody needs to train them about Dr. Alfred Kinsey.
Jenny Beth Martin (36:03):
Yes. And that's what you're doing with the webinars that you're doing right now?
Tina Descovich (36:08):
Yeah, it's through M four lu. That's what we called it. We launched it in January. It's really quite incredible what we're doing over there at M for Lu. Each month is a new topic. We have 30 months planned out right now, and there's more stuff on the way. We started with social emotional learning in January. We did critical race theory in February, gender ideology. And this month, the month of May is the comprehensive sex ed. And we include a few lectures. We do a live lecture, we do digital lectures. We allow the audience at the end to always ask questions of the speakers and the hosts. We have Miriam Grossman, her book, a book club at the end of the month where we'll bring her in. Everybody's reading the book this month and we'll be able to interact and ask her questions. It's really, and then there's a whole toolkit of links and resources and follow the money and read the white papers. And so you could really educate yourself. Short little videos, long videos we pulled together. It's not all created by Moms for Liberty. We pulled together from Prager, you and parents defending ed the best that everybody's got on these issues. We pull it all together so a parent can go type in what is comprehensive sex ed and get a whole menu of things to learn from.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:19):
That is really good that you're doing that. And you said you've done social emotional learning, critical race theory, and then this month it's comprehensive sex education. You've got 30 months planned of these trainings.
Tina Descovich (37:37):
We do from everything from school choice options to AI technology, data mining, I mean, you name it. If it's a concern in education right now, we've got it planned out for 30 months. So again, unfortunately that's a really long time, and I keep thinking, oh, we need to cover this one now. And then we have this arguments about which one is more pressing right this minute because they're all coming at us so fast and they're all intertwined. Last month was gender ideology was another great month with a lot of issues and topics too.
Jenny Beth Martin (38:12):
That is really good. You're doing such amazing work, Tina, and you're growing, and I understand what it's like when the Tea Party movement. Well, unlike you, we did not have a business plan at all. We just decided we're going to do a protest and six weeks later do another set of protests. And those six weeks later, we had over 850 protests around the country with over a million people in attendance, and we've been going ever since then. But you have all this interest and all these people and you're trying to meet all of the needs of what they have because they care about the same values and mission that you have. And then after you get out of that spark where everything is just, it's a floodgate and you're just trying to keep your head above water, then you want to make sure you're creating that long-term organization, that long-term organization so you can keep fighting for the values that you care about. And that's what you're doing and you're trying to make sure that it is sustainable. With 13,000 school districts around the entire country, there's a lot of work to be done
Tina Descovich (39:28):
And parents are getting complacent. I mean, if you talk to our chapters, attendance is down at chapter meetings. Everybody's back into their lives. During COVID, our chapter meetings were busting at the seam. Some places a thousand people showing up, lots of them had well over a hundred. And now our chapter chairs say things like, well, we've got our Core 20 here, but I keep telling them, A Core 20 is amazing because there's 3000 counties. And if you had 20 people that were committed to keeping watch on their school district in all 3000 counties and in all 13,000 school districts, it would change the face of education in America. And the point is those, even if you only had five people and they were going to school board meetings and keeping watch, as long as you're keeping your 200 on your mail list informed and connected, when you need to raise up that flare that something really bad is happening again, they gather around, they show back up for the important moments. So a small people, was it Margaret Mead? What was the power of, I can't think of a statement there, but a concerned citizen. Doing the right work can make a difference in the community. And so we're in that same phase. We keep saying now as a leadership team and our board of directors, like we are in the phase now where we're going to grow up Moms for Liberty. We were a baby organization just trying to
Tina Descovich (40:50):
Swim to stay alive for four years because just keeping up with all the growth and everything coming at us now, we're able to put policies in place and processes in place and create meaningful long-term tools in a lasting organization. And I'm really excited about this phase of our organization.
Jenny Beth Martin (41:05):
It's very exciting. So if people want to sign up and get involved, they just go to moms for liberty.org.
Tina Descovich (41:12):
You got it. Yeah. Right on the front, there's a join button you can search for your chapter. We got a big map. If it's navy blue, it means you're in the dark. You just start a chapter. If it's a gold county, it means you're all lit up with a chapter already. You can click on it and connect to your chapter and join.
Jenny Beth Martin (41:28):
Well, thank you so much for all the work that you're doing to defend parental rights, and thanks for joining my podcast today, Tina.
Tina Descovich (41:36):
Jenny Beth, I just want to say, I remember having in my Facebook block that your party, it says, I don't think it's on there anymore. It's so divisive. But back when you started Tea Party Patriots, you could put whatever you wanted in there. And under my party, I didn't have Democrat or Republican. I had Tea Party members, so we didn't know each other then. I had no idea who you were. But thank you for starting the movement, inspiring me. Back then. I didn't know who you were, but the Tea Party movement did inspire me to get involved politically for the first time ever. So thank you for having me on and for being my friend and for keeping the fight up.
Narrator (42:14):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (42:34):
If you like this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you want to be the first to know, every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications for whichever platform you're listening on. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow, and I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much.