This is the Kater Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 19th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

Fights over gender and sexuality teachings in public schools

are bringing out some unexpected coalitions.

Protests by Muslim and Christian families, among others from Maryland to Los Angeles, are largely in the interest of defending religious values.

It is Mustafa Akiole and Neil McCluskey say that the fight and the coalitions offer some lessons.

We discuss their framework for a liberated education, meaning more choice, so families can decide for themselves

what their kids will learn.

From day one of public schooling, the idea that government taxes people, takes everybody's money and then uses it to establish

public schools.

So not just say, well, we'll supply money so everyone can get an education, but we will

supply the places where that happens, that has

always caused culture wars, social conflict, about what's taught because it turns out people have diverse values

and they have diverse backgrounds and they often want different things taught

and sometimes usually exclusive things taught.

And so we've had these battles forever. You mentioned the public

schooling battle map, which always has to be mentioned. We started collecting these

sorts of conflicts in public schools just modern in the 2005-06 school year. We're about to surpass 3,600 conflicts on

this map, many of them at the state level, so everybody's pulled in. So we've seen

these sorts of battles for a long time. What is new is a lot of

this most recent debate has been progressive saying that conservatives want to impose Christian nationalism or white nationalism or white supremacy.

Conservatives saying no, we just want our values respected it doesn't have to do with our

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