Beware Mama Bears
The Presbyterian church where I once taught homeschoolers was located in a suburban neighborhood of Asheville filled with medium-sized houses and well-tended yards. And with its broad lawn and surrounding woods, the church was a place of tranquility.
Except when the bears decided to pay a visit.
Black bears roam much of western North Carolina, and every fall and spring, once the first bears were sighted, I delivered a short talk to students about staying away from these critters. Most of the students lived in places where they too encountered bears—who were usually intent on looting trash cans—and knew to take precautions.
Black bears normally avoid humans, unless they perceive some danger to their young. Because the bears we saw sometimes included a Mama Bear with a couple of cubs, I always reminded students never to get between Mom and her kids. For bears, that’s when timidity vanishes.
Today it seems some of our politicians, bureaucrats, school officials, teachers, and other assorted characters need a lesson or two from Mama Bear.
In the last three years, these clueless folks have gotten between human mamas and their children. These people shuttered schools, taught classes by Zoom, and forced students to wear masks and social distance long after the schools reopened. These shenanigans stunted the education of young Americans.
In addition, in some districts, it’s now apparent that administrators and teachers are dead set on making radical agendas like critical race theory, gender ideology, and inappropriate sex education a formal part of K-12 education. There are, for instance, cases of boys claiming to be girls using women’s locker rooms and bathrooms. Not to mention the teaching of gender pronouns and the apparent recruiting, often behind the backs of parents, of students into certain sexual lifestyles. A majority of American secondary schools continue to teach these race and gender theories.
But things are changing. The Mama Bears have their claws out and are coming after these transgressors tooth-and-nail.
In the blue state of Virginia, for instance, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated his opponent Terry McAuliffe in the 2021 gubernatorial race, in part because McAuliffe defended his veto of a bill requiring that schools inform parents when students are being taught sexually explicit material. Additionally, during a debate with Youngkin, McAuliffe declared, “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That veto and those remarks likely cost McAuliffe the election.
Meanwhile, in Virginia’s wealthy and heavily blue northern counties—the ones closest to Washington D.C.—parents began appearing at school board meetings to protest the sexual and political policies of school boards. Particularly upsetting was a sexual assault on a 14-year-old girl by a boy wearing a skirt in a girls’ bathroom.
On January 1, 2021, some of these bad news bears spelled more headaches for overreaching government with the start of Moms for Liberty. Co-founded by Tiffany Justice, mother of four school-age children, and Tina Descovich, mother of five, Moms for Liberty is a rapidly growing grassroots movement with chapters springing up across the United States. The group defines its mission as “fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.” They intend to hold political leaders and school officials accountable, spread “an understanding of the limited role of government,” fight government overreach, and encourage like-minded people to seek elected office.
Despite its name, Moms for Liberty welcomes moms, dads, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and friends into its membership. Their website includes instructions on how to find a chapter in your area or start your own chapter. And despite attacks accusing the organization of being far-right, Moms for Liberty is standing strong.
“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world,” says Agatha Christie in “The Last Séance,” a short story. “It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.”
The slow learners in our government might want to call those words to mind the next time they decide to come between Mama and her cubs.
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Image credit: Flickr-Christoph Strässler, CC BY-SA 2.0.