Parents call for boycott of LA school over Pride Day assembly

A group of parents are boycotting an LA school's Pride Day assembly and encouraging others to ‘keep your kids home and innocent’. (Getty Images)

A group of parents are calling for a boycott of a Los Angeles elementary school's Pride Day assembly, and encouraging others to "keep your kids home and innocent".

An Instagram page called Saticoy Elementary Parents has been set up with the purpose of opposing planned LGBTQ+ Pride activities at Saticoy Elementary in North Hollywood, which will take place on 2 June.

The school, which caters for kindergarteners through to fifth-graders, will hold an assembly where teachers will read from The Great Big Book of Families by Mary Hoffman, KTLA-TV reports.

Hoffman's charming children's book showcases different aspects of family lives for kids around the world, including homes, schools, pets, holidays, emotions and diverse family trees.

But anti-LGBTQ+ parents have called the inclusive assembly "an inappropriate topic for our kids".

On the group's Instagram page, a post calls for parents to "keep your kids home and innocent", and continues: "Videos will be shown to the students including one where it says, ‘some kids have 2 mommies, some have 2 daddies’. This has caused outrage among parents."

Another reads: "We said no to COVID-19 vaccines and it's now over. It was a hard fought battle and we won! Now it is time to say stop grooming our children."

One grid post is about whether boys at the school will be able to use the girls’ bathroom, with the caption detailing a discussion with the school's principal about the issue.

"Doesn't that frighten you as a parent that the principal at your children's school does not know if the boys and girls can share a bathroom?" the caption reads, along with the hashtag ‘gays against groomers’.

Comments below discuss the heritage of the principal and whether she is "Armenian".

The first post Instagram post, dated 16 May, calls for parents to keep kids at home on 2 June, and claims that all LGBTQ+ topics are "sexually explicit".

"We are parents of elementary school children, who have the right to introduce sexually explicit topics at our discretion," it reads.

"Yes any topic that is related to LGBTQ is is sexually explicit. Why? Our children are innocent and have no idea what is out there."

According to KTLA-TV, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has confirmed that parents can allow their children to skip Pride-related events.

One unhappy parent, George Dzhabroyan, told the channel: "We respect everyone, but some things are appropriate for children [of] that age, and some things are not.

"Hopefully the message gets across and people understand that parents should be the primary contact of what their children should be exposed to and shouldn't be exposed to."

LAUSD told the Los Angeles Times: "As part of our engagement with school communities, our schools regularly discuss the diversity of the families that we serve and the importance of inclusion.

"This remains an active discussion with our school communities and we remain committed to continuing to engage with families about this important topic."

The number of parents who will participate in the boycott is not currently known, but a protest has been scheduled at the school at 8am on 2 June, according to the group's Instagram.

The call to boycott the inclusive, LGBTQ+friendly assembly comes as Republican lawmakers legislate to prevent LGBTQ+ topics being discussed in schools across the US.

In at least 15 states, including Oregon, Iowa and Alaska, new laws which are being considered aim to stifle LGBTQ+ discussions in schools.

Meanwhile, under governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, Florida has expanded the state's reviled ‘Don't Say Gay’ law, which now bans discussions of gender and sexuality across all school grades and introduced laws to remove books with race or LGBTQ+ themes from school libraries.

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