A parental rights advocate called out “The View” hosts for labeling “Moms for Liberty,” a parental rights group, as an “extremist organization.”
Vernadette Broyles, who is the president and general counsel of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, joined “Fox News @ Night” to discuss the criticism as parents nationwide push for more rights in the classroom.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center has a three-page-long list of organizations that they call hate groups. It includes many churches, many Jewish organizations and advocacy organizations, legal organizations, anyone that they disagree with,” Broyles said Thursday.
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“Bottom line, Moms for Liberty is standing up for the fundamental right of parents to be able to direct their child’s upbringing. They would not be doing this if it wasn’t instigated by school officials that did exactly what happened in Virginia to Sage,” she continued.
The SPLC recently named “Moms for Liberty” in their “Year In Hate and Extremism 2022” report released in June, attempting to pair the parental rights nonprofit with neo-Nazis and over a thousand other groups they deemed “extremist.”
“At the forefront of this mobilization is Moms for Liberty, a Florida-based group with vast connections to the GOP that this year the SPLC designated as an extremist group,” the report read. “The group hijacks meetings, preventing officials and parents from conducting their normal proceedings.”
Since then, the group has reportedly been targeted with death threats. But “The View” spared no understanding for the parental rights group.
“Moms for Liberty has been found by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist organization because of what they’re doing with parental rights, anti-LGBTQ education, anti-African education…” co-host Sunny Hostin said.
Host Trace Gallagher labeled Hostin’s remarks as “preposterous,” saying the mischaracterization is “almost laughable.” Gallagher also talked to Michele Blair, a Virginia mother who sued her child’s school, alleging that a high school intentionally concealed her child’s gender transition in school as they faced a mental health crisis.
The child later ran away from home, was kidnapped and sex-trafficked, according to the lawsuit.
The suit was filed on behalf of Blair against defendants Appomattox County School Board and district staff – who allegedly “deliberately concealed from [Blair] information related to her daughter’s asserted gender identity” – and public defender Aneesa Khan – who is accused of misrepresenting facts to deprive Blair of her parental rights.
“Hiding from parents personal mental health decisions that directly affect a child, and when you drive a wedge between a child with their parents, you put that child in harm’s way such that what happened to Sage is more likely to happen, so now this school owns the damage that they have caused,” Broyles said.
The child had diagnoses including “major depressive disorder” and “intentional self-harm by sharp object.” She was hospitalized for treatment of those diagnoses, according to the lawsuit.
To withhold that information, “deprived” Blair of the ability to “exercise her fundamental parental rights to direct the upbringing of her daughter, including making educational and mental health decisions,” the lawsuit stated.
S.B. ended up running away from home, in part, as a result of the stress from bullying and harassment in her school, according to the lawsuit. She was then kidnapped and sex-trafficked until she was rescued by the FBI.
“It never should have happened,” Blair told Gallagher. “It could have easily been avoided had the school just been honest with me.”
Fox News’ Hannah Grossman and Aubrie Spady contributed to this report.
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