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Whenever the first Trump administration made noises about defunding public media (in its 2017 and 2018 budget proposals, for instance), including National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the congressionally founded tax-funded entity ostensibly in charge, would respond by emphasizing how PBS benefits kids. This statement from PBS CEO Paula Kerger in February 2020 bragged:

Decades of research confirms that PBS’s premier children’s media service, PBS KIDS, helps children build critical literacy, math and social-emotional skills, enabling them to find success in school and life.

But must PBS’s educational support for children also include transgender and gender-identity propaganda?

PBS has run plenty of stories on its evening broadcast encouraging transgender treatments and surgery and standing for “transgender rights,” not only for adults but even impressionable minors who are not ready to make such irrevocable decisions about their body.

The controversial Trevor Project, which bills itself as “the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention nonprofit organization for LGBTQ+ young people” and aggressively pushes so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries (like “cross-sex hormones, castration, and breast removal”) onto kids, has not only figured heavily in PBS coverage, which regularly promotes its slanted surveys on so-called suicidal ideation among LGBTQ youth. Trevor’s presence has also seeped into its coverage aimed at children themselves.

More trans-propaganda aimed at children: WNET, an influential public station which serves New York City and produces much PBS programming, ran a “Teacher’s Voice” piece in October 2020, “Queering Your Classroom with the Understanding LGTBQ+ Identity Toolkit,” written by Natalie Nuzzo, an 8th grade (!) teacher who celebrated that “LGTBQ+” resource:

In my 8th grade English class, I teach a project and inquiry based unit on discrimination. I begin the unit with a class viewing of the video “All Oppression is Connected,” featuring poet and activist Staceyann Chin….After the viewing, I adapt the support materials to deepen our understanding of how LGBTQ+ rights are connected to the struggles around race, gender, reproductive rights, wealth inequality and immigration.

Although our students may have experience discussing the aforementioned topics, they may not perceive the interconnected nature of these relations. As Chin reminds us at the close of the interview, “we cannot remove our struggle from the person next to us.”

No wonder Oklahoma’s Republican governor Kevin Stitt vetoed funding for the state’s PBS station in 2023 for “indoctrination and over-sexualization” of children. Citizens Defending Freedom also called on PBS to be defunded for promoting its LGBT ‘toolkit’ for schools “Understanding LGBTQ+ Identity: A Toolkit for Educators,” initially created by the NYC Department of Education. 

The PBS News Hour’s segment on the Supreme Court’s recent oral arguments on whether Tennessee could ban so-called gender-affirming care for minors, from reporter Laura Barron-Lopez, ignored the intellectual disintegration of the trans-kids argument under Justice Samuel Alito’s rigorous questioning. Her piece was instead dominated by emotional blackmail about “transgender” kids killing themselves for lack of surgery, lack of access to their chosen school bathroom, or having their chosen pronouns ignored.