In this compelling episode of Restoring Education in America, host Priscilla Rahn welcomes Erin Lee to discuss the tumultuous experiences she’s faced in the public education system. Erin, a mother and activist, opens up about her personal journey of realizing the dangers of gender ideology in schools after saving her daughter from a troubling situation. Together, they delve into the systemic issues plaguing education, including the secretive practices in school clubs and the impact of recent legislation on parental rights. Listeners will gain insights into the transformation Erin underwent from a trusting parent to a fierce advocate for change.
Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. She’s a master educator and author, leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Rahn, and I’m so excited that you’ve decided to join the conversation today. I have an amazing guest, and if you’re in or around education, you know exactly who she is and what she’s done. I’m bringing my friend to the stage, Miss Erin Lee. Hey, Erin, how’s it going? Hey, Priscilla, good to see you. Congratulations on your book. Oh, thank you so much. You know, I’ve been motivated and encouraged to talk about what’s been going on in the public education system and how we fix it. And I know you’ve been a mama bear, but. You know, for those people who may not know who you are, I’m going to give a little bit of your bio. So Erin Lee is the mother of three children from Northern Colorado, a speaker, writer, founder of Stop Gender Ideology and executive director of Protect Kids Colorado. After rescuing her own 12-year-old daughter from transgender grooming in public school, Erin activated to help others. She filed a federal lawsuit against the district, led by Pam Bondi, in which Justice Alito called their experience troubling and tragic and urged lower courts to address secret school transition. Erin has been featured in Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire, The Epoch Times, The Blaze, Daily Mail, UK, and The Wall Street Journal. She produced a film about their family story called Art Club, available to stream for free at artclubmovie.com. Erin now travels the country educating others and fighting for parental rights and against gender ideology. Wow. I mean, I bet you couldn’t have imagined that you would be here. This would be your life right now.
SPEAKER 02 :
Never in a million years. I was like your typical millennial mom who was sleepwalking through life. I was a leftist voter. I was faithless. I was trusting every system that I was putting my kids into. And then I got punched in the face with reality. And I mean, I activated quickly.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, it’s really heartbreaking as a teacher. This is my 32nd year in education. And I’ve always been a conservative. I grew up in a very patriotic home. And I’ve watched this slow boil in public education. And I’ve watched what your daughter has gone through. And it’s really heartbreaking. Real quickly, for those people who may not know your story, quickly tell what happened. It started when your daughter was invited to art club.
SPEAKER 02 :
Go ahead. Yeah, we had just moved across the country from Florida. And I actually, my undergrad is elementary education. I couldn’t cut it as a teacher. I failed in the classroom and very quickly went into human resources instead. But I had been kind of programmed, I now realize, to think the way the teachers did. And my daughter was recruited into this after-school art club that was actually a GSA for gender and sexuality awareness. And they invited in an outside, a really predacious, it was a groomer group. who told the kids, if you’re not comfortable in your body, that means you’re transgender. And if you don’t know who you’re sexually attracted to, that means you’re queer and celebrated the kids for proclaiming these new identities and talked about, you know, explicit concepts like polyamory and how to medicalize. If you’re not comfortable in your body, You can just take these magic puberty blocker drugs and all your discomfort will go away. They taught her how to access those in the school, in our school-based health centers. They connected her online with these predators. And they most significantly taught her to keep it all a secret, that you don’t have to tell your parents about your identity, about this meeting. It can all be our little secret. And we’re lucky she told us. She came right home after that club and told us what was going on. But it took about a year to get her out of, I call it a cult situation. the gender cult that really programmed her to believe she was born wrong. that her family would not support her, that the only path forward was medicalization into a boy’s body. And it was a tough year getting our little girl out of that. She was only 12 when all this happened and it was the height of COVID. So she was really mentally like nine or 10. She was very immature to be exposed to that.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, when you think about a young 12 year old, there’s no 12 year old who’s comfortable in their body. Right. They’re going through puberty changes, hormones. And so they’re very, very vulnerable. And I will tell you that we as teachers are taught to use this language of we’re the trusted adult. You know, make sure you identify a student. So every student in the school has a trusted adult that they can go to. And at the time I thought, oh, this is really important. This is good because we want our students to, if they need help, know there’s an adult in the building that they can go to for help. But it started unraveling even for me when like Gay Straight Alliance, GSA, we used to be called Gay Straight Alliance. And then they changed it to gender sexuality. And I remember I still have an email where I emailed my principal and I said, you know what, this sounds great. Very strange to me, I’m not comfortable with it. Where is this coming from? Because in my mind, gay-straight alliance is a very different concept than gender sexuality. I never did get a response in writing OK, but what they do in our schools, Aaron, I know you know this. They will have students come in for counseling. They’ll shut the door. The blinds are closed. You don’t know what’s being said. And parents often are denied even knowing the content of the conversations. And so students begin to. look at their parents as an enemy and not as a safe space, but another adult who doesn’t have the same values as the parents. And I’m so sorry that you had to go through that trauma as a parent where we’ve seen now cases where we’ve testified together at the Capitol against bills where they’re taking parental rights away from parents. Talk about some of those. I think it was 1312, right? Was it?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Well, real quick to another fundamental shift, since this is a podcast about education, people need to understand the distinction between school sponsored clubs and student sponsored clubs. So the GSA, the Gay Straight Alliance, used to be a student sponsored space where kids would run the format. They would run the meeting and they would just congregate and talk with each other. But what it’s transformed into now is the gender and sexuality awareness or alliance in my district, at least, is they’re all school sponsored, which means an adult is the one who is initiating, leading, running these clubs and has like full unfettered access to our kids. And it’s not it’s not just an environment for kids to talk to each other. It’s where the teacher is imposing ideas on. onto the kids and, you know, it gives them free reign to say anything they want with these kids. And I think most people don’t understand that distinction, that there’s a big difference between student and school sponsored. But oftentimes they often happen in secret as well. This, you know, our district has moved a lot of these clubs to the lunch hour. they don’t give you an option to opt out so even if you find out it’s happening which most parents don’t especially if they’re being intentionally deceived like i was being told it was an art club you don’t have the option to opt your kid out even if you find out it’s happening So I wanted to make sure people understand that because a lot of people don’t understand school sponsored versus student sponsored clubs and that distinction. But man, Colorado is just off the rails. They have passed so many unconstitutional anti-parent laws. I like to say that gender ideology is like our state mandated religion. Really, they just continue to pass bill after bill that forces it down our throats. Teachers Via 241039 are forced to socially transition kids, call them whatever they want to be called. Counselors via House Bill 191129 are required to only affirm gender confused kids. So once you’ve planted that seed in their head and they go to their school counselor, the only option is to say, yes, you are transgendered. And go along with it. I mean, they’ve mandated that death certificates have to abide by gender ideology where people have passed away and doctors have to say that this man is actually a woman on the death certificate. And then there’s 1312, which really made it so that parents are labeled as abusive, that it is a form of coercive control, which is akin to harboring someone for sex slavery. Same thing. Same charge, same misdemeanor charge, that parents would be criminally liable if they’re not willing to transition their kids. And it gives the courts full license to remove children from your loving care, from your custody, for the sole reason of being unwilling to transition them.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. You know, if there are teachers listening to this podcast or the radio show, the message needs to be they’re not your children. You can you can love your students. You can protect your students. Of course, you know, we want them to be safe. The goal is to send them back home to you safely in the same manner that you have sent your children to us online. without imposing our own personal ideology i make it clear i don’t talk about politics in my classroom if someone happens to see something on social media i don’t talk about it when they say who did you vote for i’m like we’re not talking about that you know it’s not our place as teachers and the teachers union uses this language that they’re your kids, they’re our kids, we know better, like what a school day should look like, what students should learn. And I didn’t realize this until COVID, really. I mean, I started to kind of sort of see it, but when we all got locked down and it became more evident, that’s when I personally got activated and I left the teacher’s union because it’s very, very damaging. Yes, two and a half years ago, I’m like, I’m done. I’m done. We are actually harming kids, but what we’re doing is we’re harming families. And we see the data about broken homes, statistically, especially in minority homes where we see a big education gap and economic gap. But I didn’t want to be a part of that movement that was actually separating parents. So I want to encourage teachers because a lot of people say, well, Priscilla, how do you have the courage to speak up as a teacher? Aren’t you afraid of being fired? And, you know, it could happen. I could get fired from my job for protecting and standing up for parents. And that’s the risk that I take. But I think… in a way, being an abolitionist in this movement to protect children and to support parents is far more important and more impactful that I should be doing with my time. But Erin, how did you as a mom get the courage to speak up? Very easily, you could have just done nothing, but you decided to activate. So where did that courage come from?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, first of all, thank you for speaking up. I hope that your courage is contagious for other teachers because I think there’s more of them in the system that agree with us. They’re just afraid to say it. They’re waiting for someone else to speak up first. And it’s the same with parents. You know, I activated when they messed with my kid. I was a very quiet, non-confrontational person. And then they came after my kid and we watched the real harm happen. I mean, my daughter became suicidal. She became alienated. She left us a suicide note and parents get bullied with the suicide myth. So to teachers that you either transition the child or they’ll die. Those are your options. If you don’t affirm that, their gender confusion, they will kill themselves. There’s no data to support that. In fact, most times it’s the opposite, that my daughter’s impossible pursuit to become the opposite sex, because it’s impossible, is what led to her depression and suicidality. It was impossible. She could not be a boy. No matter how much she tried to fit the square peg into the round hole, It wouldn’t work. And that’s what made her ultimately depressed and suicidal. It was not our lack of support. But when I went public, it was about a year later. We got our daughter out of it, took a whole year. And then she asked us to speak up to help others. She said, mom, what can we do to make sure this doesn’t happen to other kids? And it was all the other families who came forward. I mean, like dozens just in my school district, hundreds here in my state, thousands now across the country that I have communicated with and helped through this pandemic. It’s a very common pervasive issue, kids being secretly transitioned and parents not finding out until they’re already sent down that path. And I went, well, no one’s talking about this because when it happened to me, I was alone on an island. Like, oh, I must be the only person in the world who’s going through this. And then when I went public, I went, oh, this is ubiquitous. Like this is everywhere. And these parents need a voice because most of them are not so lucky as to get their kid out. Once you send your kid down that path of they’ve changed their name, they’ve changed their hair, they’ve medicalized. You can’t just turn that off. You work with kids all day. You know, you can’t just reverse course on this identity that you’ve proclaimed to the whole world. And so I very much just continue to be that voice for the thousands of families who are going through this, but who have not gotten their kids to the other side or who are afraid, much like teachers. They don’t want to lose their job. They don’t want to take all the hate. And you and I get that. We get a lot of hate for speaking up. And it takes a certain personality to withstand it. But I continue to speak up on behalf of all the other families.
SPEAKER 03 :
If you’re just tuning in, my guest today is Erin Lee. She’s Mega Mom, Uber Mom, Executive Director of Protect Kids Colorado. And she is speaking from a place of experience. You know what you’re doing. Thank you. First of all, thank you for being a mom. That was the first, you know, first person to lead. And so many people are following you and you’re part of this organization, Protect Kids Colorado. Talk a little bit about the mission of Protect Kids Colorado and some of the initiatives that you’re involved in.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Well, we here in Colorado, we cannot pass good legislation. We can’t even stop the bad stuff. That 1312 law that I referenced, the death certificate law. I mean, they pass and there’s not a whole lot we can do to stop it. But we’re one of 27 states that has the citizen ballot measure process. And so our main objective right now is passing citizen law. In addition to we filed the first federal lawsuit against 1312. I think we’ll strike that horrific law down tomorrow. We support families who are going through this. We just want to be a beacon that, you know, when you Google like I did, when this happens to you and you don’t know where to go, there’s this resource of people who can help you and have been through it. But then we’re running three citizens ballot measures. Last year, we ran two protecting girls sports, just keeping sports male, female co-ed and parents right to know when their child’s been transitioned. We didn’t make the ballot. We were up against all kinds of hurdles, but we learned so much. And so this year we’re running girls sports again, keeping sports male, female coed, stopping irreversible sex change surgeries on minor children and then stricter penalties for child sex trafficking. Because we live in a state where you get a slap on the wrist for raping children on multiple occasions.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mean, it’s crazy to think that we have to have a citizen’s initiative for common sense legislation. There are other more liberal countries that have stricter laws that won’t allow minor children to have surgeries and take puberty blockers. This stuff is dangerous. I mean, we’re all smart. We’re intelligent. We know how God created our bodies. And let me talk about that. Faith has a lot to do with this. You cannot separate… um faith from this conversation because it is an attack on the family it’s an attack on our children it’s an opposition to how god created us man and woman male and female there’s nothing in between i’m not going to talk about anomalies okay those anomaly okay people try to look and we’re not going to talk about it’s the same as if you want to identify as black or white or whatever like God is very clear and we are not confused about how he created us. And I was a coach too. I coached boys and girls tennis and volleyball. And I’m going to tell you distinctly, there is a biological difference between you know, structural, skeletal-wise. There is nothing you can do. When I looked at Leah Thomas, I mean, she was just so much bigger than the women. That’s not fair. We’re talking about something that is unjust, unfair, Irreversible a lot of times. And these young women and even some young men who are detransitioning, their stories are just heartbreaking as to the medical problems they continually have. biological problems, medications they’re always going to be on. Maybe they’ll never be able to have children. They’ll never be able to enjoy a covenant of a marriage the way God had intended that to be. You know, these are real consequences of being lost and then having society affirm a lie. And we have to fight against that. My guest today is Erin Lee. She’s the executive director of Protect Kids Colorado. She’s talking about these three initiatives in Colorado that we need signatures for. I know there are a lot of people with petitions, but what’s the down and dirty about where people can go to sign the petition?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. I just want to piggyback on what you said real quick, because God doesn’t make mistakes. It is so important to teach our own children that at an early age, you know, I now I have younger boys. I had a newborn. when our daughter was brought into the cult, newborn a six-year-old. And we didn’t know how to talk about these things, but we started with, God doesn’t make mistakes with you. And there’s no wrong way to be a boy or a girl. I was such a tomboy, man, I would have fallen into this whole idea if this had been a thing in the 80s and 90s. So it’s so important to impart that in our kids. But these ballot measures, they’re so simple and they’re so easy to understand and they’re common sense. They’re 80-20 issues. Even the New York Times has said these are 80-20 issues. And it’s not just the boys competing against the girls. It’s I hear from a lot of young female athletes, high school age girls who are like, I have to change in front of these fully intact men. I go into my locker room and all of a sudden there are male parts in my locker room in my high school where I’m just trying to change and get out onto the field and play. So the levels of trauma that these girls are going through and the fear for them to speak up. We talk about fear for you and I speaking up as a parent and a teacher. Imagine what these girls… 15, 16, 17 years old, even younger are going through, they don’t have the, you know, they don’t have the ability to speak up for themselves. And when they do, they face repercussions. So it’s up to us, the adults across the board on all of these issues to stand up for kids, because there is nothing more important than protecting the innocence of children, their spaces, their bodies, keeping them whole. And we’ve gotten some pushback on the trafficking issue. People go, Well, you’re setting a life of a penalty of life in prison, no chance of parole for these perpetrators. You’re darn right we are, because the child victim does not get a second chance. Why should the perpetrator get a second chance to victimize another child? We should absolutely be putting away people who are buying and selling innocent children for sex in the state of Colorado. And that that’s actually a 90-10 issue. I do believe that will pass when we make the ballot. So people can go to protectkidscolorado.org. We have all kinds of signing opportunities on our events page. Anyone can be a circulator. If you know 20 people, you can take a petition packet and get some signatures and be part of this movement.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, because it’s very expensive to get a ballot initiative. There’s a lot of people don’t understand the process and you have to get the language approved by a board. So it’s a big, big process. And this needs to come from we the people and a lot of churches. I’m so proud that a lot of pastors are starting to wake up and become more active because they know that. So goes the church. So goes community. We need our men. We’re going to put our fathers back in their rightful, respectful place so that we can get our families back in order. I mean, these are so many wonderful things that we’re starting to see fathers even step up and be the strong men and godly leaders and spiritual leaders of their family. And it’s so refreshing to see this movement change. But, you know, there are people who call us haters. Where, you know, they call us transphobic and they call us, you know, anti this and anti that. I mean, what’s your response when you hear people say that you’re just being hateful?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, well, I have about 2000 circulators all over the state and over 300 churches have engaged in this process. And I get this question a lot from them. And I say, we just keep the messaging positive. I’m not anti anything. I don’t hate anyone. I am pro protecting kids. I am pro transparency, pro parental authority, pro family. We’re not anti anything. Keep the messaging positive. All they have is hateful insults. And that I think to me is a sign that we’re over the target. When I have the enemy screeching at what I’m doing, I know that I’m doing something right. If they’re not talking about us, then we’re not affecting change. And we, with these petitions, it’s so cool because this is like you said, it usually costs three to $5 million to pay people to get these signatures. That’s not how we’re doing it. We’re engaging the hands and feet of Jesus and, We’re engaging the church, we’re engaging citizens to go out and have conversations and shift culture in addition to changing policy. So your film, Art Club, where can people see this film? It’s for free at artclubmovie.com. And that’s just a film about our family story, but we included ADF and Family Research Council, David Barton, some great leaders that really helped tie together this overall issue and how it’s affecting families across the country. So it’s just artclubmovie.com and it streams for free.
SPEAKER 03 :
And what kind of response have you received from that film?
SPEAKER 02 :
I wish we had way more views on it. I know we’ve had over a hundred thousand views, but I wish this would have taken fire more than it has. And I hope that it still will. The response has been really positive. It’s just more affirmation that there are so many families going through this. It’s been surprising how many families have reached out and said, your story is my story. Cause it’s always eerily the same vulnerable pubescent girl gets convinced that her normal pubescent discomfort actually means she’s trans or autistic or has been through some kind of sexual trauma and As you said, no 12-year-old’s comfortable in their body. But what I’ve learned is that the story is so similar with these kids being secretly transitioned behind parents’ backs.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, this movement has definitely been a contagion. It’s not normal. I’ve been in education for 32 years. This didn’t happen 30 years ago. Didn’t happen 25 years ago. Didn’t happen 20 years ago.
SPEAKER 1 :
15, 10.
SPEAKER 03 :
But in 2020… It started happening. And, you know, it’s really interesting when you look at the social justice movement. It went from like George Floyd and BLM. and Black excellence. And for me as a Black educator to see, well, look, the data, nothing changed in that all of the DEI training, kids were still not reading and writing at grade level. Oh, let’s change our focus in schools to now LGBTQ plus and trans. And that’s like the new, everything, everything, all of our professional development, we don’t talk about Black excellence anymore. We don’t talk about making sure our kids in city schools are reading and writing at grade level. Everything is trans. And the whole name your pronoun thing, if you cannot look at me and tell that I am a woman, they said, oh, we need you to put your pronouns on everything, on your school email, on your placard outside your door. So I said, I’m not doing that, but I will say Mrs. Priscilla Rahn. Yes, Mrs. So do we not teach students anymore about Mr. Mrs. Doctor, you know, our titles? We don’t do that stuff anymore. So our kids are just growing up, just existing, not learning how to read and write at grade level, but they’re learning how to hate their country. And they’re learning how to question God and question authority and disrespect everybody around them and hate law enforcement. I mean, this is where we’re at. And so we now have options for parents. that we need parents to start looking into different options. Because as you mentioned, we only have one opportunity to raise innocent children. Once their innocence is taken, it’s very difficult. Then they grow up to be adults that have a lot of social emotional problems. And if parents can find a good charter school, a classical school, a private school, private Christian school, homeschool, micro school, there are all kinds of options. And I think parents can find support to pull their kids out of the public education system and make sure that their children have a shot at growing up healthy, mentally healthy and
SPEAKER 02 :
Um, you’re speaking my language. So I, and I hear from parents a lot, like I can’t, it’s too hard, you know, public schools, what’s easy. Well, I’m a, I’m a private Christian, a classical core knowledge and a homeschool parent. I have three kids and all three options because one size does not fit all. And let me just tell you, you either sacrifice for your kids or you are sacrificing your kids to exactly what you were talking about. Indoctrination to a life of not being able to read and write a life of where pronoun conversation has been normalized and And now, even though it may seem innocent, you tell a kid, what, 12 times and it becomes normal to them. Well, if they get asked their pronouns 12 times, that just becomes normal that I now announce myself with my pronouns. So you either sacrifice for your kids or you’re sacrificing your kids. And it is a lot easier to do the extra drive to a school I trust than it is to read every book and paper and do 18 core requests a week to see what my kid is being exposed to in the public school. It’s actually easier.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, Aaron, I’m looking at the time and we have to land our plane. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. We’ll have to have more. OK, I really love having this conversation with you and keep going. We’re praying for you and we’re going to get those ballots signed. But to my guests, thanks for tuning in today. Catch me next time. And remember, educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue and speak truth.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. Visit PriscillaRahn.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.
