LINCOLN, Neb. (Flatwater Free Press) -On a Saturday this March, Stephanie Nantkes walked into the Civic Middle in downtown Seward and located a number of dozen individuals gathered within the assembly room downstairs, heads bowed in prayer. She discovered Kirk Penner, working for re-election to the Nebraska State Board of Training. She discovered Jessie Bremer and Jacob Bierbaum, native college board candidates.

She discovered a desk of fellow lecturers. Some retired, like her. Some nonetheless at it: grading essays,  revising lesson plans and organizing area journeys.

Collectively, they waited for a brand new movie referred to as “The Thoughts Polluters” to start – a movie that might finally be publicly screened by Nebraska for Founders’ Values and the Defend Nebraska Youngsters Coalition roughly two dozen instances throughout the state, from Omaha to Gordon.

The lights have been dimmed. The projector turned on.

“Let me ask you a query…,” Mark Archer, the movie’s director and narrator, begins. “What if I informed you that your baby was being not solely sexually harassed, however proven pornography in an effort to groom them for sexual exercise? What in the event that they have been being groomed for gay exercise? What in the event that they have been being groomed for intercourse with pedophiles….”

He speaks slowly, softly. Involved.

“Now right here’s the massive query: What if I informed you all these items have been taking place to your baby of their college classroom?”

Nantkes watched as audio system rifled accusations at “authorities education programs” – at lecturers like herself, she felt.

Months later, Nantkes, mom of former ACLU of Nebraska director Danielle Conrad, struggled to articulate the depths of her bewilderment.

“A horror movie,” she referred to as it.

“How insane is that this?” she requested. “There isn’t one reality behind what they have been saying.”

She hadn’t spent 40 years educating in Nebraska’s public faculties and served two phrases on the Seward college board solely to have her life’s pursuit portrayed because the work of the Antichrist.

“And that’s the correct definition…,” insists writer Alex Newman close to the movie’s finish. “So mother and father, you might have an obligation as a Christian to take away these youngsters from that college.”

When the movie ended and Penner rose to talk, Nantkes snapped.

“Boo!” she yelled. “Boo! Boo!”

She stored at it till the hosts tried – and failed – to usher her from the constructing. She dared them to name the police. They backed down.

“They have been telling individuals lies about what I’ve liked my whole life,” she says. “And I’ll go down preventing for it.”

Leaders of the Nebraskans for Founders’ Values and the Defend Nebraska Youngsters Coalition  rejected interview requests for this story, as did Nebraska Board of Training member Penner and state board candidates Elizabeth Tegtmeier, Marni Hodgen and Sherry Jones, who’ve been endorsed by the PNCC and took part in a displaying of the movie.

“Any statements attributed to the PNCC or myself shall be disavowed,” wrote Sue Greenwald, retired pediatrician and Defend Nebraska Youngsters Coalition member. “If you want to speak in regards to the movie, I might recommend you discuss to the producers.”

Mark and Amber Archer, the Indiana-based husband-wife filmmaking duo who produced the movie, additionally declined to remark.

Doug Brady, candidate for the Studying Neighborhood of Douglas and Sarpy Counties’ Coordinating Council, hosted an April viewing of “The Thoughts Polluters” in Bellevue.

“An actual eye opener,” he stated. A film that “tells rather a lot about what’s really occurring in our faculty districts round right here.”

***

“The Thoughts Polluters” is the second feature-length movie produced by the Archers. The film alleges that “authorities faculties” are “grooming” youngsters by means of applications like complete sex-ed and social-emotional studying, along with what audio system name pornographic youngsters’s books.

“Overcoming the pure inhibitions that youngsters have is the objective of each the sexual predator and the sexual educator,” Amber Archer says. “Breaking down the God-given boundaries that youngsters have in the direction of sexual content material and conduct is the important thing: the important thing to manipulation and in the end enslavement…”

The movie doesn’t interview any lively public college lecturers, directors, teachers or consultants in public well being or baby psychological improvement.

The Nebraska Division of Training and the Nebraska State Training Affiliation – the lecturers’ union –  don’t all the time see eye to eye.

Each agree that “The Thoughts Polluters” has no foundation in actuality.

“This film is pure propaganda,” wrote NSEA President Jenni Benson in an e-mail.

“I believe it’s detrimental to the faculties,” stated David Jespersen, the Nebraska Division of Training’s public info officer. “I believe it’s detrimental to the lecturers. And I believe it’s really detrimental to society to be making these broad, baseless claims.”

Not like the couple’s first movie – about disgraced Indiana physician and abortion supplier George Klopfer – “The Thoughts Polluters” was prohibited from launch on Amazon. (Amazon couldn’t be reached for remark). It prices $24.99 to lease on Vimeo.

The Nebraskans for Founders’ Values (whose director, Mark Bonkiewicz, additionally stars within the movie) and the Defend Nebraska Youngsters Coalition started collectively screening “The Thoughts Polluters” in church buildings, libraries and group facilities this spring, shortly after the Nebraska Board of Training voted to indefinitely postpone the state’s first-ever well being schooling requirements.

State and native college board candidates endorsed by the teams appeared as visitor audio system at these occasions.

Phrase of the “The Thoughts Polluters” rapidly unfold on social media and bled into native college board conferences.

Amanda Ripley, a Lincoln nurse and mom of two, streamed the film on-line. She then publicly addressed the Lincoln Board of Training, sure the state’s proposed well being requirements would quickly inch their means again into consideration.

“It could virtually be negligent for anybody to vote sure or no on the proposed well being requirements with out seeing this very complete and well-sourced documentary,” she informed the college board in February.

In a follow-up interview, Ripley stated she hasn’t personally seen any of the grooming actions alleged in “Thoughts Polluters.” She referred to as the lecturers at her youngsters’ public college “beautiful individuals” and stated she hasn’t hosted a screening of the movie “as a result of this does appear tremendous excessive for Lincoln, Nebraska.”

“It does appear…to color lecturers in a nasty gentle,” she stated. “So if I have been a trainer, would I be proud of that? No. However then show your self. Show that you just’re higher and may be trusted with our youngsters…”

Jespersen, on the Nebraska Division of Training, stated there’s no proof to help the movie’s accusations. He stated Nebraska lately made headlines when comparable “baseless claims” have been aired within the Legislature.

Repeating a rumor that unfold from the PNCC Fb web page, Sen. Bruce Bostelman of Brainard claimed public faculties have been offering litter containers to “furries,” or youngsters figuring out as cats. A number of college districts discredited the rumor. Bostelman apologized.

“If mother and father actually consider one thing’s occurring, it needs to be investigated.,. And in case you assume the administration is pushing it, then the Division of Training ought to get entangled,” Jespersen stated. “However we don’t have these claims.”

Lecturers are the only largest reporters of kid abuse annually in Nebraska, he stated.

If mother and father are morally against a part of the curriculum, they’ll usually choose their baby out, he stated. In the event that they consider materials is inappropriate, they’ll file discover with the college board and district for evaluate.

“However we’re simply not conscious of any of these items taking place,” he stated.

Even because it misleads, the movie could have energy as a result of, in some ways, the US has remodeled. In accordance with a current Gallup ballot, 7.1% of American adults who now determine as LGBT, almost twice as many as a decade in the past. The variety of LGBT youngsters is rising sharply. The nation’s multiracial inhabitants is rising at an unprecedented fee. The proportion of white Individuals is shrinking and so, too, is the proportion of self-identifying Christians.

“The world is turning into a daunting place to many as a result of it’s altering,” stated Rita Bennett, former Lincoln Training Affiliation president, who opposes the documentary.

Brady, candidate for the Studying Neighborhood’s Coordinating Council, agrees that issues are altering. He stated faculties are pushing that change.

He stated classes about gender and sexuality taught in faculties are sometimes inappropriate. Any information about intercourse needs to be taught by mother and father, he stated.

Citing “The Thoughts Polluters” as proof, he stated faculties are educating youngsters that it’s acceptable to have intercourse with adults.

“The massive factor they all the time say is ‘No means no and sure means sure,’” Brady stated. “They’re telling a younger baby that’s is O.Okay. for them to provide permission to have intercourse, even to older individuals.”

Jill Brown, Creighton College professor who teaches “The Psychology of Gender,” testified earlier than the Legislature’s Training Committee supporting the proposed well being requirements in February.

She stated “Thoughts Polluters” does a disservice to “the true work” of stopping sexual abuse, which many research have proven may be considerably lowered when complete sexual schooling is taught in faculties.

Many claims made within the movie are disproven by present analysis.

The movie says “each cell in your physique testifies to the truth that you’re both male or feminine.” In accordance with a United Nations report, as much as 1.7-percent of the world’s inhabitants is born with intersex traits.

The movie says transgenderism is the results of trauma, confusion or whimsy. However quite a few research have proven in any other case.

The movie says youngsters’s “pure aversion” to intercourse will stop abuse.  However the U.S. authorities stories almost one in 4 ladies and one in 13 boys expertise sexual abuse yearly.

***

After the “Thoughts Polluters” program in Seward was completed, Nantkes and different lecturers from her desk reconvened exterior the Civic Middle. They have been shocked. Indignant. One among them later in contrast it to stepping off a curler coaster. “Your again is up in opposition to the wall, and so they have you ever get out, and also you’re simply wobbling round like, What simply occurred right here?”

However they have been additionally stuffed with conviction. All of them, Nantkes stated, are “hellbent” on damning the move of disinformation.

It’s a frustration shared by the Nebraska Division of Training.

“Individuals see movies like this and so they marvel why lecturers are having a tough time proper now. This undoubtedly contributes,” Jespersen stated. “With every part that we’re asking of lecturers, we needs to be celebrating them, not utilizing baseless claims to convey them down.”

FFP reporter Natalia Alamdari contributed to this story.

The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska’s first impartial, nonprofit newsroom targeted on investigations and have tales that matter.

Copyright 2022 KOLN. All rights reserved.