Michael Gottesman is a retired New Jersey attorney and the founder of the “New Jersey Coalition for Protection of Public Education,” a non-partisan organization designed to provide parents with factual information about school board issues and school board elections, as well as to dispel misinformation and disinformation campaigns that are prevalent in our state at the current time. www.facebook.com/groups/njc4ppe

In his latest op-ed, defeated gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli continues to align himself with organizations, from within and without the state that present “cultist conspiracy theories” about the “hidden” intention and agenda of not only the NJ Department of Education, but the NJEA, School Board members, teacher and even parents who refuse to accept their outlandish allegations.

Ciattarelli is all on-board with radical dark money seeking to destabilize our public schools and reject any regulation of public schools that might ensure that diversity, inclusion and an accurate American history are presented. He supports organizations like the New Jersey Project, a pseudo –PAC that pushes absurd allegations that teachers are “pedophiles” and “groomers” who plan to sexualize our children and prepare them for the human sex-trafficking industry. These groups have plied disinformation in furtherance of their goals of division and confusion. All one needs to do is check out their Facebook page and review the posts to see a true indicator of lunacy at work.

Ciattarelli knows with whom he aligns. He knows the players like Moms for Liberty, Arise NJ, No Left Turn, the New Jersey Project, and the Center for Garden State Families, just to name a few. Organizations with non-descript names that push the idea of “home rule” in order to morph our public schools into institutions they would seek to control and if allowed to, will indoctrinate our children into their warped dystopian conspiratorial view. One imbued with their biased theocratic principals, race bias and the view that they alone hold the supreme key to a perfect world. One bereft of diversity and inclusion. One where any opposing view is quashed through threats and intimidation.
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Ciattarelli, in league with these forces, continues to misrepresent the newly adopted health and fitness curriculum because, in doing so, he and his comrades can seize control. You see, “home rule” in their perception is not the idea that municipalities should make all decisions about municipal affairs. While they shout about “big brotherism” and a desire to wrest control from the NJ DOE, the true meaning of their “home rule” is the desire to have the power to force their viewpoint on all of our children. And after gaining local control, their intention to push that control up the governmental ladder.

Attacks and control at the local level is merely the beginning. That is why their newest slogan is “Vote Bottoms Up” and they share images such as this one through their groups. They recognize that local school board elections are the course to domination and their “battle royal” remains the health and fitness mandate, or as they call it the “sex-ed” conspiracy.

Ciattarelli, after his defeat, was perfectly happy to take succor from these groups and use his status as a public figure to assist in the campaign of misinformation. He expresses his objection to curriculum that he says includes “hotly debated changes to the public school curriculum,” including inclusivity lessons which he nicknames the “LGBTQ curriculum.” There is no “LGBTQ curriculum” in the NJDOE health and fitness mandate so his classification of a curriculum like this is an invention of his making

Ciattarelli  decries how kindergarten lesson plans include “gender identification and sexual orientation.” He pushes this disinformation when, if he had actually bothered to read the curriculum (which impacts second grade students, not kindergarten students), he would know the curriculum he is so alarmed about merely tells second graders that boys and girls can play with any toys they want, be it boys playing with dolls and girls playing with trucks. That anyone can play with any toys they wish. By telling children that boys don’t have to be astronauts, policemen or firemen and girls don’t have to be teachers or nurses but all can grow up to do anything they want. And that teaches our children the anatomical names of their bodies, including those “covered by their bathing suits,” so that our children will have the vocabulary to tell a caregiver if they are being sexually assaulted.

Further, Ciattarelli completely rejects the eighth grade curriculum, a portion of which is purposed with teaching our children that sex is not limited to vaginal. That anal and oral sex is in fact sex as well. That you are more likely to be infected with a STD/STI from oral or anal sex than vagina sex, and that rates of STD/STI transmission among teens has escalated over the last two years. That vaginal sex can result in unwanted pregnancies in teenagers that have not only a detrimental impact on the physical body but can create protracted psychologic injury.

And multiply that by the fact that Ciattarelli’s own party is hell bent on making every women carry every pregnancy to term, without regard to the means of insemination, even if from rape or incest.

And to not allow a curriculum designed to let our children know what is and what is not appropriate touching, that they are in control and have the right to say no!

So we know where Ciattarelli stands on the spectrum. He too, like many politicians of his ilk, is prepared to ride the “disinformation train” in order to cease power. It’s not about protecting children from a so-called threat in the curriculum. It is about Ciattarelli remaining prominent in the minds of the public through the use of misinformation. To ride this “wave of lies” and eventually attempt another run for Governor.