[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange podcast. This is the unique program where we have conversations about worldview all through the lens of oneism and two ISM. That lens is based on Romans 1:25. We've exchanged the truth of God for the lie, worship and serve creation rather than the Creator who is blessed forever.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: I'm your host, Joshua Gila with Mary Weller, of course. Good morning, partner in crime.
Good to have you on. It's good to be doing podcasts again. We took a little bit of a break for the Advent Christmas tide season, and of course it's the end of the year and the beginning of the year for nonprofit, so there's a bit of a behind the scenes activity. So it's good to be doing podcasting again.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: We have a special guest, a bit of activity as opposed to an avalanche of activity under which you've been buried for like a month and a half.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: So.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: And so we have back on the podcast with us, Dean Broyles. For our, our veterans. They'll remember. Dean has. Well, I wouldn't say we work together, but we have had Dean on the podcast a number of times, specifically relating to the issue of yoga within the schools. Dean is the president and chief counsel for the national loss that the national center for Law and Policy, which is a nonprofit legal defense organization. So, Dean, welcome back on the program.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Great to be back with you, Dean.
[00:01:30] Speaker C: I feel like it's old Home week. We had Bishop Eric Meniz on the show recently and then now with you, it's like getting to visit old family friends. And it's so good to have you on the show.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Well, I am old, so that would be appropriate.
I'm definitely the oldest one on this podcast today.
[00:01:56] Speaker C: Well, I, I just wanted to take a minute because we have a lot of listeners who were not around when the entire Encinitas, as I think of it, the Encinitas yoga debacle happened. And so, Dean, I just wanted to take a minute to introduce you and kind of my experience of meeting you to our audience. And this was we're going back to 15 years ago now, which is pretty amazing.
And I had discovered that the schools in Encinitas were doing a mandatory yoga program in which my son, who was a kindergartner at the time, was involved.
And I remember a friend of mine, Marcia, after about a year, I had been handing out articles and trying to notify parents that this was going on. And then it spread into the entire district. And my friend Marcia told me, you know, we're going to Have a meeting and there's a lawyer coming. And I remember thinking, a lawyer? Like, how on earth are we going to afford a lawyer? Like, this is ridiculous. You know what? I just felt completely like this whole thing was out of my hands. There was nothing that we could possibly do. And I remember meeting you outside of Marsha's house, and sure enough, there you were.
One of God's gifts. And I mean this truly God's gifts to the church, especially here in California, with all of the challenges that we face. A lawyer who was willing to come in and talk to us parents and eventually represent parents because our rights and our children's rights were being trampled on by the education system. So I'm, I'm offering you a hero's welcome still to the podcast, because that's how we met you. And just. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do and what that was like? Dean?
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah, so I, when I was growing up as a kid, I did not have any dreams of being an attorney. And God kind of tapped me on the shoulder and didn't audibly speak to me, but may as well been audible and called me to law school to fight for religious liberty. And that was, I got excited about that, I got passionate about that.
And I was trained in constitutional litigation.
So I, you know, including by Jay Sekulow, who's one of the, you know, preeminent constitutional attorneys in the United States. Yeah, so I, I've been doing this work now for a long time, but we, the, we formed the national center for Law and policy back in 2007, right at kind of the beginning of the Prop 8 effort to preserve marriage in California.
And I'm so, I've been doing pro life, pro family, pro religious liberty work for about 30 years now. And we've had a lot of success even in crazy California, fighting for religious liberty. And our main reason for existing is to keep the doors open for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so we help churches, we help Christian ministries, we help individuals and parents and families and do a lot of public school cases like the Encinitas yoga case.
And I've been doing that for a long time and it's been a lot of fun.
California is a target rich environment for the work that we do.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Absolutely unending target rich environment. It's like they keep producing targets. Um, can you explain a little bit to our audience what it was like for you as a, as a Christian attorney at the time, specifically with yoga, what it was like to come in and to try to talk to parents about yoga. Did it seem like it was going to be a difficult issue, an easy issue to convince parents on? What was your experience? I know what my end of it was like, but what was your experience and what things did you learn about kind of the state of the church and the way that we interpret things through that case?
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So back when I was in college, you know, during the 80s, there was a lot of Christian apologetics work in. In the area of New Age movements and New Age religions and yoga and Hinduism and Buddhism and all of that. And so I had taken. I was a sociology major and taken a lot of sociology classes on cults and new religious movements. So I had a background in Eastern mysticism and yoga that was very helpful when I heard about Encinitas case. And as you stated, Encinitas basically replaced their entire PE program with mandatory yoga. Yeah, it wasn't just any kind of yoga. It was Ashtanga yoga, which is, you know, deeply spiritual and religious form of yoga that was brought to the US by Pattavi Joyce 30 to 40 years ago. Tanzanitas in particular was kind of the landing place that Patabi Joyce had when he came to California. Yeah, yeah. So usually it was kind of an interesting case for me to get involved with because usually I'm trying to allow as much religious liberty for parents and students in public school and teachers in public schools here. I'm trying to get a alternative religion kind of kicked out in the sense that, you know, it was mandatory for all students, no matter what their religious background was. And so it was, I would say it was a little bit heavy lifting because a lot of people, when they look at yoga from the outside, it looks fun, it looks nice.
It looks like you're just stretching and breathing, and that's all it is.
And so it was strange to have to convince Christians even that yoga was a problem because of its spiritual and I would say, demonic roots.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. That was something that was interesting to me during that time.
And just to lay a little bit more of this out for our listeners, and I've talked about it before, but you were handling the legal end of things. I was one of the parents. And while I wasn't a parent who was pursuing, I was a parent who was involved. And you. And I did. I was trying to think about it the other day. I mean, I think we did more than 20 to 30, I mean, huge news interviews. I mean, I remember the New York Times. I remember Al Jazeera coming to your office.
AL JAZEERA ENGLISH cnn, pbs these Huge outlets coming to speak to us. And we were not only in those interviews trying to explain to non Christians why this was an issue for Christians.
But what surprised me, and I think it was surprising to you too, was that some of the angriest pushback that we got against parents speaking out at all was from Christians who also wanted their students to be able to take these yoga programs.
I joke about it, but I remember you sweetly asking me if you needed to pursue the threat to my safety and my children's safety that I received via email during that time, being told that I should no longer feel safe showing my face on the streets of my neighborhood because I had spoken out about yoga. And so was that a shock to you, how angry it made the Christians that didn't agree with us?
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Yes, that was shocking because as I said, Christians generally used to know that Eastern mysticism was not something to be messed with.
And yet, you know, fast forward to that time period. You know, there was a lot of, in 2015, 2013, there was a lot of Christians starting to promote what they called Christian yoga or holy yoga and trying to syncretize Christianity with these pagan religious beliefs. And it was bizarre because we were actually getting thanked by Hindus and thank you for acknowledging that our beliefs are not just stretching and breathing. They're not just physical. They're actually religious. And so it was bizarre. We were, you know, that we had angry white Karens attacking us, but the Hindus were actually thanking us for acknowledging that their religion was actually a religion.
[00:10:20] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it really, it was a remarkable time. It really was a remarkable time.
You were going to ask something, Joshua?
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to ask for our listeners who may, our first time listeners who may not have been familiar with the podcast and the articles and a lot of the resources that really came out during that time from Truth Exchange 1 through you, Mary and Pam Frost. But Dean, for some of our listeners may be asking the question as they listen to this, okay, well, what about freedom of religion?
So does not a student have the right to practice Hinduism at school?
Would you encourage, because you would encourage Christians to practice their faith on school. Can't the Hindus also practice their faith? Does that not seem a bit self like in contradiction?
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Yeah, so we're not anti religion or even anti religion school. It's the state imposing one religion or one religious practice or belief on all students. That's what was happening in Encinitas. So, you know, if Hindu students want to chant or do yoga at break or lunchtime, that's perfectly fine. You know, Christians can have Bible clubs on campuses. Christian students can share their faith. There's a lot of things that students can do.
But you know, when the state uses its coercive, you know, pressure of compulsory education, says you have to come to our school or go to a private school. So most students, 80% of Americans are educated in public education and it's the state promoting one religion over another, including you know, and Hinduism is polar opposite to the biblical Judeo Christian worldview. And so, you know, we, we even had Christian parents who were saying, oh, this is no big deal. Our kids are just stretching and breathing. But I had a dad a year or so later come back and apologize and repent to me for taking that position, kind of mocking me. Oh, they're just stretching and breathing. What's the big deal? When he found his 12 year old son stressed out trying to deal with it in the lotus position with his hands in the genre Mudra, rather than praying to Jesus for help with his stress, he was going to, to the Hindu gods for, to deal with this stress. And so the dad called me later and apologized and said, hey, I, I now see this is more than just physical. It's actually spiritual and religious.
[00:12:55] Speaker C: That touched my heart so much when you told me about that conversation that you had had, Dean. And I know there were moms that we ended up working with who even at the beginning of things were very opposed to our saying something. They thought that we were going to sound like Bible thumpers and sound crazy. But repeatedly we had parents come who were like, oh my gosh, you know, my son has started having these really crazy nightmares and their nightmares that they were nightmares that were directly related to the curriculum documents that we were reading where teachers were being trained to like draw the spirit of the student to the surface by yoga so that they could like influence the, the students. You know, I mean, and students were having nightmares about stuff like this.
Little kids getting into lotus position for, for worship. They had clearly connected the fact that it was worship.
And I really, I think that was the first, that period was the first time that I really started to truly understand the power of 1 ISM and 2 ISM.
Having that principal that I spoke to talked to me and say, well, we're teaching kids to respect each other. You're a Christian, don't you believe in respect?
And my being able to kind of step back and analyze, wait a second, what is the difference between Christian respect and Hindu respect? One is, no, I teach my son that he's made in the image of a holy God and that every other human being is as well. Therefore, they have inherent dignity and they're deserving of respect.
That is Christian respect imbued by our Creator. You're teaching kids that they all have a spark of divinity in them that causes them to need to respect each other because they're all inherently divine. Those are the same word.
And you're acknowledging it's religious and you're saying it's the same as my religion. And here I can explain to you the way it's inherently different. And that was just an extraordinary experience for me.
Dean, you mentioned something I found really encouraging, and I was hoping you could tell our audience because ultimately that lawsuit failed. And can you break down the way the judge handled that suit?
And. And then what you explained to me about what happened years later as a result of the lawsuit.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I wouldn't. I mean, I wouldn't characterize it as a failure in that the judge. Actually, we had a great expert witness, Candy Gunther Brown.
[00:15:27] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Really smart. Probably the smartest person I've ever known. But she testified, and our judge found that yoga is religious, including Ashtanga yoga.
So in that sense, it was a win. Where it became a loss is that the judge was convinced that by the time we got to trial that Encinitas had stripped enough religion out of their yoga PE program.
And they did make changes, right? They did make a lot of changes to the program.
They stopped chanting. They stopped doing certain exercises that were more overtly religious, I would say.
So they made a lot of changes. And the judge found somehow he threaded the needle and said, well, they stripped enough religion out of this yoga program, so it's no longer violates the First Amendment. If it did violate the First Amendment.
[00:16:26] Speaker C: It's just enough religious.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Yeah, just enough religious.
I mean, that's kind of interesting that a judge would know that they've stripped enough religion out of it so it was no longer religious enough to violate the First Amendment.
He must have powers that I don't have. But anyhow, it was kind of a bizarre split decision. So technically, Encinitas was able to continue to teach yoga in their PE program.
And certainly that was a loss. We appealed it, and the appellate court just didn't understand what was going on. They were completely in the tank for yoga and didn't even give us any quarter.
So we made a decision as a legal team at that point to not appeal it first further in the California court system because we felt like we were going to lose and get a bad ruling. That would hurt us down the road. And so we stepped back.
However, I want to say that we maybe lost that battle, but we won the war. And just today I was on the web searching Sonoma Foundation. Now, originally when we started the lawsuit, they were called the Joyce foundation after the Hindu guru that brought Ashtanga yoga, Encinitas, Pattavi Joyce.
But during and after the lawsuit, they changed the name to the Sonoma foundation because they were getting bad press. The spotlight was being shown on them because they wanted to.
A hedge fund billionaire's wife wanted to spread the gospel of yoga throughout all public schools in the United States and replace all PE programs. That was their goal.
But if you go, if you go on their website now or look on their Facebook page, they have not posted anything for more than 10 years, since 2015.
[00:18:21] Speaker C: Wow, okay.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Which is a year or two after we did our appellate arguments in that case.
So foundation, for all intents and purposes, is dead.
Even at their height, they only were touching about 30 to 40,000 kids in the U.S.
yeah. So they basically, what I suspect happened is school districts did not want to get sued like Encinitas got sued.
And even though we lost that case and we didn't get it kicked out of Encinitas, we stopped it from spreading like spiritual cancer all over the United States. So I can say, really, in the end now, as of today, 11, 12, 14 years later, we really stopped the spread of yoga in public schools in the United States. Wow.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: I remember coming into the office during all of that and well before some of the went to court, Mary talking about and showing me the print screens that she had taken the screen captures from the various documents and how they one day it. Mary had all the evidence that they held to certain things and this was being done. And then they had the next day stripped it, deleted it, changed wording and so on. And it was just like, maybe I'm dating myself hitting print screen, but I still print screen.
[00:19:51] Speaker C: And I'm going to say this actually, and Dean, I think you'll back me up as a religious liberty attorney. If you, you as a parent that your school district or your school classroom or a website is listing something that you're concerned about and you're about to speak out about it, you need to print screen. Because the Wayback Machine, the different like time searches that you can do to go back and look at things, those are not always reliable.
And that is one thing that I learned from that whole experience with the Choice foundation and the Sonema foundation was they would change anything to make us look like we were lying or we were making it up, that we were, you know, waving our hands in the air, you know, at being Chicken Little, saying that the sky was falling. We. Most of the time, what we were talking about was direct quotes from them, their teachers, their guru.
Um, it was really remarkable. So always print screen.
Always print screen. Especially if you need to stand up for your. Your rights.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I just want to say, I know, you know, there may be some listeners who, or this may be, you know, watched later on by people who don't really understand Hinduism, don't understand yoga, don't understand how it conflicts with biblical Christianity. And there's a lot of great resources out there that prove that that's not the case, that there are problems and conflicts. But I think one of the really good resources that's out there is a training we did for over 100 pastors and priests and religious leaders back in 2014. I think it was a Horizon Christian Fellowship in Rancheria Santa Fe.
[00:21:42] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: And we had our clients there. I spoke.
I think Ravi Maharaj spoke, and you and some others from Truth Exchange spoke, Mary.
But we kind of walk through the biblical issues and what Hinduism teaches, and specifically in that case, what Ashtanga yoga promotes. And we showed how even the poses themselves are spiritual and religiously problematic.
Even if you think you're doing something physical, it's not purely physical.
And so I just want to encourage people, they can go on our website, nclplaw.org and I believe that video is still linked on there.
And you can educate yourself by just watching that video. And it's really helpful, I think.
[00:22:34] Speaker C: Yeah. I had forgotten about that event because we had done that one. And then Rabbi Maharaj and Dr. Jones came with us to the one that we did at James Barlow's church.
I think you were at that one at that point, too. I think you were with Truth Exchange at that point.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:22:53] Speaker C: So, yeah. And, you know, I. I want to say, too, we stopped, I think, the most virulent form of yoga from being spread in public schools. But I just had a mom contact me from here in Escondido two days ago, and she's not in the Escondido school district, but she's in a nearby school district. And I'll talk to you about this offline, Dean. But her preschoolers were going to be taking yoga, and she wouldn't have known about it. And this is something that I want to bring up. This wouldn't have known part. She wouldn't have known about it if one of the. The kids had not mentioned it at dinner the night before, he was excited about it. He'd been told at school that they were going to be doing this, but there was no notification sent out to parents so that they could decide whether this was appropriate or not. And she's taking steps to handle it in her situation, but it's still out there. And, Dean, I think you got the same kind of reaching out from all over the country that I did,
[00:24:04] Speaker B: where
[00:24:04] Speaker C: there were parents who. It wasn't just yoga, but then we. We started finding out how much they're using mindfulness meditation techniques.
They're using, like, Hindu sound bath techniques on students.
They're using all of these different, like, energy changing, meditate, you know, peacefulness bringing. They're calling it mental health care here, but it's all Buddhist and Hindu spiritual techniques that they're actually bringing in. And so it's still out there.
And I understand very much as a parent who at one point, I did not have a choice but to have my children in public school, I know that there are Christian parents out there who. Who are in those situations. For whatever reason the Lord has put them in where they. They have to have their kids in public school.
You've got to be paying attention to stuff like this.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: And I'm glad. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up mbsr, or what we call Mindfulness Based Stress reduction. It's. Those are scientific terms that they try to create John Kabat Zinn, to bring in basically Buddhist meditation and prayer into public schools. And so we opposed that back in Cape Cod.
And I just found out a couple years ago, that was in 2016, 2017, and they had a hard time getting it kicked out there. But ultimately, one of my clients back in Cape Cod, the founder of a foundation back there to promote MBSR in public schools, apologized and repented. And she realized now she was wrong.
And just last year, some. Some friends of ours who do a lot of work with Alliance Defending Freedom in the Chicago area were able to win a case to basically, MBSR was declared religious and kicked out of Chicago Public Schools.
So, yeah, there's been some big victories in this area and just being able to push back and stop it or slow it down.
[00:26:14] Speaker C: Well, Dean, I just wanted to ask you, because it's not here. We've been talking about mystical practices that get brought into education, but you're very involved in other aspects of helping Christians stand up for their faith and speak out about things that are going on in schools related to LGBTQ Issues, too. And so I was wondering if you could tell our audience some of what's been going on there.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Sure.
So there's a case that was just decided on June 30th of last year. It was called Mamu versus Taylor, and it's a case involving religious parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, right outside of Washington, D.C.
and basically what that case was about was they were teaching younger and younger kids very aggressively LGBTQ identities and ideology, and they weren't notifying parents or allowing them to opt out. So parents complained, and the school initially said, yeah, we'll notify you and allow you to opt out. But then so many parents were opting out that the school district said, we can't do that anymore.
And so there's a group of Muslim and Christian and Catholic parents that ended up suing the district. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And I will say if Mahmoud versus District Taylor had been decided before our Yoga case in 2013, we would have won that case.
Because what the court ruled in Mahmoud vs. Taylor, it's very important for parents and teachers and students to understand this, is that whenever a subject or topic or issue is taught in public schools, that substantially undermines the faith that parents are inculcating at home.
The parents have the right to be notified by the school of what's being taught, and they have the right to opt out.
And it's not an optional right to opt out. The school has to give them the right to opt out unless they, you know, unless the parents are actually not religious or they know that they're lying. You know, they have to just grant it. So it's almost an automatic opt out. Right. And that's, you know, not just for LGBTQ issues, which are very aggressively being coercively taught in public education, indoctrinated today, it's other issues like yoga, like mbsr, like, you know, witchcraft being promoted, for example, or evolution being taught as a fact and not a theory, for example, how to doubt that. So. So Mahmoud versus Taylor would have completely changed the calculus in our yoga case because we wouldn't have had to proven that yoga was religious. All we had to prove or show is that yoga was undermining the Christianity of the students and parents involved.
We would have had the right to opt out. As a matter of fact, we've gotten that right now in the same district involving the teaching of gender ideology on behalf of some families there. We're winning a case right now against the same school district over transgender ideology.
[00:29:53] Speaker C: Tell our listeners, because I don't think that we've spoken. I think a lot of our listeners are aware of the issue because it did hit national news at one point. But can you explain what that case is about? I. I had PTSD going to speak at the school board meetings about this particular book, but.
And I missed you. I didn't get to get to see you there the time I was there speaking. But tell our listeners what was happening in Encinitas.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So we represent some Christian and Catholic Christian families. A couple and their fifth grade sons were part of a buddy mentor program where they would go into kindergartners classrooms and work with their mentees who are kindergarteners. So we had fifth graders mentoring kindergarteners in public school. And Encinitas very woke progressive. I put that in air quotes. School district thought it would be a great idea not only to have yoga as PE like they did 10 years ago, but let's have the fifth graders mentor the kindergartners in gender ideology.
So they had read a book in their fifth grade class called My Shadow is Pink.
It's a. It's promoting very aggressively promoting gender ideology and undermining religious beliefs. And then they'd gone into the, the kindergartner's class and they watched a video about the book My Shadow is Pink. And then the fifth graders were supposed to chalk the outline of the kindergartners in whatever color they chose, which represented their shadow, which represented their gender identity.
So there's these Christian Catholic kids being forced to engage in this gender ideology indoctrination exercise.
And so we sued and we won a preliminary injunction. And then Mahmoud versus Taylor was decided and Encinitas is now change their policy in alignment with Mahmoud. And we expect them to be allowing parents to opt out because initially the parents just asked for what we asked back in the yoga case. They said just notify us and allow us to opt out. That's all we want. We don't want you to change your curriculum. Just let us out.
The district said no. But then Mahmoud versus Taylor basically was deciding and said no, you have to allow them to be notified and opt out. And so, and Tanitas is, we're still in settlement discussions, but we expect them to pay us a lot of money very soon.
[00:32:29] Speaker C: Well, I'm, I'm so glad. I mean that's the remarkable thing to me in both of these instances.
And I had watched some video of the little, the fifth grader who had gone home and talked to his parents because as I recall, he had said to his little kindergarten buddy, I don't feel very good about doing this with you and the little kind of kindergarten buddy saying, yeah, I don't like it either, you know, so they. They were in school feeling uncomfortable, you know, so clearly his conscience was being challenged. And that really. That touched my heart just as a parent, that, that our kids are being put in these situations. But in both the yoga case and in the sense Nita's case, I remember at the very first school board meeting that I spoke at about the yoga issue, specifically in my speech asking them, could you just take this class and make it a before school club or like during lunch, Kids go at the club and you could study those students and the effects of yoga on them, but don't force it on all of our kids. And that was just treated like, you know, anathema. I mean, we were just treated like jerks for asking just to have the choice.
And that was very much the tenor of all of the pro LGBTQ speakers who spoke at that Encinitas meeting. That as. As though allowing people to opt out is to stigmatize the people who are. Who are lgbtq and it will make them feel bad. So it doesn't matter if you feel bad. Your feelings, your sense of religious understanding and belief doesn't matter. Only this sense of, frankly, religious belief, this worldview over here on the pro LGBTQ side matters. And so, no, you can't even have an opt out.
That was really a remarkable thing to me. So I'm delighted that.
I'm delighted that they've had to backtrack on that in such a huge way.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that. That's the thing is a lot of these programs, you know, they claim you have to be tolerant and inclusive and allow diversity when it comes to LGBTQ students, but they completely ignore the religious families and trample on their rights and pressure them and oppress them and basically say, you know, if you believe this, you're a homophobic bigot. And the government. That's not the proper role of our government, is to be telling people what to believe, what not to believe.
[00:35:04] Speaker C: Right, right.
And then along those lines also, Dean, I know that you helped a teacher here in Escondido who was being forced to alter her speech and to hide things from parents because of the policy that's in the courts right now.
And I did not check the Supreme Court docket today. I don't know whether Justice Kagan has. Has said whether or not the Supreme Court will review the Mirabelli vs Olson case that started here in Escondido. I think It's Mirabelli versus Bonton. Now it's the Attorney General here in California. But can you explain a little bit about what happened in that instance and what this teacher was going through?
[00:35:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So, as we said at the outset, California is kind of the leading bleeding edge of a lot of these issues. And California has been promoting things in public education for a long time that are LGBTQ inclusive, and they're starting to force everyone. They're trying to force everyone to be in lockstep with that, and that's teachers, parents, students, everyone across the board.
And they don't care which First Amendment or civil rights or 14th Amendment parental rights they'll violate in the process.
California seems to think that it's its own country and it can do whatever it wants and ignore the Constitution, and they keep losing in court as a result. But one of the areas they're losing right now is imposing the LGBTQ identity ideology on teachers and parents and students in public schools. And the Mirabelli case was initially brought by two teachers saying, we don't want to use improper personal pronouns that are self selected.
We don't want to keep secrets from parents about their child's gender dysphoria or gender transitioning socially at school, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, you can go into bathrooms and locker rooms and sports teams and all of that. But the great thing is, in California and here on the west coast, we've been winning those cases.
And Mirabelli, ultimately, they won, in 2023, a very powerful preliminary injunction ruling.
But throughout the case, the case was ultimately turned in the last fall, into a class action lawsuit on behalf of all, basically all teachers in California who object and all parents in California who object. So any ruling would become a statewide injunction. And so that injunction was actually one.
It was a great Christmas present. Two days, three days before Christmas, on December 22, a statewide injunction was entered against the practice of forcing Christian and other religious teachers to lie to parents.
[00:38:08] Speaker C: And I just want to. I just want to insert this here for our listeners so that they understand, because we get accused of being like the land of the fruits and the nuts. You know, like people think, oh, just crazy California. But I want to be clear that what was happening is that teachers were being forced to use the chosen name and pronouns of children who are gender confused and claimed an alternate identity. And at the same time, they were being forced to actively hide that information from. From parents.
So kids were being socially transitioned at school, parents didn't know what was happening at home, and teachers could be punished if they did reveal that information without the explicit permission of students. And to add to this. So that was happening here in Escondido all, but I think six districts in California had that policy.
But I know that it's a policy on the books in Illinois, Colorado, New Jersey. I mean, it's all over the place. And it's not just blue states. There are states that are waking up and changing these things. But so this, this being decided on a federal level is a huge deal because it doesn't just protect Californians, it also will protect Christians in other states. So I just wanted to clarify on that part of it because I didn't understand how that worked at the beginning of all of this.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So the ruling that was issued before Christmas was a fantastic ruling and it enjoyed enjoying that practice. Statewide, however, it was appealed to the ninth Circuit.
We got a bad ninth Circuit ruling, but that was appealed as an en banc hearing. And we were still waiting on that. The attorneys involved are still waiting on that.
Then it was also appealed to an emergency basis to the US Supreme Court to reverse a temporary stay in the preliminary statewide preliminary injunction.
We're still waiting for the ultimate ruling in that case. It may take a little while.
However, as a constitutional attorney who's been doing this, I'll date myself for 30 years now, I can say with relative confidence that I believe that Judge Benitez's ruling was correct and will ultimately be upheld by the U.S. supreme Court.
[00:40:28] Speaker C: Yeah, that's fantastic.
Thank you so much for, in the meantime, working with teachers to get religious exemptions from this policy, to give them protection, because they are being, I will use the word, they're being persecuted. It's a soft persecution, but it's a very real persecution that's going on. And I mean, I'm talking about schools.
Literally. I can see the rooftops of some of them. You know, if I'm standing on the balcony of my house.
And then. Dean, can you also explain a little bit, just real quickly, as we kind of start to wrap up here, the prism training and what the prism training is? And this, again, is one of those things where it's happening in California, but it's being pushed down through nationwide groups like the National Education Association, I believe, the Trevor Project and GLSEN and a couple of these other groups were involved in its development. Can you talk a little bit about the prism training and how this is affecting teachers and what you're doing to help with that?
[00:41:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So Sacramento and the California Department of Education in the last couple of years have thought, you know, we've got to get all California teachers lockstep into this LGBTQ identity ideology.
And so they figure out a plan to do that. Their plan was to pass a law that required mandatory kind of in service training of teachers over a five year period between 2025 and 2030. Wow. And the training isn't just informational training, like, hey, here's how you generally can support LGBTQ students, which is really all the law requires.
What happened is the cde through, you know, Los Angeles School district, coordinated with all these groups, you know, all the bad actors that you mentioned earlier and more, to create as a committee this, this training program that's very anti religious, very anti Christian. And it basically says, you know, if you believe, if, if you don't affirm, you're a bigot. Right. So it tells all Christian teachers and religious teachers who don't affirm in California that they're a bigot and they have
[00:42:58] Speaker C: to quit saying, yes, I am a bigot. Like, they literally have to click a button agreeing with the statement, well, yeah,
[00:43:05] Speaker B: they have to agree. Yeah, they have to agree with all sorts of things that are horrible. So it's basically trying to force teachers to affirm or be silent, to keep their jobs, basically, and not just, not just receive the training, but implement all of it in the classroom.
So the pro, you know, they say you have to use personal pronouns, right?
You have to affirm whatever identity the student has. And, you know, they focus on LGBTQ stuff. But where does that come when a kid says they're a cat or a dog, like furry issues, you know, you have to, you have to deceive parents. Well, that's now been taken out of the PRISM training because of the Mirabelli lawsuit.
But, but most school districts still have that policy in place and they haven't revoked it yet. So the prison training is very coercive. It's very anti religious, not just against Christians, but against Muslims and Buddhists and even Hindus who have traditional views of human sexuality.
And so our perspective is, and we're starting to win on this, is that this not only violates the free speech and religious free exercise rights of teachers, but they can. Teachers can ask for religious accommodation under federal and state statutes, and they have to be accommodated unless the school can prove it imposes an undue hardship on the school. And most schools can't do that. And so we've already gotten received religious accommodation on behalf of, I think you were mentioning the Mirabelli case. We had a client, Ramona Garcia, who was accommodated at USD after the initial preliminary injunction ruling came about. But we're also representing teachers across the state right now.
And what's scaring me is not that.
Not that the prism training is happening. That's bad enough. What's scaring me is there's not. We don't have tens of thousands of Christian teachers saying, help us object to and get out of this coercive and training because it's kind of like the Cambodian killing fields where they want to erase your worldview and replace it with their worldview.
[00:45:27] Speaker C: Yeah, Yeah.
I think thinking back to just my time prior to meeting you and being a concerned parent, you really do feel like you're going up against Goliath. Right. You really do feel like it's this impossible behemoth of a battle that you're not. So you just kind of put your head down and try and make little changes, I think, for yourself, without realizing that there are so many Christians out there, so many Christians in our state, so many Christians who really could speak up. And it's not, you know, I've talked to people about this a lot. It's not just kind of putting our foot down and standing up for our rights, because there are rights, but it is that these things that are being taught and propagated through the schools, they are, they are anti human flourishing. They go against everything that the Lord in his authority as Creator has ordained for our good.
And so I think that there is an obligation there for us not just to look to the good of our little family units, which that, Please hear me. I am not denigrating that. I mean, our first priority is, is. Is to our children.
But we are also, we're called to be salt and light. And part of being salt and light, like, even if your kids are not stuck in these schools, all the kids that your kids are going to be living with and voting with and, and doing life with in the future, they're being trained in these institutions. And so even if your kids aren't there, even if you're homeschooling or you have your kids in a Christian private school, you need to care about what's happening to the students and the teachers in these institutions in your community.
And so I just, I want to get a little bit up on my soapbox about that. I do think that Christians, we've given up a fight that we're paying for. And, and I think that it's. It's sinful that we've done that. And I want people to realize when they Feel alone and like there is no help. I want them to know that they're the Dean Broyles of the world out there. There's Alliance Defending Freedom. You know, there's the national center for Law and Policy.
Write the name down just in case you need it. Contact him. Like, I remember feeling so ridiculous standing in front of Marsha's house with a $20 bill. That was all I could afford to put into that offering basket. But you were there. You had donors behind you, and you were willing to take on this case because the Lord has called you to that.
And thank you for that. And I just want to encourage everyone listening like this. This is also your concern.
This is the mission field on which we've been placed as Christians.
The very final piece of this, Dean, I want to go back to one thing you mentioned, and then we'll go ahead and wrap. You told me an interesting statistic about how many opt outs can kill a bad curriculum in a school. Can you. Can you explain that to our listeners?
[00:48:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll explain that in a second. But I just want to follow up on what you said because I think this is really important.
[00:48:45] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: I wrote an op ed, I think, about five to seven years ago. I think the title was When Love Overcomes Fear.
And you know what's the first and greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
And I think that part of the problem here. Yeah. We're not just supposed to protect our kids. We're supposed to love our neighbors.
[00:49:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: If we love our neighbors, we're. And they're about to jump off a cliff, we're going to warn them that they're about to jump off a cliff.
[00:49:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:19] Speaker B: And especially with the transgender ideology, we've. We've allowed a lot of kids to be thrown off cliffs, you know, by.
By what I call a very child abuse system that's in place with this crazy, insane, unhinged, damaging, harmful, destructive, child butchering, gender ideology.
Well, I don't think the problem is Christians aren't aware. I think the problem is Christians don't love enough.
[00:49:51] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Because if we love, we're going to be willing and love to sacrifice not just for our families, but for our neighbors and for the protection of their children and their grandchildren.
[00:50:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: And so we. We. We don't just have a truth problem in the church today. We have a lack of love problem.
[00:50:11] Speaker C: Well, and Dean, I. I could not agree with you more. And I love that you brought up love the Lord. Your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. Because here comes one is a twoism again. We love God first with our minds, our souls, with our strength and all of our hearts and that, that forms the shape of the love that we have for a neighbor. Right? So we hear, you know, we see on the, the rainbow signs out in the front yards in our neighborhoods, love is love. Well, that doesn't make any sense. Love is defined by God. Love is defined by what he has again as Creator, laid out as the means by which we experience human flow, flourishing. And so I think that's the other thing. I think you're right that, that Christians have not exhibited love and that a lot of times when we think about what love looks like, we allow the world to define that love, which is, hey man, just go along to get along.
[00:51:11] Speaker B: You.
[00:51:13] Speaker C: That is not love in so many instances. Love.
I've said this probably every episode that we have had for the last year.
Proverbs 27:6.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy. An enemy is kissing and, and saying that they're loving you because they are seeking your destruction. And an enemy is not neutral.
And a true friend sometimes says something that is going to make someone upset, that's deeply going to hurt them because they've believed lies. That is love.
And so you're right, we're lacking in love and we're allowing the world to define what love is. And we have.
Dean, I know because you've been to the events in Washington D.C. and other places that I've been to.
We've seen the women with the chopped up bodies weep because they don't know if they're going to have children.
We've seen the reality of the carnage on the other side of this.
And so I'm sorry, I didn't, I didn't mean this to be a rant at the end here, but I couldn't agree with you more. And it's just, it's on my heart because it's happening right now down the street from UN schools. Little kids are being taught these things. We have to stand up against it.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And love, you know, love isn't primarily a feeling. It could involve feelings, but love is action. It's obedience, it's sacrifice. And too many Christians just want to protect their own and be comfortable and float to heaven on beds of ease.
And I've been saying for a long time, until we're willing to lose our jobs, we're going to keep losing these battles. And I could have so many more cases and do so much more good if Christians had a spine. And then courage and boldness and more love.
And we're willing to sacrifice until we're there.
We're going to struggle.
But to answer your question, I'm going to answer your question.
What percentage of parents need to opt out before it starts changing the curriculum or changing the program?
And that gets back to the Mahmoud case we were talking about earlier when I was researching this, I don't know, probably five to seven years ago.
And it's only about 5 to 8% of families need to start opting out to start changing a curriculum because school districts will have a hard time managing those kids, putting those kids somewhere else. And so opting out not only protects your kids, but it will change over time. If you get enough percentages of parents opting out and showing courage, it will change your curriculum. For everyone else in love and truth.
[00:54:04] Speaker C: That's so encouraging. I mean it doesn't, you don't have to convince everyone it's five out of every hundred, seven out of every hundred need to be pulled out. And that can be, you know, one family who has two kids. Like, it's really, it's such a small number. And so then this final thing, do you have the preemptive opt out letter or form on your website yet, Dean?
[00:54:30] Speaker B: I believe I do. I know you were on there. Did you see a check the box one or which one did you see?
[00:54:36] Speaker C: No, I saw a PDF that you could download and then you could write your own. I mean, it was simple. The mom that I sent it to was like, oh, this is amazing. She, she altered it a little bit so that she could use it immediately.
[00:54:50] Speaker B: But yeah, that, that resource is, has been under development and we've been updating it and learning as we go along. But we will, we, we'll have kind of a check the box form that, that deals with all the issues we talked about earlier, including Buddhism and Hinduism and yoga and all that on our website. On our website, which is nclplaw.org under resources.
So we'll, we'll, we'll have it there very soon.
[00:55:23] Speaker C: And so what that is for our listeners is that Dean's creating a tool on his website where parents can go on and they can ahead of time because I think a lot of parents feel like they need to go figure out all the ways that their religion is being attacked by curriculum. But instead now, because of this decision, this Mahmoud decision, parents can go with a letter and Let the school know ahead of time, we are Christians, our student, we are raising our students to be Christians. And therefore any teaching that you are going to be doing this school year that has to do with, you know, LGBTQ or teaching evolution as fact rather than theory and any mindfulness and meditation, you can check off each of the categories where if the school is going to be teaching something in that category, they must notify you in time to give you a chance to opt out. And so it's like a pre made customized letter tool where parents will be able to check those off and print off that letter and take it to the school. So it's that puts the onus on the school rather than the onus on the parent. Now obviously you're going to have to follow up and make sure that the school schools honoring that, but you will have put them on notice that you are a Christian and they may not interfere with your children in that way. And I just think that's a fantastic thing that you're doing, Dean. So let us know when that's available.
And Joshua, if it's okay with you, you know, we can just, on another episode, when we know it's available, we can highlight that to our audience and we can put a link in the show notes so that parents can access it.
All right, well, Joshua, you want to wrap this up for us?
[00:57:06] Speaker A: I'll wrap this one up. So in a world that increasingly it blurs the creator creation distinction, truth exchange exists to equip and to empower churches to communicate the gospel effectively and lovingly to a culture that has lost that crucial distinction between worshiping and serving creation, rather than the Creator who is blessed forever, who is our redeemer. So whether we're unpacking cultural trends or interviewing faithful leaders like Dean Broyles, or we're diving deep into Scripture as a diagnostic of our times, we're committed to helping you proclaim Christ clearly and compassionately in the midst of this neopagan confusion.
So if today's episode has challenged you, if it's encouraged you or equipped you to better discern and to engage with the world around you, here's a couple ways how you can respond and partner with us. First off, as Mary always says, subscribe, subscribe. On the Apple podcast, the Spotify and the Amazon, leave us a comment.
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[email protected] so thank you for listening and joining us. And Dean, thank you for being on the podcast with us today.
[00:58:45] Speaker B: Soli, Deo, Leo, Gloria, God is good.
[00:58:47] Speaker C: He is good. Amen.
