Deborah Flora’s Whose Children Are They? exposes how Colorado’s 2021 sex ed law—pushed without parental input—sparked her fight against CRT, gender ideology, and teachers’ unions she accuses of Marxist control. Her documentary highlights cases like a kindergartner told she could be transgender without consent, plummeting test scores, and Title IX erosion in girls’ sports, framing these as neo-Marxist indoctrination. With stories of jailing Black mothers for school choice (Kelly Willems-Bolar) and hidden curricula (Tennessee’s parental-observation bans), Flora argues parents must unite to reject elite-driven "neoracist" policies reshaping schools. [Automatically generated summary]
So, you know, for several weeks, I've been ranting about this thing of in our schools with people teaching.
It drives it, it drives me crazy.
People teaching this racist critical race theory, telling little children about their sex lives and how they're not the gender they think they are.
There is a documentary called Whose Children Are They.
I was watching this luckily in my office with the door closed because I was sitting there sobbing like a child.
And this was made by one of my favorite people, Deborah Flora.
We are veterans of the Hollywood Wars together, but Deborah is also the president and founder of Parents United America.
She has advocated for parental rights, educational freedom, helped foot school boards, push for curriculum transparency legislation.
And now she is one of the producers and writers with her husband, Jonathan Flora, a very talented filmmaker who has made other films as well.
And she has made this film, Whose Children Are They? which opened in America's, which premiered in theaters nationwide.
Deborah, it's great to see you.
How are you?
Great to be with you, Andrew.
Thank you so much.
Good to reconnect, my friend.
As you say, I never see my friends anymore.
I just interview them.
That's how.
Well, good to see you here.
So is this a picture available?
Whose children are they available to be?
It is.
It is.
Thank you for asking.
Always the question for a filmmaker.
People can find out at whosechildrenarethay.com.
But our goal in making this was to put a tool into the hands of every parent, grandparent, and concerned citizen.
So this has a long life until we reclaim education over indoctrination.
That's what we have to do.
Well, I have to tell you, it's a very moving doc because it's children, you know, and all we ever used to hear from the left is, what about the children?
What about the children?
And it turns out they don't care about the children whatsoever.
I kept asking.
So how did you get involved in this to begin with?
Yes.
Well, the way I got really involved is, you know, I've been involved on issues that matter and our rights.
But about three and a half years ago, I'm actually from Colorado.
I'm not from California, grew up here, but we moved back and we have kids.
I'm a mom.
You know, I think it's going to be moms and dads who get their dander up.
They're going to save our kids and they're going to save our country ultimately.
But about three and a half years ago, they pushed comprehensive sex ed through on the very last day of the legislature in Colorado.
I knew what was in it because I'd seen it in California.
I knew how age inappropriate and exploitative it was of children.
So when I stood up, I was one of hundreds of parents that stood up and they pushed it through anyway.
Then I introduced sex ed curriculum transparency along with the legislator here.
They sent that to the KILL committee and I thought, you know what?
What we have to do is really take this grassroots movement and get it to the tipping point.
And you're a student of history, Andrew.
So many movements either reach a peak and then die off or they reach a peak and they have real change.
And unfortunately, that's a rare exception.
But we thought if we can actually help connect the dots for parents, grandparents, concerned citizens, it's not just sex education.
Teachers Unions vs. Students00:10:46
It's not just gender fluidity in kindergarten.
It's not just CRT.
It's not just anti-disciplinary discipline policy.
It is all of these things together with a through line of a culprit who really are the teachers' unions for the most part and their agenda that, like you said, has nothing to do with the good of children.
We felt that if we could do that and put this in the hands of good people who care and have common sense and want to protect children, we can make sure that movement peaks and leads to real change instead of dissipating.
Can you talk about this a little more about the teachers' unions?
Because I get letters every time I rant about this and I can't help it because it makes my eyeballs roll around in my head.
The absolute indifference to the health of children, the mental health of children.
I keep getting letters saying, don't forget where there are many teachers out here who are opposed to this.
We're working hard, but we're afraid.
We're afraid to talk about it.
What role?
How is the teachers' union pulling this off?
Well, teachers' unions don't represent teachers.
I mean, we're pro-teacher.
We're pro-good teacher who's not been indoctrinated in the teaching colleges, which some of them have been, unfortunately, but many have not.
But the way the teachers' union works, unfortunately, like a lot of unions, it's a thug tactic.
And you just have to, you know, in the movie, you see that John Dewey, who's a father of modern education, the honorary president of the teachers' unions, he was a Marxist.
He appreciated the Soviet style of education.
And everything was not for the good of the students.
It was for the control of the message and the education of the next generation for their purposes.
And then the way they control teachers is they bully them and they literally say, if you want to teach, you have to become a member of the union.
And they scare them by saying it's the only way you'll have protection, et cetera.
It's all a big lie, really, because teachers can have insurance and protection and with organizations that don't tell them what they have to teach.
I mean, there's a famous quote that we have in the movie, a clip of one of the heads of the teachers' union saying, you know, basically when students pay dues, we'll represent the students.
And all that they have done is grown their power and grown their power.
And when you see the teachers have only gone up, let's say 8%, students, 7%, these are approximate statistics.
They're in the movie.
But the flood of the bureaucracy in our schools has gone up 74% for administrators, 24% for janitors, 45% for principals.
The whole point of the teachers' union is to have as much money as they can, as many people in the building, so that they can control.
And they also control by flipping school boards.
You know, they fund school board candidates that they want who will simply carry out the teachers' union agenda.
And all we have to do, Andrew, is look at the plummeting academic scores and the skyrocketing mental issues that our children are having to know it's not for the good of the students.
It's actually the only thing that the only group that is benefiting here are the teachers' unions.
They, you know, Randy Weingarten makes over half a million dollars a year when teachers' salaries are stagnating or dropping.
So we're pro-teacher, pro-parent, pro-student, which was the original golden triangle of education.
And who got in the middle of it and blew it up was the teachers' unions.
That's really interesting and a little scary talking to Deborah Flora about her film, Whose Children Are They?
A very powerful documentary.
Talk a little bit about some of these children.
I'm watching these children telling their stories, some of the experiences they had, which are mind-boggling.
I mean, it's just mind-boggling that the authorities, these parents are up against authorities who are supposed to be helping them and raise their kids.
One girl, I remember, was taken off to finally found a school that actually helped her, which was a charter school, which was then destroyed.
I mean, is that part of that?
I mean, that's something that Obama did.
He destroyed that movement.
How is that happening?
Well, the movement has to be towards educational freedom.
And educational freedom involves many different options.
We have two children, and just with two children, different schools fit them.
One of our children is in a charter school, the other one is in a public school, and it fits them.
Any parent knows that every child is different.
They're not cookie-cutter in the same exact situation.
So children flourish when there are options that benefit them.
In addition, you know, the money, let's say, following the student, not the system, who does that benefit the most?
Underprivileged minority inner city kids where their parents can't afford to drive them all over or fight for a private school or et cetera.
So who is the only organization that would want there not to be choices?
The teachers' unions who want a monopoly, who want to have everything under their control.
So it's not just Obama, it's pretty much any democratically run regime.
I mean, most Democrats are funded by two organizations, their Planned Parenthood and they are the teachers' unions, and they're beholden to them.
That's why they push against these policies.
And it's being revealed now.
I mean, the absolute hypocrisy of the left who say, you know, we are for minority children, inner city students, but they have them locked into failing schools.
There's another woman we have in the documentary, a woman named Kelly Willems-Bolar, a single black mom in Ohio, whose twin daughters were in a dangerous school.
She simply signed them up under her father's address, which was just a couple of miles away to get them into a safe school.
She was sent to jail and made an example of.
So when you see that, you realize once and for all who's really for the students, who's really for the underprivileged parents who need help, and who is for the power structure that keeps students locked into failing schools.
So it's hard to watch, but the reality is there's so much we can do.
All we have to do is ask, you know, a school board candidate, are you taking money from the teachers' unions?
Then you're not for us.
You are actually for the teachers union.
You can hire and hire at the polls, elect legislators who will stand up for educational freedom, the money following the student, not the system, which allows the grace ability for everyone to flourish.
And there's so much we can do.
Finally, parents are awake.
And our hope with this document is they will never, ever go to sleep again.
And they woke up under COVID because they saw what was really going on.
Now, I know that's kind of the funny thing about it.
They sat at home.
You said in the documentary that they were told not to watch.
Yes.
There is a school district in Tennessee that we point out.
And by the way, you know, everything in this documentary, one of my jobs as the producers, we had three teams of lawyers.
Everything is verifiable.
Everything is locked down.
We did not want to in any way negate the arguments that we have here by having just even one claim that wasn't true.
Everything has been locked down.
In Tennessee, they wanted parents to sign a waiver saying, we will not observe what our children are learning online in your kitchen, for goodness sake, or your living room.
And of course, that begs the question, why?
You know, what are you hiding?
And people began to find out what they were hiding.
I mean, you mentioned CRT.
CRT, let's just call it what it is.
First of all, it's neo-Marxism because it's just Marx's critical theory with a new wrapper on it.
And critical theory simply divides people into groups and pits them against each other, which is what they're trying to do with students.
And it's neo-racism because what it is doing is telling children to judge themselves by their skin color.
You know, our CRT portion, we've interviewed, by the way, over 120 people, parents, teachers, experts, students all over America.
And our CRT portion was primarily filmed in Minneapolis or in Minnesota, right outside where George Floyd, where that incident happened.
And these are Black parents saying, you will not tell our children that they're victims and that they can't learn.
So you're eliminating honors classes.
That's racism.
Plain and simple.
It's amazing how much of this stuff is supported by elite white people against the will of ordinary run of the mill rank and file black people, just black citizens of this country.
Talk for a minute about the sexual teachings, because, you know, I've always been very tolerant of people's private lives.
I don't want to interfere with what they're doing and where they get their joy if they're not hurting anybody.
And so they kind of use that.
They use that natural American tolerance of difference to sell something that I feel is enormously destructive.
What have you personally seen or seen through this film that is happening to children on that front?
You make a great distinction because, you know, Andrew, a lot of people are going to say, oh, this is anti-LGBTQ.
Far from it.
If you're an adult, you are free to live your life however you want to.
But anyone, I think, can understand that children kindergarten through third grade.
And by the way, sex education is now in third or fourth grade, which it should not be.
It should be in junior high.
But when you have children who are four or five years old who are being told that they could have a boy brain trapped in a girl body or vice versa, there's something that happens when you're under eight years old.
It's called concrete thinking.
You know, they believe whatever you tell them.
That's why Easter Bunny, the magic of Santa Claus, all of this, you tell them it's true.
They don't have abstract thinking yet where they can say, well, maybe that's true for Billy, but it's not true for me.
That is intentional.
So the fact is, I've talked to a lot of members of the LGBT community who are not for indoctrinating young school children about this.
It's one thing if you're an adult and you're living your life, but they understand that kids who are K through third grade, honestly, they should be going, learning to be potty trained, learning to color, learning to read, learning to be socialized.
And the argument, the straw man argument that this is so that there is no bullying holds no water.
All you have to do is say, look, you know, Saeed is Sikh, he wears a turban, don't bully him.
You know, Susie is Catholic.
She's ashes on her forehead on, you know, on Ash Wednesday.
Don't give her a hard time.
Tommy is now Mary.
Just be kind to Mary.
That's all you have to say if you do think that a child as young as kindergarten can be transgender.
That's up to you and the parents, et cetera.
But the idea that you are telling children that they could overnight become a boy or a girl is damaging.
We have a story in the documentary of Rockland Academy that was in California.
And this was told to kindergartners without their parents' knowledge.
So they weren't even there to help support them.
And one little girl went home.
Her mom had no idea that in kindergarten, she was told she could eventually be a boy.
She took a bath, her hair was slicked back.
She looked in the mirror and she started just shaking uncontrollably.
And her mom just had no idea what's happening.
Vast Majority Waking Up00:05:38
I said, what's going on?
She goes, Mommy, I just turned into a boy and I didn't want to.
Her mom didn't even know that this had been taught.
And when you teach that to a child, they have no ability.
So you have to ask yourself, if your goal is to stop bullying, then do it by teaching kindness.
But they've even said it's time to move beyond kindness.
What do they move beyond kindness to?
Indoctrination.
And that is not okay.
Yeah, it's really sickening.
You live in a state that just passed, as I understand it, a law that allows abortion.
I think until the age of like 15 or something, they can't shoot your teenager.
Very dystopian.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what hope do you have in a state like that?
Is there a disconnect between your leaders and the parents?
There is.
You know, this is our opportunity.
I'm actually optimistic in a way, Andrew.
You know, it's funny.
Somebody said, Are you excited for the review, you know, for the documentary to be released?
I'm like, no, it's like inviting your friends over and saying, I've got bad news for you.
I mean, that's really it.
But the reality is we have to see it.
The reason why all this stuff has happened is because it's been in the dark.
Parents are busy.
I mean, they're working a job.
They're picking up their kids.
They're taking them to sports.
They don't, they trusted the school system to be as the school system was for them.
This is our opportunity to point out how progressive policies taken to their very extreme become regressive.
They become neo-racism.
They become neosexism in the case of erasing Title IX and girls' sports.
They become exactly what they said they were not meant to be, which is hurting the very people that they had purported to stand up for.
But this is our time.
We have to drag it into the light.
And the vast majority of people, I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, you're a mom and a dad first.
And I think this is the overplay of the hand of those who really do want to introduce Marxist agendas, want to take over the oligarchy elite, want to tell everybody else how to be.
And when it comes to the abortion situation, most pro-choice people who call themselves that are not for abortion after the first trimester.
This extreme puts us in the category of North Korea, Vietnam, and China that has forced abortion.
I mean, really, we don't force abortion here.
I'm not saying that.
This is out of step with the vast majority of Americans who are common sense, decent people who understand this is way too far.
And the reason why we are hoping that this documentary takes off like wildfire, you wake people up about what they care about most, which is their kids.
They will never go back to sleep again.
And they'll realize that this is a politicization and an exploitation of the most vulnerable and innocent amongst us.
And I think that brings optimism to me.
We're seeing a revolution and a renaissance of the American citizens starting at the school boards.
And we need that to continue.
The film is called Whose Children Are They, Deborah Flora, one of the producers and a writer.
You know, you and I were members of the semi-secret organization.
It's not the best kept secret like Phyllis Love.
This is not the best kept secret.
It was one of the worst kept secrets ever.
And we've both gotten out of LA and the stories that I'm hearing from LA are just awful.
The stories, you know, just humiliating, degrading stories where black people are being put on films.
They don't have to do anything, but they get a credit to run cover for the white creatives who are doing the work.
And I just think that that's such a nasty thing to do to the black guy, let alone the white guy.
It's just a horrible, racist thing to do.
But when you look at the culture right now, and we are in this horrible Biden moment, are you optimistic?
Are you optimistic?
I mean, we fought a fight where no one was listening.
And now it seems to me that people are listening about the culture.
Do you share that optimism?
You know, I do for this reason.
And it's going to come down to those people who are now awake.
What are they going to choose?
Because this is our moment.
And I do believe the vast majority of Americans, I think 80% of Americans, even more, probably want the same thing.
They honestly just want to pursue their dreams, raise their families, provide for them, know their kids have a good education and a better future than they had, and that they're safe.
That's what they really want.
And I think what has happened is those vast majority of people are waking up and realizing the fringe elements have left them far behind.
And this has been a period of time where under, you know, what's happening in the schools and the, you know, the Democrat Party, which has now taken off its mask and has revealed itself to really be the socialist party.
I think a lot of people are waking up saying, wow, I maybe, you know, thought that they were had my back, but I realize they have left me.
They've left my family.
They've left really anything that we would call common sense.
I believe we have this window in history.
And we need good people of goodwill to forget what yard sign they had in front of their yard last November and say, let's come together on the 80% that we share in common.
And, you know, even Ronald Reagan said, you know, my 80% friend is not my 20% enemy.
Let's get back to where we disagree on like the minutiae of bonds and tax policy, but let's get back to the most basic things of human dignity and freedom, which is, hey, if you're an adult, live your life how you see fit.
But we can all come together and agree that our children are not the political pawns and the indoctrination they're trying to do to basically move the future of this country in a different way.
If we come together now, we will look back at this crazy time as the time we stepped back from the precipice.
Deborah Flora's Vision00:00:30
And we can do it.
We just have to stand together.
Deborah Flora, the president and founder of Parents United America, the producer of Whose Children and writer of Whose Children Are They, a terrific documentary and an all-around great person.
It's wonderful to see you, Deborah.
I hope to see you.
Thank you, my friend.
Thank you.
And I do invite people to go to whosechildrenarethay.com.
We want to make sure every person has this in their hands so they can convince others to join this movement.