Andrew Gradison, acting assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, said Thursday he expected to find radical gender ideology being taught in sex education programs in California, but he told Newsmax the problem is more "widespread" than that.
Gradison said HHS found "inappropriate gender-based content" being taught in schools across nearly 40 states.
Gradison joined "National Report" to discuss Thursday's announcement that HHS terminated California's Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) grant after the state refused to remove gender ideology from the federally-funded education program designed to prevent teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections among schoolchildren.
Gradison said, "Each state gets to select which educational materials they use under" PREP.
"California selected materials that are outside of the bounds of this program — that have nothing to do with teaching the importance of abstinence or contraception. And instead, they were teaching children how they may be in the wrong body or how they ought to be taking gender hormones," Gradison said.
He added that HHS started its national review with California, "expecting materials to be outside the bounds of the law." And they did. Gradison said the curriculum in California was not only medically inaccurate but also "ideological" and "anti-science."
Gradison stressed that PREP is designed to prepare young people for adulthood by teaching responsibility not by promoting gender ideology.
While some states adhered to PREP's mission — teaching students about contraception, abstinence, financial literacy, and what Gradison called the "success sequence" of graduating high school, delaying sex until marriage, and getting full-time work — most did not.
"In a majority of the states, almost 40 of them, we found inappropriate gender-based content," Gradison revealed.
"These are supposed to teach kids about the importance of contraception and also different responsibility behaviors — so how to be a responsible adult, financial literacy, and taking care of your children when you grow up," Gradison said.
"But what we found wasn't just medically inaccurate and ideological. What we found were materials teaching young boys, as young as 10, that they could become girls, and that young girls may be in the wrong body, and that the solution should be gender transition hormones or even surgeries," he added, specifying California's curriculum.
"None of that is appropriate. None of that is common sense. And this anti-science material will no longer be funded by federal taxpayers," Gradison said.
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.