District leaders at a Collin County public school system claim that certain policy changes worked to protect children from being exposed to sexually explicit content at a recent LGBTQ Pride event held at a high school campus.
Princeton Pride 2023 was held at Lovelady High School in Princeton ISD on June 24. The event included a drag show attended by children, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
In a prior statement to The Dallas Express, Princeton ISD spokesperson Jean Ann Collins emphasized that “this event is not hosted by the school district.”
“An outside group has rented a school building as do many other groups, according to the Facility Use Policy,” she said. “The policy is very specific as to what will and will not be allowed. If there is a violation of this policy, usage and rentals will be prohibited in the future.”
Critics such as Kelly Neidert of Protect Texas Kids previously told The Dallas Express that school facilities “should never be used for any event containing inappropriate sexual content.”
However, Princeton ISD officials claimed to have updated the Facility Use Policy in an effort to “protect children as best we could” from sexually charged activities.
“It worked as far as toning down their behavior,” said Cyndi Darland, school board president at Princeton ISD, speaking with the Texas Scorecard. “They’ve cleaned up their act.”
Darland attended the Pride event on Saturday to make sure the Facility Use Policy was respected and claimed that drag performers did not wear revealing costumes or sing sexually explicit lyrics and vendors did not display blatantly sexual items.
“I will continue to care for these students and their families,” she claimed, explaining that the school board plans to continue reviewing the Facility Use Policy.
The Dallas Express reached out to Darland for further comment but received no response by press time.
Still, even as Darland insists the school board is working to ensure children attending LGBTQ Pride events are not exposed to sexual content, some critics argue children should not be allowed to attend such events at all.
The New Columbia Movement, which claims to be “a grassroots organization of like-minded patriotic Americans,” said in a Facebook post that Pride events “and their promoters often lure in children with promises of goodies and fun … [but] the real goal is to groom kids into their sterile culture, emptied of morality and innocence.”
The group claimed that “woke companies, school boards, city councils, and even churches form unholy alliances to push perversion under the guise of ‘inclusion.'”
