Hugin comes out swinging on new sex ed rules

GOP State Chairman Bob Hugin says he isn’t buying the sudden opposition to a new rule passed by the New Jersey State Board of Education to segregate sex ed classes based on gender identity and remove numerous instances of gendered language.

Hugin called out Senate President Nicholas Scutari and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin for issuing an after-the-fact statement that slaps the state board and backs local school boards as the decision-making authority.

“Nick Scutari and Craig Coughlin’s insincere and weak ‘criticism’ of the Board of Education’s vote is phony and pathetic.  Scutari, Coughlin, (State Senators Vin) Gopal, and (Joe) Lagana all championed legislation passed during the height of COVID that upended school curriculum to allow for sex-ed instruction for children as young as seven years old,” Hugin said.  “They opened this door, and now that they are on the ballot, they are running scared.”

Hugin skewered the state panel for implementing “a radical agenda that usurps parents’ rights and defies both the laws of nature and common sense.”

“To force children of the opposite biological sex into the same classroom while learning about personal, sensitive health matters is unfathomable,” Hugin said.  “The Democrats’ quest to eliminate any meaningful distinction between males and females – in language and in practice – endangers the welfare of our children and needs to be reversed immediately.”

Republicans want to make the new regulations an issue in the upcoming campaign for control of the legislature, and some Democrats are distancing themselves from the state board’s decision – almost all of whom were appointed by GOP Gov. Chris Christie.  In addition to Gopal and Lagana, South Jersey Senate candidates John Burzichelli and Paul Moriarty slammed the state Board of Education.

Hugin is messaging that voters shouldn’t believe them.

“In their deeds or in their silence, Democrats are complicit with every new radical measure that seeks to put government in the middle of the sacred relationship between parents and children,” he said.  “Voters know who is responsible for this mess, and we will hold Democrats accountable for it this November.”