Boston parents outraged after students given sex, gender survey

Parents in Boston are outraged after a middle school issued a survey to students asking explicit questions about sexual activity and gender identity, according to reports.

Boston’s Eliot K-8 Innovation School principal Traci Griffith told parents in an email last Thursday that she had received “many concerns” regarding the “Youth Risk Behavior Survey,” which was given to students in sixth and seventh grade, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

The 54-question survey —  which was voluntary and anonymous — was administered by Boston Public Schools and included questions about sex and transgenderism as well as suicide, drug use, bullying, weight and exercise.

“A transgender person is someone who does not feel the same inside as the sex they were born with. Are you transgender?” one question toward the top of the survey asked.

Others asked if students have “ever participated in oral sex” and “seriously thought” about killing themselves.

On March 17, the district’s Office of Health and Wellness executive director Jill Carter said that families will have an opportunity to voice their concerns during a virtual meeting this Thursday.

Parents were reportedly blindsided by the survey.

Deirdre Hall, the mother of a sixth-grade student, told the news outlet that the survey was “entirely inappropriate” and said her daughter had come home from school talking about a “really weird survey” she had been asked to complete.

“She said half her class didn’t even know what any of this stuff meant,” Hall said. “Now they’re coming home and asking their parents and their friends, ‘What’s oral sex?’”

Another parent anonymously told the outlet she was “outraged” by the survey, which she said parents were not told about.

“To go on field trips the district has parents sign permission slips, but for the district to ask our children private explicit sexual questions they are able to do so without consent?” she said. “This makes no sense.”

A database compiled by parents’ rights group Parents Defending Education includes incidents of similar surveys from 37 states and the District of Columbia, according to Fox News.