New Mexico is a solidly blue state with policies that could make even California or New York blush. Yet it rarely registers in the national conversation.
That needs to change.
This state has been my home for 48 years – it’s where I’ve raised my kids and now my kids raise my grandkids. But over the past several years, I’ve watched as New Mexico’s lawmakers have used their Democratic majority to push the state’s policies further and further to the left, especially when it comes to parental rights in education and the debate over transgenderism.
These policies are completely out of step with the vast majority of New Mexico voters. In fact, recent polling by Independent Women shows most New Mexicans aren’t even aware of just how radical our state’s laws have become. More than 54% of New Mexicans, for example, said they had never heard of House Bill 7, also known as the Reproductive and Gender-Affirming Care Act, which passed in 2023 and mandates that all public bodies, including schools, protect access to social, hormonal and physical gender transition.
New Mexican parents might not realize it, but this law is being used to aggressively and secretly push gender ideology onto their children in the state’s public schools.
For instance, when my 9-year-old nephew was struggling with depression in 2022, we discovered that his school in Albuquerque had used his mental health battle as an opportunity to introduce gender ideology to him. He had never once questioned his sex, nor did his battle with depression have anything to do with his sex, and yet school counselors pushed him to consider adopting a different “gender identity.”
We’re fortunate to have discovered that school officials were having these conversations with my nephew. Eight New Mexico school districts – Albuquerque, Gadsden Independent, Gallup-McKinley, Las Cruces, Los Alamos, Moriarty Edgewood, Rio Rancho, and Santa Fe – have policies explicitly stating school personnel should hide information about a student’s “gender identity” from their parents.
How many other New Mexican children have been pushed toward a gender transition without their families ever knowing about it?
New Mexico’s public schools are also pushing gender ideology onto children through curricula and other academic resources. Many parents have come forward with examples of outrageous and inappropriate content that their children have been exposed to without their consent. From the “genderbread” lesson in kindergarten classrooms to pornographic material in high school English assignments, this content has become shockingly common in our state.
This is one of the reasons I decided to pull my youngest daughter out of the public school system. I would have preferred to keep her in public education, since the system’s resources for special needs students were an asset to her and to my family.
But after conversations with other families in the area, I realized I couldn’t trust the school district not to expose my impressionable daughter to content that is at odds with my family’s values.
Many other New Mexico parents will find themselves facing a similar challenge if state lawmakers move forward with Senate Bill 258, a bill introduced this year that would require all public middle and high schools to provide education on sexuality as part of their health education curriculum.
Fortunately, this bill did not become law, but New Mexico parents can be sure that instruction on “gender identity” and other controversial topics will be a part of this curriculum, mandated by the state itself.
I know there are many New Mexicans who, like me, are deeply disturbed by the direction in which our state is heading. I talk to them every day. And more than anything, what I hear from them is a sense of frustration that our state’s leaders are pushing an agenda that is so out of touch with their communities and priorities.
New Mexicans don’t want to be the next California or New York. We want our children to be educated, not indoctrinated. We want them to be protected, not pushed toward irreversible gender interventions that threaten their mental and physical health. And we want to be informed and involved in what our children are being taught, not treated like inconvenient roadblocks to be ignored and shut out.
These are simple expectations. If New Mexico’s lawmakers and school boards refuse to meet them, then perhaps it’s time that we remind them who they were elected to serve.
