Marjorie Holsten is a Minnesota-based lawyer, former delegate to the Republican National Convention and treasurer of the Education Liberty Watch, a wingnut organization fighting for promoting Christian nationalism in public schools, opposes that evolution be taught without presenting young-Earth creationism as a viable scientific alternative, promotes a science curriculum that denies the existence of global warming, and, perhaps more centrally, pushes parents’ rights to give their kids whatever education they want (or none) through homeschooling; the group is perhaps most famous for helping to launch the career of Michele Bachmann.
Although Holsten might not be a major figure on any kind of national stage, she did receive some attention back in 2016 for her argument that sex education is a conspiratorial plot to produce Democratic votes: “why would they teach such awful things to our children? If you go deep down and you connect those dots, you see that when children are desensitized to sexual things, that affects their ability at a later date to bond with a spouse. And so if you have somebody who can’t bond, they’re not going to have a stable marriage. When you have unstable, broken households, how do they vote? Democrat. So this has a very evil underlying intent.” Yes, there’s some serious dot-connecting there. Holsten did, grudgingly, admit that children have to learn a bit about how life works, but suggested showing them guinea pigs mating instead because “you really couldn’t see anything” and thus not learn anything anyways.
We don’t know what Holsten’s been up to since and can’t be bothered to do any serious investigation, but her organization is apparently still around.
Diagnosis: At least she takes a strong grassroots interest in children’s education. Unfortunately, she is rather typical of a large group of people who seem to have been doing just that in the US recently.
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