The Republican candidate for governor, Jack Ciattarelli, is being criticized by advocates and his political opponents for what they called “hateful” comments, describing him as an “extremist” and “mini-Trump contender.”
The onslaught of criticism followed the publication of audio clips of Ciattarelli saying at a campaign stop last month that he would roll back New Jersey’s LGBTQ curriculum.
“I feel lucky [our children] are in their 20s and I don’t have to be dealing with what you’re dealing with right now,” Ciattarelli said, according to the report by Gothamist/WNYC.
“You won’t have to deal with it when I’m governor, but we’re not teaching gender ID and sexual orientation to kindergartners,” he said. “We’re not teaching sodomy in sixth grade. And we’re going to roll back the LGBTQ curriculum. It goes too far.”
Ciattarelli told WNYC his comments about sodomy had “absolutely nothing to do with someone’s sexual orientation, and the inference that it does is purposefully misleading.”
Ciattarelli’s campaign said “all schools should be promoting diversity, inclusivity, tolerance, and respect for others, but that doesn’t mean pushing explicit subjects in elementary school classrooms.”
Who someone loves is “no business” of a governor, and resources should be available to students “who want to understand themselves as they grow into adults,” the campaign said in a statement to the Trenton bureau of the USA TODAY Network Atlantic Group.
“We should not, however,…
