Claymore: Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Claymore: Become Who You Are
#714 The High-Stakes Battle For The Next Generation: Who Forms Them Wins The War
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If you feel like something has shifted in your child’s school and you can’t quite name it, you’re not alone. We’re watching a real fight over who forms a child’s imagination, shapes their desires, and defines their identity: parents or institutions. Journalist and crime-fighter Tom Hampson returns to lay out why the conflict over school libraries, classroom materials, and sex education isn’t just policy, it’s a battle over foundational values and the protection of childhood innocence.
We dig into Illinois as a case study and unpack how national sex education standards can influence what districts teach, even when families assume local control. We also talk about the real-world impact of explicit materials, including how early exposure can twist a child’s view of sexuality and accelerate a pipeline toward pornography through books, devices, and recommended online content.
Visit Tom!! https://thomasrhampson.substack.com/
Then we turn to the legal ground that’s moving under everyone’s feet. Tom explains why Mahmoud v Taylor matters for parental rights, transparency, and religious opt-out protections, plus what parents can do when schools resist disclosure. We end with a practical path forward: learn what’s being taught, check what’s in the library, show up at school board meetings, and build local support so you’re not fighting alone.
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A Battle Over Children’s Formation
SPEAKER_01If we lose the next generation, it's all over for our culture and our country. And the next generation is being attacked. This is spiritual warfare, and the enemy knows this. It's being formed, it's being attacked, and it's not by accident. So the question is by whom and why. Welcome to the Become Who You Are podcast, a production of the John Paul Two Renewal Center. I'm Jack Riggert, your host. And pause for a second on that. Don't rush past us. The world changes when we pass down what's true, good, and beautiful to the next generation. That's always been the mission, especially of parents and families. But today something shifted. Across the country, a new battle is being drawn up, not on distant battlefields, but in classrooms and libraries and school boards. Who decides what a child sees? Who decides what shapes their imagination, their desires, their identity? Parents or institutions. Today's returning guest is a crime fighter journalist, Tom Hampson. He's been tracking this battle closely. And what he shares is this we're not just dealing with isolated incidents, but a coordinated system that's reshaping what children are exposed to and when. And yet, at the very same time, something unexpected has happened. The legal ground is shifting. The question is no longer what is happening, but whether parents are going to step forward and respond. Tom, welcome to the podcast, brother. It's good to be here. Tom, let's start right here. You frame this as not just a policy debate, but as something much deeper. So what's really at stake in this fight over what children are being exposed to in schools and libraries and beyond?
SPEAKER_00Well, it it's basically conflict over foundational values, like what is it that you value, what's important. Uh on the one hand, in uh what's going on in the schools right now, the value that's being presented to the kids is to get them to see themselves as sexual beings. Whereas our values, the traditional Christian values, are getting getting people to see that they are children of God whose duty it is to spread the good news. This is not good news.
SPEAKER_01Well, I you know, we are we are sexual beings. And of course, you know, the the problem isn't that we're sexual beings, but it's when you distort and twist our sexuality and instead of being persons of love, we start to see each other as objects and really gets distorted and twisted. Uh, you know, when you steal a child's innocence, when you obliterate and darken their moral imaginations, they no longer see the they don't understand the beauty of sexuality, Tom. And if and if you can go in there and expose them to things like pornography and stuff early, you really you you really twist and distort that child from a very deep level.
SPEAKER_00That's my point about uh you know the sexual there it's what they're teaching children is that they should engage in sex and experiment with it. And the only issue is to determine whether or not there's consent in the relationship that you have in the sexual activity that you engage in. And they're even uh encouraging children to experiment with both same and opposite sex relationships so that they can discover what who they really are. What uh are they are they heterosexual, homosexual, are they bisexual, are they transgender, or whatever it is. That you have to discover that, children have to discover that rather than be brought up in the way that God created them. And really, in the years past, not not that many years ago, the innocence of children was protected, and it's that's no longer the case.
Illinois And National Sex Ed Standards
SPEAKER_01No. And you point to Illinois as as a kind of ground zero for this issue. What happened here, and why should the rest of the country be paying attention to what's going on here right now?
SPEAKER_00Well, Illinois is one of the four states that is that's pushed this philosophy of sexual experimentation on the children in a uh in aggressive way.
SPEAKER_01It's all it's part of the school system, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00It's totally part of the school.
SPEAKER_01National sex ed standards?
SPEAKER_00It's uh yeah, the national sex ed standards have been adopted by the state. Each district has a right to to make a decision as to whether or not they're going to use it. But if they teach if they teach any kind of um uh sexuality in school, like uh they can't teach abstinence, they have to teach the standards that are taught in the sex uh national sex ed standards. So if they have a health class where they're teaching children, even if in the districts where they have rejected the national sex ed standards, those health classes have to be taught and in a way that convey the national sex ed standard principles. They can't just do anything else.
SPEAKER_01Tom, you and I have done presentations on this out in the public and uh of course on podcasts too. And just for people that don't know what those national sex ed standards are, I don't want to spend much time on those. We've talked about them in the past, but they're bringing these gender ideologies, we're bringing this grooming process, the sexualization we talked about is in the opener, down to kids in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, uh telling them that that uh their identity could be like you you mentioned, it could be a boy, it could be a girl. What what what what does it mean to have two fathers, two daddies, two moms, but etc. etc. It's normalizing every type of perversion you could think out there. And and again, I'm gonna stop at that point, but just so people understand, this is what they're doing, and every uh every LBGTQ book for kids, I'm talking about elementary uh schools now, and you and I have exposed this. Everyone has pornography right underneath. So, you know, people are arguing about equality for same-sex, about hey, all you gotta do is look at those books right underneath the veil is is always pornography, you know, and and uh you know, perfectly normal is one of those books made uh for ten years, ten year olds.
SPEAKER_00Just because it's uh a cartoon, uh they're still they still show pictures of these these uh people having sexual activity of all kinds. And they have videos online that they refer them to as well, where they have moving pictures of people having sex, and and this is all considered to be part of the sex ed curricula. It's all uh it's all good. There's no there's no problem with it, according to the group that is.
Explicit Books And Early Porn Exposure
SPEAKER_01We know as soon as you can get them online, they're gonna be they're gonna be sucked in uh to hardcore pornography. I mean, all the young men that we're talking to now have been exposed to that between eight, nine, and ten, uh sometimes eleven years old. Um, but they did it by accident. And so again, you know, that this perversion is really something you highlight, Tom, in your article. The article, again, is turning the tables. I'll make sure I put it in the show notes for people that so that they can read it. And the uh subtitle is The Fight Against Explicit Materials in Schools that Tom wrote about a week or so ago. In there, you highlight a Supreme Court case that most people have never heard of, but you say it changes everything. Is it uh Mahoud versus Taylor Mahmud versus Taylor? And what new authority does it give parents?
SPEAKER_00Well, it re actually reaffirms the authority parents have always had, that has been eroded by a couple of other decisions and were misinterpreted. But this re-establishes parents as the person the people who control what their children are taught, and and uh religious beliefs must be honored and respected in an affirmative way by every school that teaches these children, so that they no longer can say, well, it's inconvenient for us to you know to let this person opt out. And they it the Supreme Court says we don't care if it's inconvenient to you. He says it's it's the parents' decision as to what those children, what their own children are going to be taught, and what their religious beliefs dictate that their children should be taught. And so the school has to respect and honor that.
SPEAKER_01You know, Tom, it it this isn't brain surgery. I mean, what we just what you just said was common to knowledge and understanding from every generation except up to this last generation. That's right. We understood that parents are the primary educators of their kids, and the public the school system, the government school system, has no authority up until this last 15 minutes of human history to actually twist and distort a human heart. We see this all over. You tell in your article a story about a young girl whose life was deeply affected by early exposure to explicit content without getting lost in theory, Tom. What have you actually seen happen to kids when these boundaries disappear?
SPEAKER_00They get their whole sexuality gets twisted. They become obsessed with sex. They and it's not just pictures. It's uh, you know, a lot of the times these books are narratives, and it's the pictures that they create in their own mind that they get addicted to, and they become driven to learn more and get more and read more about it, and and be experience a dopamine hit, I guess, is what happens to them from reading this kind of material. It gets them, it gets them excited. And this is the kind of material that this girl Megan had had actually been introduced to the material by the librarian and her own teachers and say, Yeah, this is a good book for you.
SPEAKER_01And and essentially uh, you know, these romance novels that are nothing but sex uh Tom, you you you mentioned just now the American Library Association, at least, and and or alluded to it. You're critical of those major institutions, of course. And uh do you believe these institutions understand the consequences of what they're promoting, or is or is this something else? What's going on? Why why would that librarian to your point, and we see this over and over and over again, it's in every single library, and not only public libraries, but but public school libraries are full of these books and these ideologies.
SPEAKER_00No, it's their philosophy. They believe that this is what they should do. The children, every child has a right to experience sexual pleasure, and nobody should have the ability to dictate to them that they can't, even though the law says they can't make these kind of decisions until they reach the age of majority. And so they still they believe that they know better. And what's happening in the last 30 years is this idea of expertise run amok. In other words, as parents, you're not smart enough to know what your children should be taught, that they are the all they're the experts, they have these degrees in education, they know what's best for children, and you should just go along with it and keep your mouth shut. Well, that's that uh Supreme Court says that's not the way it should be. And the American Library Association has promoted this idea that any any material that's available to an adult should be available to anybody of any age. So if you have pornographic material, which is not considered to be obscene under some of the Supreme Court decisions, if that's available to an adult, a child should be able to see it. And yet, there's another Supreme Court decision that was made years ago, Ginsburg versus New York, I think, or is it New York versus I don't know, which one way or the other, um, that says that the standard for obscenity for a child is lower than it is for an adult. So you can think do you think should be. And that I mean, it's the the case says it's obvious. And so they just the American Library Association just ignores this, and that anybody that objects to the material for their children, what they that they they equate them with Nazis who did the book burnings. It's the book ban hoax that they keep promoting.
SPEAKER_01It's crazy. And and look at we've mentioned this in the past, and she's not the president of the American Library Association presently, but when we were initially giving our talks, it was Emily Debinsky, I think it was Dobinsky her name was. So you you mentioned these geniuses, these experts, right? Right. Well, these expert geniuses, this one happens to be a self-described lesbian Marxist who wanted to get Marxist ideologies into the American Library Association. These are your experts, Tom. So if parents don't wake up and do anything, and I tell you what, you know, that's the hardest thing for us, has been actually waking parents up, you know. But but Mary Miller introduced this legislation. What does the stop the sexualization of children's act actually do? You know, have have you looked at its strengths and weaknesses?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I have. It's uh, you know, some of the language in there is is is its weakness because I don't think it'll still be.
SPEAKER_01Well, let's back up a little bit and just and tell our audience who introduced that. I I think I I said Mary Miller, I think that's who it was.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's Mary Miller. She it's actually a response. It's actually a response to the bill that was introduced in Illinois. I think Illinois was the first one that had a bill that if any library um uh succumbed to parents' pressure to remove books from their library, they would lose the um uh state grants for the library. So they would they could lose millions of dollars, in other words, it depending on the size of the library.
Mahmoud V Taylor And Opt Out Rights
SPEAKER_01And let's make sure everybody knows that what we're talking about here. So Alexia Janulius. Genulis, yeah, our Secretary of State, who also is in charge of the library system for Illinois, and Governor Pritzer have a do not ban books ban. And so basically what you just said was hey, if there's a pornographic material in my child's library, in the elementary school library, if the library takes that out, they stop the funding. I mean, this I opened up Tom by saying this is a spiritual attack. This is this is not by accident. And uh, and so Mary Miller at least is is uh introduced a bill to push back uh on that. Do you think it's gonna go through?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it will eventually in some form. I don't think it's gonna it's gonna go through in in the way it is now because there's uh there's about um she gets into sexual orientation in a enough def not a well enough defined way that they can that would uh withstand the Supreme Court review of it. I can't remember the exact language that was used, but it's uh the other part of it as far as the that uh um essentially what Mary did was say, and this is the good part of it, was that if the state tries to impose this law that uh Gianulas had onto libraries and prevent them from getting money if they if they punish parents who try to get these books banned, Mary says the federal government is gonna withhold money from you from the state for that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01So, in other words, it kind of forces the issue to say that the state can't do this is what thank God for the Trump administration. You know, you start the article here saying the same evening President Trump called for a national band on gender ideology in school during his State of the Union address. Mary Miller, Republican from Illinois 15, introduced H.R. 7661, the Stop the Sexualization of Children uh Act. The bill would prohibit funds from developing, hosting, or promoting any program, activity, or literature for children under 18 that contain sexually explicit material. Schools found in violation could lose federal funding to your point.
SPEAKER_00That's so here we have which is exactly that that basically reverses the the standard that Gianulus imposed, Gianulus's bill imposed.
Libraries, Expertise, And The Book Ban Fight
SPEAKER_01And everybody should, if you get a chance, Google or go on YouTube, one of the right, which is Google, and and find the one with uh Janulus, I I'm gonna butcher his name a little bit, but uh Janulus, I think. And again, Illinois Secretary of State and Senator John Kennedy. And Kennedy just drills him, right? And makes him look like a fool that he is, you know. But the point is, this is the dark battle. And so most people listening are not lawmakers, they're parents, right? They're fathers, their mothers, future fathers, future mothers. They see what's going on in the culture. What can they actually do right now, you know, to begin reclaiming responsibility in this area?
SPEAKER_00Well, the first thing they need to do is find out what their children are being taught. And the schools, Mahmoud versus Taylor requires the schools to provide this. Now, there's even under the Freedom of Information Act, there's been restrictions on parents being able to see this information. So the very first thing they need to do is find out exactly what their children are being taught, not just what the broad outline of the curriculum is, but you want to know what the books are, what the articles are, what websites are being referred to in the classrooms. And so once they can do that, then they can say, well, I want my child opted out of all these things based on my religious beliefs. Now, if they give you any kind of problem at all, it's say, well, we're not going to tell you that. We, you know, file a Freedom of Information Act request and then they deny it. Well, then the first thing, the first thing after that you do is go to the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and file a complaint. And something will be done about it. You know, in the meantime, they have to also question their children. Let me see what you're let me see what you're learning. Let me see what your your uh you know, your laptop shows. What what what are you um um um uh what do you think of this material? I mean, they should know this, uh what it what it is. And if they can go into the library and see what books are there, you can call immediately let the librarian know. It says, Don't let my child check this out. This is against my belief. And it doesn't have to be pornographic and be, you know, Marxist for or anything. Yeah, well, look at this against my religious beliefs.
SPEAKER_01You know, what happens is right too many parents have done exactly what we're we said they shouldn't be doing. They are not the primary educators of their kids, and what that means is you don't have to teach them every subject, but you have to be involved enough to know to your point what's going on. That's a minimum, Tom, but most parents aren't doing that. So here here for people listening today, number one, do what we just said. Just sit down with your kids at the dinner table and say, hey, you know, let's look at your homework. Tell me about your class, tell me about your teacher. What do you guys talk about? Get to know your kids a little bit. It doesn't hurt to talk to your your children. You know, I everybody's got those screens. Put those screens away, especially at the dinner table. Number two, and you don't have to do this just by yourself, but find a friend or change with your husband and go to the school board meetings. I attend my local school board meetings, and I got to know the uh school board members, and you get to talk to them, you start to understand the challenges, and the superintendents usually at those meetings too. You get to know those people. They get to know you, trust me, if you if you show up. So those two things, everybody should be able to do those things and pay attention.
SPEAKER_00You can see the classroom that they're in.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_00They have these weird flags hanging from the wall, you know.
What Parents Can Do Right Now
SPEAKER_01They usually take them down for those conferences, but ask your your child, hey, did they sometimes put flags up and different things up? Because sometimes they'll take them down. The last thing, Tom, I'll mention so get to know your kids, talk to your kids, go to school board meetings if you need to alternate with your neighbor. And the third thing is get involved with the grassroots organization. They're all over the country. And with like-minded people, usually they're Christians and patriots, they love our country, they love our kids, we love our our our uh neighborhoods and our communities, etc. And uh get involved because uh it can be a little overwhelming to, you know, when you first get inundated with what should I do, how should I do it, but other people are are ahead of you already and they'll help you with that, right? Hey Thomas, let's as we're ending up here, let's say this, right? If if nothing changes, your parents stay passive, you know, the next 10 or 20 years, they are not gonna look good because if we are not passing, again, what's true, good, and beautiful down to the next generation, we will lose our culture like we we're doing now. We're gonna lose our our families, and we're gonna lose our nation. And that's just a reality. Uh you know, they're they're gonna have to come up. And and I'll tell you what, uh, you know, we just went through an election, Tom, the midterms, and a lot of people didn't show up to vote, did they?
SPEAKER_00No. No, and we and the fact is we are losing our culture. And you can see it in the in the figures, like when in um uh children are being indoctrinated into the belief that they are something other than heterosexual, that they and they're they're being recruited into a into an uh a an unhealthy lifestyle. When when uh in my generation, two and a half percent of the people identify as LGBT. Children in school today, 26% I Identify as LGBT. They have been recruited into that mindset. So it's their minds that are being twisted by this aberrant philosophy that's been introduced by the education system. And the parents have to begin fighting back against that because ultimately it's not going to lead to someplace that's good. It's going to be destructive to the children, and it's going to be destructive to our whole culture. Because it's not just in the LGBT thing. That's one indicator. The other indicators are that the United States is bad. Our founding principles are twisted, that we need to wipe everything out and rebuild from the from the ground up. So this is ultimately going to destroy our entire way of life.
Mentorship, Courage, And The Claymore Plan
SPEAKER_01If we want to have a future for ourselves, our kids, our grandkids, and stuff, we're going to have to latch on to this. Unfortunately, it's it's a battle because the parents of these kids, as we know, have also been indoctrinated to a certain extent, right? So, brothers and sisters, today, listen carefully. This is not somebody else's fight. This is not a political abstraction. This is formation. This is shaping of souls. Every generation is handed a choice. Will you pass on what's true, good, and beautiful, especially the beauty of love and our beauty of our sexuality to our children, or will you allow someone to replace that? You don't need permission to do this. You don't need a title. You need clarity. You need courage. You need to act. As Tom said, it starts in your home. We went through that already. Second thing is we I just wrote uh the Claymore Battle Plan Handbook. I'm going to put a plug-in for that because it's for these young people. It's for Gen Z. Uh, it's a way to explain what's going on in their heart and in their culture. And it's done in a way that's uh it's going to challenge them a little bit, uh, but also they'll be able to understand it. I'm going to put uh our uh website, Claymore Militaschristie.com, Claymore Milituschristie.com in the show notes. That's a website that goes under the John Paul II Renewal Center dedicated just to these young people. Go on that site, check it out, uh, get one of the battle plan handbooks. The last episode I did, uh, Tom talked about this, and it talked about what that battle plan's about, and it tells the story of Luke in there that I just met this last weekend at a conference. 16, 17-year-old young guy tells that story in there, so listen to that. And uh and you'll see these Luke's are all over. They're all asking questions. They're bright young guys. But if we don't help them, Tom, there it there ain't nobody behind us, man. I mean, if we don't do it, we're in trouble, right? We are, and we're already in trouble. But the good news is these young people are waking up, but the problem is they don't have enough mentors, they don't have enough people. Every one of us, again, I I just gotta restate what Tom and I already said. Every one of us becomes that potential mentor to a to a kid, to a young person. We just don't know what to do or how to say it. You know, it's not an elevator speech. So, what the Claymore Handbook does and the Claymore battle plan, this apostle that we have, it gives us the tools. It gives you the tools. It makes it simple. It makes it literally simple. You read uh listen to that last podcast I did, and it'll give you an example of Luke in there, show you how easy this is. Hey, God bless you, Tom. Thank you so much for being on. Thanks, everybody. Talk to you again soon. Bye bye.