Prairie State Wire

Illinois Family Institute representatives recently held a Jericho prayer march outside the governor’s mansion to protest a bill now being considered by Gov. J.B. Pritzker that would set the stage for comprehensive personal health and safety education to be taught to students as early as kindergarten.

“We are heading over to the governor’s mansion where we are going to hold a Jericho prayer march,” a man identified as David said in a video posted to Facebook. “We’re going to go around once, maybe twice with signs; we're going to pray and we’re going to bring some attention to the fact the governor has Senate Bill 818 on his desk, this radical, comprehensive sex ed bill and he needs to veto it.”

According to jerichomarch.org, "Jericho March is a peaceful prayer march where people of Judeo-Christian faith pray together, sing songs and blow shofars."

In a fiery House floor speech, state Rep. Darren Bailey (R-Louisville) also recently came out in opposition of the bill.

“I sat here and I listen to this and participate in what I expect to be a prestigious body,” he said in a video posted to YouTube. “And here we are dealing with the absolute nonsense of putting perversion into our schools. That’s what this is. Teachers who are learning to teach our kids proper education have no reason to teach this stuff.”

SB 818 seeks to repeal current sex education and family life instruction on disease prevention guidelines, and instead require school districts “to provide comprehensive personal health and safety education in kindergarten through the 5th grade and comprehensive sexual health education in the 6th through 12th grades in all public schools.”

Set to take effect immediately, the measure would also require school districts “to provide age and developmentally appropriate consent education in the 3rd through 12th grades,” while establishing what the instruction and materials must include.

“Parents across the state of Illinois don’t want this garbage,” said Bailey, who is also now seeking the Republican nomination for governor and has been a constant critic of the governor’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis and the way some students haven’t been allowed to engage in in-person learning for roughly a year now.

"[Gov. J.B. Pritzker] is destroying education and our children's mental health," Bailey said in a March 16 tweet. "We should have had fully opened schools a long time ago, but JB is too afraid to stand up and do what's right."