Education · Statewide · CO · August 15, 2026
ADF Letter: Colorado District's K-8 Sex Curriculum Uses Graphic Anatomy Images
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 3
“Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
The substantive fight — whether five-year-olds should be shown anatomical images — has been shifted onto ground most parents have never had to learn: curriculum-adoption procedure, the wording of a two-week notice, and an opt-out form that ADF says was placed in a take-home folder and posted on the Remind app under the generic label "health education." A parent who knows exactly what they object to still loses if they do not know the policy number, the adoption timeline, or that the district ran a two-year review before the May 2023 vote. The district's fluency in its own process is the advantage.
Counter-Rule 3 · Preparation and Width
Prepare the unfamiliar ground before you are dragged onto it. "I don't know, I'll find out and come back" beats an improvised answer.
Prepare that ground this month rather than at the microphone. Download the 3Rs teacher's guide and lesson plans free from Advocates for Youth so you are quoting page numbers, not press summaries; file a written Colorado Open Records Act request for the K-8 materials and the adoption minutes; get the board policy number for curriculum adoption and for parental notice. When asked something you do not know at a meeting, say you will find out and come back — then do.
Rule 5
“Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.”
At the 2023 adoption vote the board, by ADF's account, brushed off parent objections as "sensational comments" while assuring families a clear opt-out was in place. That is ridicule doing procedural work: it reclassifies a factual complaint about specific lesson content as an emotional overreaction, so the complaint need not be answered on its facts. The bait is an angry reply that confirms the label.
Counter-Rule 5 · Dignity as Armor
Do not supply the angry reaction the ridicule is fishing for. Composure denies it the thing it feeds on.
Deny it the reaction. In public comment, read the lesson title, grade level and page number, state the date you received notice and how it was labeled, and ask one factual question — then stop and sit down within your time limit. Put the same question in writing afterward so there is a record that cannot be characterized as a scene.
Rule 11
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.”
The alert itself notes the outlet would not publish the images, so nearly everyone discussing this curriculum is describing material they have not seen. That is exactly the condition in which a real grievance gets pushed one notch too far — "pornography for kindergartners" — and the whole objection is then dismissed on the strength of the one overstatement.
Counter-Rule 11 · Proportional Truth
Refuse to overclaim, even where it would help. One exaggeration hands the other side the only weapon that works permanently.
Refuse the extra notch even where it would land. Obtain the actual lessons before you characterize them, quote the district's own words rather than a summary of a summary, and say "I have not seen that page" when you have not. If a neighbor circulates a claim you cannot source to a document in your hand, correct it in your own group before the district does it for you.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
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