While the publicly available details within the witness list were limited, the coordinated submissions revealed detailed networks of individuals in the Homeschool community. This allowed us to positively identify nine registered sex offenders who committed felonies against minors.

Within the bill were several much needed protections homeschooled children are not entitled to under the current law—one of which aimed to prohibit homeschooling in the homes of registered sex offenders. We reached out to all of the offenders with a request for comment and to ask why they opposed the bill.

Out of the nine identified subjects, we left five messages without a response. Three of the subjects answered and positively identified themselves, but hung up soon after. In the end, only one registered sex offender agreed to speak about their opposition to Illinois’ now-stalled Homeschool Act: HB 2827. Below is our conversation, edited for clarity.

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Hi, this is Tony with SBR Sentinel, am I speaking with [Redacted]?

Yes.

Hey [Redacted], like I said, my name is Tony. I’m researching witness participation in Illinois’ homeschool legislation. I’m calling to ask about your witness slips you filed in the spring in opposition to HB 2827. Do you have two minutes?

Yes.

Thank you, I appreciate it. Can you confirm which amendments you submitted witness slips for?

It was the ones against the homeschooling, maybe a few months ago.

And that was for the original bill and the amendments as well?

Yeah.

Excellent, thank you. And real quick, what was in the bill that motivated you to testify against it?

Um, well, I don’t have it in front of me. Are you able to see my comments on that, or did I leave any comments on that?

No, I can’t see any comments.

I kind of forget about what the bill is about in general, but I’ve been homeschooled in Illinois all the way K-12 when I was younger. I went to college, graduated summa cum laude, and went on to get a master’s degree and a doctorate. Homeschooling has been great for me. I homeschooled all of my children. My oldest is starting his first year of college this year. And things go very well when we don’t have government interference with it. I think it’s the parent’s right and responsibility to educate the children. And I live with my children, and I don’t want a whole lot of government interference with that.

And do you participate in any homeschool groups or organizations within the state or nationally?

Yes, we’re lifetime members of the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Okay. So, our story revolves around the section of the bill regarding the prohibition of homeschooling for children in the homes of registered sex offenders. Is there anyone in your household that is on the Illinois Sex Offender Registry currently?

Yes. That would be me.

I appreciate your candor; do you have any additional context that you’d like to provide to that?

Sure. I committed and was convicted of a sex offense. It was not related to my children. Back about a decade ago, I went to prison, did my time. I’ve gotten out, and the law currently prevents sex offenders from residing with their minor children if their children were the victims in this situation, if not. So there’s already provisions in place that would prevent a sex offender from even living with his own children or victims. But they’re unrelated to this circumstance. And, you know, if they’re living with me, the fact that we’re homeschooling them, it really doesn’t make any difference as far as risk to the children. Yeah, I don’t think it’s a necessary law. If we need laws to prevent contact or unsupervised contact with sex offenders, then those are actually already in place. They shouldn’t be living with the sex offender if there’s risk to the children. But if they’re in a situation where the law allows it and has determined that there is not that risk to the children, then the fact that they’re homeschooling doesn’t make any difference to that. It really shouldn’t be a homeschooling issue at all.

Right. That makes sense. And do you see any conflict between your conviction and testifying against this particular bill?

No, that’s why I feel like I have some insight into the situation that most people don’t. I’ve obviously been in the situation, and I’ve talked with other people. I’ve gone to sex offender therapy classes and I’ve talked with other sex offenders and I know the current laws adequately protect the children of sex offenders without making it a homeschooling issue

And in these conversations that you’ve had with others, the consensus is that there’s no danger or issue with the children in the household.

Well, the danger would be whether they’re living with them or not, rather than whether they’re homeschooling them or not. I mean, does that make sense? The fact that they’re spending a few extra hours there each day during school hours when the sex offender is likely at work anyway, like me. Yeah, their mom homeschools them. I’m with them in the evenings whether I homeschool them or not. So the only reason they’re going for this, and I can see why they do it, is if there was abuse happening, the teacher might be somebody who might detect it, whereas if they’re homeschooled, that may or may not be the case. But I think it really complicates issues, and I don’t feel like that reasoning justifies the extreme hardship it would put on my family if we weren’t allowed to homeschool.

Right, that makes sense. Well, I appreciate your time. If you have anything else or anything comes to mind, you can reach me at this number. But that was all the questions that I had.

Okay. I appreciate you calling and probably a little bit of a unique perspective on it—there’s not a whole lot of scenarios like this I’m sure—but yeah glad to help out

The subject currently resides in Illinois. He served two years in prison and ten years of probation for forcible sexual abuse of a seven-year-old.∎

In February, Illinois state Rep. Terra Costa Howard introduced what would have been the state’s only safeguards for homeschooled children. The Homeschool Act (HB 2827) would create diluted versions of the same protections that public school students are owed. Among those guarantees included in the bill: ensuring homeschool children’s primary educator holds a high school diploma or equivalent, entitling children to documentation of their education, and banning child sex offenders from homeschooling. The bill passed the Education Committee in April but stalled in the House chamber, eventually succumbing to opposition from the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), Americans For Prosperity, and at least nine registered child sex offenders.

Through analysis of the Illinois General Assembly’s public testimony records, we have identified nine individuals listed on the Illinois State Police’s Sex Offender Registry who submitted witness statements against HB 2827—their convictions ranging from sex-trafficking to distribution of child pornography, and forcible sexual abuse. The ages of registrants at the time of offense range between 17 and 67, with victims ranging from infancy to 16. While the oldest offense is from decades prior, one offender’s witness slip was submitted while their verdict was still pending. Another was arrested two weeks after the April education hearing in a sex-trafficking sting operation.

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Few state legislatures have updated their homeschool requirements since they were first codified in the 1980s. Instead, most states are dismantling what few protections exist for homeschooled children. At the beginning of this year only three states restricted homeschooling in households with registered child sex offenders, but after Utah’s spring legislative sessions only two states maintain those restrictions. Child marriage advocate and Utah freshman Rep. Nicholeen Peck, a regular speaker for Great Homeschool Conventions and publisher of a homeschool coaching program, sponsored the bill removing those restrictions, despite homeschool alumni demanding more—not fewer—protections. The bill passed 69-1.

Peck, like the rest of the Homeschool institution, argues that child sex offender restrictions within homeschooling statutes unfairly target homeschooling parents. HSLDA further claims that existing child abuse laws already prohibit offenders from homeschooling, just as Illinois Republican Rep. Blaine Wilhour argued during HB 2827’s April hearing. This claim is regularly repeated despite being verifiably false; documented cases show registered sex offenders have done so in compliance with the law. But the frequency of registered child sex offenders homeschooling is unknowable, as the Homeschool lobby has obstructed the basic counting of homeschool students in twelve states, including Illinois. However, Illinois’ public system for filing testimony presented a rare opportunity. Contrary to the Homeschool institution’s claims, our analysis of the witness list found child sex offenders who presented testimony against HB 2827 and are currently homeschooling in Illinois.

The names of sex offenders do not appear in isolation. While any individual can submit testimony for a bill, the offenders who appear as witnesses against HB 2827 are joined by a network of relatives and associates. At odds with the Homeschool movement’s assertion that they are a self-policing institution, the offenders are integrated to various degrees within a larger homeschool network. The willingness of HSLDA to take such extreme opposition to this basic protection—which it targeted for removal in compromise negotiations—does not just trap children in the homes of sex offenders, but endangers the families and community it supposedly represents. In one case, we identified a registered child sex offender currently participating in a local homeschool group. They are a lifetime member of the HSLDA as well as a lifetime member of the national sex offender registry for forcible sexual abuse of a seven-year-old. Their name appears on the witness list beside the names of their spouse and four children.

In the end, it was this network effect that enabled the identification of each subject within the publicly redacted version of the witness list. In multiple cases, it was children’s names alongside their parents’ that signaled a match on the sex offender registry. The number of witnesses was frequently cited as evidence of grassroots opposition, yet no one noted that the witness list was overwhelmingly filled with the names of children. HSLDA and Illinois Christian Home Educators stated that opposition to the bill was partly rooted in concerns over children’s privacy, and objected to the requirement of submitting information to government officials. Yet while making these statements in committee hearings, they were sending alerts urging members to submit their child’s personal information to the government database, appropriating the data and agency of children in service of their own interests.

HB 2827’s opponents pointed to the failure of public institutions as justification for homeschooling’s sovereign status, but what are we to make of a movement that—as it weaponizes the transparency of public institutions—weaponizes the opaqueness of its own institutions? The Homeschool lobby does not want homeschool children trapped in the houses of child predators, but it does want it impossible to know if homeschool children are trapped in the houses of child predators. The threat that any bill poses doesn’t rest on an individual statute, measure, or requirement; each is opposed for the voice it could return to homeschool children, and the threat children pose when able to speak for themselves.

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While technically still alive, the bill is functionally dead. Sponsor Terra Costa Howard is vacating her seat in the 42nd to serve on the Illinois Circuit Court, much to the celebration of the Homeschool lobby. Even in a state with every advantage, a Democratic trifecta with dual super-majorities, it joins a never-ending pile of failed legislation to protect the most vulnerable. The representatives and organizations who led the charge against the bill are below.∎

HSLDA and ICHE did not respond to requests for comment

Find Your Illinois Representative

Earlier this year, the Illinois legislature introduced the Homeschool Act HB 2827. To address the state’s virtually non-existent requirements to homeschool, the bill would have codified the same guarantees afforded children educated in the public system—such as graduating with educational records and being taught by someone with a minimum of a high school education. The bill stalled and never received a vote on the House floor, succumbing to the Homeschool movement’s well-practiced pressure campaigns against any homeschool legislation. In celebration of its defeat, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) held events across the state in partnership with Illinois Christian Home Educators (ICHE) who worked to kill the bill.

Curious what those celebrating the defeat thought of the bill, I attended the last event in mid-June to speak with the participants. When I arrived, an unattended folding table with a clipboard awaited us while children played in the grass nearby. I began to mingle with the parents and spoke to the few vendors set up along the pavilion’s edge. Throughout the afternoon, the hosts, vendors, and adult attendees all expressed a shared belief in the freedom homeschooling afforded them, while continually warning that it was about to be taken away.

Speaking with a woman running a booth for a local co-op, she expressed concern over curriculum restrictions for homeschoolers and losing the ability to provide religious instruction. When I confirmed the bill did not impose restrictions or requirements on curriculum and religious instruction, she nevertheless felt any oversight would inevitably lead to this in the future: "Once they get it passed then they have the right to do whatever they want and continue to encroach on the homeschooling moms—or families!—decision making power on the curriculum and how they want to homeschool and all of that." The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) representative I spoke with next felt the same way, agreeing that it was Illinois' lax laws that protected against that encroachment: “The state of Illinois is pretty free when it comes to homeschooling … there is no real registration process. You don't have to let the schools know that you're homeschooling. And with that comes a lot of benefits … and so you don't want to be able to lose that.” I personally felt the benefits of no record requirements in another state, as I applied to colleges and jobs with only a Google Doc transcript as proof of completing high school.

Like the children playing just out of view, the homeschool alumni supporting the bill seemed to exist in the background. The attendees engaged in a ritualistic display of animosity towards the bill’s sponsor, Terra Costa Howard, and stated she and other supporters of the bill (homeschool alumni) were using the deaths of homeschooled children to enact draconian penalties targeting homeschoolers. Per one of the co-op vendors, "I think before they hadn't had any situations like that to use, so I guess they figured they got the opportunity.” I was unsure of which of the seven known deaths she was referring to.

Others were angry that homeschoolers' voices were unheard: “if you want a homeschool bill, then put some homeschoolers in the legislative process and write it with them." Whether they were unaware the bill was co-written by an organization founded and run by homeschool graduates, or simply did not consider them homeschoolers was unclear. This was echoed in a later conversation with AFP’s emcee of the event and homeschool graduate Grace Lattz, who took issue with the sponsor’s unwillingness to have a cordial dialogue and come to a mutually satisfying bill for all parties (Costa Howard actually removed the ban on sex-offenders from homeschooling at the request of opposition).

After speaking with as many guests as possible, the event ended with speeches from the figures and groups that were at the forefront opposing the bill. As much as this was a celebration, the speakers reiterated the need to "keep everyone engaged and in a holding stance, ready to get back in the fight." Chris Butler, an HSLDA affiliate and failed Democrat candidate, introduced a surprise guest who had not attended the prior events. After a mealy mouthed disclaimer that this is not him telling people to vote for a certain party and does not reflect the views of the hosts, he said to rounds of applause: “there is a legislator … who is going to attack homeschooling, and the state … will be better off if that legislator is not in Springfield next session.”

Butler then handed the microphone to Stephanie Trussell, the 2022 Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor, and she announced her campaign for the 42nd district: “I just want to assure all you homeschoolers that help is on the way. Terra Costa Howard is going to meet her match.” Trussell has never held office, but became the host of a conservative talk radio show for seven years through winning a contest. She told the crowd her bid was a result of a call from Dan Patlack, the president of conservative think-tank Illinois Policy Institute, asking her to run against Terra Costa Howard in the 42nd. Trussell left the Democratic party in 1993 but has never endorsed homeschooling publicly prior to HB 2827.1 In fact, prior to this year, her comments suggest she viewed homeschooling as unserious. In a 2023 Facebook video, she called Homeschoolers “elitist” and not a viable option to “get those kids out of the public schools.”

After lamenting the county’s under performing schools (in reality some of the highest performing districts in the country), Trussell asked the crowd for their support to “flip the 42nd” and closed the event with a promise: “We’re gonna take down Terra Costa Howard.” With each speaker stressing which regulations would not be tolerated, I approached Grace Lattz afterwards to ask what homeschool oversight would be acceptable. She was unable to answer repeat requests for an example, instead deflecting with statements such as “everyone here loves their kids,” which I reminded her was never claimed otherwise. By the time I left, no one had been able to accurately describe what was in the bill they were opposing in the first place, much less give a clear vision of how to hold abuse through homeschooling accountable.

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All of these newfound friends of homeschooling are hoping to transform this opposition into material political gains. They are likely to be disappointed. News coverage uncritically repeated the movement’s touted witness count without noting the non in-state submissions, the rampant duplicate filings—one woman submitted her name over 70 times—and the names of non-voting minors Illinois Homeschoolers urged followers to submit.2 It helped to prop up an event that was strangely hollow, all of its disjointed facets held together by an unprepared coalition of opportunists. AFP, unprepared to share a presence with a homeschooler on the receiving end of the freedom being celebrated, stated their organization was mostly interested in property taxes—implicating their incentive to withhold as many children from a public education as possible. Arriving just before the event ended and apologizing for still being in her work uniform, Stephanie Trussell stated she had only heard about 2827 ten minutes before deciding to run a campaign centered around it. It is an extension of the issues endemic to the Homeschooling movement itself, where fear and outrage against exaggerated threats are manufactured to further their own interests with little regard for the people they claim to represent.∎

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Pivot table of HB 2827 witness slips

Hb2827 Witness Slips

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It's Homeschool convention season. To kick it off this year, I decided to attend Massachusetts’ 2025 convention this past April. My trip was partly to see what Homeschooling looks like in its least popular state, but I mostly wanted to see someone from back home. Scheduled to speak at the 35th Annual MASSHope Convention was a former Homeschool leader from my home in Virginia. After allegations of grooming a minor in 2016, he disappeared from the movement he helped build. I’d never been to Massachusetts, so I figured “what the hell” and bought a plane ticket and convention pass.

As I wrote in an essay last week, the conference itself was a miserable time. I attended workshops by Homeschooling’s biggest creeps like the weekend’s keynote speaker, Heidi St. John (“Children have been given to you like arrows”). Mixing in with the attendees, I browsed the exhibit hall and vendor booths, where a woman from Turning Point USA told me about her friend arrested for harassing a transgender woman at a public restroom (“That’s a badge of honor. That’s what we need”). But I ended the convention by interviewing the former Home Educators Association of Virginia (HEAV) board member accused of grooming a minor, Rick Boyer.

Boyer was one of Homeschooling’s pioneers, but he virtually disappeared from the movement in 2016. In April that year, a woman posted on her website that as a minor, Boyer had made sexual advances in an attempt to groom her. He subsequently disappeared from the HEAV website a few months later, and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) cut ties with him. Boyer then attempted to sue the woman in a series of lawsuits that lasted nearly eight years.

I ended up interviewing him right as the convention was nearing its close. After buttering him up for a few minutes about his glory days, I began to ask him why he stopped getting invitations to speak at Homeschool conventions. His body began to erupt in a series of what felt like micro-seizures as I pressed him to acknowledge any of his past. Even after realizing the nature of the interview, he never confirmed the allegations from 2016, ending in a tense standoff. As he made his exit, Boyer told me “No hard feelings” and offered to shake my hand. I found the gesture significant, as a few minutes prior he described attacks on Homeschool figures as the work of the Devil.

Rick, incapable of self-reflection, is in practice a microcosm of the institution at large. HSLDA may have severed ties with Rick a decade ago, but that “line in the sand” wasn’t an impediment for their board member to share the top bill with him this weekend. This was also not his first convention back, as he headlined fellow Homeschool Alliance organizations North Dakota Homeschool Association (NDHSA) in 2024 as well as Oregon Christian Home Education Association Network (OCEANetwork) in 2023. He exists in a liminal world. Never formally removed, and never formally brought back in.

But my visit and interview have only led me to find more questions. In his first defamation suit that included Ryan Stollar and Homeschoolers Anonymous, he says that HSLDA rescinded their invite to their leadership conference after the April 2016 allegations. The Wayback Machine says otherwise; Boyer was removed from their speakers list between March 30, 2015 and July 2015. A full year before the allegations were published. Why that relationship was severed a year before Boyer claims is not an answer that will be given willingly.

As I concluded in my essay, the trip was notable for the way in which a dingy event held between a CVS and Yankee Liquor in a state ranked 50 out of 50 in homeschool enrollment is given legitimacy by a national network. The developed version of Homeschooling seen elsewhere in the U.S. is only able to come about through a local colony cultivating the soil for an institution to take root. An institution that exists to avoid confrontation with the reality of the world around it must in turn create fictions of itself. The manufactured realities only grow bolder as it avoids confrontation with its own nature.∎

Home Is Where The Hatred Is

I Went to the 2025 Massachusetts Homeschool Convention and Interviewed a Fucking Creep

It took sixteen minutes to get to my gate starting from the parking garage—seven minutes more than usual for RIC. I lost my driver’s license two days before, and spent the morning of my flight collecting every other ID and form with my name on it. The TSA agent at the security bridge waves a supervisor over, who then thumbs through my half-inch thick en…

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10 months ago · 26 likes · 1 comment · Tony Delvecchio

I reached out for comment to MASSHope, NDHSA, OCEANetwork, ACHEL, and HSLDA. MASSHope returned only a read receipt. NDHSA, OCEANetwork, ACHEL, and HSLDA did not respond for comment.

It took sixteen minutes to get to my gate starting from the parking garage—seven minutes more than usual for RIC. I lost my driver’s license two days before, and spent the morning of my flight collecting every other ID and form with my name on it. The TSA agent at the security bridge waves a supervisor over, who then thumbs through my half-inch thick envelope of personal documents. My envelope is handed back to me, “Just run his bags through the extra screening.” Now flush with time after my unnecessarily early arrival, I grab a seat at the only restaurant open inside the Evelyn Byrd terminal. I’m tapping my pocket with the envelope every few minutes, the current climate less than ideal for losing every identifying document you possess. As my order of what appears to be triple fried chicken tenders arrives, I check my carry-on for any Imodium I might have packed. I tap my pocket one more time.

I’m on my way to bear witness to the fastest growing form of education in its least hospitable region—a state that ranks 50th out of 50 in homeschool enrollment. Awaiting my reception at the Sturbridge, Massachusetts Super 8 is no one. I pace around for a few minutes until I see a note with a number for me to call. A once recently asleep man lumbers into the building and slides behind an unresponsive check-in computer. I fight the urge to join in as he starts playing with the router. The system boots up after a few minutes and I’m sent to the penthouse (2nd floor) with a beautiful view into the heart of New England.

Convention Day 1

The next morning, I down a paper cup of oatmeal between a CVS and Yankee Liquor on my walk to the convention. I passed on the discount block-rate at the Sturbridge Hotel and Conference Center, accepting the premium to enjoy some distance whenever I could find it. I arrive just as the morning keynote kicks off, finding a lone seat among the 150 or so attendees who arrived on time. As I settle in my seat, a man in colonial dress takes the stage to address the crowd, “Anyway, I’m in this get-up today in my incarnation as Uncle Rick the storyteller.” The man in stockings and tricorn hat is why I had come. “I don’t know if you know this or not,” he taunts his Yankee crowd, “But history was invented in Virginia, not Massachusetts!”

But Rick isn’t the keynote this morning; he hasn’t been seen much in the past eight years. He is only on stage to hawk his audiobook memberships and curriculum he’ll be selling over the weekend. I will have to catch up with him later. He wraps the sales pitch in prayer, and the headliner begins to take the stage, the room breaking into applause as she flips on her personal pink lavalier microphone. “Homeschooling by far and away, next to introducing our kids to Jesus, has been the best thing that we have ever done. And he’s going to sanctify you through the process of home education.” Behind her is the keynote title projected on the wall, Like Arrows in the Hands of a Warrior.

Heidi

“I first heard about homeschoolers in the 80s, and they were the people who didn’t register their kids with Social Security … I get it now. We all know we’re being poisoned, but that’s a whole other workshop!”

Heidi St. John is the keynote slot for a reason. The crowd is eating this up.

“Can you guys tell I ran for Congress? You should have seen me!” Before her third place finish in the 2022 Washington Republican primary, Heidi had already become one of Homeschooling’s most popular speakers over the last two decades. If the first wave of Homeschooling brought it into existence, Heidi and the rest of the second wave are responsible for bringing it into America’s alternative counter-culture.

This may be a Homeschooling convention, but the schooling aspect functions mostly as set dressing. Anyone in the audience who has made that assumption is set straight, “The Homeschool moms are wringing their hands. ‘I didn’t make it through the math book!’ My question is, ‘but did you make it through God’s book?’” The stakes are far higher than a child’s education. “I don’t actually care if you ever need to know math!”

Heidi continues through slides of particularly poor artwork, reminding the parents that they are preparing for “literal battle.” “This is the image I want you guys to keep in your mind.” Heidi’s slide switches to the next image, a father praying over his sleeping child. “This is a spiritual battle! … Dad’s not afraid about a math lesson … That’s not important!”

Heidi then asks the crowd to look a little closer at the photo. “If you zoom in—keep your eye on this—I want you to look at the top window … Can you see what’s happening” The audience is in wonder. “There’s a spiritual battle outside of the room of that child!” A sea of phones begin to pop up from the audience as the crowd takes snapshots of the projection. “I think if we could see the spiritual warfare with the naked eye, every one of us would be on our faces before the Lord.”

Well versed readers may have already picked up that the arrows in the title keynote are, in fact, people. Heidi hammers the motif repeatedly through the thickest of skulls in the crowd, “Children have been given to you like arrows in the hands of their warriors. Those children literally are God’s arrows.”

We near the finale, Heidi’s voice already hoarse for the last several minutes. Up until now, her pink* lavalier mic has been mostly for show. She enters a much slower and quieter cadence, and tells the story of Jim Elliot, killed on a missionary trip. For a literal war currently waging, they haven’t been able to produce any new martyrs since I was told the story.

I look around at the kids in the crowd, most unaware they have just been drafted for an impending war. “What are your arrows for but to shoot? You are training your children for a battle that will take them far beyond any academic pursuit that you could ever engage in.” I feel nauseous, wondering which Homeschool book or convention was the impetus for my own botched conscription. Apparently, the parents look nauseous too.

“I feel like they should give barf bags to new homeschoolers before they go into the vendor hall.”

Heidi hasn’t made Homeschooling sound very fun. In fact, most of these workshops spend a good deal of time warning parents it’s actually going to be quite the opposite. But if the alternative is to lose your children, can you afford not to?

“Don’t get overwhelmed by what you see … Don’t let it become a burden. You’re going to have bad days. You’re going to cry … You guys, welcome to the conference!”

The Exhibit Hall

The audience empties from the central ballroom and disperses to the first of dozens of breakout workshops available throughout the weekend. I choose to exchange the stuffy air of the ballroom for the musty air of the exhibit hall, where a bin of familiar posters for sale catches my eye. I flip through. On one are three pledges: one each to the American Flag, the Bible, and the Christian flag. Others provide “Answers to Evolution” and “The Ten Commandments” in cartoon form. The last, a depiction of the Old Testament Tabernacle. I flip it over and check the Copyright at the bottom. 2005. Above is an advertisement for the accompanying PowerPoint CD “for your class or home!” Still available to purchase for $39.99 at GoodSoil.com.

I stop by a handful of other booths. The Great Wolf Lodge is advertising their homeschool day packages. Another booth has two men in knock-off Boy Scout uniforms recruiting for Trail Life, a breakaway organization from Boy Scouts after the organization ended its discriminatory policy towards gay scouts—the hideous uniforms a dead giveaway on the reason for the split. One row over I ask the USAF National Guard what brought them here. “Just doing research and came across it,” she tells me. Besides her husband’s step-brother, she doesn’t know anyone who’s been homeschooled. “This is a new experience for me.”

I grab lunch, a burger from the concession-type room. As it’s handed to me from a kitchen with no stove, I make note to seek out a vegetable soon.

Uncle Rick

Rick Boyer and I are neighbors of sorts; less so from a physical distance standpoint, and more by our coexistence in the tiny world of Homeschooling. In 1980, Virginia did not recognize the practice, so Rick’s home outside Lynchburg became a testing site for what happens when parents just stopped sending their kids to school one day. His early adopter status brought him close to the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) once they put down roots to the north of him in Loudoun County, and Uncle Rick started making his first appearances at the newly formed Home Educators Association of Virginia (HEAV) convention a couple years later. Rick joined HEAV’s board in the early 2000s, about the same time I began homeschooling in Virginia—the soil of my childhood tended and groomed by Rick and a small battalion of constant gardeners.

But in 2016, after fourteen years on the board, Rick left suddenly. He received a call from the HSLDA president; his yearly invite to their National Leadership Conference was being rescinded. Accusations of grooming a minor lost him access to everything he had helped to build. He has been missing ever since, his wife becoming the face for their Character Concepts brand. Rick spent seven years trying to sue the (now adult) minor—as well as anyone who shared the allegations. But he ran out of funds; he needed to pay the liens issued against him by his second lawyer, and the case was brought to a close at the end of 2024.

Rick is still in his colonial get-up as he addresses the gaggle of children assembled before him. I take a seat as isolated as possible from the rest of the room. You might think a 30 year old male sitting alone at story time would seem out of place, but no one questions me. There is no such thing as out of place here. As Rick tells the kids some (likely apocryphal) stories from the Revolutionary War, I’m passed a stack of flyers for the Uncle Rick Audio Book Club. $14.95 a month. “Who buys this shit?” I think to myself as I pass the stack to the next potential customer. I do some quick math to find what subscriber count breaks six figures (558), and consider if it’s not too late to switch paths.

Marilyn

Rick finishes story time, swapping places with his wife at the vendor booth. I take my seat in a far less attended workshop for her session, You Mean I Can Teach History Like That? It promises to show how you can teach the true history of our country to your kids, but in practice is a reading of book suggestions for 50 minutes. Despite the extra dose of Adderall I am nearly asleep a few minutes in, but I jolt back awake about halfway through. On the projector is Judge Roy Moore, who lost his 2017 U.S. Senate race after allegations of serial predation and grooming of minors. Underneath his photo is an endorsement for the Boyers’ history books, which you can buy as a bundle for $131 at their booth or online.

Opting to skip the day’s last session, I head out to grab a burrito (counting the pico inside as my vegetable for the day) and take a quick hike in the nearby state park. As I return, the glow of the Super 8 sign draws my car to the motel parking lot, but the glow of a McDonald’s arch 1,000 feet further has a stronger pull. They have spicy versions of McChickens up here. Incredible.

Convention Day 2 | Vegetables Eaten: 1

What’s a Dad to Do?

Heidi again has the Saturday morning keynote spot at 9, but it’s one I’ve already heard several times so I really don’t give a shit. Today is all about Rick.

A dad in his 30s arrives before Rick’s 10:30 workshop at the same time as me. Placing his ball-cap down on the table, I’m able to see the patch above the snap: two Celtic crosses flanking the words “Shepherds We Shall Be,” a reference to the 1999 shoot-em-up cult classic The Boondocks Saints—a movie where two rough-and-tumble Irish Catholic twins on a mission from God who purify Boston of evil with blood and gunfire for about 90 minutes. I recognize the reference immediately, as the opening theme was 17-year-old-me’s very first ringtone.

Rick walks up to the lectern, “Hi, everybody! Hear me okay?” He no longer has his tricorn hat, opting for a suit today. “We’re here to talk about dad’s role in the home-educating family.” Homeschool mothers being both the de facto educators and homemakers has left the movement struggling for 40 years to figure out what it is exactly that a father contributes.

Back in the 80s, the lesson Rick received was to “take as much of cooking, cleaning, and laundry off of mom so that she could be free to do the teaching.” But the idea of making tangible contributions to the household didn’t sit right with Rick, so he looked for an answer elsewhere. The Lord showed him the answer he wanted through the Scripture. God is good.

The dads in the room begin writing down all the ways they will not be contributing as Rick lists them off. He tells us a father provides, which is a fancy way of saying ‘has a job’. As for the teaching aspect, fathers teach by example. This doesn’t mean teaching anything; just to do whatever you were going to do anyways, but with an inflated sense of self-importance. And of course the big one, fathers are protectors. This can be done by inventing non-existent threats so you can perform rituals of protection as proof to your wife that you’re not a pussy. Boondock Saints man begins writing furiously. “There’s so much our kids need to be protected from, sometimes even in the church. Youth groups are famous for stealing parental loyalty and turning kids over to the youth director.”

Rick rattles off a few more, “One of the most important things that a dad provides for his kids is a trade, a means of making a living.”

“What about girls, Rick?” I think to myself

“What about girls?”

Oh.

“The Proverbs 31 woman’s work fits in with a mom’s responsibilities … not in a job that required her to be up close and personal with men. If you think about people you know that committed adultery and you ask yourself, ‘where did they meet?’ … It was in the workplace, a hotbed of immorality. So I want to train my daughters to be keepers at home and then be paid without violating their godly standards.”

Creating abstract barriers between daughters and paid labor is a needed step in supplementing the parenting and teaching dad won’t be doing, which is why they will need to maintain a good supply of them.

“Have a bunch of kids. That’s a great way to educate your kids … My kids practiced parenting growing up … It’s God’s plan for restoring a godly culture. Maybe that’ll work for America, but not if Christians don’t have children … Y’all hate abortion. Can’t prevent a human life from continuing; why can you prevent one from beginning?”

I had planned to introduce myself to Rick after the workshop, but the morning’s coffee changed my plans. After relieving myself on the three Zyns inside the urinal, I hurry back to find he has already left. I head to the vendor hall and see he has taken his spot at the Character Concepts booth.

Rick was delighted when I asked to interview him, even offering me a free year of his audiobook club. It was truly incredible to run into someone from HEAV and a former Little Buddy™ of Uncle Rick. Maybe it wasn’t so incredible, this was after all a testament to the promise of Homeschooling come full circle.

While Rick was honored by the request, he wasn’t sure he was the right man for the interview. “I have kind of been out of the movement for eight years.” But running into him was such a pleasant surprise, a conversation with someone from my own childhood would make my podcast that much more compelling. Rick was sold. “Let’s do it.” Rick said he would have time at 2:15 before his 3:30 workshop, the final event on the schedule.

“Does it feel good to be back?” I ask.

“Oh yes.” Rick closes his eyes and sighs with relief. “Wonderful.”

Turning Point USA

After lunch, I kill some time in the exhibit hall and strike up a 30-minute conversation with a woman manning the table for Turning Point USA. She tells me about running her chapter for her co-op, and the frustration of trying to get others to join, “None of this is political. You’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t do politics.’ We don’t do politics either!” I glance down, a bowl full of Jolly Ranchers next to “rip food dyes” buttons stares back at me. “It’s like a free club for kids. I’m not pushing anything that’s fascism or anything like that.” I pocket a few buttons as souvenirs.

A man comes up and joins our conversation, “You heard Heidi St John speak this morning?” The woman behind the Turning Point USA table gestures to a poster-board, “She’s coming to our young woman’s conference in July.”

“She was phenomenal” he lets us know. “And she challenged the men too, like, ‘Where the heck are you guys?’”

Turning Point woman agrees. She wants men to be like her friend Rich, who was arrested last year for blocking a transgender woman from using the public restroom off the Massachusetts Turnpike. “That’s a badge of honor. That’s what we need.” The man who joined us accepts the blame for the way things are right now. “My son, his freshman year first day, ‘What’s your preferred pronouns?’ My wife went to the school committee meeting … It was one against 16 committee members. So we’re homeschooling … but if we had been involved 10 years ago this wouldn’t be happening.”

Our conversation reached her complaints of HBCUs being given money while North Carolina hurricane victims were dying in the streets (or something), and I decide I have had my fill of Turning Point USA woman. Rick was nowhere to be found, so I wandered around the hall a little more.

HSLDA

“Do you know what HSLDA is?” Two women in their late 20s ask as I approach the booth.

“Former member” I tell them.

They ask if I have any kids. The convention nearing its end, my last Adderall a distant memory, I struggle to remember the aberration in the heartland of the real I’ve created this weekend. I regain my grip on things, responding with a very generous interpretation of “soon” and tell them I am visiting a friend from Virginia.

“Do you guys know if you’re going to homeschool under religious exemption? On the HSLDA website on the Virginia page… the religious exemption should be on there somewhere. From my understanding it’s pretty easy.”

“I think I saw there was something about the religious exemption earlier this year in the news?”

“There was. They were trying to get rid of it… It got squashed”

They let me know about this new organization, Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), that is advocating against Homeschool Freedom™. “So there are kids from our era of Homeschooling that said, ‘I had a bad experience. We need more regulation’ but it’s like the anecdotal experience versus what is actually happening across the board.”

“So they’re homeschoolers?” I ask.

“Correc- Well some of them are; not all of them. Some of them who weren’t homeschoolers, they find one homeschooler that had a bad experience that is then advocating for the organization. So a couple of them are homeschooled.”

I find it an interesting way to describe an organization founded by and virtually entirely run by homeschool alumni.

Before I leave, they tell me my podcast idea exploring what Homeschooling looks like from the perspective of its own graduates is a great idea. “That’s really needed… If you can take your perspective and then apply it to others who have the same experience, that’s really powerful.”

It is now past 2:45. Rick’s chair at the booth is still empty. I pick through some items on display nearby. I flip over The Sibling Challenge game, promising to help my kids love their siblings (with God’s help). The clock is about to hit 2:50 when I hear a voice call for me. “Hey, I’m back!” Thoughtfully, Rick had been looking for me. He seems excited. “Let’s go sit down.”

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Rick

Phase 1

“Do you mind if I record?” I sit down with my back to the rest of the room, isolating my microphone as much as possible from the chatter and hum of the venue. “Not at all,” Rick tells me. I hit record and introduce him to the microphone.

“Now Rick, your voice might sound really familiar to a few listeners. Why is that?”

“Well if they were ever kids, they may have listened to my recordings as I record audiobooks for kids as Uncle Rick”

My interviewing skills are more than rough, much farther from the Isaac Chotiner impression I was going for. But it works; a deficit in charm actually makes you fit in more here. I butter him up with questions I’ve seen him answer a few dozen times, and he answers them like he did a decade ago. He enters a comfortable rhythm, even boosting my own confidence.

After knocking down a few of the easy questions, I go for something a little out of his wheelhouse. I ask what he thinks about homeschooled kids who are now grown and speaking out against it.

“Ultimately it’s because God loves the family and Satan hates it and he’s using human instruments to attack it right now, but it’s grown anyway because it’s God’s movement … We got state education laws sensitized to Homeschoolers”

I go back to the well of soft questions, and give him an opportunity to crow about his time in leadership. I swing the pendulum back with my next question. When the scandal of Josh Duggar sexually assaulting his sisters became public in 2014, Rick had come to their defense, posting that “Abuse is the new racism.”

“I remember the 2013 [HEAV] conference, which was headlined by the Duggars. You were a board member at that time—did you have any strong thoughts about what the Duggars meant for homeschooling? And how does that intersect with the post-COVID homeschooling and the new kind of challenges from homeschool grads?”

“That’s a broad question.”

Yes it is, Rick!

“Start out with the Duggars. I don’t know the Duggars real well, but I’m acquainted with them. I’ve been in their home. I consider Jim Bob and his wife personal friends, although I seldom see them.”

Rick’s demeanor begins a slow evolution now. He begins to answer faster than he can think, calling people he says he doesn’t know very well his personal friends in the next breath.

“I think the enemy jumped on the failure of their oldest son and made as big a deal out of it as they could because they’re not a godly group by and large. And I think they’re always eager to attack anybody who’s anything like an icon in the Christian family movement. The Duggars are like I am. They’re sinners … I mean, they had a TV show and all that. So they were considered icons, representative of the Christian family movement, the homeschool movement. And the enemies of God jumped on their natural failures, which we all have, and made the biggest deal out of it they could.

I can’t really say I know a lot about what the response has been movement-wide. I know that people forget things awful fast. And since their television show went off the air several years ago, I think it would be interesting to find out that there’s an awful lot of people who’ve never heard of them. So I don’t think a lot of lasting damage was done.”

I wonder how much of his answers are only about the Duggars. A decade ago, HSLDA quietly pushed Rick off. But this weekend he gets to share the top bill with one of their board members, Heidi St. John. People really do forget things awful fast.

“And I pray for them. I think they did a lot of good. It’s a shame that their oldest son had the issues that he did. But how many families have raised 18 good kids who have never gone overboard and done terrible things? So I’m not saying…”

He trails off, looking into the distance. “I’m not…” Rick is now overcome with slight unnatural movements, his face exhibiting seizure-like symptoms, and I begin to wonder if I’m about to call an ambulance. I don’t interrupt.

“I’m not qualified to judge other people … I’m not surprised that when a failure appeared in their family that the media jumped on it. Because by and large, the secular media is an instrument of the devil. And ultimately, it’s a spiritual battle.”

His answer finally concludes. The Duggar parents along with every single member of their community covered up their son’s crimes for over a decade, enabling him to continue harming others. Rick doesn’t just seem unaware of this, he appears unable to comprehend it.

Phase 2

The questions seemed to have drained the life from Rick. He looks defeated, any excitement from earlier has now evaporated. I begin my next phase and ask short and direct questions from here on out, curious when Rick will realize the nature of the interview.

“How long did you serve on the board?”

“14 years.”

“When did you leave?”

“2016.”

“Did you leave for any reason?”

We sit in silence for eleven seconds. His facial contortions accelerate.

“I don’t think I want to comment on that.”

“That’s when you stopped going to conventions?”

“Huh?”

“That’s when you stopped going to conventions?”

“No, I went to the convention a year or two after that. I spoke a year or two after that.”

“But then you stopped?”

“I’ve been since then. I couldn’t tell you how many times.”

“So what made you go on a break?”

Another moment of silence.

“Well, usually when I went, it’s because I was asked to speak. And I didn’t get asked to speak every year. I did attend a time or two when I wasn’t asked to speak, but not every year.

“But you stopped getting invites?”

“Huh?”

“But you stopped getting invites?”

“I haven’t been invited the last few years.”

“Is there any reason?”

“You’d have to ask them, whoever’s in charge of the convention.”

Silence.

“No other reason?”

“Ask them, brother.
…
Now are you going to tell me why you’re really doing this interview?”

The jig is up. I don’t answer. “Did anything happen in Virginia around 2016 and 2017?”

“A lot of things happened in Virginia.
…What did you say your last name was?”

A woman taps Rick on the shoulder as she walks past, “Just letting you know, you have 15 minutes till your last session,” Rick lifts his arm and pulls back the suit cuff covering his watch, “Oh, you’re right! Well, this has been very interesting.”

We started too late. Fuck. I don’t have time for the flow chart on my legal pad. Unsure what to do, I decide to just dig in and continue with the same tactic, a mistake I will later regret. “No reason?”

“You with Homeschoolers Anonymous?”

“I’m homeschooled.” Jesus. That blog shut down six years ago. “Why did you leave in 2016?”

“This is really interesting. Why do you think I left in 2016?”

I glance down at my flow chart and check the node reading “HE needs to say why he left.” For some reason I felt this was important enough to draw only one exit branch. Rick then makes an observation I had been wondering myself.

“This is interesting. As far as I know this is the first time this has happened.”

“Me too.”

Rick is smart enough to recognize the expiring time on the game clock gives him an opening to regain control of the interview. Now at ease, he takes advantage and attempts to start asking me questions.

“Are you a Christian?”

Chotiner would never allow himself to be put in this position. Disgusted with myself, I opt for the same brick wall defense Rick is using, “I’m homeschooled.”

“Ahhh.” My answer has given Rick some sort of clarity. Going off his previous answers, I have an idea what he thinks this means. “So who are you with?”

“Did anything happen in 2016?”

“Who are you with?”

“I’m with myself.”

“No, you’re not.”

We have reached an impasse. He asks for my last name, which I decline to offer. He again insists I am with Homeschoolers Anonymous, the blog that he tried to sue in 2017. Vendors are beginning to break their booths down. Rick readies to leave for his last workshop and lets me know he is ready to wrap this up.

“Well, God bless you. That’s all I can say.”

I squeeze everything I can out of our last few seconds. “What happened in 2016? Why did you stop getting invites? Did HEAV ask you to step down or did you do it on your own?”

“You know what I wonder? I wonder if I’m going to end up finding out why you’re asking all this … I better go. God bless you.” Rick sticks his hand in my direction for a handshake, “No hard feelings.”

I’m indifferent on handshakes, but not with this one. “I’m okay” I tell him.

The weekend had been spent warning attendees of an impending battle with evil, literal warfare over which the very soul of our nation and children weighed in the balance, and Rick, determined I was on the opposing side of this battle, offered to shake my hand.

It was time for me to go. I left my card on his table as he whispered some instructions to the pre-teen girls tasked to sell his books and audiobook memberships. On my way out I leave another card on the HSLDA table and ask if they could tell Jim I’ve been trying to get in touch with him.

“Jim Mason? The President?”

I was ready to get the fuck out of here and hopped in the Jeep Compass rental. But after exiting onto the highway, I had a second thought and turned around. The convention wasn’t over yet. I popped into Rick’s final workshop to grab my last shot of the convention. I’ll arrive at the airport with plenty of time to catch my flight home.

“You don’t have any time. You should have gotten here sooner.” The TSA agent is bemused as to why anyone without an ID would show up this late to their flight. I’m shuffled between a battery of TSA stations, where they tell me I’m going to miss my flight. I purchase a new ticket, the price of my trip now doubled. Amidst an ongoing series of phone calls and discussions between TSA agents, a video of Kristi Noem reminding me to have a Real ID loops on the TV screens above. Finally a decision is made, “Just run his bags through the extra screening.” I arrive at my gate eight minutes later, passing the closed jet bridge to my original flight.

From Fringe, To Movement, To Enduring Institution

I was, if it wasn’t obvious, not prepared for this trip. It was a side branch to a side branch of my original plans. When I learned of Rick’s attendance, I quickly made the decision to travel. Assumptions I held prior did not return from my trip fully intact—the most heartbreaking revelation being that I’m no Chotiner (and that I maybe shouldn’t pretend to be). More though, I at first found the convention quaint, like the Homeschool movement from the past. While other larger conventions put on a (deeply shallow) show of welcoming homeschoolers outside the movement, there was no pretense here. Upon reflection, I do not view this event solely as signs of schisms or even a movement in stagnation, but as a view into the geological timescale of that movement, of the fertile soil being cultivated for an institution to form. An institution distinct from the soil it grows from, cultivated and groomed by its constant gardeners found in MASSHopes and HEAVs across the nation, by its Rick Boyers—and those who cover for them.

But an institution that is willfully blind to the harm it unleashes on its own product is blind to the tension it will one day face from that product. Rick was unable to believe I was not with an inactive blog from a decade ago for the same reason the HSLDA booth was unaware CRHE is entirely under the direction of homeschool alumni. An institution that exists to avoid confrontation with reality and replace it with its own will by necessity be unable to confront the reality of its own product. It will manufacture bolder realities to keep the tension at bay and wield increasing power at the same time it works to be seen as ethereal and the work of individual actors. The institutional machinery operating in our backyards—its homeschool days and Capitol visits and conventions—free from knowing the reality of its own product, for now.

As I asked Rick increasingly probing questions, the comfort drained from his appearance, his jaw swung wildly, his pauses between thoughts grew longer. On display was his mind grappling with the confrontation with himself he avoids every waking moment. He was betrayed by his belief that the holy ground where he stood belonged to him. That the institution built with his own hands would offer him refuge from the terror of reality it was created to replace. But before our conversation’s end, Rick did find refuge, and I had allowed it. I let the interview conclude without acknowledging the harm he had committed. The tension left unearthed and continuing to rot; he found a way out. As the charade of the interview collapsed, Rick no longer had to grapple with his own conscience. He could escape accountability by inventing a Devil. Where across from him sat the work of his own product, he replaced it with Satan, and offered to shake his hand.∎

Heidi St. John Diagnosed with Tumor

• HSLDA board member and Homeschool evangelist, Heidi St. John, announced on her podcast last week that in February doctors found multiple precancerous tumors in her colon.

• St. John ran for congress in 2022 Republican primary for Washington’s 3rd district; she placed third in a lean-R district due to voters finding her absolutely insane.

• St. John has stated she will be taking a hiatus from advocacy in the coming weeks as she begins intensive treatment.

• The diagnosis is uncannily fitting, as Heidi’s effect on the world can also be described as a tumor in the ass.

Michael Farris Testifies to Trump Anti-Christian Bias Task Force

• HSLDA co-founder and current board member, Michael Farris, testified to the near entirety of Trump’s cabinet on April 22.

• The Task Force, headed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, is part of the Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias Executive Order initiated on February 6 earlier this year.

• Farris’ involvement was to provide testimony to the IRS “discriminatory” investigation into his pastor at NOVA mega church Cornerstone Chapel, Gary Hamrick, for violations of the Johnson Amendment.

Illinois Homeschool Act Stalls

• While there are still five weeks in Illinois General Assembly session, Terra Costa Howard’s HB 2827 momentum seems to have reached a plateau. With little comment from ICHE and HSLDA, it’s future is uncertain.

• In a very out of character move, ICHE and HSLDA issued a statement during Holy Week recess to not contact their representatives.

• Finally up is Ayla’s testimony to the Illinois House Education Committee. An important reminder what Homeschooling’s institutions hope to keep hidden by killing this bill.

Everything Else

Mahmoud v. Taylor

• Last week The Supreme Court heard Mahmoud v. Taylor—ostensibly a case on what content in public schools can be opted-out from, yet in reality is a vessel to exclude LGBTQ and others from public life.

• The Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) filed an amicus brief in support of the School District.

• I attempted to attend the oral argument, but was 26th in a line that ended up admitting 25 people. Live thread of the day’s events is here.

• The case is in part a do-over of Mozert v. Hawkins County, a case from 40 years ago where Michael Farris represented the plaintiff attempted to remove secular humanism from the classroom. The saga is chronicled in Stephen Bates’ book Battleground.

Connecticut Homeschool Prisoner

• In February, an emaciated man was pulled from a house fire in Connecticut. The man was later found to be a child who had been removed from public school and subsequently disappeared through homeschooling over 20 years ago. The fire was set by himself as a means to finally escape.

• On April 16, he released his first statement since the fire, “Please call me S. This is not the name given to me by my parents when I was born. I am choosing a new name for myself, and I will use that name as I reclaim control over my life and my future.”

Day of the Homeschooled Child

• CRHE will be hosting a livestream as part of Day of the Homeschooled Child on Wednesday April 30th at 2PM EST

Illinois HB 2827 Homeschooling Act

• Lombard Police are investigating death threats toward Terra Costa Howard, the Illinois House Rep who introduced the bill.

• The right-wing media ecosystem has been pushing against this bill. The bill has been attacked by Fox News, Newsmax, National Review, and an increasing collection of reactionary influencers.

• I did some digging on the witness slips and it turns out over 20% of the opponent's witnesses are duplicates. One opponent submitted themselves 70 times.

• The Illinois General Assembly is set to begin again after a two-week recess, which means we will see more Will Estrada and his 26x28 slacks starting today at 12 CT.

• Three notes have been attached to the bill in an attempt to obstruct its progress. Notes are required to receive a response from the sponsoring representatives to continue, and depending on the response, the bill can be amended and set back to its starting point.

• Two of the notes have received answers, one of which addressed the concern of additional costs the bill would have on the State Board of Education. The answer was an eye-popping $1,600.

• If you live in Illinois, call, email, and visit your rep.

• "Didn't you say you are cutting the hearing from March to a condensed version?" Look, I'm working on it! In the meantime, I have begun collecting legislative hearings on homeschool bills on YouTube. You should absolutely listen to Ayla's testimony while I work on getting the cut finalized.

Other Homeschool Legislation

• Georgia: SB 63

  • Passed both chamber without any dissenting votes.

  • This one is fine. It allows the SAT and other tests administered by the public school system to be available to homeschooled children.

• Montana: HB 778

  • Passed the House unanimously.

  • I'm not familiar enough with the bill, but it is one that the HSLDA supports. It separates non-public and homeschooling students into distinct categories, as the state currently does not distinguish between the two. HSLDA attorney Kevin Boden has been the lead in this one.

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Nick Freitas Retiring

Nick Freitas announced he will not run for reelection for Virginia's House District 62, tombstoning a ten year career without any introduced legislation signed into law. The Culpeper delegate is exceptionally vocal about "government schools" and urges parents to "take your kids out of government run schools." Notably, he has served on the Virginia House Education Committee since 2023.

Freitas has not announced what his next moves are, but his podcast, Twitter, and YouTube channel have gained a substantial following since launching in the early stages of the COVID pandemic. Initial speculation has been that he is eyeing higher office once again (he has lost two attempts prior), but my intuition says he is planning to accelerate his media brand. Notably, he hit the homeschool convention circuit for the first time this March.

Those interested in Culpeper politics can follow Culpeper County Democrats on BlueSky.

Here's a CSV of 2500 Homeschool Groups

A few weeks ago, the HSLDA launched a web app to search through roughly 2500 local homeschool groups. Completely unrelated— I have made available a list of 2500 homeschool groups to use as you wish. Make a Power BI dashboard or something… Hey, maybe we'll publish it if we think it's neat.

My true talent lies in data, not writing. Over the coming months, I will be publishing similar data for interested researchers. They will be housed in the FileCabinet tab in the future.

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Everything Else

• Wisconsin Supreme Court

  • Susan Crawford won a seat on the Supreme Court of Wisconsin over her Elon Musk-backed conservative opponent. The HSLDA was particularly motivated against Crawford due to her husband, Shawn Peters co-authoring a 2019 book critical of homeschooling, Homeschooling: The History and Philosophy of a Controversial Practice.

• SB 1031

  • HEAV doesn't give a source, but the organization sent out a notification last week that Senator Pekarsky intends to reintroduce another homeschool bill in the next session —which could feature a more favorable government makeup. The Virginia bill to remove the religious exemption of children from education was thoroughly beaten down after missteps in the Senate education committee. You can read about the bill from our story earlier this year.

• Instagram

  • We are on Instagram! Follow it! Will be standing it up in the coming weeks.

• InfoWars

  • If you missed it, we also published the HSLDA's forgotten appearances on Alex Jones' infamous radio show, InfoWars. You can watch the video here, as well as download the audio and transcript.

Throughout the 2000s, the Home School Legal Defense Association made multiple guest appearances on Alex Jones’ notorious radio show, InfoWars. That radio show and all of its assets are currently in the process of being sold off and auctioned to pay damages awarded to the parents of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. Jones and InfoWars manufactured and promoted conspiracies about the murdered children for years, resulting in harassment campaigns against the parents of those murdered.

The InfoWars guest list of over two decades includes some of the worst humanity has to offer. Beyond guests that lied about Sandy Hook parents, the show has hosted everything from health guru scam artists, to white supremacists, holocaust deniers, and groyper Nazis. Today, HSLDA can officially be added to that list, moving them out of hiding and placing them in their rightful place in the public record.

Alex Jones has been telling listeners to homeschool their children since the show’s inception in the late 1990s, often describing schools with a now common sentiment of “indoctrination factories” where children are asked to spy on their parents. Jones’ hot-tempered conspiratorial rants about Child Protective Services and “government training facilities” made him an influential mouthpiece in the Homeschooling movement. Jones often recommended callers and listeners to become members of the HSLDA in addition to taking their kids out of schools.

I reached out multiple times to the HSLDA for comment. Over email, I contacted both their designated media inquiries inbox as well as president of the organization Jim Mason, as he represented the HSLDA as a guest in 2007. I also stopped by their booth at the South Carolina Great Homeschool Convention and asked to have my information passed along. Finally, I reached out to Michael Farris, former president and founder. The only response was from Farris, who said he “has no knowledge” of HSLDA’s relationship with InfoWars.

What are the Details?

• There are four available episodes where the HSLDA is a featured guest.

• HSLDA features across a five year period from 2002 to 2007.

• Jim Mason, Senior Legal Counsel for HSLDA at the time, features on the last known appearance in 2007.

• Chris Klicka is the most regular representative, featuring on three of the four known episodes from 2002 to 2003.

• Klicka was Senior Counsel for HSLDA in that time period, and passed away in 2009.

• There is at least one additional appearance, if not more. Jones references a previous guest appearance in the first 2002 episode.

What’s in the Episodes?

Well, it’s Alex Jones. Chris Klicka, one of HSLDA’s most insane attorneys, gets along with Jones swimmingly. They have a natural chemistry and don’t find much to disagree over. The two talk about Child Protective Services stealing children to give to the homosexuals, and at one point Klicka gives a personal anecdote about trying to cast a demon out of a social worker. That the two find common ground on the regular demonization of CPS is fitting, considering both have a record of defending child abusers.

Around the same time of the last episode appearance, Jones had a follower of child predator Bill Gothard on his show. Jones told the guest his kids were being taken by the state “because you homeschool,” and “children [are] being kidnapped by CPS for rape rooms.” The guest was arrested for stalking his kids two years later. This happened concurrently as the HSLDA was representing a couple who pulled their mentally challenged son out of public school. Those parents would later lock that disabled child in a cage with his own feces.

Current HSLDA president Jim Mason, one of HSLDA’s most sane attorneys, seems uncomfortable by Jones’ antics and flair (lying). Mason’s October 2007 appearance is possibly the last, as the organization starts to pivot to having a less (publicly) radical message around this time.

We have collected the episodes, edited for commercial breaks, and placed them in one collection available on YouTube here*. An audio file of all episodes and a PDF file containing the transcription can be downloaded at the bottom of the page.

*Well I saw that coming. YouTube (rightfully) has a low tolerance for Alex Jones content. I have uploaded them here directly—for however long that lasts.

Hslda Infowars Compilation Transcription

208KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Thank you to Erlend at fight.fudgie.org and his library of Alex Jones material for making these discoveries possible.

Intro to Autopsy

On January 20th, 2025, the Virginia Senate Education subcommittee held a hearing for a bill to end the religious exemption from education. Virginians who had been homeschooled in the commonwealth gave testimony to the abuse and neglect the religious exemption allowed to be done to them. Ten days later the bill was dead.

Most bills have short lives, never crossing the chamber’s threshold for a vote. Most bills, however, don’t get the treatment that homeschool bills receive. Like nearly every other form of homeschool legislation that has come before state lawmakers, the response from the Homeschool Lobby to Senate Bill 1031’s arrival was met with immediate opposition. The Senate hearings were packed. Overflow rooms had to be opened. The opposition’s chosen color of red spilled over the grounds for ten days. Other lobbies representing much larger groups and communities floated through the Capitol, but considering the Homeschool Lobby’s unique niche, its presence was an impressive show of force. They made their presence known to every senator and representative who would have a say in this bill. By the time the bill died, tens of thousands of emails, calls, and personal visits had been placed to the Capitol.

To the outside world, the bill was uninteresting, if only for the no-brainer of how easy of a vote this should be. Currently, the commonwealth allows homeschooling under two different conditions. The short version of the first is that you file annually with the school district you reside in, and you show proof of educational progress. Just over 60,000 children are homeschooled this way in Virginia today. But the commonwealth maintains a second classification of homeschooling. About 6,000 additional children are filed under the alternative statute of religious exemption. The long version of the second is when your child turns about five, you tell the school district you are exempt. That’s it. Is that child receiving an education? Maybe. It is even likely the plurality of homeschooled children under the religious exemption are receiving some form of education. Though how adequate —if it all— is completely unmeasurable. That one-and-only notice is the last time a child will have the opportunity for the state to advocate on their behalf. Virginia has operated in this fashion since 1984, and with the Homeschool Lobby’s successful efforts, it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

To the Homeschool Movement, there is no alteration to homeschool laws they will accept —unless that change is to remove the statutes altogether. Anywhere across the country a homeschool bill is introduced, the engines of its institutions begin to fire, and a machine is set into motion to make their voice inescapable. The blueprint that has led them to victory for nearly four decades delivered again in 2025 Virginia. The movement’s institutions sent their government affairs team down to the legislature, allied and sympathetic media spread word across the commonwealth, and its affiliated and unaffiliated members on the grassroots front mobilized to overwhelm the committee rooms. It was a run-the damn-ball offense they’ve never deviated from and have never needed to. 1031 died in committee, its body transmogrifying under the pressure as it grew closer to its inevitable death. But within a familiar victory was something unfamiliar. Unaccounted for in the playbook’s gameplan was an obstacle emerging on the horizon. That obstacle was too undeveloped to stop them here, but the Homeschool Movement saw the shifting landscape ahead of them, and then looked away.

10 Days Till Death

Prologue

The original purpose of the religious exemption was to accommodate the Amish and Mennonite communities in the western reaches of the state. In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled against compulsory attendance in Wisconsin v. Yoder, and Virginia formally codified the exemption a few years later. But as states began to adjust their compulsory attendance laws for the new phenomenon of homeschooling in the early 1980s, Virginia was the only state to roll the religious exemption into their newly created homeschooling statute. It was less than an organic decision from legislators; a newly formed lobbying group in Loudoun County found the prospect useful in expanding its influence and political project within the commonwealth. In under a decade, it would become the leading organization to represent the Homeschool Movement at a national level.

As rare as homeschooling was in 1980s Virginia, filing under the religious exemption clause was even rarer. Attempts outside the Amish community sparked legal battles and news headlines. But by the 1990s, the Loudoun County-based Home School Legal Defense Association’s (HSLDA) pressure campaigns succeeded in making it a rubber-stamp approval. Ever since, any school district that doesn’t immediately approve either form of homeschool filing can be sure they will hear from the HSLDA the next day.

Attempts to amend Virginia's religious exemption have been made before. It was a 1993 request from the commonwealth’s superintendent to modify the religious exemption where the HSLDA first established the playbook. The bill never made it into writing. A few hundred calls from Homeschoolers and the Governor promised a veto of any homeschool legislation; an easy political favor for his running mate. A 2014 proposal for a work-study researching the effects of religious exemption was stomped in subcommittee the same way, receiving just one vote — from the bill’s author.

With the proliferation and current ease of attainment of religious exemptions, it’s not hard to see how little protection children have from being withheld from an education—and the increasing number of children that are left vulnerable to neglect because of it. 1031’s changes consisted of strike-throughs without any changes to the act of homeschooling. Homeschooled children would be placed under a singular category, and those homeschooled through religious exemption would be guaranteed the same proof of progress that every other homeschooled child is entitled to. Even with the requirements changing for less than 10% of homeschool children —and the fundamental practice remaining unchanged for the majority who are indeed providing an education for their children— the reaction from Homeschool’s institutions was to regard the bill as a threat to their entire existence and way of life.

The Subcommittee | Monday, January 20th

1031’s first public appearance was scheduled for January 16th, 2025. The HSLDA and the Home Educators Association of Virginia (HEAV) had been alerting their members since the bill first appeared on the commonwealth’s website. The alerts told its followers to wear red to show opposition to the bill. Homeschoolers’ reactions contained signs of worry, but they also contained feelings of excitement. Some said they would travel from hours away to attend. Others were going to use this moment as their curriculum’s civics course, but those civics lessons would have to wait till after the weekend. The Capitol of the commonwealth would lose running water 36 hours before the session was set to begin. The legislative schedule was thrown into disarray, and agendas were shuffled to deal with the chaos. The hearing would be moved to noon on Monday the 20th, the day the new presidential administration was to take office. Homeschoolers found silver linings in the delay. One parent who had shown up anyway on Thursday told me he thought it was a good thing; it gave them time to organize even more opposition. The subcommittee was two hours behind schedule, and the crowd grew as different groups formed hallway-blocking clusters to discuss their respective bills.

The Virginia Senate’s Education Subcommittee had an overstuffed docket. Senate Room C opened its doors just after 2:00, and the crowds from the hallway flooded in. A room next door was opened to watch the subcommittee via live-stream. Throughout the afternoon, different groups cycled in and out to oppose and support different bills that passed and failed. It took several hours, but 1031 finally heard its name called just before 5 PM. Senator VanValkenburg, chair of the subcommittee, let out a seemingly knowing sigh as he called the bill forward. Senator Pekarsky, the bill’s author and one of the subcommittee’s five members, introduced her bill to the room. She relayed what led her to write the bill came from both her personal experience homeschooling one of her children, and from conversations with homeschooled children asking for change. The room (for now) gave their comments only in whispers. The woman behind me told her seatmate she would not allow her children to be condemned to a public school. The field of red inside Senate Room C was now so total you’d be forgiven for not knowing anyone present supported the bill.

Enclaved by the sea of red, around a dozen formerly homeschooled children sat together. They were there to give testimony to the neglect and abuse the commonwealth permits through the religious exemption. When the floor was opened for comment, the supporters of the bill spoke first. A student from UVA law described both the abuse the commonwealth permitted to be done to her and the lasting effects from its abdication of duty. Some spoke to not being taught anything for months, others for years. Eve Ettinger testified both as a representative for the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) and to the firsthand experience of being homeschooled under religious exemption. CRHE, the only organization composed of homeschool alumni, has been working with legislators on bills to protect homeschooled children, including 1031. All who testified in person and in writing felt the impact of being religiously exempted differently. Some even expressed a fondness for their homeschool experience and were homeschooling their own children, but supported the bill nonetheless. Through each narrative, the same unifying thread wove their experiences together. But that spool had some thread remaining.

VanValkenburg then turned comment over to the opposition. The testimonies of homeschooled children were moving, and at times uncomfortable and painful to hear. But when their testimony was over, the room seemed to have forgotten anyone else was even there. Opposition came to the stand and listed their concerns. Their complaints boiled down to the requirements being an undue burden (submitting a proof of progress once a year), objections to the infringement on religious liberty (though never quite explained how), public schools’ low test scores (the 50th percentile, a real brain teaser), and the Virginia Department of Education saying they would rather not deal with the paperwork (those bureaucrats). It was altogether uncompelling. For anyone with memory long enough to remember the testimony shared a few minutes ago, the opposition’s comments sounded extremely hollow and tone deaf. In contrast to the physical and tangible conditions homeschooled children testified to, the complaints and concerns came off as vague, unfocused, and generally uncaring about the environment of neglect the state enables.

Before the bill escaped the subcommittee on a 3-2 party line vote —Republican senators absent and voting by proxy— the crowd made sure the legislators knew they were far from happy. VanValkenburg addressed the room a half-dozen times to maintain decorum. Capitol Police at one point warned they would remove spectators if their outbursts continued. It had little effect, seemingly arousing the group even more each time they were warned. Exercising an apparent religious exemption from Senate standards, they were allowed to remain in the room. The irony of the scene on display, mirroring a parent repeatedly warning their toddler to behave, was lost on them.

Despite the opposition in the subcommittee, the bill had made it further than any that had come before. But this was its peak, and any hope that this bill would end differently than its predecessors was quickly put to rest.

Capitol Day | Tuesday, January 21st

The next day, Tuesday the 21st, HEAV had their Homeschool Day at the Capitol. Many state Homeschool organizations host these events, touring the grounds of their respective state’s capitol and maintaining a visible presence even when no relevant bills are on the horizon. This Capitol Day, however, the Homeschool Lobby had the good fortune of having a close ally in office within the Governor’s mansion once again returning favors for its allies. Governor Youngkin took a video with the field trip from HEAV, unbothered by the lack of decorum his castmates displayed toward his government the day before. The explicit promise of a veto wasn’t given, but which side he came down on was not a question. A one-seat Democrat majority in each legislative chamber meant getting the governor’s signature left no room for error.

The First Full Committee | Thursday, January 23rd

1031 was supposed to come to the full committee on Thursday the 23rd, but at the committee, VanValkenburg stated he wanted more time to come up with a substitute the Homeschoolers could agree with. Whether these statements were only posturing or a true belief in the ability to bring the Homeschool Lobby to the table, the next version of the bill would have to thread a tight political needle. Possibly aware it wouldn’t be heard that day, the crowd from the subcommittee was nowhere to be found. Pekarsky made a motion to pass the bill by for the day, and it was voted unanimously to be moved to the coming Tuesday. Its death warrant would be signed over the weekend.

The afternoon of the 23rd, a new version of the bill would go public. A new scope of all homeschool children in the Commonwealth with a complete reworking of the proof of progress clause and no input from CRHE. The new substitute somehow addressed the other areas in the homeschool statute in deep need of a 40-year update, but was so convoluted and bureaucratic in its implementation that it would be a hindrance to the very issues it was written to fix. Pekarsky released a statement disavowing the newest version, stating it was a draft substitute made without her knowledge and reflecting only the input of another committee member. It’s an extremely unusual move for a senator’s bill to be substituted without their approval, much less without their knowledge. Whether uploaded by mistake or intentionally, with the subcommittee seating only four other members, the options as to who uploaded it aren’t plentiful.

The Weekend | Friday, January 24th - Monday, January 27th

Tangible changes to the law aside, the draft bill also demonstrated a thorough lack of understanding of the playbook being used against 1031. Though the draft was only up for a few hours, the damage it unleashed was instantaneous and unable to be put back in the box. The Homeschool Lobby went into overdrive. HEAV’s Director of Government Affairs, Callie Chaplow, went on a Facebook live-stream to update the page’s followers. 1031 had been a bait and switch all along. Chaplow used Martin Niemöller’s First They Came poem as an analogy for what was happening to Homeschoolers (skipping the parts of the poem naming Communists, Socialists, Unions, and Jews; she instead opted to dive straight into the “then they came for me” finale). She explained that this is why all homeschooling bills must be defended against, regardless of the bill’s stated intentions. When Pekarsky’s statement was posted, over a thousand comments came in across social media platforms to let her know they had seen through her from the beginning. More calls and emails flooded the other senators on the committee. Governor Youngkin now explicitly promised a veto. On another livestream, Lt. Governor Winsome Sears joined Chaplow and made a promise to Homeschoolers. You will have control.

The Funeral | Tuesday, January 28th - Thursday, January 30th

When the bill came to the full committee on Tuesday the 28th, it remained a shell of its former self. Everything from before was gone; all language from the original bill and the draft bill absent. In its place was a work-study that would put out some report in a couple of years. Better than nothing, but also nothing the HSLDA and HEAV couldn’t obstruct enough to render it impotent. While the last committee’s attendance only included two representatives from HEAV, the room today swelled again with red. If any homeschool alumni came in support this time, I didn’t see them. Once again behind schedule, the committee was to hear only bills dealing with the budget. An exception was made for 1031; the crowd’s presence was a demand for their ritual tradition to be completed. Their reputation preceding them, the committee chair reminded the crowd to behave, though they still let out a good few hollers. Pekarsky made an impassioned plea to her colleagues to pass the work-study. Four of the Republicans on the committee voiced they would be voting “no.” A 9-6 party line vote recommended 1031 to Finance, not so much killing it, but kicking it back down the ladder it was unlikely to climb again. On Thursday the 30th, the Finance Committee voted 2-13 to pass the bill by, giving it a quiet death without an audience.

Epilogue

It’s not hard to see how this blitzkrieg on legislatures scares off any parties from even considering homeschool legislation. Sure, having massive in-person support when bills are introduced in committee is helpful for any legislation (and a 3x bonus by bringing supporters who don’t have a say in the matter doesn’t hurt either). But bills don’t succeed or fail just by having more bodies in the room, and their playbook does not guarantee success on all fronts. While the movement effectively shuts down bills that would cede dominion of homeschooling outside the institution’s control, the same brazenness that makes their playbook so effective in defeating regulatory bills undermines their petitions to increase their special privileges. To date, that brazenness was maybe their biggest weakness, but those institutions increasingly feel a new threat encroaching on their territory.

The Homeschool mob was delighted to attend the Senate sessions for this bill; the assailing of lawmakers is a tradition they happily uphold whenever the chance arises. When Pekarsky eventually disabled commenting on her profiles, Homeschoolers demanded she turn it back on so they could continue their ritual. During the entire affair, however, they were noticeably less excited to share the public square that was once entirely their exclusive domain. 1031 showed fear of losing that monopoly and for the future where they stand opposite the movement’s own children.

But 1031 reveals something else beyond just a strategic weakness. Pekarsky repeatedly emphasized acknowledging abuse is not an implication of homeschoolers as abusers. And she’s right; the physical abuse shared in testimony is not something anyone in attendance opposing the bill likely takes part in. But in every testimony shared were the threads that created the abuse: the agency stripped from them, an isolation that left them ignorant and vulnerable, and the suffocation of being denied your own voice. As homeschooled children spoke and wrote of the abuse that was done to them as children, Homeschool’s institutions arrived to continue the same robbery, isolation, and suffocation every homeschooled child shared.

Not to diminish her story… but getting into UVA law school, that tells me there may be more to her story than her disenchantment and bad experiences with home education… These people are standing up and saying they didn’t get an education, but they sound like very well-educated people.

-Scott Woodruff to Callie Chaplow on January 31st

Outro to Autopsy

A recurring trope from Homeschoolers has been that they just want to be left alone. That the state attempting to meddle in their affairs is tyrannical overreach. This had limited purchase in the past, but it felt even more out of place here. For decades, Virginia has been ambivalent about fulfilling its duty to protect the rights of homeschooled kids. It was the Virginia Department of Education that stood alongside the Homeschool Lobby in the subcommittee. But 1031 was brought forward by homeschooled children. Supporting the bill were letters and public comments by homeschoolers. An alumni group of homeschooled children was the force behind the bill. The harm that previously attempted homeschool bills had aimed to stop was no longer theoretical as in the past; it was in the room. But despite being in the room as testimony was shared, the opposition continued to repeat arguments that did not acknowledge the words being spoken to them. At the full committee meeting on Thursday the 28th, Pekarsky refused to allow the misdirection to go unchecked.

In the bill’s last visible moments before being put to rest in Finance, Pekarsky was understandably exasperated. After she presented the dialed-back and non-binding work study, the opposition’s response didn’t change. No matter the version of the bill, whether a complete overhaul to the statutes, ending exemption from education, or a non-binding work-study, the arguments against it remained fixed. They seemed to be stuck in a loop. Why did opponents keep bringing up public schools’ test scores if they would never send their kids to a public school regardless? If homeschooling’s failures did not invalidate homeschooling’s successes, why were its successes continuously presented to invalidate its failures?

Pekarsky may have hoped homeschooled students were not being ignored, but within minutes, the Republican committee members did just that. Senator Head didn’t think it was something we needed to do; kids in our public schools couldn’t read, after all. Senator Craig would also be a no; all of her grandchildren were homeschooled and flourishing, one even through religious exemption. Senator Durant’s vote would be a no. “We have challenges in all settings, including the public setting... I will not be able to support this.” Left unacknowledged was that homeschooled students themselves were petitioning the committee to address one of the educational settings they are tasked with overseeing.

In fact, ignoring and discounting homeschooled students’ words seemed to be the only thing happening during the bill’s ten-day existence. HEAV president Anne Miller has said homeschooled students speaking out is due to this generation of kids just “wanting to have their own story.” The HSLDA’s Scott Woodruff said the poor education homeschooled students testified to was “alleged.” While Pekarsky was unambiguous with what was happening during this entire affair, left unsaid was the why.

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The current narrative given publicly by the HSLDA and its satellites is that dissatisfaction in homeschooling is a rarity. Its unreprepsentative nature is why CRHE must “find” homeschooled children to testify. On its surface, this reads as true; CRHE advertises to gather testimony and sends out alerts for upcoming legislation (just as the HSLDA does, for that matter). That optimistic perspective perhaps isn’t quite reflective of the reality, and that reality becomes harder to suppress as each year their products reclaim their voice.

Alternatively, one can view the Homeschool institution in its earliest form as making a wager. To purchase unlimited free rein and zero oversight, they mortgaged their dissent. They temporarily released themselves of responsibility for the abuse and neglect it unleashed and instead opted to pay the penalty at a future date. The bet was that their biggest resistance would be left uneducated to do anything about it, and the aggrieved parties too scattered and isolated to organize before the institution became permanent. Publicly, they are more confident than ever in their bet. But privately, their self-assurance is less convincing.

In presentations only shown in private calls and behind closed doors, the HSLDA gives instructions on how to combat the voice of homeschooled children. Callie Chaplow wouldn’t even use the name of CRHE until the 1031 affair was over. Webpages are saved as PDFs and emailed from state group to state group to withhold traffic from CRHE’s site. The institution isn’t just vulnerable to internal dissent; the institution cannot coexist with the product it creates. Its goal and continued existence depend on convincing parents to “get their children out of public school,” and the sale of that product is dependent on hiding the defects it creates.

They see our products every day… The people who are in the best position to actually evaluate homeschool graduates don’t come out to support these bad bills because they’re happy with the product.

-Scott Woodruff to Will Estrada on February 4th, 2015

The fear is not misplaced, and the potential they see in this new landscape is a threat they never planned for. But CRHE is no longer the only threat. The price for its last decade of success against CRHE will be homeschooled children uninterested in meeting the Homeschool Lobby at the table. When you attempt to convince investors that your critics do not exist, those critics are no longer obligated to engage in civil discourse or entertain your arguments as honest debate. How can the ritual of swarming legislators continue when between them and their next target are homeschooled children—not present to give testimony, but to demand answers as to why they are being hidden? At a critical mass, the luxury to continuously violate decorum standards enjoyed by Movement Homeschoolers in subcommittee ceases to remain their exclusive domain.

The confrontation they fear is not limited to legislative chambers, it threatens all of the movement’s organs. Homeschool conferences were never designed to function with angry former homeschooled students outside. A half dozen homeschooled children protesting outside a Homeschool convention has the potential to damage its institutions far more than a six-part Washington Post series ever could. As the new presidential administration guts our public education system and strips it for parts, a machine is lying in wait to be given control of an institution it lost on May 17, 1954. The biggest threat to its legitimacy is barely in its infancy; its only defense is to convince the threat that it doesn’t exist.∎

“For too long the relativist viewpoint has made history seem meaningless. Now there is a definite choice … The facts of history have been selected, organized, and interpreted in light of Christian absolutes … At last everything falls into place. World history becomes a thrilling story having a definite beginning and moving toward a definite end.”

From the 1979 advertisement for Abeka’s “History of the World”

You may not know the name, but you have heard about them. It may have been their wildly apocryphal history textbooks or their history of blaming victims of sexual assault for their own attacks. Maybe you even heard about that kooky college with an extreme Code of Conduct. No dancing, no PG-13 movies, no shorts ending above the kneecaps, and no movie theatres allowed. Pensacola Christian is more than these headlines that may have caught your eye on Reddit or Twitter; just not in the way they would like to think. It is a massive institution within the United States’ religious conservative convention. In addition to its 7,000 students, it distributes its textbooks and recorded lessons to over 1.25 million homeschooled and private schooled children every year.1 Today Pensacola Christian generates over a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue every year while holding billions in assets.2

It didn’t start this way. In September 1954, Pensacola Christian in Escambia County Florida began its first year with an enrollment of just 35 children. After growing to nearly 3,000 students in under 15 years, their ambition could not be contained to a simple private school. By the early 1970s, they reached above the confines of primary and secondary education and established Pensacola Christian College. Around the same time, they would begin publishing their own textbooks under the name Abeka—a brand ubiquitous amongst homeschoolers and private schools today.

Pensacola Christian and its founders, Arlin and Beka Horton, share quite a few parallels with their more known contemporary: Jerry Falwell and Liberty University. Besides their fundamentalist and evangelical beliefs, both began their ministries in the Civil Rights era, starting their schools and churches with all-white congregations. Both also experienced rapid early growth, becoming Christian corporations with strong influence over their factions within just a couple of decades. Yet the Hortons have historically dodged scrutiny and criticism that Falwell has not. Only recently has a critical eye been given to the inner workings of the Florida education ministry. Pensacola Christian is certainly smaller, but it is still highly influential. Beyond their schools and publishing company they operate a mega church, radio stations, multiple summer camps, and mission boards.

But if the founding year of 1954 felt familiar to you for some reason, it is because that is the same year Brown v. Board of Education was decided. Just over three months after the unanimous decision that the segregation of public schools violated the Constitution, Pensacola Christian would begin its first year of private and segregated education. How has Pensacola Christian avoided the apt label of a segregation academy for so long? There is no accounting of its segregation roots anywhere to be found. Certainly nowhere on its website. Wikipedia’s list of segregation academies does not list them, even though it lists others under similar criteria. If there is a written record, I was yet to come across it. What I have found is that the story told by Pensacola Christian about when and why they integrated their school does not line up and that they were definitively segregated into the 1970s despite what they claim. Beyond that is the story of how when Pensacola Christian is dissatisfied with reality, they have the means and the power to change it through their vast and sprawling empire.

Part 1

After graduating from Bob Jones University, Arlin and Beka Horton moved to Pensacola in 1952 with dreams of starting a Christian School. They would meet at the YMCA to hold prayer with locals in the community who shared the same dream. After two short years of directing summer camps and leading Sunday School programs on TV and around town, Pensacola Christian began its inaugural year in September 1954 with the Hortons at the helm. It was, of course, a whites-only school.

The Hortons do not discuss this part of their origins much. When giving interviews to friendly faculty, careful wording is used and quickly refocused to less incriminating aspects of their founding. When retelling the founding in February of 2022, it’s noted that “Christian schools were growing in the 50s”, but there is no mention as to why that might be. They quickly move on from that statement before it lingers in the air too long for their congregation to think reflectively on it. I have watched three interviews with Arlin all following the same pattern; no word is mentioned that they began as a whites-only school.

However, these are 30-minute interviews conducted by those friendly to Arlin and are employed by Pensacola Christian; we are not going to get anything close to a critical perspective from these interviews. If we are going to get an objective viewpoint of this story, we will need something outside of this format.

In a 2001 multi-page expose, The Pensacola News Journal had Pensacola Christian on the front page of their paper, with a half dozen sub-stories throughout that entire day’s issue reserved for the school. It is an uncritical promotion, with most of the page’s real estate given to showering the school with praise and advertising their school. Here is how the Hortons explain to The Pensacola News Journal the obvious issue that comes with starting a private school amid the Civil Rights movement.

While not a thorough investigation, the third-party perspective goes a little bit further than we have been able to glean previously. There is a straightforward acknowledgment of their segregationist past at least. However, there is something very odd within this small section. The article’s writer states, “[Pensacola Christian] was integrated in 1969, long before public schools and other private schools.” Is the writer just credulously repeating what the Hortons told them? This is a very blatant falsehood. The Escambia School District began integrating in 1962; it was one of nine Florida counties to have integrated schools that year (albeit Escambia County was the only one with a federal court order to do so). By 1969, multiple District and Supreme Court rulings had been put into effect, and bussing programs were kicking off across the South.3

I am surprised The Pensacola News Journal just reaffirmed this statement as fact when it could have been easily disproven. Regardless of the shoddy journalism, we at least have a year and an alleged motive for desegregating. It also gives us a much clearer picture of how the Hortons want to be perceived. They want to be viewed as an early adopter of integration, and that they did it for no other reason than the Lord told them it was the right thing to do. That the truth needs to be bent ever so slightly to support their claims does not seem to be an obstacle for them.

After poring over old interviews and newspaper records, I was left unsatisfied. Unfortunately throughout the last 70 years, no one saw any reason to question the rise of this now huge ministry. Pensacola Christian has flown under the radar for most Americans; it was not until the post-COVID homeschooling boom that interest in the odd curriculum published by the school took any serious root. Since there was no real accounting of this story for me to find anywhere else, I picked up a copy of their 2016 book Builders of the Dream. Within it describes in great detail the origins of the school and the Hortons. It was written by former Dean of Education for Pensacola Christian College, Dr. Phyllis Rand, who was picked personally to write this puff piece.4

Near 100 pages in, we finally get to chapter 7, Taking A Stand, where we are given the story of how Arlin led the school in a “historic decision”. I want to include the full section the book has about the desegregation of Pensacola Christian. For the first fifteen years of this school’s existence, it had been closed to black students and faculty, yet the book can only muster up an astonishing four paragraphs throughout its 352 pages to discuss its relation to segregation.

That year [1968], Arlin led the ministry in what was to be a historic decision. [Pensacola Christian] had been incorporated as a segregated school because it was the only way a private Christian school could operate in the South in the 1950s. At that time, the public schools in the South were also segregated. The board members were all from the South. Arlin, however, growing up in Oregon, had never faced the issue until in the summer of 1968, for the first time, a black couple came to Pensacola Christian School to enroll their child. When they left without enrolling, Arlin's heart was immediately smitten. A search for this family in Pensacola was made, but he could not locate them. Following his troubled conscience, and after praying about it, he rehearsed the incident with the school board and recommended that Pensacola Christian become an integrated school. 

Several board meetings were conducted where prayer and discussion were made regarding this single matter. Finally, a board meeting was called to address and vote on this one issue. After much consideration, the board voted by secret ballot, the result being a unanimous vote for Pensacola Christian School to start accepting black students. When the board meeting closed, John Ray Hall prayed a beautiful prayer bringing down heaven into their midst. The decision was sealed!

From that historic decision, they waited almost a year until September 5, 1969, before another black parent brought his child to enroll and be accepted. That same day, President Nixon announced the IRS would no longer grant tax-exempt status to segregated schools. A reporter from The Pensacola News Journal on that very afternoon called and wanted to know whether or not the school was integrated. Arlin was able to reply that it was. In reflection, the Lord, in His goodness, allowed them to make the decision with no pressure from anyone, including the newspaper or the new law announced by President Nixon. As far as they could determine, Pensacola Christian was the first Christian school and probably the first private school in the South to integrate. This move did not go unnoticed by a few other Christian schools as Arlin notes:

“Some pastors further south in Florida with Christian schools nearly disowned us knowing we had integrated. We had integrated solely because we felt God wanted us to. Some churches during that time period started Christian schools because of integration; however, that was not our case. Pensacola, because of the Naval Air Station, was a more cosmopolitan city than most which made it easier to take that step. It could not have been done at that time in most other Deep South cities.”5

What an amazing story. It gives us the same year from the previous article in The Pensacola News Journal of 1969, and we also get a similar statement of being not just one of the first schools to integrate, but “was the first Christian school and probably the first private school in the South to integrate.” This is an incredible assertion; to be the first private or Christian school to integrate in the South should be a very proud moment in history for them… So why don’t they trot this story out more?

When breezed over, this narrative sounds plausible enough and reaffirms the beliefs of the intended readers. But once a critical eye is given to the story, it strains credulity to believe even a single part of it. Before 1968, Arlin never had to face the issue of racism? He searched frantically for the black woman who wanted to enroll her child, but she was never able to be found? They were the first private school to integrate and faced “near disownment” from other Christian schools? They integrated hours before the IRS ruling was announced?

Rand credits Arlin’s foresight with his upbringing in Oregon while leaving out that Oregon had black-exclusionary laws in effect until 1926, just two years before Arlin was born. The black population of Oregon in 1940 was about 2,000 out of 1.5 million.6 But if even it is true that he never saw discrimination in Oregon, in 1947 the Hortons started college in Greenville, South Carolina at Bob Jones University. They would begin taking courses in the wake of the lynching of Willie Earl. They were in a town full of people who, just months prior, had taken part in the mob torture and murder of a black man. All 31 white defendants were found not guilty by the all-white jury. The story was covered nationally; it would have been impossible for Arlin to not be exposed to it.7

And what of their time in Pensacola before 1968? They moved to the city in 1952. For sixteen years they would never have to morally confront the segregation their social status was structured around? To say nothing of the Civil Rights movement nationally, the city of Pensacola was itself the site of an intense campaign by local black leaders to end American apartheid. Here is how J. Michael Butler’s book, Beyond Integration, describes what Pensacola looked like in the early 1960’s.

Many harassed the young blacks who sat in the forbidden dining areas … These [white] counterdemonstrators were emboldened by a police force that had no intention of protecting blacks engaged in civil disobedience. Verbal harangues escalated into violence and officers often refused to protect the black demonstrators from physical assaults. During the June 15th sit-ins, assailants burned one protester with a lit cigarette and sprayed insecticide in the eyes of another. The next day, a white teenager slashed a black teenager with a knife. On June 17, a white onlooker threw battery acid in the face of a demonstrator. One black witness watched a cook sprinkle crushed glass over food before he served it to a NAACP Youth Council member. Police arrested no whites and laughed at or ignored their actions. Conversely, officers arrested blacks for a wide range of offenses including trespassing, illegal boycott, public cursing, loitering, vagrancy, jaywalking, unlawful assembly, resisting arrest, and “feeding a parking meter,” among others. On some occasions, officers retrieved items from the store, placed them in demonstrators’ pockets, and then arrested them for shoplifting.

…

Adult members of the PCM and NAACP also took shifts in the waiting area at the city jail to ensure that police did not physically abuse those arrested during the sit- ins. Adult volunteers packed the county court house when young activists had to face a judge, where they sat in the section reserved for whites. Both organizations collected money at the mass meetings and used the funds to bail protesters from jail and pay their fines.

During this period, NAACP leaders would have shotguns fired into their houses, crosses burnt in their yards, and signs put in their yards with the messages: “Don’t let the sun set on your head in this town” and “Stay away from lunch counters, niggers”.8 One of the boycotted locations was the Pensacola YMCA. the same YMCA where the Hortons and the Pensacola Christian board had previously had their monthly prayer meetings to establish their school.9 All of these events occurred just minutes away from the Hortons. Were they so oblivious that they were unaware of events unfolding right in front of them? How did they feel about the actions being undertaken by these demonstrators?

There is also the repeated claim that they were the first school to integrate. The story changes slightly from the 2001 article. In the article, Pensacola Christian claimed this happened “long before public schools and other private schools.” Yet the book drops the public school claim and establishes they were the very first private school to do so. They couch their assertion by using language like “As far as they could determine” and “probably”, but regardless of their unsureness they still felt comfortable publishing the claim in their book without verifying. This is important to them and for decades they have claimed variations of this. Arlin even tells the story of the black mother in 1968, leading the board to make a decision then and not the day of Nixon’s decision. This is flimsy, and there would be no way to verify this, but it would allow them to claim at least in their heads that they were integrated earlier than other private schools.

Left out of both retellings is that the reason private schools only began existing in middle-class America at all is because white families would unenroll their children from public schools when they anticipated their respective county schools would integrate. If private schools only existed at the whims of white parents avoiding desegregation, then by their very nature private schools would only desegregate at the last possible moment when it became financially viable to do so. To the extent that they were the first, it would have been by mere hours. When Nixon announced his affirmation of the Supreme Court’s Green v. Kennedy decision and withdrew tax-exempt status from segregated schools, schools across the country began admitting a small portion of black students. Sometimes they would only enroll just a single black student.

While almost all of the story is suspect, the detailed specifics are almost all unverifiable. They rely on hearsay and would need to be verified by others who have long since passed. That is except for two statements. Arlin claims that on September 5, 1969, a black family came in and enrolled the very same day just moments before they would lose their tax-exempt status. This date is however incorrect. Nixon would not make this public announcement until July 10, 1970, appearing as front-page news across the nation the next day.10

If Arlin truly did admit a black student in 1969, he would have been ahead of the ruling by months, an entire school year even. This would make his story all the more compelling, proving that “the Lord, in His goodness, allowed them to make the decision with no pressure from anyone, including the newspaper or the new law announced by President Nixon.” But if he enrolled a black student the same day as the announcement, then the first black student would have been enrolled for the coming school year in September 1970. While it might be mildly damaging to claim one less year of segregated schooling, Arlin may have just mixed his dates up.

We have just one more thread left to pull. Arlin claims after the decision on July 10 he received a phone call from The Pensacola News Journal in the afternoon. He proudly boasted to the paper that his school was already integrated. If this call did occur, we should be able to verify the statement he made to The Pensacola News Journal. If he states that a black student had already been enrolled the prior year, his story is wrong but in a way that is favorable to his image. If he states that a black student enrolled that very day, he simply mixed up his dates to a marginally worse spot on the timeline.

Part Two

Not a single part of the story can be proven true. Most of the statements are unverifiable and highly implausible. The only pieces that can be verified have been contradicted in their entirety by the evidence. This finding calls into question the already dubious supporting information. Is there a single thing that is true about the narrative being spun by these segregationists? Two months after The Pensacola News Journal published its story in July 1970, The Pensacola News (not to be confused with The Pensacola News Journal) published a story about the drop in enrollment from public schools with white students fleeing to private schools. Horton is again asked about the makeup of his student body and gives a different answer than two months prior.

It is well after they learned they would lose their tax-exempt status due to their exclusionary policies that they both enroll a black student and disclose that fact to a third party. Both in the book and newspaper article, the Hortons just say they were integrated. When telling the story they never mention the fact that it was one black child out of 2,650 kids. It doesn’t sound so ahead of the curve when you realize the student body was 99.96% white. Pensacola Christian was not the first one to come up with the idea of enrolling one black student to keep their money, certainly not the first in Florida, even if they are certainly proud of it for some reason. It was commonplace amongst private schools after the 1970 IRS decision.11 They were just following the crowd, not breaking barriers.

I at first took this last article at face value, foolishly not learning that trust in Pensacola Christian’s statements was unwarranted. The benefit of the doubt is unearned and the words of the Hortons and their ministry should not be trusted. I began combing the yearbooks for the 1970-1971 school year. Not a single black child is pictured throughout the entire yearbook.

It is not until the following year that black children begin appearing in the yearbooks. Perhaps their one black student was conveniently missed by all possible supporting evidence. The earliest advertisement that I was able to find that highlighted their “non-discriminating enrollment policy” was at best the fall of 1971. This is in line with the findings in the 1971-1972 yearbook.

Everything told to us by the Hortons and Rand about their handling of segregation has been a lie. This is also not just a lie held onto by the Hortons; the entire school is complicit. Rand is not just an author repeating the words of the Hortons, she began working at Pensacola Christian in 1969.12 She was there when it was an all-white school. The story is not just a lie, but an easily provable one. That explains why they breeze over it when they are able to, but still constructed a false timeline to make themselves righteous to each other. If the story was repeated publicly too often, they would have been found out years ago. With this fabricated story they can claim a moral high ground and give credence to their self-righteous statements: “We had integrated solely because we felt God wanted us to”, “We prayed about it and did what we thought was right”, and “the Lord, in His goodness, allowed them to make the decision with no pressure from anyone, including the newspaper or the new law announced by President Nixon.” If they really did integrate without pressure, they would not have lied about the dates. They were pressured and lied about it. God didn’t tell them to integrate, their wallet did.

Here is the true story. They began and intended to remain a whites-only school for their entire existence. There was no black mother in 1968 that left “Arlin’s heart immediately smitten”. She is a fiction made up to backdate the board meeting in which they “unanimously voted” to integrate. When The Pensacola News Journal called, Arlin could not state they were integrated because the board had not met to vote yet. That board meeting only happened after Nixon released his decision to take away their tax-exempt status in July 1970, and before The Pensacola News called later that September. Only then did they publicly claim to the paper that they had one black student. To the extent that one black student was enrolled that fall, I have no reason to believe that is true. I can only confirm through evidence that black enrollment began in the fall of 1971 at the earliest. As time went on, they realized how bad they looked. They needed to shift the events around to keep up their image that they didn’t do it for money, so they combined the two different calls from the two different newspapers into one event. They also moved the event back one year prior, just because they could; who was going to challenge them? Desegregating in the 1960s sounds better than the 1970s anyway. Over time this version of the story became ensconced as part of the lore they’ve developed about their education ministry, and 1969 became the official year.

The Hortons and Pensacola Christian have rearranged reality for their benefit. In the Pensacola Christian world, truth and facts are not something that reveals the reality of our world and ourselves. Here, facts are subservient to outcomes; things to be shaped and molded to fit the already defined conclusions they have pre-determined to be true. They have built for themselves an image that crumbles at the slightest reflection, one void of critical thought and the desire to truly know oneself.

The story they’ve made up isn’t harmless; it actively robs the people of Pensacola of their history. At each point, Rand and Arlin claim they made a change “solely because we felt God wanted us to.” It mirrors Jerry Falwell’s statements on why he desegregated his church and school: “I realized that I was completely wrong. For me, it was a scriptural and personal realization that segregation was evil.”13 By framing this point in history as an individual choice, and not as the framework for a society they were active participants of, the work and actions taken by the NAACP, SCLC, and other black groups to deconstruct Jim Crow are lost. It robs the black people of Pensacola of another thing. Arlin tries to claim persecution that is fully owed to black Pensacolians: “Some pastors further south in Florida with Christian schools nearly disowned us knowing we had integrated.” This is vile. Pensacola Christian and the Hortons have faced zero repercussions for their part in Massive Resistance. They profited from it. From 1963 the enrollment would increase from 780 students to 2,570 in 1969.14 This explosion of growth wasn’t natural, and it wasn’t “The Lord being good to them”. It was the result of enabling white families to flee integrated schools. Their billion-dollar empire would not exist without the looting of their community at the expense of black families from the 1950s through the 1970s. The black people of Pensacola were harassed, beaten, and jailed for daring to demand equal treatment in society. I don’t believe him when he says other Christian schools and pastors were upset with him; no evidence is cited, and he was merely using the strategy that every other segregated private school was using to retain tax-exempt status.

It might seem pedantic to some that I’ve written a post this long about actions from decades ago, and I think it would be a mistake to take that view. These are not actions from 50 years ago, they are actions from today. The Hortons and Pensacola Christian are still repeating this story to minimize their role in perpetuating Jim Crow. It is vitally important to realize that a school and publisher who is manipulating the facts of past events to improve and rehabilitate their image, is also in charge of educating over a million children every year about those same past events.

In 1972, the Hortons would meet with the future financial backer of their textbook curriculum, W. Clement Stone. Stone was Nixon’s largest donor in both of his election campaigns in 1968 and 1972. He was able to skirt election fundraising laws by having that money flow through his independent trust to the tune of 4.8 million dollars. In his 2002 obituary, the Guardian would state: “Disillusioned US voters can reasonably blame Stone for the vast quantity of soft money which now pollutes American politics.”15 Stone would give to more than just Nixon’s campaign; he would give the needed funding for Pensacola Christian to orchestrate the funneling of curated textbooks to private schools and homeschoolers.16

The Civil War sections of their textbooks are full of predictable Lost Cause recitations. In the books, slavery is only tertiarily connected to the war. Deification of Robert E. Lee and glowing profiles highlight other Confederate generals throughout the chapter. No profiles appear for any Union generals. The inner city black ghettos of the mid-20th century are said to have happened because “many [black] people did not take care of the property they were given by the government because they did not have to work for it. This lack of homeowner’s pride led to vandalized and neglected housing.”17 There is no mention of white flight suburbanization, highways ripping through black neighborhoods, or redlining, save to mention that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was useless. Their 4th-grade American history textbook mentions Clarence Thomas, but not Thurgood Marshall. There is also the bemoaning of critics of Joseph McCarthy; chalking up the bad parts of McCarthyism as a “sometimes careless handling of the facts.”18 You know, lying. In retrospect, their view of McCarthy is reflective of their own view of how the truth works.

The events and systems that bring about unrest are presented as a status quo with no responsible parties. Children learning from these textbooks will not grasp the reality of the American caste system from this deceitful narrative. Police brutality, lynchings, Massive Resistance, discriminatory employment, barring from public services; none of these are mentioned. The demonstrations against the systems of oppression are denounced with little word given to the conditions that brought about those demonstrations. It is the same racist framing opponents of Civil Rights used in the 1960s because they are the very same people.

It’s not that this curriculum’s birth and growth paralleled the modern Republican party coming into shape. It was constructed and formed by the same people. Abeka’s 12th-grade economics textbook was written by Russel Kirk, an architect of modern American conservatism.

A few chapters later when explaining the reason for the start of publishing textbooks in-house, Rand says the following.

Secular textbooks were becoming less usable in traditional Christian School as textbook publishers were replacing some of the old standbys with more progressive and decidedly more secular books. Principals starting new schools wanted advice about where to turn for textbooks—a difficult request to answer since the Hortons and [Pensacola Christian] classroom teachers were not satisfied with the newer textbooks they had to “teach around.”19

This is them just coming out and saying it: We do not like the facts of reality, so we decided to change them. The world that they want to be true, that they need to be true, does not exist. When the facts of reality became too great to “teach around”, new facts had to be created. They need undue persecution because it is proof of their righteousness. They need to distort reality because reality implicates them. The goal of Pensacola Christian is not to educate, but to preserve the idea that there is a natural and unassailable Christ-ordained hierarchy. A worldview that excuses them for their misdeeds, praises them where no praise is due, and preaches unwavering obedience to a God made in their image.

Part 3

In my opening, I highlighted Pensacola Christian opened the same year as Brown v. Board of Education, 1954. I’m sure their supporters would note that the talks to create the school occurred in at least May of 1952 before the Supreme Court even took the case on.20 I could argue that the Brown case was filed in 1951 and that whites were beginning to feel the pressure to desegregate by the end of the 1940s. I could argue that his sole goal in creating a school was to thwart the incoming efforts of integration. That may indeed be true, but I actually don’t believe it. Even after all this, I think there is something deeper at play. He doesn’t deserve it, but let’s take him at his word.

Accepting that position, let’s look back to a brief window of time between Christmas 1951, and May 1952. After teaching for the 1951 fall semester at a Kentucky boarding school, the pair decided the school was not for them, and debated mission work instead. Before they saw the advertisement in May 1952 for a Christian principal position in Pensacola, they were given a different opportunity. When Arlin’s parent’s church offered to sponsor them as a part of their church’s mission board, they rejected it. Below is how Rand puts it.

When Arlin wrote to his folks to tell them, they wrote back that their church would sponsor them—they would not have to raise any money or anything. This would have meant being sponsored by a Northern Baptist [now American Baptist Churches USA] church. Arlin remembered his disappointment while attending Linfield [A Northern Baptist College] to find that it really differed little from a secular college. Rather than finding themselves again in the position of being on the field and working with those with whom they did not agree, they wrote back to say that they were not interested.21

If you have a gut feeling about what “disagreements” they might have had with the Northern Baptists, you’re correct. The Northern Baptist Convention was one of the strongest majority-white churches to support the rights of African Americans. From the abolition of slavery to the Civil Rights movement, it has been one of the few white protestant voices to oppose the U.S. race-based caste system. The Convention would state “We commend the United States Supreme Court in its historic decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in public education.”22 The Hortons don’t say themselves what ideals they opposed in the Northern Baptist Convention; they are consistently vague about differences they had with other “liberal” Christians.

It becomes more obvious when in the very same chapter they lie about their desegregation story, they give an anecdote about Billy Graham. Graham brought his crusade down to Pensacola in 1967, much to the enthusiasm of most white Christian congregations in Pensacola. There was one white protestant leader who did not share in this excitement: Arlin Horton. He was invited to share in the dedication of Graham’s Pensacola Crusade, but much to the alleged shock of the other churches, he declined with a scathing letter. Arlin would go on to label Graham as working with apostates (Catholics and ecumenical Protestants) who push “liberal” teachings.23 Once again, it’s never further explained what those teachings are. Graham, while exceedingly popular then and now, is considered an extremely conservative fundamentalist and evangelical. What could Arlin have possibly opposed about this man?24 Graham was very milquetoast on Civil Rights, lacking conviction at crucial points when it would actually matter in the 1960s. However, credit where it is due, Graham began integrating his crusades in the 1950s, a real progressive act for his sect at the time.25

Remember the very first part of Rand’s opening about Pensacola Christian integrating? “[Pensacola Christian] had been incorporated as a segregated school because it was the only way a private Christian school could operate in the South in the 1950s.” It’s so tiring how they constantly paint themselves as held hostage by decisions they chose to make. They could have taken the Northern Baptist missionary position. They could have gone somewhere else besides the Deep South and opened a school that was integrated. They could have worked with black leaders to integrate their school before they were forced to. They could have forced the vote with the board and resigned if they did not agree. But they didn’t.

It’s exhausting. They spend the whole book talking about standing by convictions and how they are the embodiment of integrity. What type of convictions did they hold? In 1958, they threatened the board they would resign if the votes didn’t go their way on a crucial issue. Rand explains:

It became apparent that there was a change in the junior-high students, particularly in their attitudes and behavior. One of the children said that a parent of a seventh-grade student had invited all the students in his class to their home for a party. One of the main activities was dancing. Back in the Kentucky mission school, Arlin and Beka had seen the fruits of such activities in the lives of the young people. At the time, Arlin had promised God that if he were ever given a position of school leadership, he would do his best to have a God-honoring school.

When this event happened, Arlin was aware of a standard of conduct used at Wheaton Christian Academy, and its pattern was used when he sought the approval of the school board for instituting a standard of conduct for Pensacola Christian. It was approved, not by unanimous vote, but by enough to put in place. Every seventh grader was required to sign a Standards of Conduct with each parent signing stating they would see that their child would keep it. Looking back, the Hortons see this decision as a defining and foundational moment in the school's history. It marked the day when [Pensacola Christian] chose to take the high ground on the issue of personal separation. [Pensacola Christian] would not simply be a very good private school; it, with God's help and blessing, would be a very good Christian school. They had felt so strongly about it that had the board not supported their recommendation, they would have resigned.

“We believed having those standards in place and enforced would help in setting the stage for having a greater spiritual impact with each student. We were unwilling to invest our lives in teaching children if we couldn't have a continued clean atmosphere for spiritual growth... The standards included no smoking, drinking, or dancing while enrolled whether at home or elsewhere.”26

Was it “God-honoring” to run a segregated school for 17 years and then lie about it, Arlin? Using this anecdote to showcase their convictions, and then several pages later just hand waving away that they began as a segregated school because doing otherwise “could not have been done at that time” exposes what is important to them. That Arlin stated “we were unwilling to invest our lives in teaching children if we couldn't have a continued clean atmosphere for spiritual growth” means he did not think that denying the rights of his black neighbors hindered a “clean atmosphere for spiritual growth”.

They may have made their students sign pledges to not dance, smoke, or drink, but they did not make the same conditions for their financiers. Their future friend W. Clement Stone would joke that “his longevity was a result of smoking Havana cigars, dancing and drinking champagne.”27 A perfect trifecta of the top Pensacola Christian standards. It’s very important to the Hortons that you do not think they are motivated by money; they make that point constantly throughout the book. That’s why it incenses me that at every opportunity they get to do the right thing, they do whatever is ever financially beneficial to them. If desegregating meant retaining their tax-exempt status, they would do so. And if they needed to be more flexible on their high moral standards in service of getting funding, they would do that too. They often say they made their decisions based on what God was telling them to do, and from what they’ve revealed about themselves it sounds like their God is a dollar bill.

In earlier sections of the book, Rand describes the amount of work the Hortons directly put into the school. Arlin was the acting administrator, but the book details a variety of eclectic duties he would take on personally. The Hortons lived on campus, wiring the telephone and alarm system to their house to take calls after hours. He is described as a night watchman, janitor, receptionist, transportation supervisor, and principal. This detail is more revealing than Rand intended and gives a revelation about the racist prejudice of the Hortons.

The next year [1958], the board approved purchasing three new sixty-six passenger buses which was a great relief for the students, drivers, and Arlin. With the addition of transportation came the addition of new responsibilities to his list of duties: substituting as a bus driver, hiring and supervising the drivers, seeing the children got home safely, and frequently taking the buses to local garages for needed repairs. What a burden was lifted when the Lord sent Gettys Allen in 1964 to be the transportation Supervisor.

If he held these duties before hiring someone in 1964, we can all but guarantee that these advertisements calling for white-only bus drivers and staff were written personally by Arlin himself.

They state the impossibility of running a Christian school in the Deep South with an integrated student body. Even accepting this statement at face value, it obscures an important piece. Maybe an integrated student body would have been hard to do, but there were far fewer barriers to hiring black staff. It’s why in every advertisement the school has printed, the text never indicates it was closed to black students; it didn’t have to. The discrimination was inherent. On the other hand, they could have hired black faculty, but they actively denied blacks employment. Either Arlin had personal motivations in not hiring blacks, or he measured that it would deter white families from enrolling in his school. Both options are a moral failing by Arlin, and his refusal to acknowledge that is damning.

Whenever they speak about their early years as a segregated school, they paint themselves with no agency as if segregation was something being done to them. It was not being done to them; it was being done by them. Just as earlier with the alleged first black mother who tried to enroll their child at Pensacola Christian, Rand frames the story as “they left without enrolling”. She places the action firmly on the black family. It was not that they left without enrolling, Arlin denied them entry based on their race. At every turn, they chose segregation. They were proliferators and profiteers of it. They had repeated opportunities to practice their faith in a way that would not perpetuate the degradation and disenfranchisement of black Americans, and they chose not to until they were monetarily forced.

All of these revelations bring into question what they mean when they speak of certainty and absolutes. Again from Builders,

A biblical worldview teaches that there are absolutes and objective truth. There are character traits, actions, ideas which are good and bad. There are eternal verities. There is right and wrong. The opposite, though often subtly presented is that nothing is always true or always false. Truths change, values change, teaching methods change. The child must build new “truths” through experience and group judgment.28

Tell me, Rand. Between 1968 and 1971, did truths and values change? When a black mother came into Arlin’s office and troubled his conscious, was it only then your school’s practices became wrong? If a society built on the supremacy of one class over another is wrong, is it an “eternal verity”, or was it fine at the time? Either your school was born in sin and you refuse to acknowledge it, or you do believe God ordains one group superior over another. You claim to operate from a place of objective truth, yet you move the truth around based on your whims.

This absolutist worldview is so cheap. I think a surface-level analysis would just call this a result of being religious, but there is no faith or humility here. How can you be a person of faith when your worldview and moral framework are certain at every point? It’s not faith, it is the opposite.

To reactionaries like Arlin and Rand, the things that benefit them and harm others will always be considered an unassailable fact of life; something natural and God-ordained. Just the way it is. The things that benefit others and harm them, conversely, will be considered an alteration of God’s will, and therefore manufactured and demonic. Their peer, Jerry Falwell, would preach against integration in 1958. In his sermon, he would state the equal value in God’s eye of “negro souls” and white souls. He would condemn violence towards blacks and state he had “no animosity in my heart” towards any race. Yet his sermon was in unequivocal support of the segregation of races and of their intrinsic inequality. Why? Because it was commanded by God. Falwell would state “If we persist in tearing down God’s barriers, God must punish us for it.” and “If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s Word and had desired to the Lord’s will, I am confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made.”29

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I think it’s clear by now that they never had any opposition to American apartheid. It’s advantageous for them to pretend like they did in retrospect, but it is in truth a recurring feature of their beliefs and values. I think Arlin is speaking honestly when he says they did not open a school just to avoid desegregation; I think he did it to amass power and enforce a hierarchy he believes God has placed him atop. He can claim that power was for God, but it was just for the idea of what God is in his head: himself. As it became disadvantageous to support white supremacy, a new supremacy had to become the face of the caste system. One based on a vague gesture to morality that is unexamined yet absolute. One that could be bent and shaped by their will, and could be fluid enough to change when politically expedient to do so.

Pensacola Christian’s worldview is inseparable from the same motivations that guide white supremacy; the end of the world that they are working toward will end with a culling of humanity. With God coming down from heaven, separating the “wheat from the chaff”. One group to elevate to his side, and another to be subjugated and dominated. The color and shape of this supremacy may change, but the core ideology will not. By amassing this empire, they can create the heaven they are seeking on earth: “A simple world where reality is exactly what it looks like through their eyes, devoid of complexity, devoid of change, where they are right, and their enemies are silent.” ∎

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If you are a Pensacola Christian affiliate or supporter and have read this in its entirety, thank you for allowing yourself the opportunity to challenge the beliefs you have likely had your entire life. Please use this in reflection of other things you may have been taught by this school and ministry.

Please consider donating to The African American Heritage Society of Pensacola and the Coalition for Responsible Home Education