Woke Child Care
By DEACON MIKE MANNO
When I was growing up, apparently in a place lost to time, my mother did not work, and none of my friends’ mothers worked except for those few who were helping run family businesses. One of my great memories of that time were my friend’s parents who ran a bakery, the Spudnut Shop, right across from the school, where occasionally we’d miss the first bell after a round of glazed donuts.
Life was great back then; everything was, but I digress.
Today child care is a must for many parents, especially in single-parent families. There are, of course, numerous reasons for this and there are scores of sociologists throughout the United States who have determined why this new phenomenon exists, and, as usual, most of them will be wrong. But it does make child care a multibillion dollar industry.
To capitalize on this “business boom” there are numerous day-care centers, both large and small, dotted throughout every town in America to cater to the needs of working parents.
One such place is Bright Horizons Children’s centers. A Delaware corporation with headquarters in Newton, Mass. It has over 1,000 such centers worldwide and over 600 in just the U.S. It is “big business.”
It even has a full-time Chief People and Inclusion Officer, apparently to give guidance to its vast worldwide enterprise. Here is what its website says about the job: “[The Officer] oversees our HR functions and leads our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts to ensure a diverse workplace and maintain a culture of inclusion and caring.”
Isn’t that very nice. They also include the holy trinity of woke ideology: diversity, equity, and inclusion. What more could you ask for in a company? But it goes on through its web presence, “We offer more than early education — but inspiration for young children to grow into confident, joyful learners. . . . We’re committed to providing work environments free from discrimination and harassment.”
Wow! Are these guys great or what? They really believe in this stuff.
And to show you how strong they are in their beliefs in diversity and inclusion, its office in Studio City, Calif., has a policy requiring all teachers to support and promote celebrations of “diversity,” including same-sex marriage, to children in their care programs. In furtherance of that policy, each teacher was tasked to read to the children books in the company library on topics celebrating same-sex relationships.
Some of the books included titles such as Daddy, Papa, and Me and Mommy, Mama, and Me and featured same sex-couple marriages and families.
That’s diversity. So what about inclusion?
Well, for a Christian employee, Nelli Parisenkova, who because of her strong Christian beliefs on the subject did not want to read those books to children, or celebrate sexual diversity with the children aged one to five years old in her care, there was none. She was promptly fired, even though a previous manager for four years allowed her to perform other duties than read the objectionable books to the kids.
According to Los Angeles trial attorney and special counsel for the Thomas More Society, Paul Jonna, who are now representing Nelli in the lawsuit she filed against Bright Horizons:
“[The manager], who is lesbian, apparently took personal offense at Nelli Parisenkova’s religious beliefs and enforced Bright Horizons anti-religious ‘diversity and inclusion’ workplace policies,” explained Jonna. “[The manager] called Nelli into her office, questioned her in an irate manner, told her that if she did not want to celebrate diversity this was not the place for her to work, gave her an administrative leave memo, escorted her outside with a security guard, and left her out in the 96-degree heat with no transportation. As a result, Nelli was forced to walk 20 minutes in the heat and wait 45 minutes for transportation and suffered heat exhaustion for the next two days.”
Diversity 1, inclusion 0.
Just as an aside, I’ve noticed that the conduct of the manager is in line with others in similar circumstances that are trying to enforce a secular gospel against a faithful Christian: rage-filled abuse, belittling, condescending attitude, and condemnation.
According to the lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of Los Angeles, Nelli tried to compromise with Bright Horizons by allowing her to continue as she had for the past four years and only read what she considered non-offensive books to the kids and perform other duties while other teachers could read the “diversity” titles. But this was refused.
According to the lawsuit: “Bright Horizons responded by categorically denying the request. Bright Horizons did not engage in any negotiations and made no attempt whatsoever to determine whether a reasonable accommodation could be reached. Instead, Bright Horizons issued a counseling memo with false statements, terminated her life-insurance benefits, required her to complete retraining in diversity issues, and encouraged her to resign her position. Ms. Parisenkova could not return to work without an accommodation; so, Bright Horizons terminated her employment.”
“This is an outrageous example of religious discrimination,” added Jonna. “Nelli Parisenkova had been operating under the radar with an informal accommodation request for multiple years without notice. As soon as upper-level management discovered her religious beliefs and received her formal accommodation request, Bright Horizons leveled the full force of the company’s anti-religious and ironically ‘un-inclusive’ diversity policy against Ms. Parisenkova. They tried to get her to quit through harassment and intimidation. When she couldn’t return to work because they denied her accommodation request, they fired her. You can’t get much more discriminatory than that. It’s unethical and it’s blatantly illegal.”
The lawsuit names as defendants both Bright Horizons, the individual manager involved, and at least ten other company officials for their “illegal” and “unconstitutional” actions against Nelli. She is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages against the defendants on seven counts:
Religious discrimination and disparate treatment; failure to accommodate; wrongful termination in violation of public policy; harassment based upon religion; failure to prevent discrimination and harassment; retaliation; and constructive discharge.
Naturally, she’s asking for attorney fees and costs of the lawsuit.
Within just the last year, I have covered accusations of this “grooming” activity not only in schools, but in libraries as well. Child care was a sleeper issue, who, for example, would have thought some of these caregivers would pick up the LBGTQ banner and foist it on children too young to even attend elementary school. That is why the words of the attorney should be heeded:
“Make sure you know what books are on the shelf in your children’s care programs and schools. This is a clear-cut case of one of the largest childcare employers in the country having anti-religious workplace policies that promote indoctrination of young children with the LGBT agenda.” Paul Jonna is a partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, special counsel for The Thomas More Society.
And his words are more than just a friendly warning. Bright Horizons lists on its website that it works with such companies as Sprint, Target, General Mills, Baker Mackenzie, and Salesforce. So if your company is providing the service, check it out or you may not recognize your little boy when he comes home a little girl.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him on Faith on Trial https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/.)
