Leftists Shut Down Venue After Christian Group Organizes School Board Candidates Event
A California progressive group managed to pressure a business to back out of being the venue for a Christian-led political action committee’s school board candidates event.
Tim Thompson, pastor of 412 Church Murrieta, in southern California, formed the Inland Empire Family PAC to support school board candidates who hold to Judeo-Christian, conservative values.
Some main issues of concern for the PAC are the sexualization of children through school curricula, the teaching of critical race theory and parental rights over any medications children receive, such as transgender therapies and vaccinations.
The Bible indicates parents have the ultimate responsibility for raising children, including instilling values.
Opposing Thompson’s efforts is the Temecula Unity, a progressive group that accuses the preacher of wanting to impose his views in the schools.
“They say I’m trying to install a theocracy in the school board, which is not at all accurate,” Thompson told The Western Journal
“I’m not trying to install a theocracy. I’m just trying to say, ‘Hey, listen, let the parents be the parents. Let kids be kids. That’s it. Teach them reading, writing and arithmetic. Teach them true history.”
Julie Geary, a member of Temecula Unity and a teacher finds the pastor’s efforts “extremely offensive because public schools are for every child,” The Press-Enterprise reported.
She added that she will work to keep the Inland Empire PAC’s candidates off local school boards.
“Churches should be about love, kindness, helping the poor, helping the sick, feeding the homeless (and) helping their community, not driving a wedge through it,” she said.
Inland Empire has a fundraiser planned to support the candidates the group has endorsed for April 22, and among the featured speakers is Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.
“So it’s not like we’re some lawless group,” Thompson said. “The county sheriff is on our side of this issue.”
The first venue the PAC contracted with pulled out after receiving pressure from Temecula Unity.
The group “posted where our event was, gave the phone number to the location and said, ‘Flood that location with calls. Tell them, you’re going picket. All this kind of stuff. And they did,” Thompson said.
“And the company that was going to let us hold our event at their place of business called and said, ‘Hey, look, we’re going to have to cancel.'”
A member posted on Temecula Unity’s Facebook page last week, “Update: our efforts worked. Event has been canceled!”
The woman wrote that she had called the business and spoke with a salesman there. She told him that Thompson “spreads homophobic messages” and had hosted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene at an event at his church.
“I let him know that this information is spreading within the community and his business would like not want the negative attention it is now receiving.”
The Western Journal called the venue — a car dealership which has been used after hours for special events — and spoke with an executive who confirmed they had received over 100 calls from people both opposed to and in support of the event taking place there.
“We’re a business,” said the executive, who asked not to be named as to avoid stirring further controversy. “It has nothing to do with personal beliefs or anything else like that, just everything to do with I can’t have 100 calls a day from different people voicing their opinion about something that has nothing to do with the business.”
Thompson said Inland Empire Family PAC did not want to cause any trouble for the company and agreed to pull the event from the dealership.
“So we got canceled,” he said. “We ended up just keeping [the event]. Same schedule, same day, same speakers, but at a different venue.”
Last month, Inland Empire hosted a candidates forum for those it has endorsed running in the Murrieta and Temecula school districts.
Nick Pardue, an economics and history teacher running for Murrieta Valley Unified School District board, shared that it’s been tough to see the change in high school students from before the COVID-19 pandemic shut downs to now.
“They really aren’t the same,” he said. “And they are terrified of cancel culture. They’re self-conscious. I hear kids saying, ‘I don’t want to take my mask off because I’ve become accustomed to being able to hide in anonymity behind this mask,’ and that’s really sad.”
Caitlin Jones, who is running for the Temecula Valley Unified School District board, said the purpose of schools “should be education, not indoctrination.”
Jen Wiersma, another candidate for the Temecula board, argued, “If we’re going to save America, and I know there’s a lot of patriots in this room, it starts with school boards, so I’m in.”
“Let it be said that 2022 will be the rise of the citizen,” she added.
Thompson says Christians definitely have an important part to play on schools boards and in society as a whole.
“I think the the church has forgotten what salt and light are,” he said.
“Salt is a preservative. And somehow we think we’re not supposed to be trying to keep truth and righteousness as a staple of American civilization,” Thompson continued. “You know, we as Christians are supposed to preserve our communities.
“And light is a revealing agent. It exposes the wickedness that is in the darkness, and I think the church has forgotten that.”
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