Statement by Janice Weber to the Ocean City Board of Education on May 22, 2025. Janice Weber is a mother, grandmother, retired educator and doctoral student in Theology who resides in Ocean City, New Jersey.
The views and opinions expressed in this guest post are those of the author and may or may not reflect positions adopted by Liberty & Prosperity 1776, Inc. as an organization.
The purpose in my presence at this meeting tonight is to share with you my thoughts on the Board of
Education’s continued support for Policy 5756.
Note: Policy 5756 is a set of non-binding guidelines given in 2018 by the State Department of Education to all school districts in New Jersey. It suggests that each School District establish certain policies relating to any student who claims that he or she wishes to identify as being of a different sex at school, but not at home. It requires schools to recognize the student’s claimed gender identity without requiring documentation or evidence, including diagnosis, treatment or legal name change. Schools must also refuse to disclose any of this information to anyone, including parents of the student. Most school districts in New Jersey adopted this policy, but several, including Hanover Township, MIddletown, Manalapan-Englishtown and Marlboro did not. Last May 21, 2025, the Edison Township Board of Education, which previously adopted 5756, repealed it in a 6-3 vote.
Sociologist Mary Eberstadt examines the impact of the sexual revolution from a revisionist perspective in the work she has conducted over decades from a cultural and anthropological perspective. There is much wisdom in her book Adam and Eve After the Pill, Revisited (2023).
Eberstadt observes that there is a high level of what she terms a “new intolerance” that has permeated every structure of society, including education; one which is hostile to Christian and traditional religious and non-religious values.
The new intolerance is the (quote p. 48) “slow motion marginalization and penalizing of the faithful.” This is not just a Christian problem but an everybody problem because this new intolerance is never satisfied-seeking more and more victims as it expands. This secularist
“Christophobic” attitude allies with Marxist-socialist and progressive ideologies that seek to replace common sense, faith filled values with an ‘anything goes’ mentality-even one which obstructs parental rights.
It often does this through intimidation, insult, mockery and suppression of the ability to speak one’s mind for causes that are trying to free not bound our students. For those of you who may question the place of religion at a school board meeting, you must ask yourselves the question Eberstadt poses: “Do I want to serve the secularist religious master at the expense of the competing Christian one?” (p. 66)
You who work on behalf of the students in this district are here because you care for them. However, please do not permit misguided compassion confuse you because it is the cultural accepted mandate of our day. Youngsters who suffer from distorted gender confusion need compassionate pastoral care and healing. It will not serve them well to pretend that there is not a treatable problem at the root of their pain. You navigate through difficult and dangerous terrain and are commended for your time and interest. You work for and value all youngsters, as should be. The acceptance of a bill which accepts, tolerates even celebrates this gender concept does little to get
at the root of the problem. That will take spiritual and emotional healing that an order from the state of NJ (or anywhere for that matter) simply cannot provide.
One need not be a member of a particular religious affiliation to understand that children need solid guidance and healthy boundaries. Common sense and the natural law give evidence to this. However, for those of you who do identify with a Judeo-Christian faith, I ask you to consider with respect and understanding the views of those who are guided by a higher godly principle, so that they may help parents address their rightful place in making decisions for their own children as opposed to school interference in such a delicate matter.
Two weeks ago, we welcomed the first American Pope; one who stands clear on the moral issues of our times. In April 2016, as bishop in Chiclayo Peru, Bishop Prevost, (then a bishop, who we now know as Pope Leo XIV), opposed a plan to include gender teaching in school, noting that,
“The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist.”
Those of you who consider yourselves Catholic, I appeal to you to reconsider your support for a curriculum in which gender ideology is taught and celebrated. It is confusing to students, minimizes parental rights and mocks the plan of our Creator.
Fulton Sheen once said: “The only way to overcome error is to keep the truth in front of it.”
Janice Weber
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Many Boards of Education need to hear this message throughout the state of New Jersey