Author: Garnik Tadevosian

Inside, the school board heard from the usual suspects who waxed hysterical about gay rights being somehow in danger if an entire month isn’t dedicated to them in public schools instead of having Math Month or Spelling Month where the children work on their educational goals. Many talked about deserving a “safe” place for “queer kids,” as if your average public school is a veritable gauntlet of hate crimes against queer-identifying kids. This is demonstrably false as the New York Times just reported that “acceptance” of queer kids is at an all-time high yet their mental health is steadily declining. Acceptance is not the issue.

What is the issue is that religious children are being indoctrinated into a cult to which their parents have not consented. Parents don’t want this. And yet the boards and the schools persist.

The Glendale school board voted to approve the Pride Month celebrations unanimously despite hundreds of parents coming there to tell them not to. The speakers pretended to be shocked by the violence outside, seemingly oblivious that they had silenced the voices of the parents who don’t want this material in schools. It’s bizarre that people who claim to want discourse yet keep out the voices of the opposition then get shocked and horrified when fists start flying.

In Montgomery County, Md., the Muslim community showed up in force to protest the opt-out policy adopted by the school district. Every student is now required to learn the LGBTQ propaganda and will not be allowed to opt-out.

Asra Nomani wrote on Twitter, “Montgomery County Public Schools recently refused to allow parents to opt out of indoctrination that relates to issues of sexuality and gender. As a Muslim feminist, I don’t agree with many of the conservative interpretations of my Muslim community, but I do believe and they believe in the integral right of parents to parent. During the Obama administration, Muslim groups aligned with far-left interest groups that actually contradicted the socially conservative beliefs of many Muslims. This was not going to sustain itself, I knew. I chronicle this unholy alliance in my book, WOKE ARMY. Sure enough, the hard left came after the one interest that no mama bear or papa bear is going to surrender: our kids.”

Parents of faith need to band together now and force school districts to stop indoctrinating our kids with false doctrines and cult beliefs. Gender and queer theory is based on nothing but faith and should be classified as a religion. In fact, at the Montgomery County protest, a small group of pro-LGBTQ counter-protesters from the Unitarian church stood with a sign and a member of their clergy. It appears that their beliefs are supported by religion; why should that be taught in public schools if Catholicism, Islam, or any other religion is not?

The counter-protesters in Montgomery County were a sad group of white wine moms with weight problems and rainbow-colored, badly cared-for hair. Some of them carried in boom boxes to drown out the parents with Lady Gaga. One of them would only speak to Nomani through a bullhorn. None of these people are serious about having conversations.

Inside the meeting in Maryland, a Muslim father made a very good point that Muslims identify with their religion, and if students are going to be affirmed as the identity of their choice then they must be affirmed if they choose to identify as Muslim. The board ignored the pro-opt-out parents and voted to end the ability for parents to keep their kids from reading pornographic books about gay sex. “Please stop making this about hate. This is about parents having a choice in their children’s education,” he said. “We identify with our religion. You have to be fair and equal when accepting different identities.”

He has a point. I identify as Catholic. So do my children. It is against their religious beliefs to be indoctrinated into the queer cult. There is little chance these school policies can survive lawsuits on first amendment rights when they come. And they already have. Three families in the Montgomery County area have filed a lawsuit challenging the opt-out ban. PJ Media will follow the legal action as it continues.

More than 120,000 Christian Armenians continue to face the threat of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno Karabakh, a region inside Azerbaijan. Over the past few weeks, the E.U., the U.S., and Russia have hosted rounds of talks about the crisis between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But these meetings are unlikely to resolve the crisis, even though Armenia recently made painful and substantial concessions. Given the indifference and, frankly, complicity of outside powers, the Azeri strongman, President Ilham Aliyev, has little incentive to negotiate in good faith—and his declared ambitions include not only Karabakh, but Armenia itself. The international community needs to do more than convene meetings to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.

As I explained last year, the current crisis is the latest episode in a conflict that dates to the Armenian Genocide of 1915, when the Ottomans eliminated the Armenian Christians of Anatolia in hopes of creating a pan-Turkic empire that would extend from the Mediterranean through the Caucasus into Central Asia. Karabakh survived the genocide and Joseph Stalin made it an autonomous region within the newly created (and Muslim-majority) Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1920s. When the Soviet Union dissolved, Karabakh Armenians declared independence. A brutal war ensued, after which Armenians controlled Karabakh and several surrounding regions they held as bargaining chips for an eventual settlement.

In the succeeding decades, flush with money from its natural gas industry, Azerbaijan built up its military. In September 2020, the Azeris attacked and reconquered all the surrounding regions and parts of Karabakh. At the time, Turkish President Erdogan boasted of “fulfilling the mission of our grandfathers in the Caucasus.” Russia, supposedly Armenia’s protector, intervened only at the last minute and fashioned a ceasefire agreement in November 2020 that the parties agreed would last five years. 

The Russian-brokered ceasefire has been a farce. Although it has some 2000 peacekeepers in the region, Russia has shown itself unable—or, more likely, unwilling—to stop continued Azeri aggression. Azerbaijan has launched two large-scale invasions of Armenia since the ceasefire was proclaimed, seizing significant territory while Russian peacekeepers stood by. Since December, Azerbaijan has blockaded Karabakh, creating a humanitarian crisis. In February, the International Court of Justice ruled that the blockade violates international law and ordered Azerbaijan to reopen the road that links Karabakh to the outside world. The Azeri government has simply ignored the ruling.

Azerbaijan can safely do so because it knows Russia would block enforcement of the ICJ’s ruling in the U.N. Security Council. This might come as a surprise to Americans, who assume that Armenia and Russia are partners. That hasn’t been the case for years. Armenia’s current government is pro-Western and has tried to balance the country’s economic and military ties with Russia with new links to Europe and the U.S. This is popular in Armenia. Armenians resent Russia’s failure to honor treaty obligations and protect Armenia when Azerbaijan invaded in September 2022, and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has publicly questioned whether Armenia will remain in the CSTO, the Russian-led security organization. A recent poll shows that a majority of Armenians now think of France and the U.S. as potential political partners rather than Russia.

In fact, Azerbaijan, not Armenia, has become Russia’s key ally in the South Caucasus. Two days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Aliyev traveled to Moscow to sign a cooperation agreement with the Russian government—an agreement, he boasted, “that brings our relations to the level of an alliance.” Azerbaijan touts itself as an alternative source of natural gas for Europe, but in fact it quietly purchases gas from Russian companies, thereby allowing Russia to avoid Western sanctions. It recently announced an Azeri-Russian-Iranian partnership to build a transport corridor to link the three countries—and exclude Western interests from the South Caucasus hub.

Western governments see all this, which explains why they have become increasingly active in the region. The U.S. intervened diplomatically to stop Azerbaijan’s invasion of Armenia in September 2022. Over strenuous Russian objections, the E.U. has placed civilian observers on Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan. And, as I wrote above, both the E.U. and the U.S. are now competing with Russia to resolve the crisis with diplomatic talks—on Western terms.

There seem to be limits, though, to how far the West will push Aliyev. Notwithstanding his ties to Putin, the West sees Aliyev as at least a potential foil against Russia—and, given the Ukraine conflict, the West is willing mostly to look the other way when it comes to Aliyev’s menacing of his democratic neighbor. The E.U. signed a deal for the importation of natural gas from Azerbaijan last summer and has praised Aliyev as a “reliable” and “crucial energy partner.” The E.U. might send civilian monitors, but it is unlikely to take too hard a line. The U.S. thinks it can perhaps use Azerbaijan to keep neighboring Iran in check; Israel thinks so too. So Aliyev can continue to play a double game, cozying up to Russia while remaining interesting enough to the West to avoid serious sanctions.

But without sanctions or other serious action, Aliyev will continue to treat Armenian concessions as invitations to engage in further aggression. For example, in negotiations in Brussels last month, both Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to recognize each other’s territorial integrity and discussed reopening railway connections based on mutual reciprocity. Pashinyan subsequently confirmed that Armenia was ready to recognize Azeri sovereignty over Karabakh (provided arrangements could be made to guarantee Armenians’ security there)—a painful public concession, apparently made at the urging of the U.S., which caused anger in Karabakh itself.

How did Aliyev respond? After Pashinyan’s statement, Aliyev again threatened Karabakh Armenians with ethnic cleansing and, for good measure, threatened Armenia as well. Armenia would have to agree to Azerbaijan’s demands with respect to border demarcation, he announced, or face further aggression. “The border will pass where we say,” Aliyev crowed. “They know that we can do it. No one will help them.” A bewildered Pashinyan asked whether Aliyev was already abandoning the position he had taken in Brussels and demanded clarification. The U.S. has not yet responded.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, American and European leaders have spoken of the need to defend democracy and self-determination against authoritarian aggression. That is precisely what is needed in the South Caucasus now. At the very least, Western sanctions against the Aliyev regime should be on the table. Even in realist terms, it would not be in the West’s interest to abandon Armenia, which is looking to reorient itself and which can serve, in time, as an important bridge between the West, the South Caucasus, and beyond. Unless the West creates greater incentives for Azerbaijan to negotiate in good faith, however, a humanitarian crisis looks about to unfold.

Mark Movsesian is the Frederick A. Whitney Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University.

According to the information that Armenia’s official news agency Armenpress received from the Armenian Investigation Committee, a woman who introduced herself as the mother of one of the soldiers who died in the Second Karabakh War, invited Ashot Pashinyan to her car under the pretext of speaking and after Pashinyan got into the car, she followed the traffic rules. began to drive in violation.

Ashot Pashinyan, who claimed that the woman told him that her son was taken to the war without being asked and killed in the Second Karabakh War while driving the car, claimed that the woman said that she could kill herself by taking her to the Yerablur Military Memorial Cemetery because she had nothing to lose.

Pashinyan stated that he jumped out of the car as soon as he slowed down.

It was announced that another vehicle hit Ashot Paşiyan, who was waiting by the roadside with minor injuries, and that the people in the vehicle were the parents of the soldiers who died in the Second Karabakh War.

It has been reported that the woman who attempted to kidnap Ashot Pashinyan was taken into custody.