WATCH: State Superintendent Smirks, Goes Silent When Lawmaker Asks: 'How Many Genders?'

In the belly of Michigan’s education bureaucracy, where radical gender ideology now reigns supreme, the state’s top school official exposed the rot last month when she couldn’t — or wouldn’t — say there are two genders.

During an October House Oversight Committee hearing, Interim State Superintendent Sue Carnell sat stone-faced after a lawmaker asked the most basic biological question imaginable: "How many genders are there?"

Carnell smirked, paused in dead silence, then offered this gem, stating, "Different people have different beliefs on them."

The questioner fired back without hesitation: "You can believe all you want, but science says there’s two."

That humiliating exchange, captured on video, laid bare the cowardice driving Michigan’s education elite as they ram through a sweeping new K-12 sex-education curriculum drenched in gender confusion.

On Thursday, after nearly three hours of fiery public testimony, the Democrat-controlled State Board of Education voted 6-2 to adopt the revised "Michigan Health Education Standards Guidelines"— the first update since 2007.

The standards now require students by eighth grade to "define gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation, and explain that they are distinct components of every individual’s identity."

More than 100 parents, pastors and citizens packed the meeting, many waving small pride flags, others pleading to protect childhood innocence.

Eileen McNeil, president of Citizens for Traditional Values, demanded to know, "What is the hurry? Why now? Why today? Why this? If you really want to address health and the sex ed, let’s take time."

Transgender advocacy speaker Stella Shananaquet scoffed at opponents: “Deniers lost the bathroom wars, so here we are again with it wearing a different dress. Nobody’s teaching your kids gender identity. They already know. They’re just too scared to tell you about it. The bottom line is, you don’t have to believe in it. You don’t have to accept it, but it exists.”

Board member Tom McMillin, R-Oakland Township, one of the two "no" votes, warned the standards flirt with violating state law and will invite costly lawsuits.

Parents may still opt children out of sex-education classes, and local districts retain final control over curriculum. Yet the message from Lansing is unmistakable: two genders is now the unacceptable answer in Michigan’s government schools.

When the superintendent in charge of 1.4 million children can’t bring herself to state biological reality on camera, parents have every reason to ask who is really running — and ruining — the classroom.

The gender cult has captured the state Department of Education, and Michigan families are paying the price.