The most sacrosanct responsibility of a parent is rearing his or her children — from teaching them social norms, values, and behaviors, to providing emotional support and discipline, and assuring that they receive proper education.
From America's founding until not all that long ago, the above was an unquestionable right in this country.
That ship has sailed.
The fight over parental rights "just got primal," as George Washington University Law School professor, author, and political commenter Jonathan Turley put it in a recent column.
In a Tuesday op-ed for USA Today, under the headline "Court says school can usurp parents on child's name, pronouns. It's unnatural." Turley wrote:
Progressives' shock over the results of the last election could prove a prelude to what is coming if they continue to ignore parents' rights. There is no more powerful identity than that of a parent.
In her celebrated book "Red Scarf Girl," author Ji-li Jiang recounts growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China. She and millions of others had to choose between obeying the country's communist government or obeying her parents.
“'Now, you have to choose between two roads,' '' Jiang wrote. "Thin-Face looked straight into my eyes. 'You can break with your family and follow Chairman Mao, or you can follow your father and become an enemy of the people.'”
While America is not (yet, at least, which the far-left appears to abhor) Communist China, the now-radicalized Democrat Party continues its hellbent mission to deny those with whom it disagrees everything from free speech to merit-based hiring to parents raising their children based on their (the parents) morals and values.
While Turley noted that the U.S. is constitutionally and culturally protected against authoritarianism, we are nevertheless "experiencing our own type of cultural revolution as schools collide over the education of our children."
Turley included details about a February court decision in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit ruled that parents had no protected right to be informed when their children change their gender identity in public school:
In Foote v. Feliciano, Marissa Silvestri and Stephen Foote sued Baird Middle School in Ludlow, Massachusetts, after they learned that school administrators did not inform them that their 11-year-old child had self declared as “genderqueer" and that teachers and staff were using a new name and new pronouns for the student.
As the parent of two grown children with children of their own, the growing insanity in our public school systems causes me (and I'm sure, my kids) angst. While my grandchildren attend school in an excellent district, there are no guarantees that courts will rule in favor of parental rights.
With respect to Foote v. Feliciano, Turley continued (emphasis, mine):
The parents later learned that the school’s staff had continued to meet with their child without their knowledge, implemented the change in gender identity and took active measures not to reveal the change to them (including using the student’s birth name in communications with the parents).
The school, without the parents’ knowledge, arranged for changes in everything from the use of male bathrooms to the exclusive use of the child’s new name in class.
The district court in Massachusetts denied the parents a trial and granted a summary dismissal in favor of the schools.
A panel of three federal judges agreed and rejected any due process claim of parents to be informed, let alone to control, such decisions for an 11-year-old child.
"In a truly Orwellian line, Turley wrote, "the judges declared":
As per our understanding of Supreme Court precedent, our pluralistic society assigns those curricular and administrative decisions to the expertise of school officials, charged with the responsibility of educating children.
That statement is not only chilling; where does this "responsibility" begin and end?
"Educating children" is teaching our kids, as "they" said in the old days, reading, writing, and arithmetic, later followed by education in STEM — science, technology, engineering, and advanced mathematics.
I — like most rational people — missed the memo about "education" also including programming young kids that it's perfectly normal to pretend they were "born in the wrong body" and can change their names and pronouns — all without the knowledge and acquiescence of their parents.
The above example demonstrates abject child abuse on multiple levels — from forcing an 11-year-old child to choose between obeying — and learning life's lessons from — his parents, or "minding" his teachers, which likely leads to exacerbated mental and emotional issues, not mention a fundamental abuse of parental rights.
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Yet many on the left — if not most — eagerly support and defend such abhorrence. Go figure.
