Stopping LGBTQ indoctrination

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun signed Senate Bill 143 on April 22, and it’s an important parents’ rights law that guarantees moms and dads are the primary players in their children’s education and upbringing, thus tempering governmental overreach. The Hoosier State joins at least 32 other states with substantial parental protections in place via statute or court precedent.

The new law, according to the Indiana Family Institute, “enshrines in state law that parents have a fundamental right to: raise their children, pass along and live out their faith to their children, educate their children, and direct the healthcare of their children.”

Specifically, the Indiana Parent Protection Act states “A governmental entity may not substantially burden certain parental rights unless the burden is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering the governmental interest.” The law prohibits the government and any of its entities from advising, directing, or coercing a child to withhold certain information from the child’s parents. It also forbids government denial of a parent’s access to “certain information” concerning a child. Furthermore, the law allows parents “to bring an action against a governmental entity for certain violations.”

The statute also recognizes the rights of the unborn, establishing that the definition of the child in the legislation “includes an unborn child.” These protections are now effective July 1, 2025.

Just last year, an Indiana Catholic mother and father were refused a hearing at the United States Supreme Court when, in 2021, their 16-year-old son was taken from them and placed in state custody. They refused to use the boy’s newly adopted gender pronouns and name, and an Indiana trial court stated the boy “should be in a home where she is accepted for who she is.” He was placed in an “affirming” residence and the parents were given restricted access to their son. This reality is the current working definition of “insanity.”

Laws like SB 143 take on even more importance given that the United States Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor on the very day this Indiana bill was signed into law.

The high court is considering whether parents have the right to opt their children (including Pre-K boys and girls!) out of sexually explicit pro-gay and “trans” reading times in public schools. Montgomery County (Md.) Public Schools in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, argued before the Court that parents do not have that right. Their lawyer insists all students must dutifully sit and listen to these provocative books being read and discussed by teachers—in English class of all places. Did they figure camouflaging the indoctrination as “literature” would attract less alarm?

The ruse didn’t work. Suit was brought by a mix of Christian, Muslim, and Mormon parents when the school district rescinded its previous policy of allowing parents to opt their kids out of the explicit lessons.

So many parents were pulling their kids from the sexual and gender indoctrination, their captive audiences significantly shrunk. As one local Ethiopian Christian mother told The Free Press, “They’re not just pushing to read books. They’re creating an army of our kids. It’s a religion for them. I feel like as a Christian, my kids are getting rebaptized in another religion.” This mom concluded, “They’re trying to replace our values.”

This is precisely why so many parents are angry. And good for them. They are sick of seeing their children used as pawns in a system dead set against them in every way, evangelizing them in a new paganism of gender cosplay and sexual experimentation. Any good parent would say, “Not with my child, you don’t!”

That is why it is good that Indiana now joins other states in shoring up legal protections for parents against the government’s brazen ideological overreach. Parents, and citizens who support them, must grow bolder and more forthright when it comes to their children. There are hopeful signs.

Even the liberal news outlet Vox reported last week’s SCOTUS oral arguments “went disastrously for public schools.” Many, including some Supreme Court justices and governors, are waking up to how parents’ rights are increasingly and ironically being trampled under the oppressive boots of “inclusion” and “tolerance.”

Kudos to Indiana Gov. Mike Braun and the Hoosier legislature. Let’s hope our nation’s Supreme Court will soon give America’s parents similar protections.