Victories for parents and children

The movement to restore parental rights and the protections of children’s innocence is winning arguments in many cases, and it’s not growing tired of winning.

When the American Library Association decries a bill making its way through Congress as “a dangerous bill inviting government censorship,” that’s a sure sign it’s probably worth supporting. When gay advocacy groups like PrideSource chicken little that this same legislation would usher in a “national book ban,” you can be sure it’s a common-sense measure. When Harvard University’s Kennedy School for Human Rights ridiculously squawks, “The struggle for access to LGBTQI+ representation in books is also a struggle for LGBTQI+ existence in public life,” you likely want to sign up for what they are protesting.

The bill in question was introduced by U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., a wise stalwart in protecting children from radical sexualization. The “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act” (H.R. 7661) is the bill that has the left so distressed, and it is moving its way through the U.S. House of Representatives. This bill would amend federal educational legislation to strictly prohibit the use and promotion of sexually oriented or explicit materials for underage students.

Despite the left’s irrational fears of this commonsense legislation leading to national book bans and government censorship, the bill explicitly protects classic works of literature and art in the Western canon. The bill protects against kids being subjected to “any program, activity, literature, or material that exposes such children to nude adults, individuals who are stripping, or lewd or lascivious dancing.”

Yes, Drag Queen Story Hour, H.R. 7661 is coming for you! It’s also going after the sexually explicit books that concerned parents across the country have been ironically reprimanded for reading aloud at school board meetings, even while these same offended education leaders dutifully defend the placement of these very books in your child’s grade schools. This ironic spectacle is demonstrated here and here. This bill would give schoolchildren the same protections against offensive pornography that school board members demand for themselves at their evening meetings.

The momentum is clearly growing for such efforts.

The U.S. Supreme Court in early March struck a powerful blow against gender radicals in California public schools and across the nation, in Mirabelli v Bonta. California was intentionally not informing parents when students were demonstrating gender confusion and transitioning behaviors. The Court recognized that “California’s policies conceal that information from parents and facilitate a degree of gender transitioning during schools.” The California policies required teachers to lie to parents about the health and well-being of their children. Some of these teachers brought the suit and the highest court in the land agreed with them, shutting down this evil practice.

The Thomas More Society, which represented the truthful teachers, explained, “This is a watershed moment for parental rights in America … the most significant parental rights ruling in a generation.” Add to this, on March 30, United States District Judge Roger Benitez ordered the state of California to pay the plaintiffs nearly $4.5 million covering acquired attorney fees spent in fighting for their First Amendment rights.

Mirabelli rests on another very important SCOTUS decision handed down last June in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which reversed a Maryland public policy that prohibited parents from opting their children out of explicit LGBTQ school curricula. A multi-faith group of parents sued the Montgomery County school district, claiming the policy infringed on their religious freedom and strongly held beliefs.

Justice Samuel Alito authored the 6-3 majority decision for the Court, carefully detailing the problematic ideological reading materials these parents objected to. He explained, “A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill.” The Montgomery County curriculum certainly did that.

Justice Alito added, “At its heart, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protects ‘the ability of those who hold religious beliefs of all kinds to live out their faiths in daily life through the performance of’ religious acts.” And the religious education of their children is one of the most important freedoms, the majority declared.

Finally, a very recent win for parents and the counselors they chose to help their children with identity issues is Chiles v. Salazar, decided on the last day of March. In a remarkable 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling that parents and the mental health counselors they hire for their children can work with them to manage unwanted same-sex sexual attraction and gender confusion. Colorado, along with 27 other states and more than a hundred municipalities, dictated that counselors could only affirm same-sex attraction and gender confusion, and they were prohibited from helping patients resist these temptations. They only allowed the traffic to move in pro-LGBTQ direction. As WORLD Opinions previously noted, “Under a 2019 law, counselors like Kaley are forbidden from engaging in counseling that might help a client align her gender identity with her sex—regardless of what the client wants.”

The near unanimous majority in Chiles asserted, “The First Amendment stands as a bulwark against any effort to prescribe an orthodoxy of views, reflecting a belief that each American enjoys an inalienable right to speak his mind and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for finding truth.”

The cause of defending parental rights is increasingly winning against the radical sexualization of our children by LGBTQ activists. This encouraging momentum should embolden parents to be fierce in the protection and care of their children in the face of these dangerously corrupting ideologies.