{"id":597,"date":"2025-07-03T11:01:53","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T11:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.canoeinstructor.com\/?p=597"},"modified":"2025-07-03T12:18:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T12:18:13","slug":"u-s-supreme-court-got-it-right-on-parental-rights-and-education-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.canoeinstructor.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/03\/u-s-supreme-court-got-it-right-on-parental-rights-and-education-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Supreme Court got it right on parental rights and education (Opinion)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent Mahmoud v. Taylor Supreme Court<\/a> decision affirmed the rights of parents to opt-out of public school LGBTQ+ lessons that undermine a family\u2019s religious beliefs. This is a crucial win for religious liberty and a victory for true inclusivity by expecting that religious families\u2019 beliefs don\u2019t stop at the classroom door.<\/p>\n

This win is very personal for my family as we experienced hostility and were denied the ability to opt-out of radical transgender-promoting lessons<\/a> for my 6-year-old in the Boulder Valley School District. \u00a0My family, like a majority of Americans, believes that our male or female identity is a fixed biological trait that cannot be changed. \u00a0I want my daughter to grow up knowing that God made her wonderfully and perfectly in His image as a little girl. \u00a0No matter how she feels inside, this is how God made her! \u00a0However, our elementary school was teaching little learners that our family\u2019s Christian beliefs about how God made us were wrong and even \u201chateful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just like in the Maryland case that went to the Supreme Court, my district introduced transgender-promoting books and lessons under the guise of creating a \u201cwelcoming classroom.\u201d The school believed that, in order for \u201cqueer\u201d kids being raised transgender to feel safe at school, all other students must be taught to believe and conform to the ideas of transgenderism. \u00a0The lessons went far beyond encouraging kids to be kind. \u00a0In my daughter\u2019s case, the classroom teacher taught students that gender is fluid and based on how you \u201cfeel inside.\u201d \u00a0She then instructed the 6-year-old kids to choose their own gender. \u00a0This is not mere \u201cexposure\u201d to diverse people groups, but rather lessons that were extremely manipulative, age-inappropriate, moralistic and even referred to young students\u2019 contrary faith beliefs as hateful.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court<\/a> correctly identified the coercive and damaging nature of these lessons, stating, \u201cHere, the [Maryland school] Board requires teachers to instruct young children using storybooks that explicitly contradict their parents\u2019 religious views, and it encourages the teachers to correct the children and accuse them of being \u2018hurtful\u2019 when they express a degree of religious confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

In our experience we were met with outright hostility for our Christian beliefs. \u00a0Our family was disparaged in the hallways of the school by the music teacher. \u00a0Activists, in coordination with district employees, organized a hostile mob of transgender activists at a school board meeting who booed and hissed our family for our Christian beliefs–all over an opt-out request!<\/p>\n

We were one of many families forced to leave our school because of the hostility shown to those of religious faiths. \u00a0Some claim that if religious families don\u2019t like these lessons, we must homeschool or pay for private. \u00a0However, excluding the religious from school over objections to controversial lessons is a further means of financial coercion for families to \u201cconform\u201d and accept this radical instruction. \u00a0The Supreme Court agrees, saying \u201cIt is both insulting and legally unsound to tell parents that they must abstain from public education in order to raise their children in their religious faiths, when alternatives can be prohibitively expensive and they already contribute to financing the public schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

A sexuality lesson promoting the radical beliefs of transgenderism to 6-year-olds is highly divisive and inappropriate in the first place. \u00a0However, we celebrate that families now–at the very least\u2014have the right to opt-out of these lessons and can no longer be coerced to abandon their beliefs.<\/p>\n