Tonight, I will discuss how school policies are attacking parental rights in education that teach students gender ideology and critical race theory. I will describe how ADF protects parental rights and introduce you to the Promise to America’s Parents, which can equip you to defend your rights as a parent or a grandparent.
Parental Rights
To preserve parental rights, citizens must engage school boards, state government, and even the federal government. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the news cycles have communicated story after story of parents persistently asserting and defending their rights before school boards nationwide. But policies that endanger children emanate from state capitols, Washington D.C., and local school districts. Therefore, concerned citizens should engage at every level.
That is why the Alliance Defending Freedom launched the Promise to America’s Parents. Children belong, first and foremost, to their families. In the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, they are not “mere creatures of the state.” The unique and intimate relationship between a parent and a child creates a duty and a corresponding natural right. Parental rights are fundamental rights protected by the U.S. Constitution. However, courts have not consistently protected parental rights against government interference as they should.
Parents need laws that provide government Accountability, Choice, and Transparency (ACT), which is a ten-point plan:
Accountability: Parents and guardians may hold the government accountable for infringing on their rights to care for their children. Parents and guardians should be free to choose a school (including private schools, religious schools, and homeschooling) that aligns with their values. Parents and guardians should be able to determine the instruction that their children receive. Public schools should obtain written consent for education on topics related to Critical Theory and Identity, including but not limited to race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Parents and guardians should be able to opt their children out of any instruction that violates their beliefs and should be able to hold the government accountable if parental rights are violated. Parents and guardians should be able to determine their children’s medical treatment. No parent should face political or ideological barriers in obtaining healthcare for their child.
Choice: Parents and guardians can choose the best education and medical treatment for their children. They also have the right to select the education they believe is best for their children. Parents and guardians should be able to determine the instruction that their child receives. Public schools should obtain written consent to teach Critical Race Theory and Identity Politics. Parents and guardians should be able to opt their children out of any instruction that violates their beliefs and should be able to hold the government accountable if their rights are violated.
Transparency: Parents and guardians have the right to know what their children are learning, their health, and any harm to them. Parents and guardians should have the right to review all curriculum and teacher training materials, receive material updates, meet with teachers to discuss their child’s instruction, and make alternative arrangements to objectionable education. They also should have the right to be informed by school officials about their child’s physical, emotional, and mental health. Parents and guardians should be able to safeguard their child’s personal information. Public schools should obtain written parental consent before collecting information, including, but not limited to, DNA, blood, biometric data, and voice or image recordings. They should have the right to full access to all written and electronic records about their children (including, but not limited to, medical records, discipline, counseling, psychological records, and reports of behavioral patterns) unless the parent or guardian is the subject of a criminal investigation. Parents and guardians have the right to be notified by school employees, medical professionals, and government officials if there is a reasonable suspicion that abuse, neglect, or criminal offense has been committed against their children unless notification impedes an official investigation.
Definition of Parental Rights
What are parental rights? For almost 100 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that parents have the fundamental right to direct their child’s upbringing, care, and education following their family’s values and beliefs. Our country’s history and tradition have demonstrated that parents are the primary leaders of their children, responsible for shaping their morality and character – and, eventually, the adults they become. It is parents who have the most enduring influence on their children. The men and women we become often reflect the men and women our parents are–or were.
Threats to Parental Rights
Parents and guardians bear a moral obligation and a corresponding constitutional right to direct their children’s upbringing, education, and care. Parents love and know their children best and can lead and protect their children’s physical and mental health, moral upbringing, and overall welfare. Despite our nation’s historical protection and recognition of parental rights and parents’ critical role in leading and guiding their children’s lives, public schools and state and federal government policies have increasingly questioned and undermined parental rights. State and federal education policies undermine parental rights by teaching ideologically driven curricula in schools like antiracism, Critical Race Theory, and radical gender ideology.
Gender Ideology Is Destroying Children’s Minds, Bodies, and Family Relationships
Schools and state governments violate the constitutionally protected rights of parents by confusing children by telling them the lie that they can change their sex from male to female or vice-versa. Schools around the country are now deliberately hiding critical information concerning children from their parents – and even using different names and pronouns in secrecy while children are at school. This secrecy prevents parents from playing an active role in the lives of their vulnerable and impressionable children.
When schools socially transition children and affirm a different gender identity without parental knowledge or consent, they are infringing on parents’ fundamental rights and misleading children. It harms children when people tell them that they were born in the wrong body and that it is possible to do the impossible – that is, change from one sex to the other. Humans are born with either XX chromosomes, meaning they’re girls who become women, or they’re born with XY chromosomes, meaning they’re boys who become men.
Encouraging a child to adopt a different gender identity through using opposite-sex pronouns or other names – known as “social transition,” schoolteachers, administrators, and counselors are engaging in a psychosocial intervention that leads to the long-term persistence of gender dysphoria. This process rushes children down a path of medicalization that fails to consider and treat underlying severe mental health conditions that play a role in gender dysphoria. These conditions include ADHD, autism, personality disorders, depression, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and anxiety. Telling children they can become members of the opposite sex through social transition and, ultimately, hormonal or surgical interventions – does not help children; it actively harms them. Gender-confused children need support and compassion – especially from their parents – to embrace their bodies and know how and why God made them.
Learning from Detransitioner Regret
In March, I went to a detransitioner rally in California. A detransitioner is someone who started down the path of gender transition through hormonal or surgical interventions but then chose to embrace their biology and identify with their sex. The stories I heard about what happened to them as young girls and boys – influenced or done to them by the trusted adults in their lives, were chilling. These young people, many of whom were thirteen or fourteen years old when they sought to transition genders, were given cross-sex hormones in a futile effort to change their bodies to align with their desired gender. Some detransitioners even removed healthy body parts to appear more like the opposite sex. There are no words to adequately express the regret they now live with from such radical, irreversible surgeries.
By taking cross-sex hormones (testosterone for women and estrogen for men), children can develop some of the desired secondary sex characteristics associated with the opposite gender. These hormonal interventions are linked to an increased risk of osteoporosis, heart attack, and cognitive impairment and can ultimately lead to sterilization. Doctors claim such protocols are reversible, but insufficient data supports this.
Often, younger, pre-pubertal children struggling with gender confusion take off-label puberty blockers that temporarily shut down the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Gonadal (HPG) Axis responsible for producing estrogen or testosterone, which leads to the development of secondary sexual characteristics during puberty. Again, doctors and activists claim such experimental hormonal interventions only “pause” puberty and have no enduring effects, but there is evidence that they are also not reversible.
When Schools Usurp Parental Rights, They Endanger Children
Several factors can contribute to a child’s struggle with gender identity. This struggle includes the influence of social media, mental health conditions, and “social contagion” – when children in a friend group desire to identify as the opposite sex. These children may suffer from mind-body imbalances (children thinking that their mind can choose their “gender,” which conflicts with their biology). Parents have the right and need to know what is going on with their children at school so that they can help their children understand and effectively navigate these challenges. Parents desperately need to see this information.
Figliola v. Harrisonburg
A school refusing to inform parents of their child’s discomfort with their biological sex is happening in Harrisonburg City Public Schools in Virginia. Last year, teachers in Harrisonburg, following the school system’s modified nondiscrimination policy and subsequent new guidance, immediately and permanently agreed with a student’s expressed gender identity by using any name and pronoun the student requests. Teachers did this while intentionally hiding such requests from the child’s parents – unless school employees determined that their parents were sufficiently “supportive” of their child’s gender “transition.” Following the district’s policy, teachers must, when communicating with parents, actively hide information from parents and only use a child’s name from their official records, not any name or pronouns requested by the child.
Parents need CHOICE and TRANSPARENCY, not SECRECY
Secrecy deliberately isolates the parents from their children when the children need their parents the most. Parents need choice and transparency regarding critical decisions about their child and their identity. The Alliance Defending Freedom represents teachers and parents suing school districts, including the Harrisonburg school district.
Educators should support parents, not undermine them. A teacher’s role is to inform the child’s parents of mental health issues (just as they would if the child had a physical illness). Informed parents can then direct their child’s healthcare according to their values. But in today’s America, schools often reject the idea that parents know what’s best for their children. This rejection is done mainly by school boards that implement policies parents frequently don’t know about because school boards believe schools are “safe spaces” for students to “socially transition,” separated from their parents.
The U.S. Department of Education, the FBI, the National School Board Association, and many school districts treat parents with skepticism and suspicion. They are openly hostile to the religious and moral values parents teach their children at home. They are implementing policies and curricula, including controversial and divisive ideologies about race and gender, over parents’ objections.
Therefore, doctors, counselors, and teachers who refuse to lie because they want to protect individuals from the disappointment and regret of pursuing gender transition find that it leads to a dead end of emotional frustration and physical harm.
The Promise to America’s Parents Protects Parental Rights through Accountability, Choice, and Transparency
Turning back to parental rights and how parents can effectively engage schools, school boards, teachers, and administrators, parents have a right to know what’s happening with their children during their 7 to 8 hours in school. Parents must be proactive in asserting and preserving their rights.
Parents, not schools, should decide on their child’s upbringing and health care and choose the option that best interests them. Suppose a school refuses to give you, as the parent, pertinent information about your child. In that case, it is imperative that you clearly (and, of course, respectfully) engage teachers, administrators, and school board members to ensure that your right to be involved in all critical decisions concerning your child is adequately respected.
CRITICAL RACE THEORY HARMS CHILDREN
The other critical ideological issue impacting parental rights and harming children is Critical Race Theory (CRT). American society became familiar with CRT during the George Floyd riots in 2020. CRT propagandizes children in “critical race theory,” “critical pedagogy,” or antiracism. These racial worldviews see everyone and everything through the lens of race. Rather than focusing on how to seek practical justice and interpersonal or interracial reconciliation, CRT and antiracism ideologies foster racial division, racial stereotyping, and racial hostility. These racialized ideologies deliberately treat students differently based on race. First, it assigns immorality to white children based only on their skin color and attributes a noble victim status to blacks, Hispanics, and people who identify as homosexual or transgender.
This divisive ideology classifies all individuals into racial groups. It identifies them as either perpetually privileged oppressors or constantly victimized members of the oppressed if they’re black, Hispanic, gay, or transgender. Specifically, it assigns white children the titles of victimizer or oppressor based only on the fact that they were born white. For black children, CRT ascribes to them the titles “victimized” or “the oppressed” because defenders of CRT feel that Blacks- will never be able to transcend “systemic racism” or “institutionalized racism.” CRT assumes that racism incurably infects all our social institutions, requiring their dismantling. It imputes racism not only to those who consciously discriminate based on race but also to white boys and men who do not actively participate in the prescribed dismantling of these social institutions. The inevitable result is that it denies agency – “the thoughts and actions taken by individuals to express their power” – to white children and adults and black children and adults.
CRT has redefined racism. It’s not that anyone can be racist or that it’s an evil or sin that affects all people. From the perspective of CRT, all institutions and dominant or elite people groups are inherently and irrevocably racist. CRT claims that racism marginalizes and oppresses “people of color” based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy rooted in white privilege. CRT entirely ignores our county’s notable moral progress since the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1960s.
CRT also disadvantages white students because it attributes a certain level of privilege to them based solely on them being white, meaning these students have “white privilege.” CRT advocates also argue that white people are part of the white-dominant culture, which automatically oppresses or victimizes “people of color” institutionally based on “white supremacy.” This ideology wrongfully separates people who would otherwise be friends.
Labeling white children as oppressors or victimizers encourages them to avoid black and Hispanic children and children who identify as LGBTQ or non-binary. What child wants to hear that they are a hopeless oppressor simply because they were born white – something they have no control over? Simply put, that’s punishment, and that kind of designation is just as racist as it was to segregate blacks from schools, restaurants, and water fountains. For black and Hispanic children, it creates a sense of nihilism, which rejects moral values and society’s valuation of people, objects, and life. Nihilism demonstrates extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns their existence. A true nihilist would have no loyalties and purpose other than an impulse to destroy through self-destructive behavior, given that life is ultimately meaningless. Black and Hispanic children internalize a sense of nihilism resulting from CRT’s suggestion that whites will always oppress Blacks and other minority groups.
C.I. v. ALBEMARLE
Melissa Riley said her son’s view of race changed when Albemarle School district began an antiracism policy. Riley said her son never really saw himself as different from the other kids in school. Sure, his dad is black, and Riley is white and Native American. His mom never thought it was appropriate to box him in with stifling racial classifications. But this is precisely what the Albemarle school district is doing. Melissa said the school had changed her son in ways she disapproved of, filling his head with racial awareness lessons emphasizing oppression and privilege. Her son now sees himself as different from his primarily white classmates: a young black man who will have more struggles in life because of his race and the systemic racism that is endemic in American life.
Then, there’s Carlos Ibanez. Carlos and his wife are doctors. He and his wife immigrated to America from Panamania. A teacher told Carlos’ daughter that she could never succeed because she’s Latina. Carlos and his wife are Catholic and have taught their children that skin color does not determine a person’s worth. Everyone has equal and innate human values, and anyone can succeed. Carlos believes treating people differently based on skin color is wrong, but that is what Albemarle Schools are doing and why ADF is suing them.
What is Critical Race Theory?
Critical Race Theory rests upon the foundation of a central point: that, ultimately, language is the principal obstacle to human liberation. Therefore, Critical Theory and Critical Race Theory seek to emancipate those believed to be “oppressed.” One also sees this example in “social justice.”
Derrick Bell, the intellectual leader of this movement, developed Critical Race Theory in the 1970s. In 1971, Derrick Bell became the first Black professor tenured at Harvard University.
CRT advocates promote race as a social construct created to maintain white racial supremacy. Extreme racist attitudes and beliefs are less common among whites than before the mid-20th century. Therefore, CRT advocates see racism in the United States as standard, not aberrational: it is the ordinary experience of most people of color. Racial discrimination was seen explicitly in racist laws and legal practices—epitomized by enforced racial segregation denying African Americans fundamental civil rights in the South. CRT activists admit these laws no longer exist. Numerous social indicators and disparities demonstrate that most people of color continue to be routinely discriminated against or unfairly treated in public and private spheres.
CRT activists claim that blacks and Hispanics are more likely than qualified white people to be denied loans or jobs. These activists also claim that blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to be unjustly suspected of criminal behavior by police and are more likely to be victims of police brutality. These activists also claim that blacks and Hispanics pay more than whites for a broad range of products and services, like cars or houses.
Defenders of CRT see power hierarchies everywhere, with white people on top and everyone else at the bottom. The evils of this so-called theory are in the details. CRT also rejected the Civil Rights Movement because of the gradual nature of blacks to achieve the rights and protections expressed in the U.S. Constitution. However, this methodology misunderstands how Martin Luther King, Jr. had to appeal to the nation to change its moral consciousness, which is why it took longer than CRT advocates like.
King appealed to classical liberalism. He quoted the Declaration of Independence to show how America wasn’t living up to her ideals. King cited the U.S. Constitution and the Bible–all of which gave Blacks agency to help secure their civil rights. Since the 1980s, classical liberalism has devolved into political leftism, which adamantly seeks redistribution from the “rich” to those with intersectional identities guided by “equity.”
Bear with me here. The concept of intersectionality describes systems of inequality– based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, class, and other forms of discrimination. This assortment of oppression means having multiple victimized identities. Thus, CRT race critics blend differing layers of marginalized identity, making CRT advocates reject agency. They see white people and elites as having to make amends for the “oppression” they caused to marginalized minorities. Essentially, it’s the myth of white messiahs in which whites must address the moral, cultural, educational, and income failings associated with racial disparities.
CRT rejects equality. Equality means equal worth and dignity. CRT advocates don’t think about the multiple racial preference programs that exist for the advantage of those who are overlooked, based not on equality but on equity to overcome racial disparities.
Equity is different. According to CRT advocates, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place. Therefore, society must admit and make social adjustments or grant social dispensations, including reparations, to improve the socioeconomic imbalances of the “marginalized.” The ongoing process requires us to identify and overcome intentional and unintentional barriers arising from “bias” or “systemic structures” that cause injustice. Ladies and gentlemen, this robs people of their free will to achieve what they can. It robs people of merit-based success, which CRT advocates claim isn’t actual. It means all black and Hispanic success is under suspicion, particularly by those who didn’t need racial programs to succeed—be it in academia or the economy.
Maryland does not have a statute that protects parental rights as fundamental. This lack of law should be a top priority for parental rights advocates to get involved immediately.
The Protection of Parental Rights Requires Understanding the Dangers of Gender Theory and CRT and Pushing Back at the Local, State, and Federal Levels
At the federal level, the imposition of gender ideology through Title IX—means no state or local school district is safe. Congress should enact legislation that protects parental rights as fundamental, aligning with the ten principles in the Promise to America’s Parents, which I read earlier. In basic terms, Title IX is part of the Education Amendments of 1972, a Federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding. Under Title IX, sexual discrimination includes harassment based on sex. But, the Biden Administration is reinterpreting what Title IX means. He wants to expand the meaning of “sexual discrimination” to include gender identity, which would prevent schools and colleges from banning transgender athletes. Based on his new interpretation, no school or college that receives federal funding would be allowed to impose a “one-size-fits-all” policy that categorically bans transgender students from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. If this rule is applied, boys and men will compete against girls.
This potential rule change is another reason parents and grandparents must get involved.
Thank you.