Parents today—especially in California—face really tough questions about their children’s education. One of them: Who do kids belong to?
In 2015, California passed what it dubbed “The Healthy Youth Act.” The stated aim of the legislation was two-fold: first, to “provide pupils with the knowledge and skills necessary to protect their sexual and reproductive health” from things such HIV, STDs, and “unintended pregnancy.”
Second, to give students “knowledge and skills” to help them develop “healthy attitudes” concerning, “body image, gender, sexual orientation, relationships, marriage, and family.”
At this point, cries of “Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!” and (kudos if you get that reference) could be heard from Crescent City to Calexico. To “reassure” concerned parents, the law allowed parents to “excuse their child from all or part of comprehensive sexual health education, HIV prevention education.”
But the law explicitly states that this “right” to excuse your child does not extend to “instruction, materials, presentations, or programming that discuss gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, discrimination . . . relationships or family …” In other words, parents in California can opt their kids out of the anatomy but not the ideology.
Well, many parents missed the caveat and operated under the assumption that being able to opt out of what is normally thought of as “sex ed,” i.e., the anatomy part, would mean they’d be able to spare their kids the indoctrination part.
But they were wrong. In late March, in response to a request from members of the Orange County Board of Education, the Board’s general counsel wrote that, under “The Healthy Youth Act,” parents “may not excuse” their children from instruction about “gender, gender identity, gender expression,” and the rest. He added that “the courts have held that parents do not have the constitutional right to override the determination of the state legislature or the school district as to what information their children will be provided in the public school classroom.” All parents have the right to do is “advise their children that they disagree with” what’s being taught.
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Source: Christian Post
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