“Parents’ rights have been curtailed in indirect ways as well, as states, cities, and school districts increasingly promulgate new regulations or policies that prohibit schools from informing parents—unless the child consents—that the child is expressing a new gender identity at school. Schools also integrate gender ideology into anti-bullying programs and general school culture, making it impossible for parents to “opt” their kids out of exposure to LGBTQ or transgender issues while keeping their kids enrolled in public schools.”

Y’all remember around 2003, the media started propagandizing for gay marriage? I don’t mean “reporting on the emerging movement in favor of gay marriage”; that would have been entirely understandable. I’m talking about openly advocating for it, and ignoring counterarguments. I can remember as far back as 2005 being told by fellow journalists that there is no argument against it other than the naked assertion of bigotry, and that we were under no more obligation to be fair and balanced in our coverage of the issue than we would be if we were covering the Civil Rights movement.

This wasn’t in 2012 or thereabouts. This was in 2003-05, in journalism circles. And now, that view is mainstream. Don’t you remember the line about how this was only about giving the nice gay neighbors a chance to find some stability in their relationship, and that people who said otherwise were just cruel homophobes who were trying to scare people? Well, the script worked so well last time, why not try it again? That’s what’s happening. This is the Law of Merited Impossibility in action.

Take a look at Margot Cleveland’s piece on how the Indiana House gutted an informed consent bill that would have required public schools to allow parents to inspect educational material used to teach their kids about human sexuality and gender identity. The bill would have required schools to obtain signed parental consent before teaching kids about any of this stuff.

The state Senate passed the bill earlier this year by a comfortable majority. But the House Education committee — controlled by Republicans, note well — gutted it. Here’s Cleveland:

What does that mean? Schools may teach children as young as age five that a boy can become a girl or a girl can become a boy. Teachers may tell students that they must refer to a transgender student as belonging to a false sex and using incorrect pronouns. In other words, it allows exactly what transpired in a California kindergarten in August.

As I explained at the time, parents in California, as well as most other states, have no ability to prevent this type of indoctrination in public schools because “gender identity” is not considered “sex education.” In fact, in opposing Senate Bill 65, the ACLU of Indiana used this point to argue that the law should be scrapped, tweeting, “[g]ender pronouns are not sex education. Learning how to treat transgender people with respectful language should not be controversial.”

What the ACLU calls “respect,” however, is a demand for science denial and heresy. The Indiana legislature had a chance to prevent the public-school system from steamrolling parents who refuse to submit to the latest idolatry. Unfortunately, the House Education Committee bowed to the god of political correctness when pressured by LGBT activists. It’s a repeat pattern in a supposedly socially and fiscally conservative state with a decade-long GOP majority that in 2015 famously capitulated to LGBT activists in reversing a religious freedom bill to strip potential legal protections from religious people while extending extra legal rights to LGBT people.

Read the whole thing. 

Where are the Indiana conservatives? Where are the state’s Catholic bishops, its Evangelical pastors? Or is this just one more sign that moral and religious conservatives should abandon the public schools in states where legislators have capitulated?

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