Maryland school ruling should serve as a warning to parents

The latest news involving the usurpation of parental rights is a disturbing story out of Maryland’s Montgomery County school district. A district judge has ruled that parents cannot opt their children out of curricula that uses books with “references to . . . gender transition and pronoun preference.” The case came about because this school district recently introduced into its curriculum 22 books—for pre-K-8^th grade—that feature these themes. Parents now plan to appeal the ruling.

Federal court judge Deborah L. Boardman, who made the ruling, stated that the parents’ “asserted due process right to direct their children’s upbringing by opting out of a public-school curriculum that conflicts with their religious views is not a fundamental right.”

You read that correctly: Judge Boardman ruled that opting your young child out of a program that includes books that teach gender transition and the use of different pronouns is not a right of parents.

If it’s not a parent’s right, then whose right is it? The school? This seems to be the assertion—that schools can teach what they want and when they want to—and that parents can do nothing about it.

Our rights, increasingly, are being tossed aside in a brazen attempt to indoctrinate our children into a culture that denigrates the family, destroys the innocence of young children, and pushes an anti-life agenda that teaches that maiming bodies is acceptable.

This is a travesty of epic proportions. Our children are too valuable to allow their education to be taken over by those who care not for our children’s well-being but only for their own social or political agenda.

Kudos to the parents who stood up for their beliefs, but they—and we—will not and cannot stop fighting because of one bad ruling. And every single parent out there needs to join in the fight, for when it comes to sexuality, parents have an absolute right to know what’s going on in the schools, to approve of what is being taught, and to say “no,” especially when that teaching flies in the face of science.

And that is certainly what these teachings do. Barring some incredibly rare chromosomal abnormality, people are born either male or female. Those chromosomes are in every part of our DNA. This isn’t opinion; it’s science. And we can see differences between males and females in more than just the reproductive organs. The National Museum of Natural History emphasized this fact, stating that “males tend to have larger, more robust bones and joint surfaces, and more bone development at muscle attachment sites.” It goes on to say that “the pelvis is the best sex-related skeletal indicator, because of distinct features adapted for childbearing. The skull also has features that can indicate sex.” A National Library of Medicine article looking at the differences between males and females for health reasons stated that “there are multiple, ubiquitous differences in the basic cellular biochemistry of males and females that can affect an individual’s health.”

Thus, books that teach that a male can have surgery and become a woman, or a woman can have surgery and become a man, are based on lies. Yes, people can give the outward appearance of the opposite sex, but they cannot actually become the opposite sex.

Instead of thrusting this agenda upon our children, schools should teach them respect for their bodies and to love who they are as a person. They must teach them that their likes and dislikes have nothing to do with whether they’re a male or female but are simply a part of their uniqueness as human beings. We all have a wide range of likes, dislikes, preferences, skills, and talents. Cutting body parts and ingesting hormones in an effort to search for a different identity is not only wrong and irresponsible, but it’s child abuse. And if the current plethora of detransitioners is any indication that attempts at changing some sex organs are wrong, then we have quite an awakening ahead of us.

Parents, let this ruling be both a warning and a wake-up call. Pay attention to what is going on in your children’s schools. Read through their curricula and assignments. Talk with the teachers. Talk with your children about what the teachers say. Go to school board meetings. Become involved. Speak out against objectionable content. School boards, administration, and teachers may try to bully you, but do not give up your rights as a parent. Protect your children in the classroom.

Our children have the right to attend a school where they learn math, English (including the correct grammar), history, physical education, and scientific truths. Teachings about gender-change operations and gender fluidity have no place in schools. Our children don’t need to change who they are; they need to love who they are.