The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that parents may have their children opt out of classes using “LGBTQ” literature they object to on religious grounds. The 6-3 decision has merit, but leaves aside a better solution: the right of parents to opt out of the government monopoly K-12 education system.
The parents involved in the case sent their children to the schools the government wanted them to attend, in their own area of residence. If parents find the quality of instruction to be lacking and opt for a better arrangement, their tax money continues to support the system, hardly a model of fairness or efficiency. (RELATED: Supreme Court Saves Religious Parents From Radical LGBTQ Indoctrination of Their Children)
Tax dollars must trickle down through multiple layers of bureaucratic sediment — federal, state, county, as in California, and local, before they reach students in the classroom. This is not the model in higher education, where the dollars follow the scholars.
Veterans, for example, could take their GI Bill funding to UCLA, Brigham Young, or Columbia University. Dissenting justice Elena Kagan chose to attend Princeton and Harvard Law. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson chose Harvard and Harvard Law School. Justice Sotomayor chose to attend Princeton and Yale Law School.
Former President Barack Obama attended the prestigious Punahou School in Hawaii. He then chose Occidental College in Los Angeles, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School. Yet the former president, like the dissenting justices, backs a wasteful system that restricts choice and now favors indoctrination over education.
Parents nationwide have to wonder if former President Obama and the dissenting justices were ever subjected to books such as Prince & Knight, about two male knights who marry each other; Love Violet, about two young girls falling in love; and Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope. These were the books students aged 5-11 were required to read. These titles, and other LGBTQ materials, are hard to find among works of children’s literature that have stood the test of time.
As parents nationwide should know, religious faith is not required to find LGBTQ material objectionable. As Bruce Bawer (A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society) explains, homosexuality and transgenderism are entirely different phenomena. So the LGBTQ formulation is a construct derived from reality dysphoria, a malaise that has no place in education.
Parents of all belief systems can’t be blamed for objecting to gender indoctrination. The right to opt out should now be extended to the entire government monopoly system. The trouble is that the system remains fully deployed against parental choice. Consider Harvard alum Arne Duncan, President Obama’s choice for education secretary.
In Washington, D.C., the best alternative to dysfunctional government schools is the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships Program, a school-choice program run by Congress. Teacher cartels and education bureaucrats oppose that choice program and all others. Secretary Duncan not only opposed the program but canceled scholarships already granted, a move decried even by the Washington Post.
Duncan headed a federal Department of Education that dates from the administration of Jimmy Carter, his payback to the teacher unions that supported him in 1976. In March, President Trump issued a fact sheet ordering the secretary to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the states.
“I want every parent in America to be empowered to send their child to public, private, charter, or faith-based school of their choice,” the president wrote. That’s not what the woke education establishment wants, so as Trump likes to say, parents will have to see what happens. In the meantime, they can opt out of the gender propaganda the system now inflicts on children. That’s a victory worth celebrating.
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Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.