Parents’ rights? What does that mean?
I understand what the words mean, that parents have rights concerning their kids. But what does that look like? What rights? What if what they see as their rights infringes on the rights of parents who don’t agree with them?
Up to now, probably one of the more grating things about the parents’ rights crowd is their position that their rights take precedence. That their rights are based on a morally superior position and lifestyle. That public schools, where so many parents send their children and so many good teachers work hard to help a wide range of students, are nothing more than, as one conservative home-school leader said, a “godless monstrosity,” that’s “directly attacking the Christian worldview.”
Whatever the hell the “Christian worldview” is.
Now there’s something even more disturbing. The Washington Post reported that a group of very wealthy “Christians” are working toward gutting public education funding by pushing legal cases that could allow our corrupt U.S. Supreme Court to take billions of our taxpayer dollars and hand them over to parents so they can send their children to private schools or home-school them at their kitchen tables.
Here’s what’s going on:
There’s a group called Ziklag that’s devoted to expanding Christian influence over American culture and government. This includes pushing for schools that welcome prayer and “a conservative, biblical worldview in science, humanities, and the arts,” the Post reported.
Ziklag is a biblical word, which is fitting because when you’re planning to screw over kids and taxpayers to get what you want putting a biblical name to it might make it kind of okay in some people’s minds.
Anyway, this collection of high rollers is restricted to people with a net worth of at least $25 million. One of their leaders is Peter Bohlinger, a Southern California real estate magnate. Remember that name.
During 2021-22, Ziklag gave about $950,000 to an organization called the Alliance Defending Freedom. The plan is for ADF lawyers to file lawsuits claiming that schools’ teaching about gender identity and race are unconstitutional, with the hope this will lead to a Supreme Court ruling the declares a constitutional right to vouchers for private and home schools.
If this sounds familiar that’s because it’s the same method conservatives used to get Roe v. Wade overturned: Get cases in the judicial pipeline, push them until they’re in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, and let this historically corrupt panel do the dirty work.
Ziklag’s education committee has estimated that the public education system could lose about $238 billion a year if their plan works – about a third of its total funding.
Back to Bohlinger. Here’s what he said: “Our goal is to take down the education system as we know it today.”
It goes without saying that this will hurt our poorest schools, students, and citizens the most, but the hell with them. Right?
I guess God really must work in mysterious ways. Destroy the lives of kids who already have the odds stacked against them so the morally superior crowd’s children can avoid the damage caused by the countless number of sinful, evil, hedonists populating our public education system.
This is driven by these people’s anger over things like Covid-19 mask mandates and how schools are handling Black history, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and their irrational fear that their young, impressionable offspring would be permanently altered and maybe even doomed to eternal damnation if they were exposed to just the very mention of these subjects. Because, I guess, God wouldn’t want them to actually learn something about people who might be different than them-- even though he created these same people -- or the tortured history of those who have a different skin tone and are still suffering in some ways for their pigmentation.
Jesus, save us.
How nuts is some of this? Featured prominently in the Post’s report is a guy named Michael Farris, a Christian lawyer who’s called the most influential leader of the modern home-schooling movement.
Farris and his wife have 10 kids. The Post said that in 1980 they pulled their oldest child out of kindergarten after two months. This was “their first and only experience as parents of a public-school student.”
After that, they moved to a different part of the state and enrolled her in a private Christian school, only to eventually remove her from there and home school her because they were concerned that she was being unduly influenced by other 6-year-olds.
Yes, godless 6-year-olds. Those bastards.
By the way, here’s something to remember about home schools from the Post: “There is little to no regulation of home schooling in much of the country, with no guarantees that kids are learning skills and subjects to prepare them for adulthood – or, for that matter, learning anything at all.”
Not surprisingly, the Republican Party is all on board when it comes to parents’ rights. Fundamental parental rights measures have been proposed or enacted this year in more than two dozen states, the Post reported. In March, a federal Parents’ Bill of Rights passed the GOP-controlled House.
Give me a break. Like the Republicans give a rat’s ass about education when their greatest fear is an educated, informed public capable of critical thinking and understanding their party’s out-of-touch political positions, anti-democratic underpinnings, and the lies they tell to try to pull the wool over our eyes.
No, this is just another front in the culture war the GOP continues to gin up to try to divide us. Part of their relentless pursuit of getting white people who don’t benefit from their policies to vote for them. If you don’t see that, I don’t know what to tell you.
You can read the Post’s story here.
***
“Our goal is to take down the education system as we know it today.”
A few points. First, the Post reported that legal experts said that even if the Supreme Court’s conservative majority struck down the school policies being challenged, it’s unlikely the justices would upend America’s education landscape by declaring a constitutional right to public funding for private and home schooling.
That’s good to know, but do you really trust this blatantly corrupt, ideologically driven court to not take a hatchet to our public education system in service to a bunch of religious fanatics? I don’t.
Second, I’m sick of hearing about parents not having rights concerning their children’s education when they have all the rights they need. School districts are political entities. Residents in a particular school district vote on who gets to be on their school board, which has the ultimate authority in running the schools. They can even run to be on the board themselves if they want.
Plus, school boards are subject to various laws of transparency and operation just like any other governmental body. And parents have avenues to communicate with the board and the administration and staff it supervises.
Third, government has a responsibility to provide public education. School districts are ground zero for that, with state and federal government part of the mix. Handing out vouchers is shirking that responsibility. You have no business being in elected office if public education isn’t important to you, and if you’re not committed to making it work. If you aren’t smart enough to see the payoff in a strong investment in public education then get out of the way for those who do.
Last but not least, we have a principle of separation of church and state in this country. The Farrises and Bohlingers of this world want to tear this wall down. People like that want to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else. They’ll claim that you living your life based on your beliefs is an infringement on them. That those who don’t fall in line are rightly marginalized and deserving of the consequences that entails.
“Our goal is to take down the education system as we know it today.”
They’re coming folks. Their coming for your kids and your schools. They’re coming for you, your family, your friends, and you community if you don’t conform to their beliefs. If you don’t bend to their will.
And they’ve got money to burn. They always will because the rich see causes like this as a way to help Republicans gain the control they need to cut their taxes, slash the social safety net that those same taxes pay for, and pass legislation that helps businesses and ensures our wealth gap will continue to grow in their favor.
It’s one big con. The “God-fearing” fanatics get power. The rich get richer. And the people they hate – like the poor and the LGBTQ community – get ground down even more. You see, that’s how the rich “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” By tramping down on the collected neck of the rest of us.
And to hear them tell you, this is all their God-given right.
The thing is, I don’t know what God they’re talking about.
***
Thank you for reading my post. You can see more of my writing on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. Also, please check out my video blog: The 3:13 on Politics.