As parents push back, school boards are being forced to buckle. The lesson here is simply: To change the culture, we must engage it. That means voting in local elections. It means going to school board meetings. It means not remaining silent when these things are happening in our communities. Because when parents to speak up—when they do insist on change—we see change happening, from Arkansas to the United Kingdom. Be encouraged—and get active.
With a seemingly constant firehose of bad news, it is genuinely important to mark our cultural victories. It is true that the LGBT movement has both infiltrated and taken control of the public school system, from the contents of the curriculum to the celebration of “Pride Month.” But it is also true that the growing parental rights movement has created an effective backlash and is steadily accruing victories.
Earlier this month, for example, the Rice Lake School Board passed a policy mandating that parents must be made aware of any student who changes their name as part of “transitioning” genders. Over the past several years, we’ve seen many examples of schools assisting children in “social transitioning” (or worse) without telling the parents. The rationale for this has been the insistence of LGBT activists that parents pose a danger to their children, and that these changes should be hidden from them.
In fact, several transgender activists actually protested the board meeting, saying that the policy was “discriminatory” and that it made students unsafe. Parents pushing for the policy stated that it was essential for them to know what is going on with their children. “Parents have to be informed of or grant permission to literally anything else,” one noted at the meeting.
Parents also scored a victory in Conway, Arkansas, where the school board approved policies that trans activists predictably oppose.