Here’s a question that I heard recently from a young person down here in Bible Belt country: Why do students at (insert public school) need permission forms from their parents and a doctor to take (insert over-the-counter medication), but the school can assist a student’s efforts to change her gender identity while keeping that a total secret from the parents?

Obviously, something had changed at this school. The crucial question was whether parents had any right to shape or attempt to influence the education — or the moral and physical transformation — of their child in this setting controlled by the state and funded by their tax dollars. Yes, there are religious doctrines involved in many or even most of these cases.

Here’s the question we discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast: Are media reports about this issue starting to turn parental rights into “parental rights,” complete with those prickly “scare quotes” that have turned references to old-school religious liberty issues into so-called “religious liberty” issues. Click here to listen to that podcast.

You can find traces of this conflict if you dig deep enough in a recent New York Times story with this double-decker headline:

The Unlikely Issue Shaping the Virginia Governor’s Race: Schools

Virginia Republicans in a tight governor’s race have been staging “Parents Matter” rallies and tapping into conservative anger over mandates and critical race theory.

The team behind this fascinating Times story didn’t spot the obvious religion ghost in this story. But this story didn’t attempt to turn these standoffs into libertarian dramas in which Trumpian parents are only concerned about COVID-19 conflicts about masks and vaccines (see a related Washington Post story, for example).

No one denies that COVID-19 issues are flashpoints, right now. It would be stupid and inaccurate to leave that material out of these stories. But note this crucial block of material in the Times feature:

… Fights over evolution to desegregation to prayer, education battles have been a staple of the country’s divisive cultural issues for decades. But not quite like this.

After months of closed classrooms and lost learning time, Republicans in Virginia are making the schools the focus of their final push to capture the governor’s office, hoping to rally conservatives around both their frustrations over mask mandates and mandatory vaccinations and their fears of what their children are being taught.

Vocal groups of parents, some led by Republican activists, are organizing against school curriculums, opposing public-health measures and calling for recalls of school board members. And Mr. Youngkin, a former private equity executive, has capitalized, seizing on conservatives’ concerns about instruction on race and the rights of transgender children to argue that Democrats want to come between parents and their children’s education.

What can parents do? Democratic incumbent Terry McAuliffe, during a debate, said:

“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,” adding, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Asked in a subsequent interview whether parents should have buy-in on a school’s curriculum, McAuliffe doubled down: “Listen, we have a board of ed working with the local school boards to determine the curriculum for our schools. You don’t want parents coming in in every different school jurisdiction saying, ‘This is what should be taught here’ and, ‘This is what should be taught here.’”

As we would say down here in East Tennessee, “Them’s fightin’ words.”

In addition to the COVID fights, some of these battles between parents and school officials focus on the complicated, and inherently secular, doctrines of Critical Race Theory. The problem here — for Muslims, Orthodox Jews and traditional Christians — is that it’s impossible to have serious talks about systematic racism without making references to, well, “sin” and the brokenness of all human cultures.

Ponder this: Could someone, at this point, propose — for public, not Christian, schools — a curriculum that uses the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as the lens through which to view issues of race and social justice?

I would assume not, and with good cause. At this point in our nation’s life, it’s probably impossible to create secular materials about racism that would be acceptable to traditional religious believers. At the same time, a curriculum framed with wisdom from Martin Luther King or other Black church sources would, for obvious reasons, clash with the parental rights of agnostics, atheists and some religious liberals.

That’s complicated. Journalists covering these clashes need to be very careful when discussing the core beliefs and concerns of people on both sides.

This leads us to the bleeding edge material of this battle over parental rights. Here is some rather typical material, drawn from reports by Tallahassee Reports. The conflict focuses on concerns by a “Mr. and Mrs. Littlejohn” about how school officials are handling gender issues with their middle-school daughter. Here’s a key block of material:

The conflict began in August 2020, when the parents told their daughter’s teacher about her gender confusion and explained their daughter was receiving counseling to guide her.  They explained to the teacher their daughter would be allowed to adopt a new nickname at school if she desired, but they had not consented to her changing her name or pronouns.

Several weeks later, the parents discovered by the admission from their daughter that several school staff members met with her to note such things as what bathroom she wanted to use and what sex she wanted to room with on overnight trips. During these actions by school officials, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Littlejohn had received any communication from the school regarding a meeting involving their daughter.

After the Littlejohn’s received a copy of the “LCS Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Gender Nonconforming and Questioning Support Guide,” during a meeting with school officials, they were alarmed by its contents. 

The guide claims that under federal and state law, parents are not to be informed if a child identifies as transgender, which restroom the child chooses to use, and the child has the right to keep their chosen gender identity from their parents.

Here’s a key quote from the school’s guidelines on this subject:

Outing a student, especially to parents, can be very dangerous to the student’s health and well-being. Some students are not able to be out at home because their parents are unaccepting of LGBTQ+ people out.

Will journalists be able, in light of recent trends in modern newsrooms, be able to cover these stories in ways that accurately reflect the concerns and beliefs of people on both sides?

Or will, to use a common GetReligion term, “Kellerism” kick in — turning the rights of parents into so-called “parental rights”?

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FIRST IMAGE: Illustration posted by the Nigel Burns law firm, with material about family law issues.