An editorial in the Greenville News February 21, 2008, should concern South Carolina’s parents and grandparents. The opinion claimed common ground exists on the issue of homosexuality education in public schools, that there need not be an “all or nothing” attitude regarding this topic for public education.
The opinion editorial began by citing two court decisions and one lawsuit in three states all taking place on January 31, 2008. In a Massachusetts case, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by parents who wanted school officials to notify them whenever same-sex couples were mentioned in their children’s elementary classrooms. On the same day, a lower court in Maryland rejected a challenge by conservative groups to a new sex-education curriculum in Montgomery County that includes teaching “respect for differences in human sexuality.” The third incident was on the same topic but from the opposite perspective. In Florida, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against a high school that reportedly bans all student expression of support for gay rights giving specific examples like rainbow stickers.
The obviously pro-gay agenda author went on to describe what he believed to be an extreme law being proposed in Tennessee that “would prohibit any discussion of sexual orientation other than heterosexuality in middle and elementary schools.” What the author either doesn’t know, or neglected to mention, is that South Carolina has a law like this that extends to all grade levels already on the books, enacted in 1988. The SC Comprehensive Health Education Act prohibits the discussion of alternate sexual lifestyles except in the case of risk of disease in public school classrooms. I, for one, am glad that our state legislature has already safeguarded our children from the discussion of a lifestyle that is neither healthy nor normal. It is bad enough that we have to shelter our children from the borage of television shows that treats homosexuality as though it were just another choice among the smorgasbord of immoral behaviors networks portray as commonplace with no undesirable consequences.
The bigger concern is the rash of judicial decisions rendered and being waged across the country that unashamedly threaten parental rights to choose value-laden educational content for their children. Today parental rights are coming under assault from federal judges who deny or refuse to recognize these rights.
A national parental rights advocacy group named for its website: ParentalRights.org, has a vision of a world where the vital child-parent relationship is protected and preserved. Something that I am sure most of us assumed already existed. However, the legal cases and the threat of international law under a United Nations treaty that they report, has caused this advocacy group to organize and educate the public According to their website, “’The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’, a seemingly harmless treaty with dangerous implications for American families, is approaching possible ratification by the United States.” They go on to predict that If this treaty is made binding for the United States, “the government would have the power to intervene in any child’s life to advance its definition of the best interests of the child.” The scenarios that could occur—and are occurring—as a result of this dangerous notion are both manifold and frightening.
ParentalRights.org’s primary initiative is a petition for a constitutional amendment that defends the rights of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children. This petition is a worthy and timely undertaking and I encourage you to visit their website for more information and to sign on to the petition. Parents need to be proactive before we find ourselves in unbelievable circumstances like many parents who are chronicled on the ParentalRights.org website.
