Last week, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, which concerned the right of parents to shield their children from certain instruction about sexuality at public elementary schools. As it happens, June was also the 100th anniversary of a related case, in which the Supreme Court ruled against an effort by the state of Oregon—spearheaded by the Ku Klux Klan—to outlaw Catholic schools. Robert P. George examines the underlying, fundamental issues of freedom of religion, and the freedom of parents to decide what is best for their children:
Contemporary progressives . . . view the state as having what amounts to a quasi-parental role. . . . They typically hold that authority over children is shared between the state and the parents. Perhaps the most influential proponent of the progressive position is my friend and former Princeton colleague, Amy Gutmann. . . . Between parents and the state, Gutmann maintains, “we have no a-priori reason to favor one paternalistic agent over another.”
For the sake of the supposed comfort of their socially progressive peers, the government in Mahmoud claimed an interest in encouraging all students to adopt views normatively favorable to and disposed toward same-sex marriage, transgenderism, sexual liberation, and hotly-contested conceptions of sexuality and gender identity—and claimed that parents had no right to stop their children from being subjected to what truly was indoctrination. It is in cases like Mahmoud we see the real reason that many progressives are so keen for organs and institutions of the state, at least when they are dominated by ideological allies of social and cultural progressivism, to “share”—and eventually to override, as Montgomery County sought to do through banning opt-outs—parental authority with actual parents.
Read more on Public Discourse: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2025/06/98043/