Call it a hoax, scam, ruse, flimflam, chicanery, disinformation, agitprop, or propaganda. Just don’t call it truth. Thankfully, the metaphysical, alchemical “trans” superstition is collapsing all around us, but who will pay the due penalty for the harm done to children; families; and trust in public school teachers, administrators, board members, lawmakers, physicians, and mental health “professionals,” all of whom have been complicit, either actively or through their cowardly silence, in propagating pernicious lies?
Just this week, in a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court held in Mirabelli v. Bonta that parents have the right to raise their children in accordance with their religious beliefs and that schools may not obstruct that right by facilitating or concealing information about a child’s “gender identity” at school.
This case emerged from a shockingly presumptuous California law that took effect on Jan. 1, 2025, prohibiting schools from notifying parents when the school colludes to socially “transition” minors by using incorrect pronouns and referring to students by “trans” names unless a student gives the school permission and even if a parent explicitly asks for such information.
The Court held that “parents who assert a [religious] free exercise claim have sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs. California’s policies violate those beliefs and ‘impos[e]” a “burden on religious exercise.”
Further, the Court held that “parents—not the State—have primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children.’ … The right … includes the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.”
In a press release from the Thomas More Society, which argued the case before the Supreme Court, Illinois’ own Peter Breen, Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation at the Thomas More Society, made clear the implications of Mirabelli:
No more can bureaucrats secretly facilitate a child’s gender transition while shutting out parents. California built a wall of secrecy between parents and their own children, and the Supreme Court just tore it down. This groundbreaking ruling will protect parents’ rights to raise their children as they see fit for years to come.
Rational people who hold the proper understanding that parents have an intrinsic right to raise their children while schools have no such right are aghast at the CA law. How did we get to such a miasmic cultural place that public servants—that is, lawmakers and teachers—believe parents’ rights are subordinate to the arrogant desires of government employees?
R. R. Reno points to one of the causes of this current leftist hubris in a helpful article on nationalism in First Things magazine:
As Christianity’s influence over public life receded, liberalism evolved to warrant plenary freedom to do as one pleases, even to the point of insisting that everyone has a “right” to choose his or her own sex. …
Christ instills in his followers a respect for the natural order of life, which is rooted in marriage and the family. … [B]onds of loyalty engage the heart against the intrusion of the state. As we have seen in recent elections, parents are roused to resist the ideological capture of their children by progressive teachers and school administrators. The natural family, rooted in marriage, restrains the state from below.
Mirabelli v. Bonta is just the latest in a welcome spate of triumphs for parental rights over state power, children’s health and safety over ideology, and truth over lies.
In 2025, the Supreme Court heard another case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, against a school district, this time in Maryland. In 2023 the district, which had been exposing children in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade to material that espoused leftist beliefs on gender and sexuality, rescinded its policy of notifying parents and allowing them to opt out of such indoctrination.
Parents of diverse faith backgrounds sued the district rightly claiming that such a policy “unconstitutionally burdens their religious exercise.”
In another 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court decided that these plaintiffs—the parents—were right. Now schools must provide parents with both advance notice and the option of removing their children from exposure to inappropriate materials on sexuality. And boy, oh, boy does that enrage leftist activists who identify as “teachers” in public schools.
There are well over three million public school teachers in the United States. As “trans”-cultism has been sweeping through our government schools for years now, how many teachers who advocate fervently for “critical thinking” bothered to do their own research before kowtowing to the diktats of leftist activists who demanded that sports, locker rooms, and restrooms be co-ed?
How many of them took the time to research whether affirming “trans” identities helps or harms children before they began using incorrect pronouns, or teaching “gender theory” as objectively true, or reading picture books to kindergartners about cross-dressing children?
How many took the time to read about the risks and harms of cross-sex hormone-doping?
How many of our experts in “social and emotional learning” have bothered to ask whether halting puberty might have social and emotional repercussions for children?
Every parent of current or former students in every school district in which any faculty member or administrator told or is telling any student that any part of the “trans” superstition is true should attend school board meetings and demand a public apology from the administration.
Public school teachers, administrators, and board members are rarely held accountable for the excrement they teach or the damage they do. Heads should roll now that the “trans” cult superstition is collapsing.
Activists, their collaborators—known euphemistically as “allies”—and the moral cowards who have said nothing as the “trans” juggernaut bullied its way through every institution should be held responsible for what they have done or not done.