FRC Pushes Back on Trans Indoctrination at Dept. of Ed

June 11, 2021

Thursday, FRC's Senior Fellow for Education Studies Meg Kilgannon testified before the Department of Education against proposed changes by the Biden administration that could destroy Title IX protections for girls' sports, result in the indoctrination of children, and entrench harmful transgender ideologies that threaten the health of children and the rights of parents.

As Meg testified:

[G]reat care [must] be taken when considering the needs of children in the K-12 setting. Title IX is based on sex and sex alone. It distinguishes between men and women based on biological sex. Any other interpretation of "on the basis of sex" harms women and girls, parents, and families. Parents who send their children to schools, whether public or private, do not hand over their right to direct their children's education at the schoolhouse door. Parents are the primary educators of children and their best advocates. The best schools and teachers strive to truly partner with parents so that together they can work for the good of the child.

"Expansions of protections" for students can therefore never be legitimate protections if they are achieved at the expense of parental knowledge and consent (not to mention at the expense of other students and staff). To interrupt the bond between parents and children, to insert oneself between a custodial parent and his or her child for any reason, is unnatural and unacceptable. Period.

Policies such as keeping duplicate records that hide information from parents about their own child, allowing children to present themselves one way at school and deliberately keeping that information from parents, allowing name changes, allowing children to access opposite-sex changing facilities and the like, all while keeping parents in the dark -- such policies can never be called protections and are not in the best interest of anyone.

Further, the social transition of children directed by school officials should be instead considered medical treatment because the reason for directing that behavior is usually alleged to be the mental health of the child. Only parents have the right to direct the medical treatment of students. School administrators lack the medical training and professional competency to address those needs. Medical interventions are the responsibility of the parent and the doctor of their choosing.

To read her full testimony, see here.

We also want to thank the many thousands of you who responded to our call to action, made your voices heard, and let the Biden administration's Department of Education know that biology and fairness must be the order of the day, not radical ideologies that harm children and their families. If you stood with us against the Biden administration's radicalism, please know that you are not alone!