The Attack on Parental Rights

Canada has long been viewed by many as a land of peace, opportunity, and freedom. That freedom has included the opportunity to raise a family and pass our values and beliefs to our children. Many assume that this is still the case—but that assumption may be overly optimistic.

In 1948, the world was just beginning to recover from the two most horrific conflicts in modern history. The memory of the terror—not only imposed by the enemy, but also by secret police who enforced thought control on their populations—was still fresh. Whether by Hitler’s SS (the Schutzstaffel or “protection squadron”) or Stalin’s dreaded NKVD (Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del or “People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs”), no one under those regimes felt safe. Schools became places where the ruling party imposed its values and philosophies on students, often turning children into their own parents’ betrayers.

With this horror in mind, the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 passed Resolution 217A, also known as The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its authors had experienced or were profoundly aware of how totalitarian regimes had used schools to brainwash children into accepting philosophies and beliefs that were diametrically opposed to the cultural and religious beliefs of their parents and grandparents. The resolution sought to ensure that schools could never again be used to brainwash children against those who had raised them.

The governments of Canada and the United States signed the resolution, fundamentally agreeing to the content therein. When considering the family and the education of children, two clauses are especially notable:

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State (Article 16.3)….

Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children (Article 26.3).

Although our nations agreed to these statements, today we find many school systems openly violating those principles. Not only are schools abandoning a strong knowledge-based curriculum—over the past decade, especially throughout the Anglo-Saxon world, schools have often become tools for social activism, attempting to shape the minds of children into accepting and promoting ideas and philosophies that are often contrary to what they have been taught at home.

Schools and Institutions Teaching Gender Confusion

One may ask, Where has this been leading? A recent article published in Canada’s National Post newspaper referred to a “seismic change” that has taken place in Canadian schools over the last few years.

“Kids were being taught to lie to parents,” said a Calgary mother whose child’s Grade 6 class was told by a teacher that the gender identity of a classmate must be kept from that student’s parents. In another instance, a Toronto mother complained that her child’s school changed her kid’s name and pronouns without ever consulting her (“NP View: Schools trampling parental rights in the name of affirming gender identity,” January 14, 2023).

The article goes on to implicate the Public Health Agency of Canada in this campaign of violating parental rights:

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) also advises schools to implement a “simple, one-stop procedure” for students to change their names and gender on official transcripts and not to “talk to anyone about (a student’s) identity, including parents/caregivers, to whom they have not already disclosed their gender identity.” Instead, staff are told to, “Discuss with them the possibility of rejection, harassment, verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse.”

Health authorities or school systems that make default policies to conceal from parents some of the most sensitive and vital information about their own children are betraying a trust placed in them by those parents—and violating the UN Declaration to which the nation is a signatory.

The same article tells the story of a father who was horrified to find out his daughter, who was identifying as a boy at school, was assigned to a room with three boys in a hotel while on a field trip. In that case, the father found out and the problem was resolved. Also referenced is the disturbing fact that if parents exercise their right to have a child excused from sexual education classes, schools may nevertheless include that student in events like “Gender Splendour” weeks—where guest speakers challenge biblical ideas of human sexual identity and conduct—without parental knowledge.

Executive Director John Hilton-O’Brien of the Alberta-based Parents for Choice in Education, an organization for the protection of parental rights, comments on who is really behind these student choices:

When somebody introduces us to her vegan cat, we all know who is making the choices…. When an adult who is not the parent encourages alternative sexuality in a minor while encouraging them not to tell their parents, alarm bells go off. This is happening in Alberta right now. Calgary’s Metta gender identity clinic is accepting referrals of children as young as five years old, from teachers. Parents don’t need to be in the loop. In fact, Canada’s Public Health Agency enjoins teachers not to “out” such kids to their parents (“Alberta’s gender clinic is out of hand,” ParentChoice.ca, January 19, 2023).

Parents’ Rights to Raise and Protect

It is startling to see how neo-Marxism and other ideologically driven forms of social activism can be permitted to destroy centuries of parental rights that are, in fact, ensconced in law.

In addition to the UN Declaration on Human Rights, most nations in the Western world have also signed The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Canadian government signed this in 1976, and the government of the U.S. did so in 1992, making it part of the law of the land under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. It guarantees protection of the family as well as the right of parents to teach their religious and moral convictions:

The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions (Article 18.4).

How is it, then, that groups of activists are allowed to usurp the rights of parents to raise and influence their children, and to choose the kind of education that they will receive?

What are your children being taught? You have a right to know and a right to make correct and courageous choices for your children—choices that include raising them in a way of life that aligns with biblical values, which will long outlive the present societal madness.