Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 07:1 (Spring 2025)
Article: Family Under Fire
Author: Jonathan E. Swan

Eikon 7.1 (Spring 2025) p. 4

Family Under Fire

Jonathan E. Swan

Shortly after the oral arguments before the Supreme Court in United States v. Skrmetti this past December, we decided to devote significant space in this issue of Eikon to the subject of parenting. We did not know then how relevant this topic would be.

At issue in the Skrmetti case is the constitutionality of Tennessee’s law banning transgender procedures on minors. This bill specifically prohibits medical interventions “[e]nabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex,” as well as those “[t]reating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” The plaintiffs in this case argue that Tennessee’s laws violate their parental rights to make medical decisions for their children, and that it unlawfully discriminates on the basis of sex. To put the matter rather bluntly, by assuming the anthropological commitments of transgender ideology, these parents argue that they reserve the right to chemically and/or surgically mutilate their children.

More recently, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving parents in the state of Maryland who sought an exemption for their children from school curricula that featured LGBT themes and characters. According to Montgomery County Public School’s (MCPS) legal defense, “MCPS introduced into its pre-K through twelfth grade language-arts curriculum several storybooks featuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer characters.” According to the school’s lawyers, “The storybooks were added as part of MCPS’s commitment to ‘provid[ing] a culturally responsive . . .

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curriculum that promotes equity, respect, and civility.’” They further clarified that “MCPS believes that ‘[r]epresentation in the curriculum creates and normalizes a fully inclusive environment for all students’ and ‘supports a student’s ability to empathize, connect, and collaborate with diverse peers and encourages respect for all.’” The parents’ request for an exemption from this curriculum is unwarranted, says the school district, since “MCPS made clear to teachers that using the story books involves no instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The logic here seems to be that since these teachers were instructed not to explicitly encourage students to affirm the ideas and lifestyles presented in the books, the school is exempt from the scrutiny of the First Amendment. In other words, overt moral persuasion is not permissible, but the subtle indoctrination of “representation” and the “normalization” of “inclusivity” is. But those with e...