Sunnyvale Gave These Parents an Opt-Out From Its Gender Lessons, Then Took It Back

Justin and Rose Taylor did what careful parents do. Their children's elementary school in Sunnyvale, California was teaching gender and sexuality lessons that clashed with their faith. So they asked, politely, to be warned before those lessons and to excuse their first and third graders from them.

For a while, the district said yes. It even told the librarians not to lend those books to the Taylor children.

Then it changed its mind.

The district reversed course, denied the opt-outs, and put it in writing: the lessons are "not optional." The family, with the Becket Fund, sued in June.

Read those two words again. Not optional.

A school district just told a mother and father something true, and I do not think it meant to.

When "inclusive" has room for everyone but you#

The district calls its curriculum "inclusive." Who could be against including a child? No child should feel like a stranger in her own classroom.

But watch the word work. An inclusive classroom, we are told, has room for every kind of family. Every kind but one.

For the one family on the wrong side of that line, inclusion is just the polite word for being shown the door.

The lessons you cannot leave#

The Taylors are not trying to skip one assembly. According to their complaint, the district folds its views on gender into the ordinary day: math, science, history, reading.

When a worldview is stirred into the math, you cannot opt out of the math.

A lesson woven through everything is a lesson you cannot leave.

The part they said out loud#

The county's guidance, the lawsuit says, quotes an activist on the goal: "the struggle is really won in the hearts and minds of the community."

Hearts and minds. Of children who are four, six, and eight.

A school that has set out to win your daughter's heart has already decided what you are to it: the obstacle between it and her.

An opt-out is not a victory#

The good news is real. Last year, in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court ruled that religious parents have a right to notice and an opt-out. The Taylors are standing on it, and their lawyer is blunt: "the Constitution doesn't come with a California carveout."

An opt-out is not a victory. It is a permission slip.

The fight was never about whether the school may aim at your child's heart, only whether you may sign a form to step her out of the room while it does. We argue over the exception and quietly concede the rule.

And a permission slip can be revoked. The Taylors signed one, and the district tore it up. A child learns that too: her parents' "no" lasts only until the school overrules it.

So use every tool you have. File the form, cite the case, call a lawyer. Only do not confuse the tool with the right it stands in for.

The authority no form can grant#

Scripture puts it in one line. "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." (Proverbs 4:23)

Notice who is told to guard it. Not the county. Not the curriculum committee. A child's heart has a keeper: her parent.

The Taylors do not need a judge to grant them authority over their own children. They already have it.

A court can hand back the opt-out. It cannot hand you an authority you were born holding, and no school can take it away.

What you can do this week#

Ask your own district, in writing, what your children are being taught, and to see the materials. Most of us never do.

Then do the thing no curriculum can undo. At dinner or in the car, tell your kids what your family believes about who they are, before anyone else gets the first word.

A child who hears the truth at home first will meet the classroom version as a visitor, not a master.

The district was more honest than it knew. To the people who built that curriculum, your child's formation is not optional. It is the whole point. Neither is yours.

Guard her heart. It was always yours to keep.