“Parental rights” started on the Christian fringe — now it’s the GOP’s winning issue – By Kathryn Joyce (Salon) / January 12, 2022
Right-wing Christians have pushed for parental control over education for years. Suddenly it’s the GOP’s main focus
Not that long ago, the notion of “parental rights” as a conservative organizing principle was primarily associated with subcultures of the religious right. In the late 2000s, Michael Farris, founder of the advocacy group Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) as well as Patrick Henry College — the homeschool-marketed institution briefly attended by Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina — started another nonprofit, ParentalRights.org.
That group’s primary purpose was to advocate for the passage of a constitutional amendment declaring, “The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children is a fundamental right,” which no international treaty or law could supersede. Farris’s HSLDA published tip-sheets advising parents what to do “when social workers come knocking” (basically, don’t answer), and took frequent aim at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which Farris claimed would prevent parents from “reasonably” spanking their children and would place decisions about making kids wash dishes or go to church under the purview of an “18-member international panel.” He even wrote a novel with an anti-homeschooling villain named after Hillary Clinton, who upends society by signing the CRC.
But as the last few months — and even the last few days — have made clear, parents’ rights is a fringe issue no more. This Monday, former Republican senator David Perdue, now running for governor in Georgia, unveiled a new “Parents’ Bill of Rights” that would require schools to make teaching materials and other information about educators and school funding available to parents. Perdue’s proposal echoed a federal bill, the Parents’ Bill of Rights Act, introduced last November by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., as well as numerous bills recently passed or proposed in states including Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri, and, as of last week, Pennsylvania.
