Educational Disputes With Religious Angles Central To GOP’s Agenda
(ANALYSIS) With Donald Trump escaping death by a couple inches, it will be hard for Republicans, and Americans generally, to focus on the business at hand at this week's Milwaukee convention.
But among other things, delegates must approve the 2024 GOP platform. Though its Trump-aligned softer abortion stance dominates news coverage, don’t miss that educational issues get far more platform attention than abortion, and that both topics matter to legions of churchgoing voters.
The Republicans vow to “close the Department of Education,” abolish “Teacher Tenure,” enact “Universal School Choice in every State,” ensure equal treatment to “Homeschooling Families,” stop “taxpayer-funded schools from promoting gender transition” and inappropriate “gender indoctrination.”
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They pledge to “keep men out of women’s sports” and “ban taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries.” And they plan “a new Federal Task Force on Fighting Anti-Christian Bias.”
Also this: “Republicans will champion the First Amendment Right to Pray and Read the Bible in school, and stand up to those who violate the Religious Freedoms of American students.” It’s unclear what change this would mean since federal courts already defend students’ voluntary religious activities during free time on campus, while barring public school endorsement of particular religious beliefs and rituals.
K-12 public schools, which at one time united local communities, are now a central aspect of America’s polarized culture. On partisan politics as opposed to the cultural aspect, the National Education Association, which encompasses 3 million teachers, endorsed Joe Biden as early as April, 2023, and has done the same for many prior Democratic candidates for president.
A Pew Research Center polling report last year portrayed a stark partisan divide. Among Democrats, 72% said K-12 public schools have a positive effect on the nation, while 61% of Republicans saw a negative effect. Again, 62% of Democrats were favorable toward the federal Department of Education while 65% of Republicans were negative. Among parents of K-12 students, 23% of the Democrats felt that parents do not have enough influence on what schools teach, compared with a substantial 44% of Republican parents.
Just so, the Republican platform’s chief educational theme is “Parental Rights,” which taps into grass-roots anxiety, especially among energized conservative religious voters, about curriculum trends and policies in public schools that continually provoke fights in American towns. At the state level, for instance, conservative Florida and liberal New Jersey have struggled over the content of sexuality instruction and what grade levels are appropriate.
A fast-rising, central player in these debates is the Florida-based Moms for Liberty, which was only founded in 2021 and rapidly expanded with chapters nationwide to rally protesting parents and recruit and train school board candidates. The group’s stated purposes are not explicitly religious, but express the views of many devout conservatives.
The organization’s National Summit in Washington, D.C., from Aug. 29-Sept. 1 should be politically interesting this election year. After all, its 2023 gathering featured Republican candidates Trump, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as Florida Congressman Byron Donalds and Jewish talk-show host Dennis Prager, who often addresses moral and religious concerns.
Inevitably, Moms for Liberty’s activism faces vigorous criticism, neatly elaborated in this depiction of “extremism” by Glenn Altchuler, professor of American studies at Cornell University.
The GOP platform addresses the hot topic of the moment, stating that the party will “reverse Biden's radical rewrite of Title IX Education Regulations, and restore protections for women and girls.” This is a major emphasis of Moms for Liberty members and like-minded organizations.
Title IX refers to a section of the 1972 educational amendments to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It says no person in a school receiving federal funding shall suffer discrimination or be denied benefits “on the basis of sex.” Most schools and colleges get some federal money and are included. Among other things, this law dramatically boosted women’s athletic programs.
In April, the Department of Education issued a “final rule” on discrimination policies that go into effect Aug. 1. In 1972, “sex” discrimination obviously referred to biological females’ rights in comparison with males. But the Biden administration’s new policy adds that the law forbids discrimination based on “sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics” without seeking such legislation from Congress.
If you wade through the 1,577-page text, as this writer did, you can imagine the jockeying by lawyers, bureaucrats, legislators and judges for years to come on how the Democrats' new discrimination policy will be understood and enforced. In addition to transgender students who are biologically male competing in women’s sports, there are the disputes over girls’ privacy in locker rooms, showers and rest rooms, and much else.
On July 11, Republicans in the U.S. House passed by a party-line 210-205 vote a bill to jettison the rewritten rule. Thirty Republicans are co-sponsoring a Senate version of the bill (which President Biden is certain to veto if it ever passes).
Conservative victories seem more possible in federal court suits against the 2024 reinterpretation of the 1972 law, in which Moms for Liberty and member parents are among the major players. Press reports say 26 states with Republican attorneys general have filed suits to temporarily block the new rule from going into effect. The most recent injunction involves Alaska, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming, with other temporary court injunctions covering Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
A related venue for conflict is curriculum materials. The conservative National Review reports that one major educational publisher, the Scholastic Corporation, is promoting use of “LGBTQIA+ stories” for various age levels. The company says educators “are disrupting the status quo that implies being cisgender, heterosexual and allosexual are the default” and “showing children an expanded way of thinking and being that validates all children and people.”
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.