You Don’t Need Government’s Permission to Parent Properly

Given the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Republicans on social media, you’d think the Governor just signed a bill requiring every kid between age 13 and 18 to get a subscription to Playboy.

He didn’t. What he did do was veto a bill passed by the General Assembly that would have given parents the ability to essentially veto the use of some sexually explicit materials in school curricula. You can read the bill text here.  The outrage was sparked by assignments of a Toni Morrison book that some parents felt was not age appropriate for middle and high school kids.

The veto was received well, and proponents vowed to continue working to get the legislation enacted in the veto session.

Just kidding.  Everybody started screaming that the Governor was a moral degenerate who was forcing their kids to risk being killed or worse, expelled, by reading perverted sex filled books that would turn their palms hairy and make them go blind.

One Republican activist in Virginia Beach wrote “McAuliffe vetoes bill banning pornography from Middle and High Schools. Thanks to all of the Republican Establishment who walked away from Ken Cuccinelli for allowing this to happen.”

Other Republicans wrote similar comments, saying things like “[p]arents[,] the government knows better than you when it comes to sexual educational material and your children,” and “[m]orally debased Governor Terry McAuliffe vetoes legislation that would compel Government Schools to notify parents of sexually explicit curriculum material.”

With this kind of hyperbole, it’s little wonder why we’re so divided as a polity. And all of it is unnecessary, especially if you believe in things like limited government and personal responsibility.

First, let’s clear a few things up. The book that sparked the outrage, Beloved, is not pornographic. It is a book about slavery and the psychological impact slavery had on one family, told through what is essentially a ghost story. Is there sex in it? Yes. Does that make it something that kids shouldn’t read? It depends, primarily on the maturity level of your kid. The book won a Pulitzer Prize, so it’s not exactly Penthouse Letters we are talking about here. The sex (which includes sexual assault of the kind you find in prison) is part of the story, just like it is in many, many works of literature, from the Bible to your average sit-com.

I can understand why some parents would be concerned about their kids reading it. Nobody knows a kid better than their parents, and they can tell what their kid can handle from a maturity perspective. My son loves Star Wars, so we took him to see The Force Awakens when it came out, after I’d previewed it. It was a PG-13 movie, and he’s 5. Could he handle it? Sure. That was a decision I, as a parent, was best equipped to make.

Every parent has to do that. That’s part of parenting. And when it comes to school, things are no different.

It is utterly unfathomable to me that so many parents – most of whom appear to be Republican – seem to think that they need the General Assembly’s permission to exercise what is a fundamental right of all parents – determining what is and what isn’t acceptable media for their kids to consume.  The bill’s patron, Delegate Steve Landes, said as much in advocating for the bill, saying in a statement “[p]arents make decisions every day about what video games kids play, what movies they watch, and what material they consume online … [t]hey should have the same opportunity within the classroom.”

They already do.  That’s the point.  You don’t need government to give you that opportunity.

We complain when government forces us to buy health insurance. Or when government recognizes marriages that we don’t agree with. We scream in defense of our second amendment rights, noting correctly that government can’t protect us at all times so we must take on the responsibility of protecting ourselves and our families using the best tools for the job. We talk about personal responsibility, rugged individualism, and the need for people to be self-reliant, not looking to the government for hand-outs. You hear this every day from Republicans.

Yet when it comes to something like this, we pretend to be completely powerless, as evil teachers indoctrinate our young with pornographic materials as part of a worldwide communist plot to sap and impurify all their precious bodily fluids. It’s so bad, we need the General Assembly to pass a law to give us permission to police what our children read in school. When the Governor vetoes that legislation, there’s nothing we can do but take to social media to whine.

Let me put it bluntly: Get a grip, people.

You don’t need the General Assembly’s permission to determine what your kids read or don’t read. You don’t want them to read this book, don’t let them read the book. At worst, they get a bad grade for not completing the assignment. Or you could always get them the Sparksnotes that probably don’t have all the details.

If it means that much to you, you could always pull them out of public school and its “corrupting influence” altogether. There are plenty of private schools in Virginia – my son goes to one – whether they’re secular or religious. Or you could home school them, ensuring that you know everything they’re learning because you are the one teaching it to them.

The last thing you should be doing is sitting around waiting for government to solve this problem for you. If you are concerned, the onus is on you to solve this problem. Nobody is going to solve it for you.

The Governor was correct in vetoing this bill. And parents would be correct to ignore him and do what they think is right, because ultimately that’s their job. Not government. Not schools and teachers. Parents.

I’m not even going to get into the book banning argument, because that’s beside the point. If you think this book is so bad and so sexually explicit that it’s corrupting your kids, don’t even look at their browser history or their text messages. Your head will probably explode. They’re teenagers, after all. Remember when you were one?

We, as parents, can’t sit around waiting for government to our jobs for us, and this veto shouldn’t stop any parent from policing what their kids read. You don’t want your kid reading this stuff, tell him he can’t.

It’s that simple.

And stop whining on Facebook. Nobody should have to read that.