In Loco Parentis: Emphasis on “Loco”

Mary Kochan

Something happened in the Georgia legislature this last week that garnered national attention. The Georgia House passed a bill Wednesday that would require school students to notify their parents before joining any school clubs. The legislation would also “allow parents to block their children from joining clubs they do not approve of.”


The mind just reels. Didn’t parents already have the right to forbid their children from any extra-curricular activity they objected to?

The bill originally called for the schools to obtain written permission from parents before the kids joined a club, but some of the local school boards objected to that, citing paperwork concerns. So instead the responsibility now falls on (1) the kids who are supposed to notify parents and (2) the parents who must then notify the school if they object to their kids’ participation.

In the highly unlikely event that a teenager disagrees with his or her parents about the choice of extra-curricular activities and (even more rare, I know) that the child lies to the school about having permission, there doesn’t seem to be any protection granted to the parent’s right to know what is going on with the child in order to exercise the generous allowance of parental disapproval given by the Georgia House to Georgia parents.

Several newspapers reported that the bill “caught flak from gay advocacy groups, who charged that it was aimed at a growing number of gay-straight student alliances in schools across the state.”

In other words, the gay advocacy groups do not want parents in Georgia to know what their children are doing because if the parents know, the parents might object. In fact the parents might even stop their children from participating in things to which the parents object and this would be bad.

The utter disdain the gay advocacy groups have for parents has become transparent to an amazing degree. They do not even bother anymore to pay lip service to the idea of parental rights — except when they are advocating for their own right to be parents, if they want to be and by whatever means.

This should be a warning to all parents. If you think that there is some automatic right for you as a parent to know what is going on with your child at school, you had better wake up and realize that that is not the case. Gay advocacy in the schools has become more and more entrenched and pernicious. Understand that if you are not perceived to have right to know, then you are an expendable entity who can legitimately be lied to by your child, with the collusion of adults in the school system.

Let me detail for you how the process goes. A child expresses interest in, oh, for the sake of argument, let’s say, the Gay-Straight Student Alliance at his or her school. Now there could be numerous reasons for this, ranging from recruitment by someone who is already a member, to idle curiosity, to questions about sexuality. Yet this child may also express that his or her parents would not approve of membership in such a group.

The intention of the group however, is not to support your decision in the matter, but to grow the group. You are quite simply wrong if you do not allow your child to join the group. Just the fact that your child expresses that you might not approve would be enough to make you wrong. You are morally evil. As a moral evil, your position and your influence over your child must be defeated. The obvious moral evil of ever-so-subtly suggesting to your child that he or she disregard your backward scruples and lie to you about involvement with the group pales in comparison to your much worse “homophobia.”

If you do not understand how the gay advocates think, you will not understand their desperate fascination for the next generation and their intense desire to draw your children into their sphere of influence — with or without your approval.

• © Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
  
  
  Mary Kochan, Senior Editor of Catholic Exchange, writes from Douglasville, Georgia. Her tapes are available from Saint Joseph Communications.
  

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