If you truly believe in parental rights, you must accept that other parents may raise their children in ways you disagree with

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The resurgent “parental rights” movement has spurred vigorous debate about how much control families should exert over their children’s upbringing and education. While this is not a bad thing, supporters have often defended parental rights selectively, insofar as they entrench conservative values, and ignored the fact that progressive families have the right to raise their children how they see fit, too.

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This should change.

Though parental rights activism has existed for decades, support for the movement erupted in 2021, when American lawmakers began to pass legislation banning “critical race theory” from elementary and secondary schools. These reforms, which have since been expanded to restrict discussions of gender and sexuality, are now active in almost half of American states — and that’s reasonable.

While basic anti-racism and LGBTQ education should undoubtedly be included in school curricula, deeper analysis of these topics inevitably leads to political debates that many teachers and administrators are ill-equipped to handle.

Should racial justice be understood through a progressive lens (as epitomized by the work of “anti-racist” thinkers like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo) or a conservative one (in the tradition of Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele and John McWhorter)? Are radical approaches to gender and sexuality correct, or are “gender........

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