A storm is brewing in North Carolina with national implications. Educators in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City schools (home to the University of North Carolina) were called to a hearing by state legislators for persisting in indoctrinating children on gender and sexuality, in defiance of established state law. How does the left accomplish such a feat on a local level?
A trail of clues is emerging that uncovers the path educators took to circumvent legislation overwhelmingly supported by a majority of North Carolina voters. The Parents’ Bill of Rights (SB-49) was passed in 2023 over then-Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto. It established that schools must notify parents if a child changes his name or pronouns, the beginning acts of social transition for gender change. Furthermore, it prohibits teaching gender and sexuality material to children in grades K-4.
There’s another layer to the impudence of ignoring state law. NC Supreme Court Justice, Paul Newby, ruled in Hajoneppell vs. Guilford County Schools, that parental rights regarding their children’s health care concerns is a fundamental right the state cannot override.
Witness the Frustration
But state law and court rulings went in one ear and out the other of major NC educators. The video clip below of NC House Rep. Brenden Jones at the hearing had half a million hits in a few days. It mirrors the exasperation North Carolinians feel that gender ideology continues to be pushed, in defiance of NC law.
Rep. Jones is seen throwing the obscene books found in a CHCCS library over his right shoulder because the informed public knows that exposing children to gender ideology leads them to question whether they want to swap body parts. Indeed, 75 percent of children and teens who transition socially will move to medically alter their bodies. These grooming techniques work on vulnerable children.
The Gender Clinic at Duke, only 15 miles away, stands ready and willing to receive new children and teens. Social transition is the first step in a marijuana-to-hard-drugs sequence of gender change. There is serious money to be made in medical transitioning of children.
The Chairman of the School Board, George Griffin, was asked to explain why the schools he supervises continue to flout state law. Griffin contradicted himself by insisting these schools were in compliance because they “instituted guidelines” for having a “guided conversation with the child.” Informing a parent is left up to the school’s discretion. But NC state law requires a school to tell the parent, full stop.
The Missing Piece
North Carolina residents want their public schools back. But it will take more than anticipated to return to a straightforward education among these pine trees. How did these educators continue for more than two years with almost no fear that they would be called to account?
Tami Fitzgerald, a lawyer who heads NCValues Coalition, explains. “Bills like the one NC passed are good bills” she says, “but they are largely unenforceable.” There must be civil penalties spelled out so that a parent can sue for damages, not merely issue an injunction. Educators who flout state law should face the unpopular consequence of seeing state funds withheld.
One sobering repercussion of teaching LGBT and gender ideology in public classrooms is that the effects trickle upward. Freshman girls who attend North Carolina State University grapple with non-discriminatory roommate policies where assignments are made “without regard” for gender identity or sexual orientations, and neither a preference or a request for a room change is guaranteed. Based on what she has been taught in earlier schooling, on what basis would an 18-year-old girl think to complain? How would she face the backlash of being branded a bigot?
Republicans, who control both houses of NC legislature, protest loudly, but as long as they fail to include real consequences for ignoring the law, North Carolina’s children will be taught gender ideology. Passing a law does not mean the problem is solved.
Left-wing educators are quick to insist that “no one is above the law.” Their mantra is that the right is “threatening democracy.” Yet they feel free to create their own workarounds when it it suits their purposes. Only teeth in legislation that educators can feel will turn the tide in North Carolina and nationwide.
Paula Rinehart, LCSW, is a therapist in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the author of the book “Sex and the Soul of a Woman.” She writes about family and culture.
