Misguided. . . or not

A few days after Easter, Kelly Armstrong, the Republican governor of North Dakota, vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature that would have required public schools (and libraries) to ensure that books containing pornographic and other sexually explicit content are inaccessible to children.  According to Governor Armstrong, it was a  "misguided attempt to legislate morality."   Across the miles to the East, some parents were in court trying to prevent their school district from requiring that their sons and daughters be required to read storybooks and participate in lessons promoting “Pride” parades, same-sex marriage, “non-binary” identity, transgenderism and sex-change procedures, and drag shows.  According to them this was also a "misguided attempt to legislate morality" and one which intervened between them and their children in an overreach of law.  Now to be sure, there was no book banning involved in either case but the simple requirement in the first that children under a certain age would have their access to pornographic or sexually explicit content restricted until an age appropriate for it (is there an age appropriate for porn and sexually explicit content???) and in the other to allow the parents to opt their children out of such events, materials, and promotions.  It should have been a no-brainer but it wasn't.  

The schools and libraries of our nation are not neutral places because there is no such thing.  Leaving pornographic material and sexually explicit material on the shelves without age appropriate restriction is not being neutral.  Bypassing parental rights and responsibility so that their children are compelled to participate in the cutting edge of sexual and gender ideology is not neutral.  And, pardon my boldness, but Kelly Armstrong is just plain wrong.  The entire purpose of laws IS to legislate morality.  That is exactly why we have laws against the abuse of minors, violence, murder, defamation of character, rape, public lewdness, etc...  There is no such thing as a morally neutral zone -- not even the college campus and its safe place for students who feel threatened by ideas that conflict with their own.  Nope.  It simply does not exist nor should it.

The last thing we need is a morally free or neutral zone in our schools or anywhere else for that matter.  It may accord with some libertine ideal but it is foolishness beyond idiocy and whoever proposes such is a major league food.  Conservatives need to awaken to the fact that they have no safe place in this debate.  Either you are for children and parental responsibility and choice or you are for the progressive goal of bypassing the parents and instilling an institutional morality which accords with the social mores of the moment.  There is no neutral zone there, either.  Laws exist to impose morality upon the immoral.  That is not the question at hand but whose morality prevails.  If there are parents who believe that porn and sexually explicit material is appropriate for their toddlers, children, and youth, they have every right within their homes to make it available to their children.  The school cannot and should not be an accomplice in this.  If there are parents who believe that porn and sexually explicit material is always inappropriate for their toddlers, children, and youth, they have every right to expect that this will not be violated by another authority.  The school must respect this.  Remember, this is not about a morality neutral zone but a question of whose morality is in play.  

I hate to even think about those parents who would subject their children to such adult and prurient and steal their childhood from them in this way but I cannot abide those on the other side stealing the authority from the parents over their children thus presuming to know better what is good for them.  Where is our common sense?  Once there was a time in which people would have presumed that schools were to be places of learning around a curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Now, it would seem, we insist upon making schools into experiments and labs in pursuit of a freedom which no child really wants or is equipped to deal with and we cover it with the lie that it is morally neutral.