The hypocrisy of the Left’s secular education demands
Hudson Crozier
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Liberal nonprofit groups are losing their minds over St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma, a charter school set to launch in 2024 with public funding. Together, they are suing officials to make sure public funding is reserved for the leftist education establishment.
The head of one of the plaintiff organizations, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, sounded the alarm with a New York Times op-ed, declaring, “Something deeply un-American is underway in the state of Oklahoma.”
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“St. Isidore … said that it will operate ‘in harmony with faith and morals, including sexual morality, as taught and understood by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church based upon Holy Scripture and sacred tradition,’” she explained. “That’s a clear description of a Catholic school, not a public one.”
“A public school that is subsumed in any one church’s dogma is no longer a public school,” she added. “Yet Oklahoma taxpayers will be on the hook to pay for it.”
The argument for not forcing taxpayers to support what they disagree with morally is understandable. But if liberals really believed in this principle, they would despise what is already happening in public education nationwide.
Schools are constantly exposed for advancing controversial ideas about race and LGBT identities onto children. Conservative and religious taxpayers are “on the hook” for this “dogma” as well. Sometimes, it involves schools paying outside organizations such as an activist group or children’s hospital. Under President Joe Biden, the Department of Education has paid groups that encourage teachers to hide students’ gender transitions from parents.
Americans United proudly embraces socially liberal causes such as “reproductive freedom,” or abortion, and “trans rights.” That’s why there is no outcry about any public school’s philosophical beliefs that, among other things, offensively reduce women to “people who menstruate.” Instead, the group focuses on whatever sliver of influence traditional Christian values still have in public policy.
The activists swear they are tolerant of those values and policymakers who believe in them. “The freedom to believe as you choose does not stop when you participate in democracy or serve in public office,” their website says. “To shield our shared laws from any one religion’s influence, we oppose public policies that force everyone to live by the beliefs of some.”
In other words, your beliefs are fine as long as they have no implications for public life or true substance. Only their beliefs can be that way, they argue. This is the fallacy of the Left’s interpretation of the separation of church and state: It is really about the separation of certain beliefs and state, not just the institution of the church, which most would agree should not be merged with it.
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The argument is ironic on two fronts. First, it is marketed as pro-neutrality when it obviously is not. Second, like the New York Times article, supporters often invoke the Founding Fathers. These men wrote a founding document declaring that laws ought to reflect God-given rights.
No matter what it claims, the Left is not pursuing value-neutral education. Since there is no such thing, neither should conservatives. May the best values win.
Hudson Crozier is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.