A California school district recently adopted a new tolerance curriculum which includes a book, “And Tango makes Three”. The story — about gay penguins, is geared towards Kindergartners. The curriculum is being billed as age appropriate and claims to teach tolerance about human differences and helps to thwart bullying. The curriculum changes in every grade to correlate with grade level, eventually challenging what children may consider the “normal” family. Every few years the “Gay Penguin” debate resurfaces as parents and school administrators struggle for authority over whether this instruction can be mandated by school officials or if parents have the right to a) know about it and b) opt their children out of it if they deem the material to be inappropriate.

The additional controversy taking place in California is that parents aren’t able to opt their children out leaving parents to challenge the school district with threats of law suits.

According to World Net Daily, the parents claim the California school district is violating federal law, under the following regulations:

Under the regulation, parents must be notified and given an opportunity to opt-out, if the evaluation addresses topics such as:

* Political affiliations or beliefs of the student or the student’s parent;

* sex behavior or attitudes;

* religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or student’s parent, etc.

In the past, debates have centered around this “opt out” policy which allows parents the option — to have their children pulled out of controversial subjects, especially in earlier grade levels.

According to The School Library Journal, Jordan Sonnenblick, an author and spokeman for an organization called Authors Support Intellectual Freedom, “People have a very rigid, narrow view of what kinds of sexuality are allowed to exist.”

But is that the problem here or is it an issue, as many California parents are claiming, of indoctrination at such a young age?

While I support efforts to minimize bullying (and hate speech) within schools, this is a slippery slope when parents rights are circumvented by school administrators. Shouldn’t the preservation of parental rights be respected as a basic freedom? While some parents may disagree with parents who choose to opt their children out of such moral teachings, parents disagree all the time, yet unless the child is being abused, it’s not anybody elses business when and how parents decide to education their children in matter of sexual attraction, is it?

I don’t necessarily have a problem with older children, with higher maturity levels, learning about two Dads or two Moms living together (ie; sleeping together), but why force complicated social issues on mere babes? Must children be aware of everything social and grown up, including sexual attraction? Can’t kids just be kids and not pawns of social justice and political motives? Why can’t they simply wait to introduce such complicated issues to extremely young children?

I also have to wonder, what if a Muslim child’s parent wanted to opt out? Would the proponents of the LGBT curriculum be “tolerant” of their rights or is it only Christian whose rights are being dimissed? Just asking.