Most people, when the family is gathered around the table for a holiday meal, have sense enough not to pick a fight over politics, sex, or religion.
They are family; they can find plenty to talk about aside from the things that divide them. No need for food fights.
Most Republicans in the Ohio General Assembly don’t seem at all worried about picking a fight.
One of the last things they did at the Ohio Statehouse, before the legislature shut off the lights until the new year, was to pass a kitchen-sink piece of legislation called House Bill 8 — now on Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk to potentially be signed into law before Jan 10.
House Bill 8 is a mish-mosh of new rules on two fronts: sexuality and religion. Its supporters call it the "Parents' Bill of Rights,” as if the parents are assumed to share the socially conservative views of Ohio's Republican lawmakers. And we all know that many parents do not share those beliefs.
Opponents of the bill say it is the Ohio equivalent of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
In short, this is what House Bill 8 will do:
- It requires that parents are notified about "sexuality content" in K-12 classrooms so they can opt their kids out.
- It also requires school employees notify parents of changes in a child's physical or mental health, such as a request for counseling. That includes informing parents if a child had gender identity questions or wants to be referred to by a different name or pronoun.
- Republicans in the Senate added to House Bill 8 a requirement that K-12 school districts allow students to leave school during the day for religious instruction, though districts can develop their own policies for that release time. Present law says school districts “may” allow release for religious instruction. House Bill 8 changes “may” to “shall.”
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Critics say the requirement that teachers and school counselors “out” students who may come to them with questions about their sexual identify puts an undue burden on educators. And some say it harms students who have feelings that their parents would not understand or approve of.
Hundreds of LGBTQ activists testified against the bill in legislative hearings, saying the bill would result in fewer resources available to troubled kids.
Republican legislators defended the idea.
Sen. Andrew Brenner (R-Delaware) said parents need to know what their children are being told by teachers and counselors.
"Schools should not have the broad authority to keep secret information about someone else's child,” Brenner said. “Children are not a ward of the state or a school district and are to be raised and guided by their parents.”
State Sen. Catherine Ingram, a Democrat and 20-year member of the Cincinnati Board of Education, strongly disagrees.
“Unfortunately, when they say, ‘Parents' Bill of Rights,’ they only mean some parents,” Ingram said. “We continue to undermine the competency of local control, our teachers, and our children by passing legislation such as this.”
Much of the fire against House Bill 8 is the provision, tacked on in the Ohio Senate, that changes “may” to “shall” when it comes to providing time in the school day for religious instruction.
Making off-site religious instruction mandatory in Ohio’s K-12 public schools would be just fine with a nonprofit corporation called LifeWise Academy, headquartered in Hilliard, just outside Columbus.
There are over 700 public school districts in Ohio. LifeWise Academy — headed by entrepreneur Joel Penton, a former defensive back for The Ohio State Buckeyes football team — operates Bible study classes during the school day for over 160 of them.
LifeWise Academy, launched in 2019, reaches about 50,000 students in 29 states.
Its religious instruction, according to the LifeWise Academy website, offers Bible education that would fit most Christian denominations — those that adhere to the “historic, orthodox Christian beliefs as expressed in the Nicene Creed.”
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There’s no requirement in House Bill 8 that school districts draw upon the services of LifeWise Academy, but Penton’s operation is up and running and there would be few alternatives.
LifeWise Academy is able to do what it does because of a 1952 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that teaching the Bible during public school hours was constitutional.
But the Supreme Court’s ruling set three conditions for religious instruction during the school day:
- that it be conducted off-site;
- that it be privately funded, with no government dollars;
- and that parents can opt out of the religious instruction.
It was that U.S. Supreme Court decision, issued in the year I was born, that allowed my grade school — Cleveland Elementary School in Dayton, Ohio — to send me and my classmates on a five-block walk from the school to what was then Ohmer Park Evangelical United Brethren Church (later United Methodist).
We would walk two-by-two, accompanied by our homeroom teacher, right past my house, where my mother would usually be on our front porch waving as we marched by.
My parents had no problem with this — it was a different time; and they knew that at Ohmer Park, I would be going to Bible study in a church of the same denomination our family attended every Sunday.
Catholic kids in my neighborhood had their own parochial school to attend, nearby St. Anthony’s, where religious instruction was part of the daily routine.
The instructors at Ohmer Park were basically the same people who taught Sunday School there; they were not trained professionals.
And I can recall only one kid whose parents opted out of this — Mike, the one and only Jewish kid in our nearly all Protestant school.
I have no idea what Mike did while we were off at Ohmer Park church, learning about Moses demanding that the Pharoah “let my people go” and parting the Red Sea. I’m sure Mike had already heard all about that.
It will come as no surprise that we are living in a different world today, about a quarter of the way into the 21st century. It is a much more diverse world, especially in urban school districts.
The days of the nearly all-white, all-Christian public schools of my childhood are long gone.
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These days, I am a volunteer mentor to journalism students at Cincinnati Public Schools' Walnut Hills High School. I’m in my 11th year of doing that most satisfying work with the brightest kids I have ever known.
Over the years, on the staff of The Chatterbox, the student newspaper, there have been young people who come from a wide variety of religious backgrounds — Hindus, Muslims, Jewish, Protestants, Catholics and, I’m sure, kids with no particular religious background.
I have a feeling there are a lot of parents with children in that school — and many others, particularly in Ohio’s urban centers — who are going to be opting out of off-site religious instruction, saying thanks, but no thanks to the conservative Republicans of the Ohio General Assembly.
Those parents understand that there is a big difference between the words may and shall.
