Does the freedom to listen or not listen fall under our rights of free speech? Yes! If I am watching something on TV that I find offensive or objectionable, I can flip the channel, turn off the boob tube or mute the box. These actions happen all the time in our free society.

Here’s something else that happens every day in our public schools. Teachers shower their students with their extreme political views, and those children are obliged by law to sit there, exposed to these unwelcome rants. Do the young have any recourse?

The radically left Human Rights Commission tells us that every child has the right to change his gender and orientation at a tender age. It argues that parents who oppose such re-definition are guilty of abuse and deserve to lose their parental rights.

The groomers and LGBTQ crowd want our children to be empowered to explore their sexuality. Does their broadmindedness include the option for children to say NO?

Image: Classroom by Drazen Zigic.

Schools around America now feature safe places where students unsure about their sexuality can flee to escape the “oppressive heterosexual norms of society.” However, these “oppressed” students represent a minuscule percentage of the student population. As we pat ourselves on the back for having such safe places, we should ask ourselves where does a “straight” student go when he or she feels overwhelmed by the leftist WOKE crap students endure in school?

Does it follow then that a young student subjected to teaching that varies with his or her deepest moral beliefs should be able to leave the offending instruction and go to a safe place in school where he or she will be removed from force-fed leftist polemics?

In our free society, we justify compulsory public education as a necessary exception to freedom because we are preparing the young for citizenship. We allow those who claim to be sexually unsure to leave class if they feel unsafe. Shouldn’t we afford all students the same option?

In times of warfare, when we have drafted America’s young to fight, people who have moral or religious objections to killing were given the option of becoming conscientious objectors. In the Culture War we find ourselves in, do students have the right to reject teaching that clearly offends the moral and religious values of the student?

Dr. Jill Biden, wife of our President, has impliedly said “no.” In her speech to a teacher’s union recently, Dr. Biden said, “There is so much weight on all of you — but you carry it. Our schools are where policies become people. And educators are at the center of it all.” If educators are at the center, there is nowhere for the students to hide.

Sexually confused children now have the right in many schools to remove themselves from situations that make them feel uncomfortable. Shouldn’t all students who find a teacher’s presentation uncomfortable because of moral or religious beliefs be able to remove themselves from the offensive teaching?

Ned Cosby, a prolific contributor to American Thinker, is a former pastor, veteran Coast Guard officer, and a retired career public high school teacher. His newest novel OUTCRY is a love story exposing the refusal of Christian leaders to report and discipline clergy who sexually abuse our young people. This work of fiction addresses crimes that are all too real. Cosby has also written RECOLLECTIONS FROM MY FATHER’S HOUSE, tracing his own odyssey from 1954 to the present. For more info, visit Ned Cosby.