Sure, because parents get to decide how to raise their children...not schools. Regardless, there's no test, nothing required of those attending. It's voluntary.
Up to a point... there are certain places where society draws a line on what parents can and can't do.
Yeah here's the thing...nobody can ever come up with a reason for teaching this stuff to little kids. I haven't seen one yet.
Whenever they do admit that the whole purpose is indoctrination....they don't seem to see the problem with that. It's not for the benefit of the students...it's for gay people.
For very young children, I would agree. Not because I have a particular objection to teaching the nuances with regards to LGBT topics, but primarily because of the age groups in question in some of the higher profile cases...and the fact that the intricacies of the subject are way over their heads in 99.9% of cases. I've always said, let's wait until after the kids are old enough to have the cognitive and reasoning ability to realize that Santa isn't real before we hit them with heavy subject matter.
Or, perhaps another way to put it, let's wait until someone can spell "homosexuality" or "transgender" before we start teaching them about it.
For instance, I was on board with the DeSantis-signed bill nixing it from k-3. (or as opponents of the bill misnamed it "Don't say Gay".)
In the context of a HS-level sociology class, I'd have no issue with it.
I don't think something has to be purely educational to offer societal benefit. For instance, if they taught a class about how slavery and Jim Crow laws were bad, and tried to curtail racist ideas some students may be getting at home, it would certainly be for the benefit of the Black people in the community more than it was "educational", but I would have no qualms with that.
Yeah I disagree. We have every right to decide whether teachers have overstepped their bounds. They don't have free license to indoctrinate your children. If they were teaching children that sex with adults is ok....surely you'd object. Your solution wouldn't be "start your own school" or pay thousands of extra dollars in tuition to send them to private schools.
"We" is a very vague concept, and when someone leverages it in the context of "We have the right to decide ... ", "We" almost always is a replacement for "me and specifically the other people who agree with me".
The reality is, everyone thinks their own position is the reasonable one...combine that with peers that agree with them, that just strengthens their position in their own mind.
There are locales in the country where the prevailing mindset, the "we", thinks that merely teaching evolution in a Jr. High science class would qualify as "atheist indoctrination"
I tend to favor a more balanced approach with regards to the public education curriculum, where parents have a seat at the table, but not necessarily the final say. And parents still do (in many areas) reserve the right to pull their kids from certain classes in elementary schools. I know that, because I was pulled from class (and sat in the cafeteria with 2 or 3 other kids) in 6th grade the 2 days they were going over sex ed.
While I'd certainly agree that the extreme example you provided of "if they were teaching children that sex with adults was okay" would constitute a situation where I'd pull my kid from class (if I had kids)... that doesn't validate the other extreme of "the parents who share the prevailing ideology/mindset of the community get to the have the final say on everything that's taught in school"...because they absolutely shouldn't.
There has to be some reasonable middle ground.
And on specific topics, given that public schools are state actors (and can't be setting policies favoring particular religion...or religion over non-religion), the onus should be on the objectors to provide a compelling, secular reason why they don't want a particular thing taught in school.
Quite frankly, some people are ignorant and very underinformed (people don't become exempt from that reality just because they procreated...an ability that almost everyone has)...there's no IQ test to become a parent.
When one takes a few steps back and actually considers the context of what they're saying, it becomes silly.
For instance, if the topic was 18th century history, most would readily admit "no, the average parent doesn't know as much about 18th century history as a person who's specifically studied history for years and years". Yet, they will assert that, for the broad concept of a "curriculum" (which is a bunch of varying subjects), that somehow parents should have a say in it because "they know what's best"
If an average parent is less likely to know as much about history as a history teacher, the odds are even slimmer that they'd know more about history than a history teacher AND more about science than a science teacher, simultaneously.
