Americans are well aware of what the Left is doing in the country's bathrooms, but what about its classrooms? That's where the latest religious liberty fight is raging, thanks to an overbearing Obama administration intent on stripping schools of their First Amendment rights. New Education Secretary John King is already making his presence felt -- in a negative way for America's campuses, unfortunately.
He started by blasting the common sense laws in Mississippi and North Carolina laws, calling them "a terrible mistake" at an event Monday. Like every member of the Obama administration who refuses to read the actual legislation, he regurgitated the propaganda of the Left, insisting they are "hateful laws" that "should be repealed." In a foreboding message of things to come, he added that the policies send "a deeply problematic message to young people in schools." These days, it's certainly a contradictory message to what the government is sending.
In the midst of the Mississippi and North Carolina firestorms, the Department of Education has done plenty of its own bullying on the issues of gender and sexuality. Already, the DOE is duking it out with colleges over their interpretation of the Title IX rules, which the president has twisted to mean that schools must adopt his radical definitions of "gender identity" and "sexual orientation." Dozens of universities have complained about the agency's meddling, arguing that it censors free speech. Instead of using the force of law, both the Justice Department and DOE have threatened to pull the financial rug out from under schools that don't comply.
Like the rest of the Obama administration, the DOE and DOJ have gotten into the habit of throwing their weight around without any accountability or justification in the law. And while one of the biggest culprits of that, Secretary Arne Duncan, may be gone, his legacy of intimidation continues. As we wrote earlier this week, even the religious schools that apply for waivers are being publicly shamed for their exemptions. Now, in an attempt to retaliate against North Carolina and Mississippi, King is claiming the state schools "will now be in direct violation of Title IX, subjecting the school districts to massive liability and putting an estimated 4.5 billion of federal funding [for the Tar Heels alone] at risk."
Welcome to the federal carrot-and-stick. While liberals have always used federal funding as a means of exerting control over local matters (think abortion and health care), it should be pointed out that the federal government provides less than 10 percent of educational funding. Under the Obama administration, not only are they trying to use that 10 percent to control 90 percent of education policy, they want to use it to control policies for the entire state. If there were ever a time for governors to bring their expenses under control and cut ties with these federal tyrants, it's now. The president's sexual liberalism has already wreaked havoc on education, starting in elementary school and continuing through college. It's time for every state to rise up and say: enough!
