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(LifeSiteNews) — With a seemingly constant firehose of bad news, it is genuinely important to mark our cultural victories. It is true that the LGBT movement has both infiltrated and taken control of the public school system, from the contents of the curriculum to the celebration of “Pride Month.” But it is also true that the growing parental rights movement has created an effective backlash and is steadily accruing victories.

Earlier this month, for example, the Rice Lake School Board passed a policy mandating that parents must be made aware of any student who changes their name as part of “transitioning” genders. Over the past several years, we’ve seen many examples of schools assisting children in “social transitioning” (or worse) without telling the parents. The rationale for this has been the insistence of LGBT activists that parents pose a danger to their children, and that these changes should be hidden from them.

In fact, several transgender activists actually protested the board meeting, saying that the policy was “discriminatory” and that it made students unsafe. Parents pushing for the policy stated that it was essential for them to know what is going on with their children. “Parents have to be informed of or grant permission to literally anything else,” one noted at the meeting.

Parents also scored a victory in Conway, Arkansas, where the school board approved policies that trans activists predictably oppose. One policy states that biological males and females can use only the bathroom designated for them, with this standard also applying to accommodations on school field trips. A second policy dictated the removal of two books on “transgender children” from the school library. The school board meeting was packed, and the two policies passed unanimously.

READ: New detransitioners group calls out ‘myth’ of ‘gender-affirming care’ in letter to Biden AG

Parental pushback in the United Kingdom has also delivered results, with the UK Department for Education removing a charity that claims to advocate for “transgender children” from official government guidance. Mermaids has been consistently embroiled in scandals—their online forum featured conversations with children about experimental hormone treatments and sex change surgeries. And then there’s this:

Mermaids has repeatedly found itself in hot water, most recently after a board trustee resigned this month following an unearthed 2011 speech he gave to B4U-Act, a Maryland-based organization that promotes services to people sexually attracted to minors.

Mermaids had previously gotten tens of thousands of taxpayer pounds and attracted the support of figures like Prince Harry. Their government funding has been paused, and official relationships are being severed—all because parents pushed back.

In Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin is not backing down on parental rights policies despite student protests and walkouts and opposition from some school boards. The new guidance mandates that schools inform parents if their children want to change their name or pronouns. When asked for his response to some educators who wished to maintain a policy of secrecy surrounding these issues, Youngkin was blunt: “It’s the law, and so I don’t really have a lot of patience for folks that see a law and don’t comply with it. Protecting parents’ fundamental rights to make decisions for their children is in the Virginia code, and I fully expect that each one of the school divisions should comply.”

As parents push back, school boards are being forced to buckle. The lesson here is simply: To change the culture, we must engage it. That means voting in local elections. It means going to school board meetings. It means not remaining silent when these things are happening in our communities. Because when parents to speak up—when they do insist on change—we see change happening, from Arkansas to the United Kingdom. Be encouraged—and get active.

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Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.

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