Family Under Fire | Editorial 7.1

Editor’s Note: The following article appears in the Spring 2025 issue of Eikon.

Shortly after the oral arguments before the Supreme Court in United States v. Skrmetti this past December, we decided to devote significant space in this issue of Eikon to the subject of parenting. We did not know then how relevant this topic would be.

At issue in the Skrmetti case is the constitutionality of Tennessee’s law banning transgender procedures on minors. This bill specifically prohibits medical interventions “[e]nabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex,” as well as those “[t]reating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” The plaintiffs in this case argue that Tennessee’s laws violate their parental rights to make medical decisions for their children, and that it unlawfully discriminates on the basis of sex. To put the matter rather bluntly, by assuming the anthropological commitments of transgender ideology, these parents argue that they reserve the right to chemically and/or surgically mutilate their children.

More recently, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving parents in the state of Maryland who sought an exemption for their children from school curricula that featured LGBT themes and characters. According to Montgomery County Public School’s (MCPS) legal defense, “MCPS introduced into its pre-K through twelfth grade language-arts curriculum several storybooks featuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer characters.” According to the school’s lawyers, “The storybooks were added as part of MCPS’s commitment to ‘provid[ing] a culturally responsive . . . curriculum that promotes equity, respect, and civility.’” They further clarified that “MCPS believes that ‘[r]epresentation in the curriculum creates and normalizes a fully inclusive environment for all students’ and ‘supports a student’s ability to empathize, connect, and collaborate with diverse peers and encourages respect for all.’” The parents’ request for an exemption from this curriculum is unwarranted, says the school district, since “MCPS made clear to teachers that using the story books involves no instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The logic here seems to be that since these teachers were instructed not to explicitly encourage students to affirm the ideas and lifestyles presented in the books, the school is exempt from the scrutiny of the First Amendment. In other words, overt moral persuasion is not permissible, but the subtle indoctrination of “representation” and the “normalization” of “inclusivity” is. But those with ears to hear will recognize that the promotion of “equity, respect, and civility” in this context entails the promotion of a particular ideology, which is the precise issue raised by these Maryland parents.

The more recent and explosive episode at the intersection of the sexual revolution and parental rights occurred in Colorado, where their House of Representatives passed two breathtaking bills designed to codify gender ideology into Colorado’s Revised Statutes. The first bill (HB 25-1309) mandates that all healthcare plans provide coverage of transgender procedures, which the bill refers to as “gender-affirming health care.” Beyond the basics such as hormone therapy, the bill seeks to create legal provisions for what we used to colloquially refer to as “plastic surgery.” These medically “necessary” procedures that insurers would be obligated to provide are outlined in detail, and include “blepharoplasty, eye and lid” (reconstruction of the eyelid), “face, forehead, or neck skin tightening,” “facial bone remodeling,” “cheek, chin, or nose implants,” and much, much more. Thus, if a “physical or behavioral health-care provider” (whoever this vaguely-described group is) deems that any of these interventions are necessary for a patient’s welfare, then they must be covered by insurance. Since the bill provides no age requirements, Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family seems correct to predict that this legislation will become a “financial facilitator for children becoming gender-medicine patients for life” in a manner that “usurps the financial gate-keeping power of parents.”^[1]

But it gets worse. Not only do Colorado’s state representatives want to provide children easy access to a plethora of transgender procedures, they want to ensure parents have no choice but to affirm their child’s gender identity — whatever that may be. Prior to subsequent changes in the Colorado Senate, the House version of the bill (HB 25-1312) provided the state with the power to remove children from their parents’ custody if they do not affirm their child’s gender self-conception. It does so by defining “deadnaming” and “misgendering” as forms of “coercive control.” And now that the bill has been signed into law, parents who refuse to affirm their child’s transgender self-concept face the very real prospect of losing their rights of custody. All this despite data showing that children with gender dysphoria overwhelmingly grow out of this discomfort with the onset of puberty and the growing body of literature (not that we needed it) documenting the failure of “gender-affirming care” to improve the lives of those who undertake it. There is no return on investment for defying the laws of Nature and Nature’s God.

As you can see, the topic of parenting and the rights of parents is even more relevant now than we had previously realized. In light of these recent developments, we hope in this issue of Eikon to set forth a biblically-informed vision of parenting, shedding light on the rights of parents, along with their role and responsibility to raise their child “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4). To this end, Colin Smothers has drawn up a summary of biblical principles on parental rights. Jonathan Whitehead reasons through the rights of parents and the role of government in an analysis of current Supreme Court cases. This issue also features articles from Tedd Tripp, C.R. Wiley, Joel Beeke, and Mark Coppenger, who provide historical, practical, and theological perspective on raising children. Readers will also benefit from Josh Blount’s insightful analysis of Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy and Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation, two important books that have much to commend in their diagnosis of the issues plaguing America’s adolescents.

We also take notice of reproductive trends and technologies that are changing the way people are becoming parents today. David Closson examines America’s emerging pronatalism, arguing that a “merely pronatalist” approach to solving our demographic decline will ultimately fall short in honoring God’s intended design for the family and procreation. Emma Waters explores the “childbearing revolution” created by in vitro fertilization (IVF), while Katy Faust and J. Alan Branch contribute much-needed essays on the growing but underdiscussed phenomenon of surrogacy. At the heart of all these matters lay the dignity of human life and God’s creational norms for the family and procreation as revealed in nature and Scripture. These authors challenge us to consider the moral and practical implications of modern practices that contradict or thwart God’s design for the formation of families.

There is much more in the remaining essays and book reviews that we commend to you. As anthropological battles continue to ravage our culture, CBMW seeks to serve the church by remaining fervently and faithfully committed to promoting the truths of Scripture, shining biblical light in the midst of an age of disorder and confusion. We pray this issue of Eikon reflects that aim.

[1] Glenn T. Stanton, “Two Ghastly Bills in Colorado: Legislation Would Force Parents and Schools to Abandon Transgender Youth to Their Life-Altering Confusion,” WORLD, April 9, 2025, https://wng.org/opinions/two-ghastly-bills-in-colorado-1744169229.