The law requires schools to provide parents with any and all information related to their child’s well-being, to protect students who may be in harm’s way at home, and to knock it off with the sex talk until at least the fourth grade.

“Queer” activist and Florida student Zander Moricz implored CNN’s audience on Friday to immediately take it upon themselves to read the new parental rights law that has caused so much heartburn among leftists. I can only guess that he’s banking on nobody actually doing it because he went on to mischaracterize all seven pages of the thing (with of course no pushback from the anchor).
“If you haven’t read the bill, go read it right now,” he said, “because the language of the legislation makes it so obvious that despite the title, this has nothing to do with empowering parents. This is about de-empowering and harming queer children.”
Let’s call his bluff!
The full text of the law can be read here in the same amount of time it takes to say “gender dysphoria,” but here are just a few key lines on what it directs public schools to do:

“…adopt procedures for notifying a student’s parent if there is a change in the student’s services or monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being and the school’s ability to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for the student.”
“…not prohibit parents from accessing any of their student’s education and health records created, maintained, or used by the school district.”
“…encourage a student to discuss issues relating to his or her well-being with his or her parent or to facilitate discussion of the issue with the parent.”
“…notify parents of each healthcare service offered at their student’s school and the option to withhold consent or decline any specific service.”

In essence, the language affirms a parent’s right to control and be fully informed about the health and development of his or her child. That means if a school plans to give out hormone replacement drugs, they’re going to need parental consent (a radical concept, I know).

Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning novel All the Light We Cannot See promises a story that “illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.” This intricate work of historical fiction delivers on that promise and provides a compelling journey for any reader; but for the Christian, I believe it offers enduring lessons about kindness.

Kindness transforms us.
In January of 1941 in Saint-Malo, a young French girl named Marie-Laure is unable to get herself out of bed. Her circumstances weigh so heavy even simple tasks prove impossible:
She becomes unreachable, sullen. She does not bathe, does not warm herself by the kitchen fire, ceases to ask if she can go outdoors. She hardly eats.
Like others throughout the book, the cruelty of the world threatens to crush her.
The cook and maid of the Saint-Malo home, Madame Manec, sees this and refuses to watch her suffer alone any longer. Though it is not her responsibility, she takes Marie-Laure out of the house and down to the Breton coastline. As her lungs fill with crisp sea air and her curious fingers trace the frames of surrounding barnacles, Marie-Laure slowly comes back to life.
Madame Manec risks going out of her home during wartime to stand on a cold beach for three hours so a child not her own can feel again. This is kindness: to love another selflessly and without expectation of return.
Reading simple and profound acts of benevolence from All the Light We Cannot See during my own season of depression comforted me. Those who have tasted the bitterness of life know the sweetness of a hand reaching out through the fog of suffering. In many ways, these fictional glimmers of goodness lifted my weary chin to gaze at the transformational kindness of Jesus.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is for the despondent. It is right for our hearts to break when relationships are severed; for sobs to wrack our bodies when death steals the life of one we loved; for us to acknowledge the sheer wrongness of pain’s existence.
We could have been left in the despondent darkness of sin, but God in his lovingkindness sent Jesus to be the light of the world that those who believe in him may be saved.[1] Tasting communion upon our lips regularly reminds us of this love: the body of Christ broken for us, and the blood of Christ shed for us.
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Written by DouglasJ. Douma |
Monday, April 4, 2022
This is a valuable book which holds the interest of the reader, no small feat for a book on Presbyterian history. The value of the book comes not from any new thesis, but in its concise and informative account of American Presbyterian history.

Reformed & Evangelical across Four Centuries, The Presbyterian Story in America by Nathan P. Feldmuth, S. Donald Fortson III, Garth M. Rosell, and Kenneth J. Stewart. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022, 364 pp.
This is a valuable book which holds the interest of the reader, no small feat for a book on Presbyterian history. The value of the book comes not from any new thesis, but in its concise and informative account of American Presbyterian history.
While this volume is subtitled “The Presbyterian Story in America,” it actually doesn’t get to America until a section on “The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England” in Chapter 5 (page 72) and finally settling on Presbyterianism on this country only in Chapter 6 (page 81). This is a substantial part of a book on “The Presbyterian Story in America” to not be on the Presbyterian story in America. But, perhaps ironically, I found this to be the best section of the volume. Naturally the story cannot just begin in America, but needs to reach back to the British Isles. In both places we see that church history is messy and, especially in the England and Scotland, much intertwined with national politics.
The connection between Presbyterianism in the Old World and that in the New World is especially valuable in the section on page 94 describing how views on subscriptionism (to the Westminster Confession) that arose in Ireland were carried over to the American scene. The debate over subscription in American Presbyterian history plays a major part in this book, and while the authors are fair to the issue, the writing, it seems to me, tends to favor the “system” or “loose” view over the “full” or “strict.”
Chapters on “Debate on the Question of Slavery,” “Presbyterians, Civil War, and Reunions,” and “The Darwinian Challenge” highlight some of the major issues of the 19th century Presbyterian churches. Chapters on 20th century issues felt more scattered and tended to veer away from the subject at hand (American Presbyterianism) as significant space was given to such diverse topics as Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel, Asian immigration, and rationalism in German Universities. Certainly these are connected to American Presbyterian in some way (isn’t everything connected to everything in some way?) but the authors tended to relate the topics back more to Protestantism in general than Presbyterianism specifically.
The change (I’d argue decline) of the PCUSA’s theology in the 20th century is noted (pp. 288 and 293 for example) and the decline of the denomination’s membership is also mentioned (p. 307). But never are these two facts related. This really is the elephant in the room.
As for the PCA, I think the authors get it quite right when they contend, “The group of ministers that shaped the PCA was roughly divided into two groups: those who had a vision of the PCA as a historically confessional Presbyterian body and a larger group who found their primary identity in being evangelical Presbyterians driven by the concerns of evangelism and world missions.” (p. 301)
Appendix I titled “American Presbyterian Denominations Ranked by Membership” includes some smaller denominational like the OPC and RPCNA but does not include what some may call “micro” denominations (such as the Bible Presbyterian Church, Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly, Reformed Presbyterian Church – Hanover, John Knox Presbyterian Church, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Bible Presbyterian Church – Faith Presbytery, Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, American Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Reformed Church, Evangel Presbytery, and Vanguard Presbytery). Some comment on these smaller confessional groups seems warranted in the history. As the PCUSA inevitably continues its precipitous decline (and the referenced 1.2 million PCUSA members is highly doubtable), the confessional churches, NAPARC members or not, are generally stable or growing and are likely to play a more significant role in the fifth century of American Presbyterianism.
Douglas J. Douma is a Minister in the Bible Presbyterian Church and Pastor of the Unionville, NY BPC. This article is used with permission.