By John Bolton
Dated: August 6, 2026
Parents are not bystanders in the upbringing of their children. They are the primary moral, legal, and practical decision-makers in a child’s life, and any government policy that treats mothers and fathers as obstacles to be managed rather than authorities to be respected is wrong on principle and dangerous in practice.
That is why Connecticut must draw a bright line in defense of parental rights. School districts should not hide a child’s asserted gender identity from parents. Schools should not socially transition minors behind closed doors. Bureaucrats should not presume that they, rather than families, get to decide when a child is mature enough to navigate deeply consequential questions about sex, identity, medicine, and mental health.
This is not a radical position. It is the most basic understanding of family, law, and constitutional order. Even recent reporting on the fight in California reflects that courts are increasingly skeptical of state policies that prevent schools from informing parents about a child’s gender transition at school. The same core principle applies here in Connecticut: parents have a right to know what is happening with their children in school.
Public schools exist to educate children, not to replace parents. Any district policy that instructs staff to conceal gender-related information from mothers and fathers, or to maintain one set of facts at school and another at home, destroys trust and turns educators into participants in family deception.
That is unacceptable.
The same principle extends beyond gender policy. Parents deserve transparency about curriculum, classroom materials, counseling practices, health-related directives, and the values being promoted to their children during the school day. If a school district is proud of what it is teaching, it should have no objection to posting the curriculum and making it easily available online for every parent in Connecticut to review.
Homeschooling families deserve that same respect. Connecticut should not be weakening the rights of parents who choose to homeschool or burdening them with unnecessary hostility and suspicion. In a free society, the state does not own children, and it does not get to treat family-based education as a problem to be contained.
The debate over minors and gender ideology is often framed in emotional slogans, but public officials have a duty to speak plainly. Children and teenagers are still developing. They are vulnerable to pressure, confusion, and social contagion. The law should proceed with caution, humility, and respect for parents—not with secrecy, ideological certainty, and irreversible consequences. For that reason, gender-affirming medical or quasi-medical interventions for those under 21 should face the highest possible scrutiny under law and public policy.
None of this means any child should be mistreated, bullied, or denied dignity. Every child deserves compassion. Every parent deserves honesty. And every school district deserves to understand that its mission is to partner with families, not undermine them.
Connecticut needs a parental-rights agenda that is serious, lawful, and unmistakable. That means no secret gender-transition policies in public schools, no concealment of material information from parents, full curriculum transparency, protection for homeschooling families, and respect for parents’ authority over major medical and moral decisions affecting their children. END OF STORY.
This is not about anger. It is about order. It is about truth. And it is about restoring a principle that should never have been in doubt: parents, not government, have the first right and the highest duty to raise their children.