🌍 As We Grow More Diverse, Can We Stay Centered on Children?

Photo by Todd Trapani/Pexels

With the recent U.S. Supreme Court case weighing parents’ rights to opt children out of gender-identity content in schools, one truth becomes undeniable:

Diversity is here. It’s growing. And it brings complex questions.

Not just about race or language, but about belief systems, worldviews, and how we raise our children.

🕊️ What Happens When Belief Meets Policy?

We must prepare for a future where classrooms and communities may include children raised in belief systems that:

• Teach purity and abstinence as sacred

• Uphold strict gender roles based on tradition or scripture

• Define family structure in ways that may limit exposure to broader identities or experiences

• Emphasize obedience and modesty over self-expression

These belief systems may not align with progressive public education goals—but the children living in them still deserve our care, protection, and voice.

Back in the Day

In elementary school I was one of those children. There were children who could not make Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Halloween crafts because of their family values. So they made circles and squares or something.

I could make the holiday crafts but I could not wear shorts past my knees and in those days, that was a big deal. Even the boys wore their shorts on the shorter side sometimes.

My Mom sent me to gym class in long pants that she cut off below the knees. I just know that ugly uneven jagged cut was in protest. She was a seamstress. How did she get that wrong?

On school picture day the girls used to twirl around in their dresses. The dresses my mother made for me did not flare enough for that, and just in case they did, she made me wear pants beneath them. 

For a long time, I was one of those kids with a different set of rules than the other kids and nothing and no one was going to change that. As it just so happens, there are a lot of children in public schools coming from families with a lot of different beliefs and values.

As the country grows more religiously and culturally diverse, the tensions between protecting children’s needs and honoring belief systems will continue to surface in public life—especially in schools, healthcare, and law.

⚖️ Are We Ready?

We must ask ourselves:

• Can we hold space for deeply religious and traditional families while ensuring no child is isolated or silenced?

• Can schools offer both inclusion and respectful accommodation—without bending so far that we lose sight of the child’s best interest?

• Can we teach children about dignity and difference without disrespecting the home they come from—or sacrificing their right to safety?

🧒🏽 What Should Never Be Negotiable?

Children’s safety, emotional health, and full humanity.
That must be the north star.

Because while adults can consent to belief systems, children are born into them.
They depend on the rest of us—teachers, neighbors, advocates, and institutions—to ensure they:

• Have access to truth, safety, and support

• Are not shamed for their bodies, questions, or feelings

• Are free to grow into who they are, not who others need them to be

💛 Our Compass Must Be the Child

Beliefs will vary. Cultures will differ.
But in every decision, we must ask:

“What does the child need in order to feel safe, seen, and whole?”
Not just today. But twenty years from now.

That is the only question that matters.