In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether parents of children in government schools have a constitutional right to opt out of programs that “expose” their kids to LGBTQ materials. Once again, the chickens have come home to roost.

By that, I mean that if politicians, bureaucrats, and elected boards did not run schools and force (tax) parents and nonparents to finance them, this problem could not arise. This should not be an issue for the political system, and you need not be an anarchist to see it. Free people are capable of educating or buying education for their children, just as they are competent to obtain other goods and services we take for granted every day. Freedom and social cooperation work when they’re allowed to, and parents ought to be free to raise their children according to their values. (Beatings and other forms of aggression are not relevant here.) This has nothing to do with the particular issue in the case (LGBTQ programs).

The question is not: “Do parents have a constitutional right to opt their kids out of this and other school programs they dislike?” Rather, it is: “Do parents have a natural individual right to educate their kids through purely voluntary means?”

The answer is yes! So-called public schooling relies on the initiation of force from financing to curriculum. How dare anyone propose that we be compelled to pay for or to send our or other people’s kids to schools we disapprove of? Even if you opt out of the schools or have no kids, you still must pay or lose your home, go to jail, etc. Such a system is unfit to exist.

(See my 1994 book, Separating School and State.)