Religious-Liberty-Annual-Report

32 VI – National Trends in Politics, Culture, and Law

this obligation of confidentiality, not just in the context of Catholic practice, but in similar practic es of other faiths as well. Aside from avoiding intrusion of the state into the practice of a religious sacrament, there is also a commonsense reason to protect the seal of con fession. If priests were required to report crimes heard during confessions, penitents would likely stop confessing them. The opportunity that the sacrament presents for healing — not just of the penitent’s soul, but of the wounds that the peni tent’s sin has inflicted on others — would be lost. While a priest may not oblige a penitent to turn himself in as a condition for receiving absolution, priests can encourage the penitent to report crimes to the proper authorities. At least three states — Washington, Vermont, and Delaware — have introduced bills to eliminate the clergy–penitent privilege. These bills are pri marily aimed at compelling priests to testify about confessions of sexual abuse of minors, or to report such confessions to law enforcement. The ongoing debate over issues of gender identi ty spans many areas — the workplace, the medical profession, social media — but perhaps has mani fested more intensely in schools than in any other. In public schools, teachers have sued — some successfully, some not — over requirements that they abide by policies that require them to affirm students’ asserted gender identities, such as by the use of preferred pronouns. 47 Meanwhile, a middle school student sued after his principal ordered him to remove a T-shirt that said, “There are only two genders.” 48 School curricula and libraries have come under intense scrutiny for including books 5. Schools as a Battleground in the Gender Identity Debates Multiple lawsuits have alleged that schools have intentionally kept parents in the dark about their children’s efforts to socially transition from one gender to another.

that promote gender ideology, leading to accusa tions of book banning. There has been a particular emphasis on the rights of parents to be informed of and consent to aspects of their children’s schools’ handling of gender identity issues. Multiple lawsuits have al leged that schools have intentionally kept parents in the dark about their children’s efforts to socially transition from one gender to another. Parents in Maryland filed a major lawsuit for the right to opt their children out of classes that promote views of sex and gender that conflict with their religious beliefs. 49 A father in New Jersey has recently filed suit against his public school district over a policy that allows teachers and administrators to affirm a child’s use of “gender pronouns” or “gender tran sition” without parental consent or notification. 50 Of course, the questions of how to accom modate individuals with gender dysphoria in the contexts of bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports pertain in a particular way to schools. A split has emerged among the federal courts of appeal on whether public schools can maintain bathrooms separated by sex rather than asserted gender iden tity, potentially teeing up Supreme Court review on this contentious issue. 51 The controversies over public schools’ embrace of gender ideology has lent momentum to the push for school choice, as religious parents look for school environments that are compatible with their beliefs. In the state of Oklahoma, its two dioceses, the Arch diocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tul sa, opened the nation’s first public religious charter school. In response, the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and other groups filed a lawsuit arguing, among other things, that the state would be funding a school that discriminates on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender identity.” 52 In that respect, it is notable that three federal actions in 2023 may affect private schools’ ability to abide by traditional beliefs about sex and sexual dif ferentiation — both of the proposed Title IX rules from the USDE and the proposed 504 rule from HHS.