Emma Brown and Peter Jamison wrote in The Washington Post about Michael Farris, the conservative Christian lawyer who led the campaign to spend tax dollars on home schooling and prevailed. The reporters got hold of a recorded phone call in which Farris told his funders that the time has come to take down public education. The recording was obtained by an organization called “Documented.”
The message Michael Farris had come to deliver was a simple one: The time to act was now.
For decades, Farris — a conservative Christian lawyer who is the most influential leader of the modern home-schooling movement — had toiled at the margins of American politics. His arguments about the harms of public education and the divinely endowed rights of parents had left many unconvinced.
Now, speaking on a confidential conference call to a secretive group of Christian millionaires seeking, in the words of one member, to “take down the education system as we know it today,” Farris made the same points he had made in courtrooms since the 1980s. Public schools were indoctrinating children with a secular worldview that amounted to a godless religion, he said.
The solution: lawsuits alleging that schools’ teachings about gender identity and race are unconstitutional, leading to a Supreme Court decision that would mandate the right of parents to claim billions of tax dollars for private education or home schooling.
“We’ve got to recognize that we’re swinging for the fences here, that any time you try to take down a giant of this nature, it’s an uphill battle,” Farris said on the previously undisclosed July 2021 call, a recording of which was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with The Washington Post. “And the teachers union, the education establishment and everybody associated with the education establishment will be there in full array against us — just as they were against home-schoolers.”
“We’ve got to recognize that we’re swinging for the fences here, that any time you try to take down a giant of this nature, it’s an uphill battle,” Farris said on the previously undisclosed July 2021 call, a recording of which was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with The Washington Post. “And the teachers union, the education establishment and everybody associated with the education establishment will be there in full array against us — just as they were against home-schoolers.”
The 50-minute recording, whose details Farris did not dispute in a series of interviews with The Post, is a remarkable demonstration of how the ideology he has long championed has moved from the partisan fringe to the center of the nation’s bitter debates over public education.
A deeply religious evangelical from Washington state, Farris began his career facing off with social workers over the rights of home-schoolers and representing Christian parents who objected to “Rumpelstiltskin” being read in class.
In recent years, he has reached the pinnacle of the conservative legal establishment. From 2017 to 2022, he was the president and chief executive of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a powerhouse Christian legal groupthat helped draft and defend the restrictive Mississippi abortion law that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. ADF and its allieshave filed a flurry of state and federal lawsuits over the past two years alleging that public schools are violating parental and religious rights.
Yet it is outside the courtroom that Farris’s influence has arguably been most profound. No single figure has been more instrumental in transforming the parental rights cause from an obscure concern of Christian home-schoolers into a GOP rallying cry.
When former president Donald Trump called for a federal parental bill of rights in a 2023 campaign video, saying secular public school instruction had become a “new religion,” he was invoking arguments Farris first made 40 years ago. The executive order targeting school mask mandates that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) signed on his first day in office cited a 2013 state law guaranteeing “fundamental” parental rights that Farris helped write.
In Florida, a home-schooling mom introduced Farris’s ideas to a state lawmaker, setting in motion the passage of the state’s Parents’ Bill of Rights in 2021. The law, repeatedly touted by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on the presidential campaign trail, laid the groundwork for the state’s controversial Parental Rights in Education Act, dubbed by its critics the “don’t say gay” bill.
“He is our hero,” Patti Sullivan, the home-schooler involved in Florida’s 2021 law, said of Farris. “He is the father of the modern movement in parental rights.”
Fundamental parental rights measures have been proposed or enacted this year in more than two dozen other states, according to a Post analysis using the legislation-tracking database Quorum, and in March, a federal parents’ bill of rights passed the Republican-controlled House.
Farris has not been personally involved in pushing the most recent bills, which have been fueled by anger over covid-19 mask mandates and how schools are handling Black history, sexual orientation and gender identity. Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the right-wing groupMoms for Liberty, which has become a powerful force in the parental rights movement since its launch less than three years ago, said it would be a mistake to overemphasize the impact of conservative Christian home-schoolers on the battles now playing out across the country.
Justice said she has met Farris but that the arguments he was making in the 1980s haven’t strongly influenced her organization, whose members have pushed to remove some books with LGBTQ+ themes from schools and to restrict what teachers can say about race and gender.
“It’s 2023,” she said. “There are a lot of things that people thought 40 years ago.”
Yet to those who have followed Farris’s career, the adoption of his arguments by so many families unconnected to home schooling is a measure of his success. In the eyes of his critics, he has masterfully imported an extreme religious agenda into the heart of the nation’s politics through the seemingly unobjectionable language of parents’ rights. Some argue that it has always been the goal of the most radical Christian home-schoolers not merely to opt out of the public schools but to transform them, either by diverting their funding or allowing religion back into the classroom.
“Everyone should be aware of Michael Farris and his influence on the Christian right,” said R.L. Stollar, a children’s rights advocate who was home-schooled and has long warned of the conservative home-schooling movement’s political goals. “To Farris’s credit, he is really good at what he does. He is really good at taking these more extreme positions and presenting them as if they are something that would just be based on common sense.”
The story continues in extensive detail about Farris’s battles to win acceptance and public funding for home schooling.
He tried but failed to criminalize gay sex. His biggest victories have been in his demands to expand home schooling. He and his wife have 10 children. They enrolled her in a public school, bur removed her after two months. They put her in a Christian school but withdrew her after concluding she was being influenced by other 6-year-olds.
Farris wrote that public schools are “a godless monstrosity.”
And he wrote that by their very nature, public schools indoctrinate:
“Inculcation of values is inherently a religious act,” he said. “What the public schools are doing is indoctrinating your children in religion, no matter what.”
My view: public schools unite us as a nation, a people, and a democracy. While there are some highly-educated people like Michael Farris who homeschool their children, many uneducated people are following their lead and their children will be indoctrinated into their religion and be poorly educated.
His God Is Hard Cold Cash!
Michael Farris assured his conservative donors that their money would be well spent on his legal campaign. A conservative supermajority reigns supreme on the nation’s highest court. In statehouses and at school boards, political activism over parental rights is at a fever pitch.
“The time is right. Sometimes it does take a while for seed to be planted and to germinate.”
A Garden Of Greed. Toxic, Intoxicating, Addictive & Democracy Deadly.
“the most recent bills, which have been fueled by anger over covid-19 mask mandates and how schools are handling Black history, sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Or where they fueled by Republican astroturf groups such as Moms for Liberty for Parents who Agree with Us, which was founded by the spouse of a Florida Republican legislator and has ties to Republican big bucks?
Are they the natural result of a governor trying desperately to make Fox News every day as he vainly runs for higher office?
Republicans destroy at the direction of Charles Koch.
Tim Scott hosted a fundraiser for Moms for Liberty in May and Nikki Haley and DeSantis spoke at their summit in June.
Public education, one of America’s greatest achievements, is threatened by people who want to burn down the US.
Among those attacking the US is the axis of Koch, the Catholic Church and evangelicals. Jefferson warned, in every age, in every country, the priest aligns with the despot.
We hold these theories to be
self-evident, that all are
NOT
equal, that some are endowed
by the state,
with certain unalienable
powers, that among these are,
knowing what’s best for the
children, knowing the path of
enlightenment,
and owning the keys to the
kingdom of taxed citizens.
And Farris calls himself a Christian. What a RIOT. Farris is just another grifter to the MAX.
“. . . that amounted to a godless religion, he said.”
Another of the many falsehoods perpetrated by regressive xtian theofascists.
Better a godless religion than a dogless
religion is what I always say.
I can imagine where we would be without gods, but where would we be without dogs?
A God eat Dog world
A world without gods
Is world with less war
But world without dogs
Means food on the floor
Godless Teachings
A godless religion
They teach in the schools
Respectful position
The teachings of fools!
Michael Farris is another Fascist working in the shadows to empower the birth of the Fourth Reich.
While there have always been some parents that have educated children at home, there was never a radical attempt to dismantle public education or make the public pay for home school or religious education choices. Home schooling should not give them the right to demolish democratic public education that serves all and provides young people with accurate historical and scientific information and prepares them to be responsible citizens.
The far right & GOP have been much better than Democrats & progressives at understanding the importance of the courts- especially the Supreme Court. Once Mitch McConnell stole Scalia’s empty seat from Obama, the right was empowered. They’ll ignore any rule, break any law, to get what they want. With the Supreme Court in the hands of extreme fundamentalists, they’re ready to flood the country with contrived lawsuits. They could teach the Taliban a thing or two.
“Farris assured the conservative donors, their money would be well spent on this legal campaign. A conservative supermajority reigned on the nation’s highest court. In statehouses and at school boards, political activism over parental rights had reached a fever pitch.
“The time is right,” he said, later adding, “Sometimes it does take a while for seed to be planted and to germinate.”
Michael Farris is a liar, a bigot, and — as the Good Book states — an abomination.
“Inculcation of values is inherently a religious act”
I do not accept that one’s beliefs about a higher power is inherently related to social values. Often the two are intentionally conflated to serve a power in social or political relations, but this is an example of man creating a supernatural justification for a very mortal set of values.
“The Church that ‘won’ tax dollars for their sexist institution-
“…the Catholic Church in Ohio and nationwide has consistently advocated for public policy…school of their choice.”
Catholic Conference of Ohio website
Btw- 30% of Catholic schools are single sex.
So, 70% of Catholic schools are bi-sexual?
Wow!
Thanks for the laugh