It's Tuesday, January 24, 2023.

I'm Albert Molar, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian

world view.

When it comes to parental rights, most Americans believe those rights to be secure.

After all, who in the world would intervene in the relationship between parents and a child,

unless there is some kind of sudden emergency, or there is some declaration by a court or

others that a parent is incompetent or worse in relationship with the child.

Parental rights we need to note acknowledge that the state comes after the pre-political

institution of the family, and at the center of the family is the mother and the father,

and the children who are under the care and under the authority and are the responsibility

of those parents.

The state must refer to the parents unless there is some compelling cause that would lead

even in public review to some justified intervention by the state.

It should be rare, and it must be justified.

But then we need to note that modern America comes with new complications, and it's not

just the United States, it's the modern age itself, but modern societies include vast bureaucracies,

a vastly expanded government, and with the vast expansion of governments reach, comes the

reach of the government into the family.

What we're witnessing in this particular moment is the fact that the state is becoming increasingly

hostile to parents.

We saw this as we discussed on the briefing just a matter of days ago.

The issue of whether or not school teachers have some kind of moral responsibility to keep

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