Secret phone call reveals Christian Right plan to 'take down the education system as we know it'

A home-schooled lawyer has spent the majority of his professional career fighting public schools to no avail. They're harmful, he claimed, but his pleas have for years fallen on deaf ears.

But it seems that now that he has rebranded it as "parents' rights," the movement has taken off.

The Washington Post wrote a profile on conservative Christian Michael Farris that revealed a secret phone call showing the way that he is obtaining support from Christian millionaires. Farris made a name for himself by getting the story "Rumpelstiltskin" banned from classrooms.

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Speaking on a confidential conference call, he told the group, according to one member, he sought to “take down the education system as we know it today" on the grounds that schools were indoctrinating children to be "secular."

To him, that's a "godless religion," even though being secular means to not profess belief in any specific religion.

He has been using his law degree to launch lawsuits claiming schools are teaching children to be gay or transgender. The ultimate goal is to get the Supreme Court to mandate the state pay for private religious schools despite the First Amendment preventing the "respecting an establishment of religion."

In the new Trump-appointed Supreme Court, however, he might get his wish. Already, Oklahoma passed a law to fully fund a Catholic school in the state.

“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 in a 2021 call that was recorded and obtained by the watchdog group known as Documented.

“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," he also said.

More "parents rights" laws have been proposed or enacted in more than two dozen states, the Post reported.

The support for the anti-public education bills came not only from the disasters of homeschooling during COVID-19 but the mask mandates in classes once they returned to school. It's how the group "Moms for Liberty" was able to gain members.

Read the full profile at the Washington Post.