GOP politicians feel strongly about “protecting” children from woke ideas about race and gender they find obnoxious. They have typically framed this as an argument about protecting the rights of conservative parents. Should we take them seriously?
If this were really a process argument about parents’ rights, you would expect the GOP to stand up for parents who want their trans children to have appropriate medical care. They don’t; in that case, parents have no rights. The same thing would be true about parents in bright blue cities who want their children to be “protected” from books they would view as racist or sexist. This is really an argument about using the state to enforce traditional values; parents are just a means to an end.