I read with great interest an article that appeared on the front page of the Sep. 17 edition of The Cullman Times, carrying the banner headline, “A ‘Catastrophic’ Loss,” which reported the misgivings of some “Alabama education representatives” about Alabama’s laws protecting children from sexual exposure and indoctrination in their schools.

These “education representatives” appear to be worried that Alabama’s laws will offend President Biden — whose administration is currently waging a campaign to impose the left’s extremist “gender identity” agenda on schoolchildren through administrative rules and guidance — and will cause them to get less money from the federal government.

It is important to understand how compliance with the left’s extremist “gender identity” agenda would destroy the educational experiences of students — girls in particular. The Biden administration’s own fact sheet about its guidance indicates that preventing a boy from using the girls’ restroom would be discrimination if the boy “identifies” as a girl. Similarly, the fact sheet suggests that preventing a boy from trying out for the girls’ cheerleading squad would be discrimination if the boy “identifies” as a girl. This is what the left wants to see in Alabama’s schools.

Alabama parents — the taxpayers who fund our schools — do not share the Biden administration’s goal of genderlessness in our schools.

That is why the people of Alabama have supported laws that protect girls’ sports and girls’ bathrooms, as well as laws that prohibit sexual indoctrination in the classroom. I am fighting to defend the State of Alabama’s constitutional prerogative over these matters in two different lawsuits at this very moment.

In the article, one education representative sounded her alarm over the conflict between Alabama’s laws and Biden’s agenda. After suggesting that Alabama’s anti-sexual-indoctrination-of-students statute is somehow dehumanizing and hateful, she is quoted as complaining that “we eventually could be at risk of [the federal government] withholding the funds or taking back the funds, or [the state] paying back the funds.” The message was clear: Alabama should cave to Biden’s demands and do it quickly!

I take extraordinary issue with the suggestion that federal funding should take precedence over the sincere and well-founded concerns of parents statewide about the odious impact of the left’s extremist “gender identity” agenda on their children. Furthermore, to the degree that it is the education bureaucracy’s position that state sovereignty over matters as central to self-governance as public education should yield when money is threatened, I cannot more fervently disagree — and I am certain that the people of Alabama are of the same mind.

The federal government’s ever-increasing control over primary and secondary education offends our American constitutional system. The root cause is coercion through federal funding, upon which states have been far too willing to blindly accept and jealously rely.

The Biden administration’s actions seeking to impose the left’s extremist “gender identity” agenda on schoolchildren are illegal and unconstitutional. But even if they were not, and federal funding was at risk, the duty of state leaders is not to dollars. We are meant to serve the interests of the people of Alabama — and the people of Alabama have clearly spoken, through their elected representatives, that they do not wish for sexual politics to be thrust on their children by far-left radicals in Washington.

While I hope to preserve every penny of federal funding being threatened by this administration, Alabama’s sovereignty is not for sale.