The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty released its fifth annual Religious Freedom Index this week, which sampled the opinions of 1,000 American adults in an online survey.
Released on National Religious Freedom Day, the report documents respondents’ views about six dimensions related to religious freedom and assigns each of them a score on a 100-point scale based on the public’s level of support. A score of 0 indicates “complete opposition to the principle” while a score of 100 indicates “complete support.”
Many questions dealt with the emergence of LGBT-affirming curriculum in public schools.
67% of respondents believe “parents are the primary educators of their children and should have [the] final say on what their children are taught in public school” and should have the ability to “opt their children” out of the curriculum they view as “morally objectionable or inappropriate.”
58% exactly or somewhat agreed with the notion that public schools “should not be allowed to implement policies to require students and employees to use a person’s preferred gender pronouns.”
And 79% said schools should not be able to “hide information from parents about their child’s decision to adopt a new name, new pronouns, or begin a gender transition.”