This is not solidarity. It’s content.

Yesterday, Friendly Atheist posted a graphic declaring that religious instruction does not belong in the public school day.

Great. We’ve been saying that for years.

But there was no information. No explanation of what LifeWise is doing inside public school districts. No resources for affected parents. No mention of the investigations, records, maps, curriculum analysis or organizing that made much of what is now publicly known about LifeWise possible.

And, once again, no mention of us.

That omission is especially infuriating because when LifeWise sued our co-founder Zach Parrish in 2024 for exposing its curriculum, Hemant Mehta did cover us.

He just did not cover us well.

He declared that LifeWise would “almost certainly win.” He reduced a fight over parental access, public accountability and religious instruction during the school day to a straightforward copyright dispute. His coverage was dismissive of our legal defense, dismissive of our organization and dismissive of what we were trying to accomplish.

That kind of coverage did not help a tiny grassroots parent organization being sued by a multimillion-dollar religious corporation. It amplified the idea that we had recklessly picked a fight we could not win and that the outcome was practically predetermined.

He was wrong about what this fight could achieve. The lawsuit did not end with LifeWise crushing Zach or collecting damages from him.

It ended with neither party paying the other—and with LifeWise legally bound to make its complete and current curriculum available to anyone who requests it. Access is provided for 48 hours at a time, requests can be made repeatedly, and LifeWise can no longer simply deny access to the materials.

Parents have that access today because Zach fought back.

Because we did not fold.

Because our organization kept working while people with much larger platforms underestimated us, dismissed us or ignored us.

Now Friendly Atheist can post a LifeWise bus, say “indoctrination,” collect thousands of engagements and move on.

We do not get to move on.

We are the parents answering frightened families. We are filing the records requests. We are reading the curriculum. We are tracking the legislation, money, facilities, political alliances and district entanglement. We are building the tools that allow the public to understand what a meme never will.

So yes, religious instruction should happen at home or in church—not during the public school day.

But the people doing the actual work to defend that principle deserve more than being erased from the story after being publicly written off.

---

View original post on Facebook