“Umm… you guys aren’t supposed to be in here. These doors stay locked until the clerks arrive for the hearing. They are the ones who will let you in. Please step outside until they get here…”
I looked around the room to gauge the reaction.
Some of us had been there for close to an hour. Most folks had taken off their coats and settled in. Many were engaged in discussions. Others were reading through their notes in preparation.
I heard a few people grumble under their breath. “Are you kidding me?” they seemed to ask themselves.
Still, everyone gathered their coats and proceeded to step out into the hall per the bureaucrat’s request. He remained quiet and steel-faced as we exited the room. He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t so much as smile to acknowledge anyone’s presence.
The scene was the Virginia State Capitol building in Richmond, VA. That’s right – I found myself venturing into the Belly of the Beast. Senate Room C in the General Assembly Wing, to be exact.
For many of us, it was our first time in the building. To say the crowd was highly motivated would be an understatement.
Days earlier we received word that a state senator from Fairfax County had pushed through a bill (S.B. 1031) seeking to effectively eliminate Virginia’s religious exemption for homeschooling.
It was a surprise attack that seemingly came out of left field. Even the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) was surprised.
The HSLDA monitors this kind of thing daily… and this bill had not been on its radar previously. There had been no prior mention of it. But somehow the senator from Fairfax managed to push it to a public sub-committee hearing within 48 hours’ time.
Clearly there was an agenda at work here…
The official data shows that less than 8,000 children are currently homeschooling under the religious exemption in Virginia. Meanwhile, the state’s population of school-aged children is roughly 1.3 million.
So we’re talking about a tiny minority group of people here. The senate bill would negatively impact 0.6% of Virginia’s children – a fraction of one percent.
Yet, what would happen for the other 99.4% of Virginia’s school-aged children?
Nothing. Not a thing would change for them. They would continue about their lives just as they had before. They probably wouldn’t know this bill ever existed.
Now, the mainstream view on legislation is that each bill is supposed to address a clear and measurable problem. The legislative drafting process begins with identifying a problem to be solved.
Even the most egregious, pork-filled monstrosity bills claim to address a specific problem. This one doesn’t even do that.
If we read S.B. 1031, it doesn’t outline a clear and measurable problem anywhere in the bill. It simply seeks to eliminate the religious exemption for homeschooling.
Well, to be fair, the bill doesn’t eliminate a family’s ability to claim the religious exemption. It simply removes every protection afforded by the exemption… so that it no longer exempts homeschooling students from anything. Which of course defeats the entire purpose.
I’m not sure how this could be viewed as anything other than a dedicated attack on a small minority group of people – Virginians who homeschool under the state’s religious exemption.
To me, that means this is also a fundamental attack on the principle of religious liberty… something fundamental to our country’s very essence.
And that’s why so many of us were motivated to attend the sub-committee hearing last week. We felt compelled to let them know that freedom won’t be dying in Virginia – not on our watch.
Tomorrow I’ll share the rest of the story with you – including how everybody got into the locked conference room early in the first place.
-Joe Withrow
P.S. If you would like to learn more about the Virginia Senate’s attack on religious liberty, the HSLDA is tracking all the updates right here. You can also find the senate sub-committee chair’s office number at that site. If you’re so inclined, feel free to call his office and encourage them to vote no on S.B. 1031.