OPINION:
When “March For Our Lives” student protesters won a get-out-of-class free card from school administrators and teachers who thought the calling to curb gun rights was more important than math and science and history, the right wondered: Hmm, how come these kids can’t protest on their own free time?
Good question. Particularly when a lot of those students were pressing a more “Down With Donald Trump” mantra than the far less politically charged and partisan “Down With Violence.”
Well, move over left. And be silent and accommodating — at least as accommodating as for the “March For Our Lives” walkouts. A #ProlifeWalkout, started by a 17-year-old California student named Brandon Gillespie, is now set for April 11 at spots around the nation.
Really, truth be told, it’s aimed at saving lives, too — the lives of the unborn.
“Every day,” said Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins, in a written statement, “Planned Parenthood violently ends the lives of 880 children. Every day, Planned Parenthood targets this generation in school and online to trap us in their predatory business cycle. And for many of us, every day, we are silent, but Enough is Enough. It’s time that the #prolifegen stands up to the violence of abortion and those who perpetrate it.”
The overall aim is to defund Planned Parenthood and “abolish abortion now,” Hawkins said.
The overall aim, too, is to check the left for hypocrisy.
“I would like to see if there really is a double standard and what will come of that,” Gillespie said to CBS Sacramento.
Great idea. If the left can get away with leaving class under guise of protesting gun violence — while also denouncing Trump, the NRA, the Second Amendment and pretty much all conservative causes — those on the other side of the political spectrum should be given the same opportunity.
Student protests that take kids out of class and away from the learning environment they so desperately need is never a good idea. But the left violated that and marched to curb the Constitution — when really, they should’ve been teaching and learning the Constitution. Damage done.
So tit for tat.
Let’s see if the right can do the same, leave school to march, only this time against abortion, and if they can win the same level of media coverage, the same amount of school administrator adoration — the same head-pats and high-fives and kudos as the “March For Our Lives” guys. Anything less, and the left will be choked on its own double standard.
And then? When the streets clear and then pro-life signs are put away and the media coverage stops?
And then it’s time for all sides to get back to class. School is for learning, not political protesting.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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