by Renee McGuinness, Vermont Family Alliance Policy Analyst

The Vermont legislature’s most dangerous opponents of parental rights were reelected in the 2026 General Election without any counterinfluence to stop them.

Parents’ and guardians’ greatest threat to their rights and responsibilities in the upbringing, education, and welfare of their own children are: Senators Virginia Lyons, Chittenden Southeast; Martine Laroque-Gulick, Chittenden-Central, both of whom will most likely continue to serve on the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare; Senator Ruth Hardy, Addison, who formerly served on Health and Welfare; and Representatives Lori Houghton, Chittenden-22, and Alyssa Black Chittenden-24, who will likely continue serving on the House Committee on Health  Care.

Having served as chairs and co-chairs of the above-mentioned committees with the exception of Ruth Hardy, these legislators will determine which bills will be taken up during the 2027 – 2028 legislative session. Houghton will most assuredly be elected Speaker of the House. She will dictate the House’s agenda and coerce the Democrats to vote party line.

These seasoned legislators’ extreme ideologies align with many of the 45 Communist goals read into the Congressional record in 1963. Below are a few of the Communist goals they have already fulfilled – or will continue to attempt to fulfill – that are specific to the upbringing of children.

Communist goal number 17: Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Socialist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of the teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

Rob Roper, freelance writer and former President of the Ethan Allen Institute, has exposed Vermont’s education system regarding control over education by special interests and the decline in academic outcomes caused by exchanging academics for social causes.

Communist goal number 19: Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Socialist attack.

Vermont students have protested during school hours against the U.S. Secretary of Education and ICE, and participated in Climate change activism supported by the Vermont Natural Resources Counsil and Youth Lobby under the Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP).

Communist goal number 20: Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.

Act 150 library bill, passed by the 2024 supermajority, reduced parents’ access to their children’s library use records from age 16 to age 12, and directs libraries to curate books that uphold Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ideology, which is a passive ban on books that present opposing views to issues such as boys in girls’ sports.

Communist Goals 25 and 26: Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV, and Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

These goals have been fulfilled through Act 157, which requires that secondary schools provide free contraception; banning so-called conversion therapy; and shielding so-called gender-affirming care practitioners from liability, including for minors, which Senator Hardy enthusiastically supported.

Senator Lyons has gone as far as attempting to push minor consent to STI preventative treatments through her committee, which violates federal law.

In addition, books in classrooms – some of them graphic – introduce LTBTQ+ ideology to children as young as kindergarten.

Communist goals 29, 30, and 31: Discredit the U.S. Constitution and the Founding Fathers and belittle all forms of American culture. This is being fulfilled through public school curriculum.

Communist goal 39: Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose socialist goals.

There will be a continuing effort by the Vermont Supermajority legislature to take control over children’s mental healthcare in schools, without parental consent or notification.

Communist Goal 40: Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

I frequently hear legislators in House Health Care, House Human Services, and Senate Health and Welfare dismiss the critical role of parents in their own children’s lives.

In 2026, the legislature passed, and Governor Scott signed into law, Act 136, which is a soft emancipation of minors aged 16 – 17 that allows certified “unaccompanied youth” to consent to medical and mental health care and obtain housing without parental consent or notification. “Unaccompanied youth” is loosely defined.

Legislators also attempted to introduce peer to peer mental health programs in schools without parental consent or notification, which violates the federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA).

Keeping two separate files on students in public schools: one for parents, one for the school, for the purposes of socially transitioning children at schools without parental knowledge or consent, (See page 4, “Privacy”), is one of many abuses of the sanctity of the family institution, as are existing laws that allow minors to consent to medical and mental healthcare.

Rob Roper also uncovered the blaming parents in, Who’s responsible for Vermont’s failing schools?

Several individuals and organizations such as Vermont Family Alliance and SPEAK-VT will continue to shed light on these issues. We can expect that parents will continually be ignored, shut down, and bullied for speaking out against the Supermajority’s communist ideals. I can predict that any bill legislators take up in the 2027 – 2028 legislative session regarding children will violate parents’ rights and put minors at risk of poor physical and mental health outcomes and continued academic decline.