Most Americans have probably never heard of Fairfax County, Virginia—but their children could be the next victims of its latest policy. That’s because the 10th-largest school district in the country rewrote the rules on sex ed—and the LGBT activists who helped are about to take the model everywhere.

It was one of the fiercest debates that most locals had ever seen. Parents, furious that they’d been left out of such a controversial subject, flooded the public comment lines with objections.

No, they didn’t want their young children learning that gender is something you choose, biological sex is meaningless, and daily gay sex pills PrEP can help prevent HIV. And that’s just the LGBT portion of the lesson. There were other, more graphic explanations of “healthy” sex acts and ways of pleasuring one’s self that didn’t exactly have the ringing endorsement of concerned moms and dads.

The lessons are so radical that the word “marriage,” Family Research Council’s Cathy Ruse (and resident Virginian) points out, doesn’t appear even once.

“The sex-ed curriculum advisory committee that is responsible for drafting the lessons is supposed to be made up of stakeholders, namely parents. Any curriculum it devises must reflect ‘broad-based community involvement.’ These are mandates from the Virginia Department of Education,” she writes. And yet the 40-member committee is made up of “mostly of people on the county payroll, not parents.”

One outside voice who seemed to have more authority than anyone was the national Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Alliance (GLSEN). In a Washington Post puff piece that focuses on how important these extremist curriculums are (and ignores the public outcry), GLSEN admits that it was using Fairfax to pave the way for a broader onslaught. Northern Virginia, says local GLSEN Co-Chair David Aponte, served as a “laboratory” for its LGBT school policies. And local children are the rats.

One board member, Tom Wilson, made a last-ditch effort that schools should have to “obtain written permission before exposing students to this kind of sex-ed.” But the majority of the board refused.

“Board member Pat Hynes said it would be too much of an administrative burden, and the parents in the audience erupted with yells. One mom stood and shouted, ‘You require it for field trips!’ She was ignored. Board member Elizabeth Schultz ran down a long list of things kids need permission slips for, course selections, prescription medication, even music class.” Apparently, Ruse writes, “you need your mom’s permission to learn the oboe but not to learn about oral sex.”

Despite the county’s record-shattering 1,300 comments—83 percent of which opposed the policy—the school board marched ahead with GLSEN, voting 10-1 to ignore parents and force its own twisted ideas of sexuality on innocent and impressionable kids.

I don’t know about you, but as a dad, the idea that I wouldn’t have control over what my children are learning at school is absolutely unacceptable. Parents—not teachers, state legislatures, school boards, or outside groups—should be the ultimate authority on what their kids learn and when. But, because of radical influences like GLSEN, teenagers growing up in Christian homes could be morally compromised because their parents don’t know what they’re hearing in class.

The moral of the Fairfax County story is a simple one: If your children are in government schools, (a) consider the alternatives; or (b) pay very close attention to what kind of sex ed your child’s school is teaching. You might even consider running for your local school board so that you can have an even greater influence on the content. Either way, don’t let local bureaucrats rob you of your responsibility in an area that can make so much difference in a child’s future. The only way schools can really keep parents in the dark is if we let them.

This was originally published in Tony Perkins’ Washington Update, which is written with the aid of Family Research Council senior writers.