The resolution yesterday of the much-anticipated cage fight between Alberta's NDP government and a home-schoolers' association beloved of the conservative opposition was disappointingly anti-climactic.

Instead of the scheduled court battle in the oilpatch servicing city of Grande Prairie, the parties meekly announced they had reached an agreement in which the Trinity Christian School Association would be able to continue operating, albeit subject fairly severe and significant restrictions.

Controversy in Alberta over the provincial government's decision to withdraw funding and accreditation from a private Christian school association that oversaw about a third of the province's home-schooled children offers a chance to cast a little light on the home schooling movement and its goals.

For while all sorts of parents home school their children for all sorts of reasons, the majority of the growing number of North American home schoolers are members of the Christian right, and their movement is driven by religious fundamentalist leaders with an agenda for curriculum, philosophy, and, ultimately, societal change that extends beyond their circle of co-religionists.

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Where exactly is this "sensible Alberta compromise" Jason Kenney advises the province's New Democratic Party government to work out with religious schools determined not to allow the gay, lesbian and transgender children they teach to form anti-bullying clubs as the law requires?

The Edmonton-area Baptist church associated with two private schools whose administrator vows they will never comply with the Alberta Government's policy on LGBTQ student rights appears to be a politically active organization that espouses right-wing ideology unrelated to Christian doctrine.