For years, a battle has been raging in Montgomery County, Md., over the school district’s sex education curriculum. Yesterday, the curriculum’s main opponents, while promising to keep fighting, announced that they would no longer do so in court. In celebratory response to the news, Brian Edwards, chief of staff for district superintendent Jerry Weast, declared that “a small group of opponents have cost taxpayers thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend this, so obviously we’re very pleased that it’s over.”

It certainly is regrettable that Montgomery County taxpayers have had to shell out big bucks to fight this battle, but Mr. Edwards seems to be suggesting that the main injustice is that the curriculum’s opponents are but a “small group.” The small group is itself composed largely of taxpayers, and one of the basic principles of American government is supposed to be respect for people’s rights no matter how few are having them trampled. We are supposed to hate tyranny of the majority.

The problem in Montgomery County — and districts all over the country — is not that a few troublemakers keep thwarting majority rule. It’s that public schooling, which forces taxpayers with diverse values to support monolithic school systems, makes such conflict, and often repression of minorities, unavoidable.

Thankfully, there is a solution to this problem that will benefit both majorities and minorities: Let parents, not government, decide to which schools their children and tax dollars will go. Let all people freely seek the education they want and you immediately vanquish the cause of war.