“Here to Protect You…From Your Parents”
More than 90 years ago, in 1932, a 13-year-old Russian boy named Pavlik was praised in the Soviet press as a martyr. After publicly denouncing his father for hiding wheat from communist officials, which led to the father’s imprisonment, Pavlik was in turn killed by family members. Monuments to him were erected across the Soviet Union. He was listed in the Soviet youth pioneer organization as Pioneer #001, an example of a youth who chose the state over his own father.
Nearly a century later, a growing number of American youth are faced with a similar choice, whether to follow the down-to-earth worldview of most of their parents that there are two sexes or to follow the ideology being taught in government-sponsored and progressive schools that sex/gender is a social construct existing in a spectrum. If students, increasing numbers of whom are autistic females experiencing difficulties relating to other girls, suddenly discover that their problems can be “solved” by declaring that they are transgender males, then not to “affirm” this identity would be proof of bigotry.
In many schools this radical shift has become an enforced policy, one in which parents of “transitioning” students are generally viewed with suspicion as dangers to their own children. Assuming they are informed, if parents dare to express reservations about their child receiving puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or radical surgery, they are labeled as anti-LGBTQ bigots and threatened with losing custody of their son or daughter.
Skeptical? Take the example of Olivia Garrison, a “nonbinary” history teacher in Bakersfield, California, who has helped students socially transition at school without their parents’ knowledge. Garrison says, “My job, which is a public service, is to protect kids. Sometimes, they need protection from their own parents.”
In Pennsylvania, the Greater Johnstown School District created a “gender transition plan” and a “gender support plan” for students. Neither plan requires consent or involvement from parents. In order to keep students’ gender identity secret, school personnel are instructed to “use the student’s legal name and the pronoun corresponding to the student’s gender assigned at birth” when contacting a student’s parent or guardian.[i]
One mother in California shared messages that her teenager’s teacher had sent through the school’s web portal encouraging the student to obtain medical care, housing and legal advice without the parents’ knowledge.
A lawsuit filed against a school district in Wisconsin included a photo of a teacher’s flyer posted at school which stated: “If your parents aren’t accepting of your identity, I’m your mom now.”
At schools in states such as Michigan and New York, parents said that teachers had used a student’s new name in class but the old one with them, so that they wouldn’t be aware of the change.[ii]
At a parents’ support group in Westchester County, New York, one mother said her middle-schooler had secretly changed names and pronouns without her knowledge, even though she had worked as a teacher at the same school.
In Florida, Wendell and Maria Perez filed a lawsuit against their child’s elementary school district, saying that only after their child made two suicide attempts did the school tell them that an employee had been counseling their 12-year-old about “gender confusion for several months.
Courts have ruled that under the Fourteenth Amendment, parents get to make medical and mental health decisions for their children, as well as direct their education and upbringing in other ways, unless they are abusive or unfit. But lawyers for schools have countered that parental rights are not absolute. Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Education has said that discriminating against students based on gender identity violates federal policy.
Guidelines on social transitioning vary widely among school districts. Some states, such as California, New Jersey, and Maryland, expressly advise schools NOT to disclose information about students’ gender identity to parents without the children’s permission.
The American Civil Liberties Union argues that it would be unconstitutional for public schools to reveal a student’s gender identity, as if parents are just random strangers with no special knowledge or concern about their own children.
An ACLU lawyer, Jon Davidson, explains, “parents don’t have a constitutional right to dictate to schools how they should create an optimal learning environment for students.” The default view he advocates is that the state and its “experts” are best equipped to make decisions about life-changing interventions in the lives of minors.
The arrogance and harsh indifference to parents who have known and cared for their child since the first breath is staggering. Teachers and counselors who may have only known a child for a few months are making decisions that may affect their life for years, if not decades, with the parents, not school officials, left to deal with the wreckage.
Welcome to the new progressive, Soviet-style USA, where the therapeutic state and its bureaucracy, not parents, knows what is best for your son or daughter.
[i] Spencer Lindquist, “Pennsylvania Schools to Exclude Parents from Child’s ‘Gender Transition Plan,’” April 2, 2023, Breitbart. www.breitbart.com/education/2023/04/02/pennsylvania-schools-exclude-parents-kids-gender-transition-plan/
[ii] Katie J.M. Baker, “When Students Change Gender Identity, and Parents Don’t Know,” New York Times, January 22, 2023.