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The New York Times published a front-page article yesterday documenting the outrage that even liberal parents feel when schools hide their minor children’s gender “transitions” from them until it is too late to intervene.
The article titled, “When Students Change Gender Identity, and Parents Don’t Know,” highlights the anxiety that educators are said to feel about the moral dilemma of whether to inform parents who may disapprove.
LGBTQIA+ has been allowed to dismantle kids' lives and families.
The outrage and pushback have begun.
Be informed, not misled.
But along the way, the Times reports the outrage of parents — even liberal parents who support gay rights and transgenderism for adults — who are kept in the dark, even when children consider hormones and surgery.
Cultural confusion replaces education.
Jessica Bradshaw found out that her 15-year-old identified as transgender at school after she glimpsed a homework assignment with an unfamiliar name scrawled at the top.
When she asked about the name, the teenager acknowledged that, at his request, teachers and administrators at his high school in Southern California had for six months been letting him use the boy’s bathroom and calling him by male pronouns.
Mrs. Bradshaw was confused: Didn’t the school need her permission, or at least need to tell her?
It did not, a counselor later explained, because the student did not want his parents to know. District and state policies instructed the school to respect his wishes.
“There was never any word from anyone to let us know that on paper, and in the classroom, our daughter was our son,” Mrs. Bradshaw said.
There are hundreds---perhaps thousands of parents across the nation that are outraged at public schools because they have essentially stolen their children---without the parents having a clue.
Dozens of parents whose children have socially transitioned at school told The Times they felt villainized by educators who seemed to think that they — not the parents — knew what was best for their children. They insisted that educators should not intervene without notifying parents unless there is evidence of physical abuse at home. Although some didn’t want their children to transition at all, others said they were open to it, but felt schools forced the process to move too quickly, and that they couldn’t raise concerns without being cut out completely or having their home labeled “unsafe.”
Many advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. youth counter that parents should stop scapegoating schools and instead ask themselves why they don’t believe their children. They said ensuring that schools provide enough support for transgender students is more crucial than ever, given the rise of legislation that blocks their access to bathrooms, sports, and gender-affirming care.
The New York Times and its kinfolk in the news media have aligned with LGBTQ activists and breathlessly pushed this "transitioning" movement to its limit.
Now they are caught in the sinking sand of their own doing.
Given the complexities, Mrs. Bradshaw said she resented the fact that the school had made her feel like a bad parent for wondering whether educators had put her teenager, a minor, on a path the school wasn’t qualified to oversee.
“It felt like a parenting stab in the back from the school system,” she said. “It should have been a decision we made as a family.”
The student, now 16, told The New York Times that his school had provided him with a space to be himself that he otherwise lacked. He had tried to come out to his parents before, he said, but they didn’t take it seriously, which is why he asked his school for support.
The news media and public education are also feeling political pressure.
An increasing number of parents, the Times notes, find themselves reluctantly drawn to supporting Republican politicians and conservative legal foundations who are standing up for parental rights against transgender activists who have the support of the Biden administration and powerful interest groups: “Other self-described liberal parents said they registered as independents or voted for Republican candidates for the first time as a result of this issue. Although they haven’t sued, some have retained lawyers affiliated with the largest legal organization on the religious right to battle their children’s schools.”
Governors who are taking leadership on this issue have high approval ratings. People support and appreciate them. And they vote for them.
Florida Gov. DeSantis is taking direct action by passing laws that protect parent-child relationships, and that get public education out of surrogate parenting. He won his last election by a 20-point landslide.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Younkin, a newcomer to politics, ran almost exclusively on his opposition to public schools blocking parents from these issues. He won handily over an establishment Democrat who supported the school's position of isolating parents and was picked to win in every poll.
And there is the hypocrisy.
At the time, I talked about the book on our daily radio program.
The Times reporting now contradicts the editorial stance found in their op-ed pages of the Times itself, which described Shrier’s work as an “insult,” and accused Shrier of hiding the phenomenon of transgender “children.”
The Times article published Jan. 8, 2019 said:
Abigail Shrier, writing in The Wall Street Journal, describes it as “social contagion.” She says that young people — many of them college-aged, and most of them born female-bodied — are embarking upon transition, with its surgeries and hormones and other accompanying challenges, in the same way a person might take up the ukulele.
Even the headline on that essay is an insult: “When Your Daughter Defies Biology.” An abundance of scientific research makes clear that gender variance is a fundamental truth of human biology, not some wacky dance craze.
Transgender people have not come up with the entirety of our existence solely to hurt Tucker Carlson’s feelings. We do not embark upon transition because it’s groovy. We are here because our hearts demand it.
I suspect a lot of parents' "heart" loves their child and they want the best for the child. And, unfortunately, in their attempt to understand and support their child, they and their child have been terribly misled by the press, public schools, and LGBTQ activists.
All three are dead wrong on this issue.
What should a parent do?
Reaching back to some of the earliest recorded instruction on parenting, Moses instructed people to first be informed about what they, as a parent believes, then teach those beliefs to their children.
He wrote this in Deuteronomy chapter 6:
5. And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
6. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
7. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
8. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
9. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
10. And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not,
11. And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full;
12. Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.