[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Joseph Klein’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Drag queens and LGBQT+ activists marched through a New York City park on June 23rd in advance of the annual Pride parade, chanting, “We’re here, we’re queer and we’re coming for your children.”
They are not kidding. The author M.E. O’Brien, whose motto is “towards trans communist future,” spells out the “collective liberation” from parents and the nuclear family in a book that just came out, entitled Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care.
The extreme transgenderism ideology is not confined to the fringes of society. Alarmingly, left-wing progressive politicians in some states are becoming the enablers of trans extremists whose ultimate objective is to abolish the nuclear family altogether.
An organization known as Parents Defending Education has compiled a list of “school districts by state that have Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Policies that openly state that district personnel can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents.” (Emphasis in the original)
The list includes 1002 school districts and 17,639 schools, encompassing 10,231,942 students nationwide. California is in the lead as expected. New Jersey is not that far behind. Their left-wing progressive leadersare seeking to deny parents their constitutional right to direct the education and upbringing of their children.
A bill that has been advancing in California’s legislature would require parents to affirm their child’s expressed gender identity in order to be judged fit by a court of law to provide for “the health, safety, and welfare of the child.” The non-complying parents could be found liable for child abuse and be forced to give up custody of their child.
Nicole Pearson, founder of the Facts Law Truth Justice law firm and civil rights advocacy group, condemned the proposed legislation:
“If a parent or guardian is unwilling or simply not ready to affirm their 7-year-old’s new identity—as they transition from Spongebob to Batman to Dora the Explorer—they can be found guilty of child abuse under AB-957 [the bill in question] if it passes into law.”
In California, schools are running roughshod over parental rights. In one illustrative case reported on by the Daily Signal, a northern California school board “voted to keep parents in the dark about children’s gender transitions.” Pro-LGBTQ+ activists who had showed up at the board meeting en masse were ecstatic. A professor of public health at California State University-Chico boasted on Twitter: “Chico queers SHOWED UP tonight! So many beautiful, radical, queer babes came out to support trans & queer youth tonight at the Chico Unified School District meeting. It took 7 HOURS but we emerged victorious at 12:16 am and trans kids are safe tonight in Chico.” The tweet included an image of an individual pointing a pistol with the caption “Not gay as in happy, but queer as in f— you.”
The transgenderism lunacy on the West Coast is being matched by transgenderism lunacy on the East Coast.
New Jersey’s Democrat administration has sued three school districts for deciding that parents should be notified if their children express a desire to be treated as transgenders in school. This could happen, for example, if their children ask to be referred to in school by their preferred gender names and pronouns or if their children ask to use school bathrooms that do not correspond with their biological sex.
New Jersey’s lawsuit claims that these school districts’ policies in support of the parental right to know discriminates against the parents’ children who seek recognition in school, but not at home, of their preferred gender identity.
New Jersey’s Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who filed the civil rights complaints against the schools, claimed, without a shred of evidence, that “Without question, the discriminatory policies passed by these Boards of Education, if allowed to go into effect, will harm our kids and pose severe risk to their safety.” So Platkin is looking for a court to step in and halt the schools’ parental notification policies from taking effect.
New Jersey’s complaint against the Middletown Township Public School District and Board of Education, for example, alleges that the “parent/guardian notification requirement” will “have an unjustified disparate impact on transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary students at Middletown Township schools, including by subjecting them to the continuous threat of being ‘outed’ if they have not already made their gender identity or gender expression known to their parents or guardians.”
According to the complaint, “Defendants have enacted an amended policy that unlawfully discriminates against students on the basis of gender identity and gender expression, in violation of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD)…and will result in significant and irreversible harm to students if not enjoined.”
Middletown has decided to contest the lawsuit.
The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination says nothing about a school’s notification to a child’s parents regarding their child’s expression in school of a gender identity other than the child’s biological sex. In fact, the statute that New Jersey’s lawsuits rely on to block schools from keeping parents informed about their children’s gender transitioning at school expressly states that “the right of a natural parent or one in loco parentis to direct the education and upbringing of a child under his control is hereby affirmed.” (Emphasis added)
New Jersey State law prohibits schools from providing any “over the counter” medication like Tylenol without a doctor’s order and a parent’s or guardian’s written consent. Yet New Jersey officials have taken school districts to court for letting parents know if their children are having issues with their gender identity in school.
New Jersey’s Governor Phil Murphy said he was “offended” and would be “vigilant to the max in fighting back” against the school disclosure policies that his administration has challenged in court. New Jersey parents should be offended that their governor and his left-wing progressive cronies insist on keeping parents in the dark about the serious health and emotional issue of gender identity that their children are grappling with.
Some parents in New Jersey are fighting back. One group of parents known as the New Jersey Project states on its website: “Only parents can help a child that is struggling with gender identity. The fact that the Murphy administration is trying to force schools to hide this vital information from parents is quite disturbing. A child who is changing gender identity is at high risk for bullying and suicide. Keeping this vital information from the parents will most certainly hurt children by preventing parents from seeking help for their kids.”
But Governor Murphy and Attorney General Platkin could not care less what parents think. Transgenderism rules in New Jersey.
New York has not gone quite as far as California and New Jersey yet when it comes to denying parents their constitutional right to direct the education and upbringing of their children. But New York is moving ever closer to embracing the extreme transgenderism ideology in its public schools.
New York State’s Education Department issued its 2023 Legal Update and Best Practices to create what the Education Department called a “Safe, Supportive, and Affirming School Environment for Transgender and Gender Expansive [TGE] Students.”
“The individual student is the sole person who will establish their gender identity. School staff should be careful and respectfully use the language chosen by each student,” the Education Department declared. “It is essential that schools accept and respect a student’s assertion of their own gender identity.”
Forget about what the child’s parents might think. The New York Department of Education believes it is a “best practice” to keep the student’s own assertion of preferred gender identity in school from the child’s parents if that is the way the child wants it.
“Only the student knows whether it is safe to share their identity with caregivers, and schools should be mindful that some TGE students do not want or cannot have their parents/guardians know about their transgender status,” New York’s Education Department wrote. It added that “as students may not have disclosed their gender identity to parents/guardians, friends, or even other school staff, it is important that school personnel receiving this information keep it confidential, unless the student explicitly states otherwise.”
The child’s age makes no difference. Neither does the child’s physical and mental health. New York’s schools are instructed to just take the child’s word for it – no questions asked. Forget about consulting with a multidisciplinary team of experts to determine what may be the real underlying reasons for the child’s desire to change gender identity in school.
“School personnel’s acceptance of a student’s asserted gender identity should require no more than a statement from the student expressing their preference,” the Department of Education wrote. “Schools do not need to require permission, letters from professionals, or other proof of gender identity.”
Evidently, the authors of New York State’s 2023 Legal Update and Best Practices did not think it is a “best practice” for schools to seek professional advice before honoring the child’s request to transition in school. They would rather rely entirely on the child’s self-expressed feelings, which could be transitory, a symptom of a deep underlying physical or mental health problem, or the result of peer pressure and social media influence.
Public schools across the country are failing to fulfill their basic educational responsibilities. Students’ math and reading test scores have plummeted. Yet an alarming number of school teachers and administrators do not seem to care so much these days about imparting the basic knowledge and skills that their students will need to succeed in life. Instead, these progressive school educators would rather indoctrinate even young primary school students with transgenderism ideology. And these educators outrageously believe that they are entitled to substitute their judgment for the judgment of their students’ parents when it comes to deciding what is best for the health and welfare of the parents’ own children.
Schools that keep parents in the dark are violating the parents’ fundamental constitutional right to be in charge of their children’s education and upbringing. This transgenderism lunacy must be stopped, or America’s schools will be headed towards a “trans communist future.”