California Attorney General Rob Bonta has defied a court order by directing school districts to adopt policies that allow them to hide a student’s claimed transgender identity from parents or guardians, despite a federal judge’s ruling that such policies likely violate the U.S. Constitution, lawyers say.
Bonta sent a letter to school districts across California, encouraging them to adopt secretive transgender policies.
When my son was younger, my hottest hot button was “Do not fuck around with my kid.” Now that my son is an adult, I don’t know if I have a hottest hot button, but one of my hottest hot buttons is “Don’t fuck around with other people’s kids.”
I absolutely believe in the right of parents to direct the education, health and upbringing, and to maintain the well-being of, their children.
Do I think a lot of parents do a poor job of that? Yes. But I still believe in their right to do it.
One of the reasons that’s sometimes cited for not informing parents of a student’s transgender identity is a right of privacy.
Children don’t have a right of privacy from their parents. I learned when my son was an adult and went to college that his consent (which he granted) was required for his mom or me to access his health records, grades — anything, really. It seems obvious enough to me that a school does not have the right to withhold health records, grades or anything else regarding a minor child, and I’m including gender dysphoria as a health issue.
Another reason often given for not informing parents is “safety.” “Safety” has become synonymous with “whatever I want to do.” Similarly, whatever I don’t want to do is “dangerous,” as in “Forced outing [another great term] of children to their parents could be dangerous.”
I have to call total bullshit on that one, as school personnel in California are mandated reporters, meaning if they suspect a student is living in a dangerous situation, they’re required to report that to the appropriate agency and it has nothing to do with gender identity.
Finally, and most importantly, secretive transgender policies seem to me to check all the boxes for grooming:
- Gaining access and isolating the victim: Abusers will attempt to physically or emotionally separate a victim from those protecting them (e.g., drive a wedge between students and parents) and often seek out positions in which they have contact with minors.
- Trust development and keeping secrets: Abusers attempt to gain trust of a potential victim through sharing “secrets” and other means to make them feel that they have a caring relationship and to train them to keep the relationship secret.
- Desensitization to discussion of sexual topics: Abusers may show the victim pornography (the school library probably has some) or discuss sexual topics with them, to introduce the idea of sexual contact.
Next step: Blackmail the child. It would be bad for you if our little secret got out, wouldn’t it?
You might say, “How dare you suggest that a teacher would do something like that?” Well — the teacher is already a self-professed liar. If teachers are willing to lie to parents, why wouldn’t they lie to students? A liar is a liar.
Also, on any given day in our great land, you can find a teacher being arrested for sexual contact with a student. It’s not even surprising anymore. Granted, these seem to mostly be heterosexual relationships but there’s no reason why that has to be the case.
If you’re a parent, make your own choices, but if I still had a school-age child, I would get him the hell out of any school that was committed to secretive transgender policies.