The desire to protect children from harm by any means necessary is in itself good.
However, the desire to protect children from things that are not harmful has in turn created some of the stupidest culture war nonsense society has seen.
“Parental rights” definitely sound like something we should uphold on paper. I find it very nobel to protect one’s children from danger and indoctrination. However, many of the people championing for parental rights and condemning indoctrination seem to have a warped view of how the world works.
One such group that claims to be concerned with parental rights is Moms for Liberty. Recently the group has gone against the books “The Kite Runner” and “Slaughterhouse-Five” being allowed in Florida schools. It is shocking to me that mothers who say they support liberty want anti-war books banned from schools.
According to CNN, Moms for Liberty was founded in Fla. as a response to COVID-19 school closures and mask mandates. They have also expanded their goal to stop the discussion of gender and sexuality by teachers and the teaching of “critical race theory.”
Parental rights groups feel they should be entitled to everything about their children as if they were not their own person, but an extension of the parent. They see their own children as objects to control and must micromanage everything right down to how they express their gender identity.
I want to be clear, parents should never have the right to control how their children express their gender identity. The only person who should control their gender expression is that person themselves.
There were even attempts to bring this sort of evil into New Hampshire. Last year the “parental bill of rights” would have made it so teachers would have to disclose a child’s gender identity and/or sexual orientation to family members, but it was thankfully defeated by the N.H. House.
A law like this would only make a child more secretive, which could be detrimental to them. Parents can be abusive and bigoted; they are not entitled to know private details only their child and those they would like to share it with should know. It seems ultra conservatives would rather put children in the way of abuse over phony “indoctrination” than admit being gay or transgender is okay and natural.
Teaching children about how gender works is not indoctrination and it never will be. Likewise, teaching children the historically accurate version of slavery and the racist past and present of the United States is not indoctrination and it never will be.
Parents do not need to know everything about their children. I can empathize with wanting to know whether or not one’s child is safe and only learning accurate information. That is not what the so called Moms for Liberty care about though. They do not speak out against the preventable school shootings and the “teaching” of Christopher Colombus discovering America.
This is clearly only about allowing parents to have absolute control over their children. It is not about liberty; it is about oppression.
Nico Brazill can be contacted at
nbrazill@kscequinox.com
