Around the country, school authorities are “socially transitioning” (treating a boy as a girl or a girl as a boy) students if they say they are experiencing gender dysphoria behind parents’ backs. Washington State is no exception to this trend, but it does not stop there. A 2023 Washington law directs state licensed shelters that take in a runaway child not to contact parents but rather to contact the state Department of Children, Youth and Family Services (DCYF) if that child is seeking “gender-affirming treatment.” While advocates for such policies would suggest they are trying to protect the interests of the children, a moment of thought shows that they are only protecting their own agenda.
In a recent article for Vox preemptively criticizing the Supreme Court for protecting parental rights in schools, Ian Millhiser wrote that, “when a child tells their teacher that they are transgender, and that they do not want their parents to know this fact about them, that child is asserting their own right to self-determination.” This supposed right of children to “self-determination” has a flaw that should be immediately obvious to anyone who once was, but no longer is, a child. Children do not have the wisdom and maturity to make critical decisions for themselves without adult attention and supervision.
Laws across the country and of various types recognize this fact. Contracts with minors are often non-enforceable. Minors need parental consent for all kinds of medical interventions and for body alterations like tattoos and piercings. And minors cannot consent to engage in sexual activity with adults.
As the great Thomas Sowell wrote in Knowledge and Decisions, “The most basic question is not what is best but who shall decide what is best.” When it comes to children’s decisions, the question is not whether others will influence that decision; it is only who will do so.
For gender ideologues, only those who “affirm” a child’s supposed transgender identity should be allowed to influence the child’s decision making.
In one case out of Colorado, for example, a 12-year-old girl was invited without her parents’ knowledge to a meeting of the Gender and Sexualities Alliance Club (GSA) by her teacher. At the meeting, a substitute teacher told her and the other attendees that they were “likely transgender” if “they were not completely comfortable with their bodies” and “warned [them] that it might not be safe to tell their parents they are transgender or about the meeting.”
Another girl at the same school was invited and attended other instances of the GSA meeting and ultimately attempted to commit suicide. Before attending the meetings, she had never questioned her gender, and she identified her attendance at the meetings as the source of her emotional decline.
Returning to Washington’s 2023 law, when DCYF is notified that a child seeking “gender-affirming treatment” has been taken in by a shelter, it is directed in the law to make a “good faith” effort to contact the parents. Regardless of whether the efforts to notify parents succeed, DCYF is also directed to “[o]ffer to make referrals on behalf of the minor for appropriate behavioral health services.” The law also appears to leave to the discretion of DCYF when to return the child to the parents’ custody.
The Supreme Court has rightly held that the Constitution protects the fundamental right of parents “to direct the education and upbringing of their children” and “the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.” As we at Advancing American Freedom argued in our amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to hear the Washington case, the state’s law undermines these fundamental rights.
It is past time for the Supreme Court to vindicate the rights of American parents. The case challenging Washington’s law is one of many critical opportunities for the Court to do so.
Marc Wheat is the General Counsel at Advancing American Freedom
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Transgender activists. Flickr/Sterling College)
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