California’s gender madness is affecting the kids too

California’s left-wing government is trying to leave parents out of the loop when it comes to the health and well-being of their children. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) just signed a bill into law that prohibits local school districts from implementing policies that require teachers to inform parents when students change their genders at school.

So municipalities that have implemented this policy of ‘parental notification’ to require schools to keep parents informed, cannot enforce this policy. What does that look like in practice?

“I’ve spoken to parents who discovered that their high school daughters were known as ‘Spencer’ or ‘Ethan’ for the better part of an entire school year,” reports journalist Abigail Shrier. “One of these girls had even shared a room with the boys on a field trip.”

This is pure madness.

Parents are ultimately responsible for their children. And if a child starts using different pronouns, names, or genders, it’s likely because he or she is experiencing gender dysphoria. This is a potentially serious mental health condition that often comes with increased anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. We’re not talking about a Goth phase here.

If parents are not aware of this change, they cannot provide their children with the care they need for a potentially life-threatening situation. As Shrier concluded in the cases she has covered, “The hidden transition resulted in the alienation of children from loving parents who tried to protect them.”

Progressive LGBT activists and Democratic politicians argue that keeping parents out of the loop is necessary because some parents might abuse, neglect, or send their children away if their transgender or nonbinary identity is brought to their attention. In every instance where this happens, it is, of course, morally grotesque. But it beggars belief to argue that this is anything but a rare case, particularly in California, and that isolated worst-case scenarios cannot justify undermining the sanctity of parental rights.

It is also possible that students will be abused if their poor academic performance is brought to the attention of their parents. But no serious person has ever argued that this rare outcome means that schools should not inform parents when children fail their classes.

A better solution would be to have narrow exceptions within policies requiring parental notification for cases where counselors or school officials have strong reason to believe that the child would be subject to physical abuse or criminal neglect if the parents were informed of his or her gender. But frankly, if there is good reason to fear that outcome, Child Protective Services should already be involved, because that is an unsafe home for a child.

So what Newsom is doing is completely indefensible. It may also be illegal.

The libertarian-leaning Liberty Justice Center has already filed a lawsuit against the state challenging this new law banning parental notification, arguing that it “violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).”

“PK-12 students, most of whom are too young to drive, vote, or provide medical consent, are also too young to make life-altering decisions about their expressed gender identity without their parents’ knowledge,” Emily Rae, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, said in a statement.

(Disclosure: The Liberty Justice Center is representing me pro bono in an unrelated matter.)

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Legal or not, California’s new policy is an unmitigated disaster, even from a pro-LGBT perspective. After years of progressive overreach, we’re already seeing a significant backlash against the LGBT community and even declining support for gay rights in public polls. There’s no better way to accelerate this trend and inflame support for LGBT people than to come between parents and their children.

Newsom and the fringe activists behind his radical policies may sincerely believe they are helping to protect transgender children. But what they are really doing is undermining the rights of parents and sabotaging acceptance of the LGBT community.

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is an independent journalist, YouTuberand co-founder of BASEDPolitics.