If Your Kid Trusts A Teacher More Than You, That’s Your Own Fault

Recently, the Florida state legislature considered an amendment to an already controversial bill that would force a school principal to out LGBT students to their parents. The amendment was quickly withdrawn, but the idea behind the amendment is still worthy of discussion, if only because the idea has become popular in Republican circles.

There’s an ad from the Orwellianly named Alliance Defending Freedom warning of the possibility of schools allowing children to change their gender identity without parental knowledge, with specific focus on the school district of Madison, Wisconsin.

The video is filled with many false statements and terrible sources, at one point quoting child pornography defender Stephen B. Levine. Although they also cite the statistic that gender dysphoric children tend to desist later in life — a statistic that is both incorrect and was made up by pedophilia apologist James Cantor — so what do I expect?

I should also note that the quote from Stephen Levine doesn’t actually make any sense. Here is what the they cite Levine as having said:

For a child to live radically different identities at home and at school, and to conceal what he or she perceives to be his or her true identity from parents, is psychology unhealthy in itself.

Of course, human social relationships are constantly changing depending on circumstance, meaning people already “live radically different identities,” all the time. Most people are not the same when alone in their rooms compared to in front of their parents, just as most people are not the same when in front of their parents as they are in front of their friends. Exactly when this difference becomes “radical,” is never defined in the video, so I’m just going to call that a weasel word and move on.

With that said, this ad — which was totally mocked when it was posted onto YouTube by the vast majority of people who saw it — does do a good job showing the conservative view, that parents have a right to know everything they can about their kids regardless of why anyone would want to conceal that information. I certainly sympathize with and totally understand that belief, and I certainly think that a good parent should be informed about everything…