Childhood ought to be a carefree time of learning and healthy development. This is difficult when children are used as political pawns.
Childhood ought to be a carefree time of learning and healthy development. This is difficult when children are used as political pawns.
P rogressives appeal to the “think of the children!” sentiment when it suits them. Take gun control, for instance. This month, state representative Justin Jones (D., Tenn.) carried a child-sized casket through Nashville and tried to bring it inside the state legislature. Or take transgenderism, about which activists claim that unless we all facilitate and celebrate medicalized gender transition, children will die by suicide: “Tantamount to torture” is how one Montana Democrat described the restriction of such procedures.
Child homicide and suicide are horrific tragedies and every parent’s worst nightmares. But there is little evidence that progressive policy preferences prevent either. On the contrary, children are often the primary victims in the Left’s culture war.
Medically transitioning children is not “lifesaving treatment,” as advertised, but reckless experimentation. The British National Health Service, which closed its youth gender clinic under pressure, now admits that “little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers with gender dysphoria.” What we do know is concerning, however. There is emerging evidence that these drugs can cause bone damage, liver damage, and stunted growth.
Unfortunately, the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs is still commonplace in the United States. Project Veritas’s recent undercover videos revealed that doctors in New York and Texas are regularly prescribing “gender-affirming” puberty-blocking drugs to children as young as eight years old, sometimes after just one consultation.
Most patients on puberty blockers will progress to cross-sex hormones, which can cause sexual dysfunction and infertility. Detransitioners who have undergone “gender-affirming” medical treatments report how permanent changes in their bodies, undergone in youth — such as lowered voices, baldness, facial hair, and the inability to breastfeed — have introduced new suffering to their lives while leaving their underlying issues unresolved.
Parents — not teachers, peers, or activists — are best positioned to give children the emotional support and validation they need. But progressive ideologues directly undermine the parent–child bond in pursuit of their agenda. That’s why Florida governor Ron DeSantis passed the Parental Rights in Education bill, the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill, prohibiting schools from treating a child as if he or she is of the opposite sex behind parents’ backs.
The sexual revolution was the Left’s doing. It promoted adult fecklessness — higher rates of fatherless (sometimes motherless) children, divorce, and abortion — for which children have paid the price. Little has been done to protect children from pornography, another one of the revolution’s fruits. National Review’s Evan Myers notes that, on average, children are exposed to pornography online between the ages of eleven and twelve. That’s bad enough. But must they also be exposed to pornographic material at school?
Progressive seem to think so. Explicit materials instructing children in everything from masturbation to anal sex are now distributed in public schools across the nation.
During the pandemic, we saw children being sacrificed at the altar of “Science.” Of course, it wasn’t really science at all, but progressives’ cult of expertise. Schools shut down for months on end, hitting kids from disadvantaged backgrounds the worst. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) estimates that two decades of educational progress have been wiped out. Those who protested were demonized. The Free Press reports on a school in Upstate New York which from the fall of 2020 has had children “masked during class and on the playground” and barred from “speaking during lunch.” These policies are still in place.
Children have likewise been sacrificed at the altar of “equity.” Even with kids back in school, across North America, progressive ideology is being prioritized ahead of literacy, numeracy, and general knowledge. National Review’s Ari Blaff reported on the Ontario school system, which, in pursuit of ideological goals, has abandoned its “no tolerance” policy for violence and has stopped grouping children based on ability. As National Review editors wrote, “teaching kids that math is about recovering ‘indigenous knowledge’ or dismantling ‘white supremacy’ is educational fraud and institutional abuse.”
Childhood ought to be a carefree time of learning and healthy development, but this becomes difficult when children are used as pawns in the Left’s culture war.