Editors at National Review Online decry the latest bad political decision in the Golden State.
Adults who keep secrets with other people’s children violate commonsense safeguards of minors and must be stopped. Shamefully, this is exactly the kind of behavior California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, seeks to enable.
Last Monday, Bonta sued a Southern California school district over its new policy that sensibly requires schools to notify parents within three days when their child requests to be treated as the opposite (or neither) sex.
In his filing, Bonta alleges that the Chino Valley Unified School District “singled out an especially vulnerable group of children and youth for discriminatory treatment: transgender and gender nonconforming students.”
Bonta is correct that young people confused or distressed by their sex are a vulnerable population. They are at higher risk of mental-health problems. They are also at high risk of being ushered down an irreversible medical pathway that can result in sterility and sexual dysfunction. That’s precisely why their parents’ involvement in all aspects of their care is so critical. And why it is so dangerous to drive a wedge between these children and their families.
Yet, time and time again, that is what transgender activists across the country have done. Take the case of the Littlejohn family, in Tallahassee, Fla., who say they informed their daughter’s school that they did not consent to social transition, only to learn later that school personnel had been having secret meetings with their 13-year-old, asking which restroom she wanted to use and which sex she wanted to stay with on overnight trips.
Or the Perez family in Jacksonville, Fla., whose twelve-year-old daughter secretly met with a school counselor for months to discuss her transgender identity. Mr. and Mrs. Perez allege they were told only after their daughter twice tried to kill herself at school that they had been excluded from these discussions because of their Catholic faith, which the counselor presumed would make them opposed to transgenderism.
