Does your government believe its job is to protect your children from your bad beliefs?
More and more state and local governments, especially school boards, see their role as peeling children away from parents who don’t share the official current belief systems. Maryland just passed a bill enabling therapists and psychologists to diagnose and treat 12-year-olds without parental knowledge or consent. “There are so many young people who have struggled with depression, who’ve had tremendous isolation, and they need help,” said bill sponsor Malcolm Augustine, a state senator who supported the yearlong school closures in his county that caused this depression and tremendous isolation.
The Maryland Psychological Association opposed the bill, explaining the obvious: “Most pre-teen and younger teenage children do not have the cognitive capacity to consent to such treatment without parental involvement, and it is not developmentally appropriate to expect them to be able to do so.” Maryland’s psychological Board of Examiners also opposed the legislation, which “places the burden of determining maturity and capacity on the healthcare provider, which is further problematic as it may introduce bias.“ The nursing board opposed the bill because “a child, as young as 12 years old, could be consenting to a treatment without understanding the risk, benefits, or alternatives. Children are extremely impressionable and may feel pressured to consent.”
That’s the point, isn’t it? Nobody is trying to liberate preteens to make their life choices. This is about wresting influence over a child away from the parents.
Augustine said his bill was needed to help children escape “stigma” from certain cultures or families. “Advocates of the legislation assert this will expand mental healthcare access to LGBTQ+ youth,” one education news source reported. Translated: Parents must be circumvented if they do not support their depressed 12-year-old’s gender transition.
Democrat Terry McAuliffe, in sinking his bid for a second term as Virginia’s governor, famously pronounced that parents should have no say in what is being taught to their children. As countless very frank teachers have made clear in TikTok videos, it is a widespread view that the public school system’s job is, in part, to tear children away from their parents.
How long can such a system survive in a democracy?
