Oh, no! Those Moms for Liberty freaks have struck again!
You haven’t heard of Moms for Liberty? You lucky duck! Allow me to ruin your day: Moms for Liberty is a “grassroots” organization (that somehow manages to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars by… selling t-shirts?) focused on destroying LGBTQ+ people. They also dabble in anti-vax action, because why not?
M4L holds a spot on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s prestigious extremist files, where they are described as a “far-right… antigovernment organization” that “engages in anti-student inclusion activities and self-identifies as part of the modern parental rights movement.” These NIMBY crackers advocate book burnings and work hard to steer local politics away from supporting LGBTQ+ people and racial inclusivity.
Basically, they are evil incarnate.
Regrettably, they’ve won yet another victory in their war against the very concept of human decency, thanks to the cowardice of the Chathams School District in New Jersey. In August, with the help of the Thomas More Society (a shadowy conservative law firm who love to lend their aid to the most vile far-right causes they can find), M4L sued the Chathams School District over a policy that gave trans students the right to use a name and pronouns that best suited them without their parents being notified.
Policies like these have been contentious across the nation. Parents (and the powerful conservative law firms suspiciously eager to represent them) argue that they have a right, as parents, to any medical information schools may possess about their kids. While I would agree that parents should be informed when their kid accidentally chops her finger off in metal shop, I would argue that social transition is explicitly non-medical, and should not be shared against children’s will.
You see, I believe that children are full human beings who deserve significantly more autonomy and respect than they are currently afforded. Certainly there is a line beyond which a young person must be protected from their own idiocy—I’m sure, like me, your parent(s) kept you from metaphorically wandering into traffic a time or two while your noggin noodle was still developing—but, in my humble opinion, exploring ideas of identity and self don’t require unrequested parental intervention.
To say nothing of the serious risk of abuse and homelessness that transgender kids face.
Our ideologically enslaved, Republican-captured Supreme Court disagrees, unfortunately. In March, the Supreme Court utilized their vile shadow docket to issue an 18-page decree in support of schools outing trans kids against their will. This ruling was the backbone of M4L’s suit against Chatham School District. Never mind that the Supreme Court’s ruling was in response to an existing pro-outing policy that had been ruled against by a Ninth Circuit court, which is legally distinct from an existing policy against forcible outing… or that the Supreme Court has explicitly declined to hear cases like M4L’s.
No, you see, it’s much easier for Chatham School District to throw their trans students to the wolves. Why fight for kids when you can abandon them to the dangers of an unsafe home? Less than two months after M4L’s suit was filed, Chatham acquiesced, rolling over to show their soft underbelly in a 7-0 vote in favor of terminating the 2024 district rule that protected trans kids.
I can’t tell you how much this sort of thing disgusts me. Our kids deserve so much more than these domestic terrorist organizations want for them. I’m still dreaming of a world where trans youth are allowed to figure themselves out without the terror of being harassed back into the closet by miserable sickos like Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich.
