When I was a kid, we went to health class. Our teacher taught us the basics: The human reproductive system is built this way, and you’re going to get hair in weird places.
Now, some think we ought to place different ideas into the minds of children. I joined a small-town school board for a time, and it was tragic to dig into the curriculum.
The previous leaders selected a sex curriculum that was free. Unlike a potluck dinner, sometimes free isn’t better.
Upon further research, I learned that the curriculum was created and funded by a mega-hospital that made its millions conducting sex transitions and hormone therapy on kids.
That wasn’t too surprising when I dug into what it was teaching our kids. Follow the money and agenda.
The curriculum taught the kids that doctors could not technically assign a sex at birth, that biological reality did not exist and that gender is a fluid concept that is purely subjective.
They discussed “norms” and “discrimination,” all while making these ideas seem trendy and common.
That same small-town school had a young girl who, recently, pled guilty to murdering her baby with a knife in her bedroom after she had it in secret.
Perhaps the sex ed curriculum could have mentioned the Safe Haven law that would have allowed that girl to drop her unwanted baby off at a hospital without any penalty.
She could have enjoyed decades of her life outside prison walls, and her baby could be alive today.
While proponents of teaching kids controversial sex concepts have long said that mainstreaming these thoughts keep kids from suicidal ideation, the data disagree.
These extremist beliefs are dangerous and harmful to kids. I think we all remember what it was like to be a kid growing up. We all hated our bodies, didn’t we?
We all felt like we didn’t belong and had moments where we lacked confidence and comfortability in our developing bodies. We were awkward, pimple-filled trainwrecks.
Our emotions were too much and we feared we would never fit in or find love.
Kids now are caught in a culture war that monetizes these normal feelings.
Their common beliefs are being capitalized on by organizations fundraising and receiving mega-grants, while the end result is sterilization, to which a minor in no way can fully understand the consequences of or legally consent.
A kid who isn’t old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes shouldn’t decide to change his or her sex. Parents are often pressured into this by “counselors” with their own host of agendas, problems and monetary gain.
Telling a kid anything except that they are fearfully and wonderfully made in the body they were born with is evil.
To say that they need changing and to endorse the belief that there is something about them that is worthy of medically correcting is an atrocity toward everything it means to be the adult in the room.
Now mind you, if you are a grown adult and you decide that you would like to undergo sex transition or hormones, I would not have an opinion.
It is your body and your life. If you’d like to change it, go ahead. You are a fully-consenting adult making an adult decision for which you will enjoy the consequences.
I object, rather, to grooming children to make them believe that switching genders is a Band-Aid that will fix their emotions and any self-hate they may be feeling. Instead of normalizing teenage emotions, we’ve financially capitalized upon it.
Instead of helping children develop self-confidence and an ability to understand and regulate their emotions, we’ve medicated their confusion.
We have failed an entire generation that is more depressed and medicated than any generation in history. The effects will be long-term and devastating.
We have failed these kids by instituting the lobotomies of our generation instead of letting them just grow up as kids should.
Former state Rep. Albert Sommers, who lost his race last election cycle, refused to hear bills that would have supported parental rights and helped provide a state cause of action to parents like the Willey family whose court case was dismissed by a Wyoming federal judge earlier this week.
One bill was Senate File 117 which would have prohibited schools from teaching young children about gender identity or sexual orientation.
Many believe sex education should not include sex indoctrination, I agree, and apparently so did the voters.
Cowboy State Daily columnist Cassie Craven is a University of Wyoming College of Law graduate who practices law in Wyoming. She can be reached at: longhornwritingllc@gmail.com
