Parents reasonably assume they know their own children, yet the government is now positioning itself as the authority on whether the genitals Mom saw while changing Junior’s diapers were actually indicative of her son’s sex.

Originally posted at American Thinker

After twelve hours of intense labor, giving birth, tucking the rugrats into bed every night, wiping snotty noses, and patching up bruised elbows and knees, parents, in good faith, place their offspring into the hands of the public school system.

Parents reasonably assume they know their own children, yet the government is now positioning itself as the authority on whether the genitals Mom saw while changing Junior’s diapers were actually indicative of her son’s sex.

Regardless of gender, parents are entrusted with guardianship once the child safely enters the world. In more progressive circles, that arrangement is apparently acceptable until liberal schoolmarms 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.

Wherever they live, American parents are now having to fight for the right to exercise authority over their own children. Meanwhile, local school districts increasingly appear intent on shaping a generation of confused useful idiots who look to the state for everything — from how to think to whether to pee standing up or sitting down.

Take, for instance, what’s happening in Kansas — you know, the state Dorothy and Toto were so eager to return to way back 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 — from parents — about a child’s “gender identity.” 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 despite threats to their funding, Shawnee Mission and Olathe are standing firm in their commitment to withhold gender identity information from parents.

Apparently, in the more resistant Kansas school districts, classrooms full of flying monkeys and Miss Gulches dressed up as educators can know that a child has changed names or pronouns, while Mom and Dad remain totally oblivious. In fact, 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, after positioning the tassel on her graduation cap, discovering at commencement that the school has been calling Jenny Johnny — and then being forced to accept that, since junior high school, little Jenny has been procuring her 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.

Excuse me, has anyone asked why this topic is even being broached in public schools, especially when national reading, math, and science measures remain below pre-pandemic levels? Could one factor driving those scores be that precious school time is being spent on trivial issues, such as helping befuddled students decide whether their sex organs match their fashion sense?

In essence, the science of kids exploring creek beds and snakes on the harsh Kansas prairie has given way to a form of science fiction that encourages schoolchildren to explore gender identity free from the biological reality of sex and to follow impulses or inclinations that arise during the most confusing period of childhood development.

This turn of events is not surprising; it’s no longer Fun with Dick and Jane in America. Instead, modern educators have welcomed transgender storytellers and drag queens and stocked libraries with playful, colorful children’s books that explore alternative families and gender fluidity, including the trans kid storybook titled I Am Jazz.

Kansas may be in the news right now, but the issue is hardly 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 the authority to withhold information from parents, it creates a model that educators elsewhere can replicate.

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 likewise prohibits districts from requiring employees to disclose a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression without the student’s consent, unless otherwise required by state or federal law.

Using tax money to indoctrinate children against the fundamental beliefs of the parents who pay those taxes is akin to making parents the architects of their own children’s demise. It’s one thing for states to exercise their right to tax residents; it’s another to usurp parental authority. 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’s living in the wrong body, is not only depraved but an intrusive school 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 might differ from the state’s is even more troubling.

Most importantly, what makes the state believe it has the authority to tax its citizens and then use the institutions those taxes fund to justify the right of schools to deliberately exclude a child’s parents? And to do so while assuming a form of parental authority over that minor child by confusing students into believing the fairy tale that they are not the biological sex established at conception?

Meanwhile, back in Kansas, Dorothy, who at school also goes by the name Dylan, stores their ruby slippers in their gym locker — a footwear choice that has made the teen considerably less effective working on Auntie Em and Uncle Henry’s farm. But no worries. In this version of Oz, in addition to hiding a child’s gender confusion from the folks back home, there’s apparently a participation trophy for surviving the tornado and for aimlessly wandering around Oz, 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.”