Two religious parents filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the Anne Arundel County Public School District of Maryland for allegedly “socially transitioning” their child with a masculine name and pronouns without notifying them.
The parents, identified in court documents only as John and Jane Doe, are being represented by America First Legal (AFL), an anti-LGBTQ+ conservative legal organization. The parents want school officials to start misgendering their child and for the judge to declare the school district’s trans-inclusive name and pronoun policies as illegal. The school district has declined to comment on the case.
The lawsuit, filed in Maryland’s U.S. District Court, says the school began referring to the child with a masculine name and pronouns at the beginning of the school year at the student’s request. The parents only became aware of this last December 10 when the school emailed the parents about a lab experiment happening in class the next day. The email used a male name to refer to their child, The Baltimore Banner reported.
The staff member who sent the email reportedly tried to unsend it and then sent the parents a message saying that the email wasn’t intended to go to them, the lawsuit said. The following day, the parents allegedly spoke to the staff member who “admitted to lying in the emails” and informed the parents that their child had requested the masculine name and pronouns, the lawsuit adds.
I think it’s probably more analogous than you are painting it as. The trans community suffers elevated levels of suicide risk, and parents who are in the dark about what their child is going through are less equipped to get them the help they need if they need it. Parents of trans kids often have to get them emergency mental health services due to them being bullied or ostracized. If the parents are kept in the dark about it, they may not see the problem until it is too late.
And I agree that children aren’t property, but they also aren’t fully independent agents. Children need guidance. Children need to be raised by parents who love them and are involved in steering them to be a successful and active participant in society. Children should not be allowed to make every decision for themselves without question. They need to be required by an authority figure to eat their vegetables and brush their teeth.
They have agency certainly, but not unlimited agency, and we need to figure out what the left and right bounds of that agency are. And that will change as they age and get older, and will be different from child to child even. But who decides that? My gut is that it’s the parents. I feel like every other option is unpalatable.
It’s almost as if there was a reason that this student didn’t want their parents to know.
Your argument seems entirely disingenuous to me. Describe the situation where a student feels comfortable and confident enough to share this aspect of their life with their peers and teachers at school, but not at home with their parents. These parents are “loving and involved in their child’s life” but somehow also in the dark about their child’s identity and mental health. I don’t see how you can meet all this criteria without a ton of mental gymnastics.
Should this be extended further into other hot button political issues? Should a school inform parents if their white child is hanging out with black or brown students? Should schools inform parents if their straight child is hanging out with LGBT students? Should they inform parents if children are expressing leftist or right wing viewpoints? Why or why not? What’s the difference?