American parents should be on notice: the Biden administration is going to war.
This isn’t a targeted attack on the cartels trafficking drugs, women, and children across our southern border. Rather, it’s an attack on the very foundation of our civilization – the idea that parents know what’s best for their children and have the right to direct their educational, medical and moral upbringing.
In recent weeks, we’ve all learned how the Biden Administration’s desired changes to Title IX regulations would totally upend women’s and girls’ sports. We’ve also discovered how they’d strip the due process rights of those accused of heinous crimes on college campuses.
But perhaps the most nefarious policy overhaul has flown under the radar. In its report on the proposed Title IX changes, the Defense of Freedom Institute explains that the Biden Education Department’s Title IX Final Rule would undermine parental rights by mandating all schools, including public elementary and secondary institutions, accept a student’s gender identity without parental approval or knowledge. Under the proposed changes, schools could pursue this dangerous, life-altering course of action without notifying a student’s parents or obtaining their agreement. They would also be required to provide students with gender affirming care, regardless of their biological sex, or risk forfeiting access to federal funds.
We don’t have to imagine how this scenario would play out. Over the last several years, we’ve heard heartbreaking stories from parents, rich and poor, in red states and blue, about incidents where their children descended into a mental health crisis, including attempts at suicide, after attempts by teachers and administrators to groom, indoctrinate and transition confused children behind their back. In some cases, parents who objected to this radical usurpation of their authority by the state lost custody of their children. This course of action has been enshrined into law by several states, and it could be a preview of what the Biden Administration has in mind.
Too many parents are content to believe this could never happen to them, that living in a red state puts them beyond the reach of the groomers. But they couldn’t be more wrong. Earlier this year in deep red Montana, Todd and Krista Kolstad discovered that their daughter Jennifer had been asking hospital staff to refer to her as a male after being admitted for attempting suicide. They expressed their moral and religious objections to this behavior to hospital staff and refused to allow it. Because they asserted their rights as parents when their child was in the midst of a mental health crisis, they were reported to the state's office of Child and Family Services. The agency removed the teen from the Kolstad’s custody. In a shocking turn of events, the state’s allegedly Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, reviewed the agency’s action and determined that they did absolutely nothing wrong - upholding the state’s right to seize the Kolstad’s daughter. In subsequent state monitored interactions with their child while she was remanded to a facility in Wyoming, the Kolstads were forced to refer to their daughter as Leo. She has since been remanded to a state facility in Montana, where she is being socially transitioned, dresses like a man, and wears a chest binder. The Kolstads, barring a miracle, have lost their baby girl. The Biden Administration would have their tragedy serve as a blueprint for state interactions with parents across the country.
The Biden blueprint has already been rolled out in blue states across the country. California recently enshrined the right of the state to remove your child from your custody if you object to public employees grooming, indoctrinating, and then unilaterally transitioning them. Teachers who object are legally prohibited from even revealing a student’s gender identity to parents. As parents in over 20 states across the country have pursued a different course, barring the medical transition of minors, states like California and Oregon have responded by becoming sanctuary states for transgender minors, offering hormones and gender affirming care, implicitly signaling that if their parents don’t agree with their decision to transition, they should run away.
These policy choices are justified in the name of treating LGBT youth with compassion. But there’s nothing compassionate about the sexualization, indoctrination, mutilation, and sterilization of children against their parent’s will, and contrary to what the Biden administration would have you believe, LGBT people do not speak with one single voice on this issue. In fact, the majority reject this ideological crusade that threatens American families. As a gay woman, I will not sit idly by as this toxic ideology is foisted on children in my name.
That is why on August 31, 2024, the organization I represent, Gays Against Groomers, will proudly stand up for the rights of parents, and for our children, at the March for Kids in Washington, D.C. We come from all walks of life - every race, religious background, and sexual orientation. We hail from across the country and the political spectrum. But we’re all united in our commitment to doing what the government can’t for our kids: love them.
Jaimee Michell is the Founder of “Gays Against Groomers."