The Saskatchewan Schools Question

 

I was startled when friend Xerxes framed the current debate over SOGI (sexual orientation and gender ideology) in the schools as a matter of children’s “trans” rights over parents’ rights. After all, the parents marching are concerned about the introduction of gender ideology in the schools, and discussion of sexuality in general. This has nothing obviously to do with being either a boy or a girl, straight or gay.

Nevertheless, that is how it was framed by a court, in trying to put a stay on Saskatchewan’s policy that parents must be informed and consent if a child “changes their pronouns.” A recent CBC “At Issue” panel took this as a given. They spoke only of whether it was in the political interests of the federal Conservatives, or conservative parties at the provincial level, to oppose children’s human rights. And of course their argument was that it wasn’t. After all, voters, including “ethnic voters,” were concerned with pocketbook issues, not such distractions. 

Never take political advice from your adversaries. There couldn’t be a more important or more powerful issue for conservatives, in my opinion. Decent people care more for their children’s future than for their own welfare. This is the hill on which a parent is ready to fight, and, if necessary, die. In fact, it is the appeal on which young men do usually go to war: to protect the hearth, the women and children back home.

But let’s extend that logic. Let’s say it is a child’s human right to decide they are a boy and not a girl, without their parents having anything to say about it. If a child has a right to decide such things it must follow that society has no right to require them to attend school in the first place. This is slavery: they are being forced to work, told what to do at every moment, and given no pay. How is that not a violation of their human rights?

Child labour laws must also be abolished as unconstitutional. A child must have the right to earn a living.

In school, if parents have no right to input on the curriculum, certainly society has no right. The children must decide what they want to learn about, or indeed to do, today. Schools and teachers must demonstrate that any discussion of sexual orientation or gender is prompted by the children themselves. 

But this must also be true for reading, writing, or arithmetic. It must also be a child’s human right to decide for himself or herself, without coercion, whether 2 plus 2 equals 4; whether gravity ought to apply to them; or whether their spelling of a word is the best one.

They also have the inherent right to choose their teachers, and dismiss them if dissatisfied. 

If the left is not prepared to be consistent here, we must suspect an ulterior motive.

Could it be to advance the notion that even small children have the right to consent to sex in any form? Certainly looks like it.