“Offer up your best defense but this is the end. This is the end of the innocence.” I wonder if Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby knew just how prophetically their words would be playing out in 2021. I don’t know if 1989 ushered in the end of the innocence or not, but somewhere along the way, it ceased to be. That may sound cynical, especially when you look into the trusting eyes of a child who hasn’t yet been tutored in the ways of the world, but with all due respect to parents, and sometimes to our chagrin, we can’t shield them from the world, especially once they start school.
Today, it doesn’t matter what parents want their children to know or what they want their children to believe in, the public education system, i.e, the government, gets the Gold in the match. I am not innocent, either; I can just feel the breeze of feathers standing up on backs as I write this, but I am tired of not speaking my mind for fear of being accused of political incorrectness or some other nefarious act. So here I am, inviting discourse from potentially ticked-off people to state my mind.
Children are stripped of their innocence early in life and parents are being stripped of their rights as parents due to a woke society. Everyone wants to talk about their rights. But rights only seem to matter when it’s their own in question. Case in point: LGBTQ children. Yes, they have rights. They have the right to not be bullied. They have the right to not be excluded from schools, churches, employment, or anywhere else for their lifestyles. I have no problem with that. I believe that they are as they are born, and I believe most cannot change their proclivity toward the same sex. However, I also believe that parents have the right to teach their children about this in their own homes, in their own time, and in their own way. I remember my mother pulling me out of a Brownie meeting one night because they were showing us a film on menstruation. Of course, that was not cool, but wow, how far we have come. Too far.
I don’t believe that this issue belongs in the classroom. Our country is in trouble, and we should be arming our children with knowledge in academic subjects. With all there is to learn these days, there should be no time left, between the core classes and rest time, for discussion of a controversial subject that may even fly in the face of what some parents believe. It’s nothing more than grandstanding for political gain. These parents pay taxes, too, and deserve the same respect given those with this particular concern.
Regardless of what anyone wants to think, the majority of us are born with a penis (boys) or a vagina (girls). Period. Done and done. In a very small number of cases, a baby can be designated as ambiguous gender, now known as intersex gender, at birth. These are children that will be, necessarily, faced with a likely difficult decision in the future. The rest will certainly figure out soon enough who they are, but I am opposed to allowing children to use a bathroom designated for anyone other than what each child’s physical body indicates. Does that take away the “rights” of that child? Of course not. It does prevent children from having to deal with questions that should NOT be a part of the public-school classroom. Allowing co-use, however, affects the rights of the other children who will have those physically of the opposite sex use their bathrooms. Whose rights are more important? A child who may use a restroom once or twice a day, or a child and his or her parents who struggle to deal with something for which they may not be emotionally or intellectually ready or that may go against the parent or child’s religious beliefs. Those rights count, too.
Can’t we just preserve our children’s innocence just a little while longer? Can’t we just let them be kids for as long as they can before adulting must become their way of life? Why do people feel they must force their belief systems or lifestyles on those who don’t feel the same way? That’s just wrong on so many levels. We are supposed to have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but why does it always have to be the unwoke ones that have to do the compromising?
Do the "write" thing! 