You know how progressives are forever being accused of virtue signaling for conspicuously displaying their points of view on social issues?
They don’t just recycle; they have to wear a T-shirt knocking you for not recycling. They don’t just fight against racial inequities; they have to change their social-media profile pictures to reflect the latest battle.
Of course, another way of looking at VS is that some progressives are more about posturing than about actually taking action.
Which is precisely why citizen groups and electeds proposing policies requiring parents to be told if their child identifies as transgender on school campuses are doing nothing more and nothing less than virtue signaling.
The difference being, there actually is a problem in the world when, say, plastics don’t get recycled and end up in the belly of a fish. There actually is a problem with racism in this country, and when you don’t acknowledge it and counter it, people get shot dead in a Dollar Store because of the color of their skin.
Whereas parents so clueless, so out of touch with their children and the issues they are dealing with, that they would be shocked if the Johnny they thought was macho slips on a skirt as soon as he hits campus?
Doesn’t happen. Or, rather, doesn’t happen a whole lot. And when it does, boy howdy, is that one on the parents for being so disinterested in their children’s lives that they would be a) surprised at the news or b) so in denial about the fact that for a tiny percentage of the population, gender is a fluid thing, and that it may not be the one they were “assigned at birth.”
I thought the whole point of the conservative movement’s attitude about public education is that California needs to get back to reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic and ditch the focus on hot-button social issues of the day.
Then why — other than banning books — has its focus suddenly changed to requiring schools to out transgender students to their parents?
One Chino Valley school board member, seeing her odd focus on something other than education slapped down by a California court, moaned to a reporter in a text, “We spent months bringing together a policy that allows parents to be involved in the upbringing in their child’s life.”
Who’s disallowing parental involvement simply by not forcing teachers to call Mommy if her little cheerleader is actually a bit more butch than Mommy had imagined? Teacher’s job is to teach, not to tattle about something that is none of her business.
I think it’s too bad that the state has even had to get involved here, as there are too many real issues to have to waste time on a ginned-up one. But I happen to completely agree with the attorney general that California law gives students privacy rights on issues of gender, even the right to keep it from their parents if they have worries — which some certainly do — about the violent reaction with which this news might be met. Also, this whole thing is yet another attack on the LGBTQ community, which doesn’t need another attack.
But, fearful folks, I also get it. This is so new to us. All of us. I have close friends whose teens, one of whom I had known since birth, came out as trans, initially to everyone’s consternation. Another close friend, who happens to be gay, a therapist and a parent, is flummoxed by quick moves toward hormones and surgery. “Why not just be queer, like me?” she laments.
The answer is that, like it or not, every generation is a consternation to the previous one. Let today’s non-binary kids talk to their parents when they’re ready to, not when some school board rule says that they must.
Larry Wilson is a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com
