In Kansas, you can parent your children any way you like.
Just so long as you do that parenting like a conservative Republican.
That’s the message coming from Topeka these days, anyway. Just a few weeks ago, Attorney General Kris Kobach took a bold stand for the primacy of parental rights after it emerged that he had written to some of the state’s largest school districts to demand information on their policies regarding transgender students — and to warn districts that they must inform parents if their student present as trans or nonbinary at school.
Now, there is no state law requiring schools to trample on their students’ privacy in that matter.
But Kobach asserted that the requirement can be found in the U.S. Constitution, as well as a series of Supreme Court rulings over the years.
Schools that don’t inform on their trans students, he wrote to Kansas officials, are “in violation of the parents’ right to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children.”
Which struck me as odd. My high school principal never called my parents to tell them about my raging heterosexuality. Why must we turn teachers — who are desperately, simply trying to teach kids how to read and write — into the gender conformity police?
But Kobach had a powerful argument, admittedly. My high school principal never called my parents to tell them about my raging heterosexuality. Why must we turn teachers — who are desperately, simply trying to teach kids how to read and write — into the gender conformity police?
You won’t find many Kansans who argue against the right of parents to, well, parent.
Unless they’re parenting the “wrong” way, it turns out.
That’s the upshot of a bill the Kansas Legislature sent to Gov. Laura Kelly last week, imposing a strict ban on transgender care for minors. There will be no gender therapy, no surgeries, no real gender-affirming care at all for young people.
Kelly will almost certainly veto the bill, like she did with similar legislation last year.
That might not matter: This year’s bill passed with veto-proof majorities in both legislative chambers. Which means the ban will probably become law.
So much for the rights of Kansas parents to direct the care and upbringing of their children.
