NY Mag senior writer explains how 'parental rights movement' is so dangerous to kids and democracy

Apparently we missed this little gem from New York Magazine’s Sarah Jones over the weekend. And we’re worse off for it, because it was actually an impressive display of weapons-grade insanity with a healthy dose of projection.

You’re gonna love this, you guys:

The parental rights movement actively threatens the safety and wellbeing of children and by extension, democracy itself: https://t.co/kGW6sVSh7v

— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) April 8, 2023

Jones writes:

State laws passed by conservative Republicans have made LGBTQ children in particular more vulnerable to abuse at home by practically requiring schools to out them to their parents. The denial of gender-affirming care is another act of violence. Far-right activists invent tales of wanton surgeries on minors and irreversible hormonal treatments. In doing so, they obscure the high suicide rate among LGBT youth who need gender-affirming care as a matter of life or death. Children who work may be exposed to adult dangers, like workplace injury or sexual harassment. In the home and at school, children must also fear gun violence in the name of the Second Amendment. Adults who encourage the proliferation of guns do so knowing well that children will die. In their hierarchy, the adult right to a gun is worth more than the child‘s right to live. Reduced to the level of a collectible or a beloved pet, the child is not a person to the right.

Only the unborn are spared the right’s cruelty. Conservatives claim personhood for the fetus, who cannot disobey and requires nothing but a womb. The fetus is more valuable than the child because the fetus is a means to an end: the subjugation of women. Once born, a child’s value depreciates. The parental right to “train” the child takes precedence over the child’s basic rights. There are ways to circumvent a child’s established right to an education, as conservatives know. Homeschooling laws are so lax in the U.S. that thousands of children have essentially disappeared into an academic void. Even if a child goes to public school, chronic underfunding deprives many children, especially in poor areas, of a sound education. In much of the country, trans youth aren’t treated like people with medical needs but political targets. This is ownership, and the U.S. rarely interferes. There is one exception to the right’s belief in absolute parental rule: trans-affirming parents. A defiant parent is a threat to the right. They’ve stepped out of place and must be subdued.

…

There is no way to control a child forever. My parents learned that much. I hid books from them and discovered different ways of thinking through literature and furtive online searching. In relatively short order, I became an atheist and a socialist, a fate so dire that a former trustee at my Evangelical college told me he hoped my parents died before they knew the truth. (They did not share his sentiment.) If my example means anything, it’s this: Children are not dogs to train but adults in formation. They will learn, someday soon, that the future belongs to them. What they do with that knowledge matters to everyone. Children aren’t private property, then, but a public responsibility. To expand our democratic project to children is to grant them the security the right seeks to deny them: education, health care, shelter, food. A better America begins with the child.

“Parental rights are merely one path to the total capture of state power and the imposition of an authoritarian hierarchy on us all. So it’s no surprise that children have long been a fixation to the right wing.”

The entire article is gross, but holy lack of awareness here. https://t.co/bMPl7Jlc65

— J.R. Holmsted (@JHolmsted) April 11, 2023

Sarah really, really doesn’t want parents to look out for and take care of their kids. Not when The State — and lefties like Sarah, of course — knows better.

The existence of the phrase “parental rights movement” demonstrates the problem—no one has a right to access to, or any say over, someone else’s kids.

— DrM 🇺🇸 (@DrMagnolias) April 11, 2023

I made my children. They are mine. I am legally and financially responsible for them until the age of 18. You want to argue that they are property. Community property. Come near MY children, and we will have a problem.

— Rafaella Gabriela Sarsaparilla (@magic_mom14) April 11, 2023

Go on, Sarah. Just try it.

You're correct. They aren't property. They aren't your property, and they aren't the state's property.

— adam (@SCAdamH) April 11, 2023

Yep.

The thesis here is that conservative parents want a say in their children's upbringing solely to indoctrinate them.

This entire thing is a massive exercise in projection. https://t.co/L06Fq0DUCX

— Boo (@IzaBooboo) April 11, 2023

She somehow thinks only conservative parents treat their children as some sort of narcissistic extension of themselves. As if we're not experiencing a wave of Munchausen by proxy parenting on the Left.

— Boo (@IzaBooboo) April 11, 2023

My children are not my property. They are my responsibility. They are the people I am in charge of taking care of and making sure they grow into adults capable of taking care of themselves or others.

— Boo (@IzaBooboo) April 11, 2023

The reason that idiot thinks parental rights threaten democracy is that she is afraid the kids will be raised not to vote for her preferred policies. She's a true democracy lover that way. https://t.co/3dv5Z14s8k

— Boo (@IzaBooboo) April 11, 2023

Parents, don’t let your kids grow up to be Sarah Jones.

pic.twitter.com/DBVnNltNuL

— Rob Smithson (@RobSmithson6) April 11, 2023

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‘Please keep talking’! NY Mag’s Sarah Jones explains how the GOP is the party of far-Right ‘household tyrants’ who want a say in their kids’ educations

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