1/ Amid the comments of various Dems at the LGBTQ forum on CNN, right wingers are claiming liberals are trying to "force their kids" to accept views counter to the faith-based beliefs they are being taught at home (re: marriage, the "normalcy" of homosexuality, etc)...
2/ This, they say, amounts to usurping parental authority & proves the "totalitarian and elitist" nature of the left. This idea of "parental authority" and the "right to teach our kids as we see fit" animates much right wing anger towards the LGBTQ community and its advocates...
3/ I tweeted about this before, but wanted to be clear as to why these arguments are absurd & why those who make them are the real totalitarians. They're the ones seeking to control people's thinking by indoctrinating their kids and preventing them from even hearing other views..
4/ First, their arguments amount to a claim that their kids are their property, not free moral agents deserving of the right to come to their own conclusions after weighing evidence/arguments from various perspectives....this is disgusting. It equates kids with furniture...
5/ But even if we accept that a person's kids are their property, when that property negatively impacts other people's 'property' - like other people's kids-or the society we share, that's when others get to impose limits on what the 1st party can do with their possessions...
6/ Just as you are not free to stage dog fights, even if the dogs belong to you, and you are not free to dump toxic waste in your yard, even if it's your name on the deed, likewise, your "right" to raise your children as you see fit, is far from an exclusive one...
7/ Your right to teach your kids as you wish doesn't impose limits on what the rest of us can try and expose your kids to. Because your children are social beings. They attend school with other kids, from different religions,sexualities and any number of identity categories...
8/ And the schools (and society) have an interest in seeing to it that your children grow up to be the kind of people who can effectively and peacefully co-exist with others, no matter the differences between them...
9/ If they cannot do this because you have drummed religious, racial, ethnic, or some other kind of prejudices into them on pain of hellfire, brimstone, or just the threat of parental alienation , then you will have created a problem for us...
10/ And that's something u don't have the right to do. As the saying goes, your rights end where mine begin & your right to use your 'property' (in this case, kids) as you wish is limited by my right to see to it my "property" (also, in this case, kids) aren't damaged by yours...
11/ And if raising your kids to believe LGBTQ folks are evil and destined for hell, and worthy of condemnation increases the risk of violence and mistreatment of such persons, we have the right to seek to intervene and counter that teaching with other teaching...
12/ Ultimately they can feel that way if they wish, but the social interest in pluralism & equal treatment demands all be exposed to positions that help promote those ends. They needn't agree w/such positions once exposed, but they have no right to be protected from them...
13/ Likewise, you can raise your kids to be racist. But we have an interest in exposing them to other ideas that counter supremacist thinking. In the end, they will make up their own minds. But that's the point. It's THEIR choice and to exercise choice, one must have options...
14/ parents who seek to foreclose those options in the name of God are religious fascists of the first order. They are the ones brainwashing their kids, not those of us who are insisting that everyone be free to decide for themselves after being given a range of beliefs and ideas
