COLUMBUS, Ohio (LifeSiteNews) — Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law a Parents’ Bill of Rights that will ensure parents are notified about classroom content pertaining to sexuality as well as indications that their children are expressing gender confusion.
House Bill 8 requires school districts to “develop and adopt a policy to promote parental involvement in the public school system.”
That policy will “(e)nsure that any sexuality content is age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate for the age of the student”; give parents the “opportunity to review any instructional material that includes sexuality content” and exempt their child from participation”; “reinforce the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children” including access to health records; “(p)rohibit school district personnel from directly or indirectly encouraging a student to withhold from a parent information concerning the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being”; and more.
“‘Sexuality content’ means any oral or written instruction, presentation, image, or description of sexual concepts or gender ideology provided in a classroom setting,” according to the law, and information about a child’s “mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being” that schools must disclose to parents includes “(a)ny significant sickness or physical injury, or any psychological trauma”; “request by a student to identify as a gender that does not align with the student’s biological sex”; or “(e)xhibition of suicidal ideation or persistent symptoms of depression, or severe anxiety, or other mental health issues.”
DeWine, a moderate who has backed some conservative measures on gender issues but opposed others, signed HB8 without an announcement, and stressed when asked by reporters that he wanted “LGBTQ young people” to be “welcome” and “protect(ed)” in Ohio, and that “if you’re a parent, you want to be informed about what’s going on in your child’s life. Parents are the best teachers – first teachers are the best teachers.”
A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often-irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
The indoctrination of children with left-wing ideology on sexuality and other left-wing agenda items has long been a major concern in American public schools, from libraries to athletic and restroom policy to drag events to classroom materials to even socially “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas, regardless of their treatment of or rapport with gender-confused students.