If the law doesn’t give you what you want, try intimidation.
That’s the reprehensible tactic that our state’s biggest schoolyard bully, Attorney General Kris Kobach, is using in a dangerous attack on transgender children for fun and political profit (his own).
From his elected perch as the “state’s top law-enforcement official,” Kobach sent legal-sounding threatening letters to six Kansas school districts targeted by a D.C.-area pressure group with ties to the Koch Industries political machine.
The letters demand that the districts rescind existing school policies and force their employees to immediately inform parents if their child is “gender non-conforming” at school. Two districts have complied, four are resisting.
In his threat letters, Kobach cites no actual law, because Kansas doesn’t have one.
A bill to do what Kobach wants to do failed last year in committee at the Legislature, most likely because there are enough lawmakers in both parties who recognize the profound and present danger it represents to children.
ENDANGERING CHILDREN
When kids are involuntarily “outed” to their parents, the potential outcomes range from “We love you more than anything and we want to understand what you’re going through, so let’s talk,” to “I’ma gonna beat that little queer until he starts actin’ like a man.”
The consequences of ill-considered disclosure are severe, sometimes fatal.
There’s an elevated risk of suicide when transgender youth are mishandled at school and home, according to a joint study by researchers at Barry University of Florida, the University of Toronto and Ohio State.
“Fifty-six percent of (transgender) youth reported a previous suicide attempt and 86% reported suicidality,” the study reported.
“School belonging, emotional neglect by family, and internalized self-stigma made a unique, statistically significant contribution to past six-month suicidality.”
The multi-agency federal website Youth.gov identified “family rejection resulting from sexual orientation or gender identity,” as the No. 1 reason for LGBTQ youth homelessness. “Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse” came in second. …
Educators and school psychologists understand all this, and they’re trained and positioned to read situations and determine case-by-case if they’d be putting a child in harm’s way by notifying parents.
We can trust their judgment far more than we can trust Kobach’s grandstanding.
