Still, human nature seeks the easiest solution to a problem, and this is where state-sanctioned gender ideology is most devastating to me as a parent. Its lesson, no matter how it is packaged, is we are not the master of ourselves. An idea like this is poison. It may not manifest as dysphoria in every child to whom it is introduced, but it will not come without consequence.

Given a choice between self-control and self-indulgence, it is not difficult to know what a child will pick. This is the whole reason parents take very seriously the ideas people hand their children. A single flawed belief is like radiation. It may take some time for the exposure to become evident, but when it does it is already too late. So when a child is taught that she is actually defined by an impulse, then all opportunity of shaping a strong adult who can manage her environment has already been undermined.

This is why the heavy-handed actions of the federal government demanding the nation’s schools promote an ideology that undermines healthy child development is so infuriating. It is demanding the rights of an incredible minority, whose confusion is typically resolved on its own, at the psychological peril of the vast majority. In the process of validating one child’s confusion, it is opening up a Pandora’s Box for all of the others. We are being ordered to participate in a lie that says our children are impotent to the demands of their body. Worse still, it is being filtered through the people who spend as much time with our children as we do.