Turning Point USA

This week, Washington passed a law allowing shelters and host homes to refrain from notifying the parents of runaway children, a law described as “state-sanctioned kidnapping” by conservative opponents.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed Senate Bill 5599 into law, which states that shelters are not required to notify parents they are accommodating their children if the child left home for a “compelling reason.” The law stipulates that a compelling reason is when “the youth is in the host home or seeking placement in a host home to receive protected health care services,” such as sex change procedures or an abortion.

Under the previous law, shelters and host homes were legally required to notify parents within 72 hours when a child comes into the facility. But now, these entities are only required to contact Washington’s State Department of Children, Youth, and Families. The Washington government is required to make a “good faith attempt” to notify parents and “resolve the conflict,” but children between the ages of 13-18 will be allowed to stay at these facilities without parental consent if the state determines there to be a compelling reason.

“With this bill, Washington leads the way by taking a more compassionate, developmentally appropriate, and reasoned approach to support these youth as they access gender-affirming treatment and reproductive health care services.”

Governor Inslee shortly before signing SB 5599

This law is a massive violation of parental rights, and puts the state in between parent-child relationships.

Young children do not have the necessary life experiences and maturity to competently make irreversible decisions about their future. Because of this, our society has traditionally imposed restrictions on what decisions a child is legally allowed to make. But now, the radical left has decided that 13-year-old children should get to make their own medical decisions when it applies to their so-called “gender identity.”

In reality, individuals should be allowed to make their own decisions, only when they reach the legal age of adulthood. This is not a new concept. Americans strongly favor laws that restrict minors from drinking, smoking, getting tattoos, or consenting to sex. Why should we allow them to make irreversible medical decisions?

States enacting such laws claim they are designed to “protect trans youth.” To the left, many believe that a parent refusing to affirm a child’s gender identity is akin to child abuse. But quite the opposite is true. As parents, your prime duty is to protect your child and raise him or her for a life of success. If you are playing along with the delusion that your child is the opposite sex, you are putting them down a path of lies, confusion, depression, and instability.

In opposition to the bill, Washington State Representative Jim Walsh made this exact point:

“Among its many flaws, the bill assumes families that don’t ‘affirm’ a child’s short-term desires are being abusive. Wrong! Sometimes love requires parents to not affirm their child’s whims. Loving parents guide their children as they grow. Sometimes that means saying ‘no.’”

Washington State Representative Jim Walsh

Washington’s decision to enact this law is part of the left’s broader narrative that parents should not have an absolute say over the actions of their children. Prominent members of the left are beginning to use rhetoric that refers to American children as “our children.”

“There is no such thing as someone else’s child. No such thing as someone else’s child. Our nation’s children are all our children.”

President Joe Biden in a White House Speech regarding education

This rhetoric is deeply concerning. The belief that parents should split custody of their children with the government is a talking point in line with authoritarian regimes of the past. Children do not “belong” to the community, they belong to their parents. Parents have an obligation to condemn this narrative and take the necessary protections to protect their children in our increasingly radical society.