For Parents’ Rights And Children’s Safety From Gender Theory Predation, Virginia Needs Sage’s Law

Sage’s Law, HB 2432Recently, the Virginia House of Delegates approved the following party-line vote: 50 Republicans voted for it, 48 Democrats opposed it and 2 abstentions. Should this bill pass into law, it would mark a hard-won victory against the left’s agenda of teaching radical gender ideology in public schools and hopefully reverse a trend that has wreaked havoc on families and children across the country. 

With Sage’s Law, the state legislature seeks to redress this misguided, harmful trend by codifying what should be obvious and beyond any serious debate: Parents are the primary caregivers for their children and should be involved in their children’s care. Passage of this legislation is imperative because schools are usurping parents’ roles and interfering with the care of their children by intentionally concealing information about their children’s desire to “transition” Genders can have tragic consequences, sometimes with devastating results. In the horrific case of Sage, for whom the legislation is named, a Virginia high school’s deliberate concealment of a girl’s newly asserted transgender identity from her parents triggered a sequence of events that led to her becoming prey to sexual predators. 

Her mother’s courageous testimony before the Virginia House of Delegates Education Committee in favor of Sage’s Law can be seen Here.

Sage’s Law would require school officials who learn that a student is self-identifying or desiring a so-called gender identity different from the student’s sex (gender incongruence) to contact at least one of the student’s parents. Further, the school would be required to obtain the parent’s permission before implementing any plan to accommodate a child’s so-called transition. This shouldn’t be controversial. Parents love their children. They should be involved in a child’s potentially momentous, life-altering decision to alter his or her identity.  

Parents, acting in the best interests of their child’s welfare, can best ensure the appropriate professional psychological and medical support for their child just as they would for any other medical or mental health-care issue. As a matter of law and moral principle, Sage’s Law is critical to protect families and children.

For more than 300 years — starting in 1690, when John Locke addressed parental responsibilities in his “Second Treatise of Civil Government” — the law, ethics, and our culture recognized Parents have a responsibility “nourish and educate” Their children. 

Locke wrote: “God hath made it their business to employ this care on their offspring, and hath placed in them suitable inclinations of tenderness and concern … to apply it … to the children’s good.”

Indeed, Virginia law It is stated explicitly that a parent has the “fundamental right” These decisions are made in relation to the “upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child.” Similar decisions were made by the U.S. Supreme Court. Pierce v. Society of Sisters That “the child is not a mere creature of the state” And in Massachusetts v. Prince You can find the “care and nurture of the child resides first in the parents.”

The court stressed in 2000 that Troxel v. Granville that “the