Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign is sputtering. He seems destined to end up a minor historical footnote in the story of American politics. So it’s wise not to draw too many lessons from the campaign of division and discrimination he has waged against vulnerable communities in Florida. Maybe it was enough to get him elected as Governor, but even amongst a very right-leaning national Republican primary electorate, his “anti-woke” platform isn’t working.
But there is one element of DeSantis’s agenda that is worth paying attention to: his laser-like focus on “parental rights.”
DeSantis’s vision of parental rights is odd, hateful, and honestly kind of creepy. He pretends as if our schools are sex shops with teachers spending six hours a day fervently trying to turn our children into drag show performers. He believes that parents need to be empowered to micromanage school library shelves in order to get rid of the tidal wave of prurient books drowning students, force the termination of teachers and administrators who dare talk to students about anything other than multiplication tables, and rid schools of the true threat to student safety – gay and transgender kids. It’s bigoted utter nonsense, and it’s getting kids killed. For instance, the majority of transgender children in American have contemplated suicide. That’s a heartbreaking statistic, and it’s a direct result of adults like DeSantis making gay and transgender children feel like they are abnormal and dangerous. That’s why I regularly speak out against this agenda, as I did last week on the Senate floor.
So then, why do I suggest that this effort is worth paying attention to, if it’s so divisive and harmful? Because at the core of it, DeSantis has actually tapped into a legitimate, real emotion felt by millions of parents in America: a sense that they are no longer in control of their children’s lives. Today, parents, on both the right and left, sense that forces larger than them and outside of their control and influence are corrupting their kids and limiting their chances of future success. Parents do feel a lack of agency over their kids’ lives, and they want political leaders to talk about this.
There are a number of phenomena at play leading parents to feel this way. First, parents see a culture that is increasingly in conflict with the values they try to impart on their kids. Character used to matter more in America, and culture used to reflect this priority on teaching integrity, honesty, humility, and hard work. Today, character has been replaced by celebrity and consumerism as the primary American ideals. Clicks and likes have become a proxy for value. Being a good consumer now seems more important than being a good citizen. Individual achievement blots out any concern for the common good. Parents are having a hard time keeping up with this devaluing of virtue and character in our culture, and in the absence of responsible voices, they too often respond to demagogues like DeSantis who are talking about a divisive vision of values, but in a vacuum.
Parents are also watching their children disappear and withdraw into technologies they barely understand. TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and other social media platforms are transforming kids’ lives. The rapid pace of change, and the constant new entrance of platforms into young people’s daily lives, leaves adults feeling helpless. I saw the profound impact that social media algorithms have on students during a recent visit to a suburban high school in my state where I talked to young people about the impact of social media. I was pitching them on my legislative proposal to ban the use of corrosive, addicting algorithms for users under the age of 18. Many of these students were aghast at the idea. They could not fathom losing access to the technology that feeds them an endless conveyor belt of curated content. They could not imagine having to do the hard work and trial and error required to find interests or connection. Parents live with the consequences of the sudden erasure of age-old teenage rituals, like discovery and exploration, and feel helpless to fight back against the power of these addictive platforms.
Finally, fewer parents than ever feel equipped to deliver the one gift every parent wishes for their children: a better life. Economic mobility is vanishing in America today, and parents – especially lower or middle-income parents – who believe that children who work hard and play by the rules are supposed to get a shot at a higher quality of life are losing faith in that essential component of the American dream. Fewer parents can afford to send their children to college. Only forty percent of adults have more than $400 in the bank, meaning that millions of parents can’t help their child rent their first apartment or buy their first car. This is spiritually debilitating for parents who feel like failures for their inability to help launch their children into lives of prosperity.
The collective impact of these phenomena on parents is crushing, and Republicans know this. But instead of offering responsible solutions that actually match the problem set, conservatives like DeSantis have concocted an imaginary world of sexualized educational settings and told parents that the way they reclaim all the control they’ve lost over their kids’ lives is to rid schools of a ghost that doesn’t exist. It’s a clever ruse, but DeSantis’s plunging popularity suggests the trick might be getting old and tired.
It's up to the rest of us to realize that parents are looking for public policy that gives them new tools to impact their children’s health and safety in meaningful ways. And if responsible leaders don’t come up with a thoughtful parents’ rights agenda, then DeSantis won’t be the last reactionary to offer up division, fear and scapegoats as the answer to parents’ legitimate concerns about the modern state of childhood and adolescence. What does this agenda look like? That’s for another essay, but it would start with more talk from leaders about the common good, and less focus on individual attainment; more serious focus on passing social media regulation, like my Protecting Kids on Social Media Act; and economic policy that lowers the cost of college and raises parents’ wages.
The conservative parents’ rights campaign is worth fighting against. It has no relation to the actual challenges that our kids are facing today, and it simply serves to turn Americans against each other. But parents are hurting out in America today, and the answer to DeSantis and others isn’t alternating between jeering and silence; we need our answer for what parents are feeling today.
I get the feeling that you really do care about this stuff but you are SO wrong when it comes to transgender issues. There is no such thing as a "transgender" kid (at least not in the sense that those who claim to be the opposite sex actually are the opposite sex), just as there is no such thing as a "transgender" adult. There is nothing that a male can do to become a female, or vice versa. The best they can do is to basically put on a costume (whether surgical, makeup + clothes, or a combination). Children's attire or makeup is one thing but they cannot consent to any of these medical interventions, and parents who consent to medically transitioning their children are behaving abusively and ought to lose their parental rights. And of course doctors who do this are violating the Hippocratic Oath. You're on the wrong side of this issue morally, legally, and politically!
You also conflated "normal" with "good" or "moral". Having one eye that is a different color than the other eye is abnormal. There are many other "abnormalities" that are not the fault of the individual and that have no bearing on their worth as a person. Everyone is unique. Gay and "transgender" kids are, no matter where you stand on issues, obviously abnormal. This is a basic matter of definition. Gay kids differ from the norm in that they are sexually attracted to members of the same sex. So-called "transgender" kids are led to believe that they are literally a member of the opposite sex. These classes of people are unlike each other and lumping them into the same category does a disservice to both. It's also worth noting that "transgender" kids are often gay kids or non-gay kids who simply do not conform to gender stereotypes. Yesterday's tomboy is too often considered today's "transboy". There are of course other reasons why people choose to go down this road. It's a subject well worth exploring but doing so would be "transphobic", of course.
Ironically a lot of the kids who are sucked into the trans cult are indoctrinated on the very social media platforms that you are wise to try to regulate. (Tiktok should be outright banned as it is CCP-controlled).
Let me ask Sen. Murphy a few questions: Do you have children? If so, do they attend public school or private school? (likely, the latter). Besides political rhetoric in your Substack article, I read little substantive discourse that addresses the real issues concerning parenting in US society today. Responsible parents are concerned about the acculturational indoctrination of kids, especially those confused about their sexuality, into the world of gender-affirming surgery and transitioning. They are also concerned about books containing pornography in elementary and junior high school libraries. Why is that an issue for you, Senator? Banning content (or whole apps) like Tic-Tok, PornHub, and some others should certainly help but is unlikely to happen under the guise of "free speech" Democrats love to push (for the record, I am an Independent). Yet, silencing parents by arresting or ejecting them at and from school board meetings when understandably upset and angry over liberal policies allowing porn in libraries and drag queen story hour is just fine. Oh, the irony.
But, what can and should happen is allowing parents of minors the full authority over what their children are exposed to. As a physician, I am especially concerned about how social norms are becoming distorted and, along with this trend, the commensurate change in the groupthink of teenage and "tween-age" cohorts who, due to hormonal changes in their bodies and brains, may be confused -albeit temporarily so - about what sex they are. This is NOT an uncommon phenomenon in such age groups that usually, for most kids, dissipates in a year or so due to the establishment of new hormonal equilibriums. Instead of letting this natural process play out, the influence of teachers, "apps", and by extension, peers who support sex change ideology can change a minor's self-doubts at this critical time of hormonal expansion over a young person's sexuality into believing such a change is necessary. Pushing this ideology only creates more distressed and depressed adolescents who need the time and guidance of parents who understand this confusion is, for some, a temporary time of feeling somewhat confused about one's sexuality. If not, some of these kids develop suicidal ideations and thus become martyrs of a cause that should have never happened in the first place. Please consider taking a few minutes out of your busy schedule and read https://environmed.substack.com/p/engendering-gender-bending?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2. Thank you.