Colorado recently passed a preliminary approval for a bill that asserts a parents authority to dictate what their children learn in and the health care that they receive. This includes allowing parents to pull their children out of sex education course, illegalizing the distribution of birth control to minors without a parent's approval, the right to chose to vaccinate their children as well as the option to opt out of school data collection at the district level. None of these "rights" are expressly written in the Constitution, but the right to parent is becoming an ever increasing issue in today's society.
I don't exactly know what to think of this bill. I do know that its completely idiotic that parents can send their children to school without vaccinations; however, I am not a parent yet so I don't know what stance I take on the other aspects of the bill. I suppose that parents do not have to allow their children to participate in sex education classes, and most people probably do not like their kids sneaking around their back to get any kind of drugs. None the less the "Parent's Bill of Rights" should not be passed simply because it infringes on public safety issues. I think that the rest of the bill would be acceptable to pass. I'm just glad South Dakota hasn't tried to pull of anything like this yet. It complicates things.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_27506232/colorado-gop-pushes-through-parents-bill-rights
This bill sounds totally ridiculous to me. I won't go into the vaccination thing again because we've beat that horse plenty. What makes me mad is the sex education and birth control thing. News flash: kids do not always obey their parents and they do not always feel safe sharing things with their parents. If a parent says "my kid cannot receive sex education because I don't like them being exposed to all this sexuality!" Well chances are your kid will have sex at some point. Wouldn't it be better for them to know what they're doing? Shouldn't they know how pregnancies and birth control and things like that work? Are you really so naive as to think that they'll stay "good" and not get involved in this? Some parents don't object to that though. Some schools are teaching about different sexualities and genders outside of straight and cisgender and parents are getting upset about THAT. Of course if your kid is straight and cisgender, then we don't have a problem, but what if they're not? What if they're gay? Bisexual? Asexual? Pansexual? Transgender? And what if they don't realize that that's what they are and they feel broken and like they can't talk to anyone about this because they feel weird and unsafe? Sex education like this would be EXTREMELY beneficial. It would take away a lot of angsting and worrying and having to do searches on the internet to see if what they feel is a thing. It would help a lot of queer kids, and queer kids need all the help they can get. Suicide and abuse rates for kids like this are so high, and it's incredibly sad. And don't argue with me that "oh not that many kids are LGBT so it doesn't matter." I saw a study that estimates that 3% of the US identifies as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. That's 9.5 million people. That's small compared to the US's 318.9 million population, but by itself, that is a lot of people, and this doesn't count transgender people or asexual people. And even if you are straight and cis, knowing that other sexualities exist is good because then you're less likely to be an a-hole towards these people because you understand them a little more. Education is important and the idea that parents are trying to opt out of it really irritates me. You can't opt out of a science class, so why should you be allowed to opt out of sex ed?
ReplyDelete