Will Georgia Children Be Protected From Adult Groomers?

There’s a battle going on in Georgia about whether teachers can discuss gender identity with children in secret, without informing parents.

In a rational world this wouldn’t be an issue. Of course, if a child is being abused at home then as mandatory reporters teachers and counselors should pass that information on to the authorities, but otherwise teachers should stay away from discussing deeply personal or moral issues with children. 

But this is not a rational world anymore, if it ever was. Teachers these days often see kids as a canvas on which they can paint their dreams, or as acolytes to lead into the promised land of Alphabetia. 

So these days legislators have to become active participants in the culture war. 

Georgia’s SB88 is a pretty simple bill: it prohibits teachers from discussing gender identity issues with children under 16 without the permission of their parents. 

A Georgia Senate committee is advancing a long-stalled proposalaimed at stopping private school teachers from talking to students about gender identity without parental permission, but both gay rights groups and some religious conservatives remain opposed to the bill.

Senate Bill 88, which majority Republicans on Tuesday passed out of the Senate Education and Youth Committee on a party-line vote, now says private schools would have to obtain written permission from all parents before instruction “addressing issues of gender identity, queer theory, gender ideology, or gender transition.”

“We worked in earnest to make this bill fair while still achieving our goal of making sure children’s parents are involved in a sensitive and often life-changing issue,” said Sen. Carden Summers, a Cordele Republican.

A man whose passion and willingness to work on this issue I greatly admire, is Jeff Cleghorn, who testified in favor of the bill. 

Wanted to share this powerful testimony from @jeffcleghornga with @GAG_Georgia @againstgrmrs during todays Georgia Senate hearing on SB88, it speaks to the heart of the issue and the fact we want parents to make the decision in a their kids education. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/pBdTxdcMt5

— Sara Higdon (@SaraHigdon_) February 14, 2024

One twist in this law is that private school teachers would face the same prohibitions in schools that take state money in any fashion. This has led some on the Right to oppose it, interestingly enough. Despite this apparent glitch in the matrix, the bill is getting serious backing from Republicans in the Senate. 

Public schools that violate the law would have their state aid withheld and be banned from participating in the Georgia High School Association, the state’s main athletic and extracurricular body. Private schools that violate the law would be banned from getting state money provided by vouchers for children with special educational needs. Public school teachers and administrators would be threatened with the loss of their state teaching license.

That could be because the Left is being utterly disingenuous about what is going on, and their arguments make no sense. They claim simultaneously that 1) it isn’t happening; and 2) preventing it from happening is an attack on LGBT kids. The first of course is not true, and even if it were the second point tells us that they want teachers to discuss gender identity with kids. 

Liberal opponents say the measure, which goes to the full Senate for more debate, remains a thinly veiled attack on LGBTQ+ students.

“There has been no evidence presented that kids are being taught gender identity issues in school that would lead to any kind of confusion or coercion,” Jeff Graham, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Georgia Equality, said after the hearing.

Which is it? Is stopping this practice bad for LGBTQ+ kids bad, or is it not happening, in which case the law wouldn’t stop anything anyway. 

Nothing has to make sense in Alphabetlandia. 

What strikes me most about the battle over bills like SB88 is that the political realignment proceeds apace. In Georgia as elsewhere gays are joining up with conservative Christians against alphabet ideology, Blacks are moving Right in reaction to the Biden border and economic policies, all while Establishment Republicans have moved Left in an effort to preserve the cultural and political power of the uniparty Establishment. 

Whatever you think of Trump, this will be his legacy–he may not be the cause of the political disruption, but he is its avatar.