Ten years or so ago I was on the subway reading a book. It was warm weather and I was wearing a light blouse. In my peripheral vision I caught sight of a boy of about twelve standing next to me and staring at my chest. I looked down to discover that the top button of my blouse had come undone without my knowing it. I wasn’t completely hanging out, but I was indeed showing some serious cleavage! Right behind the boy were his parents. “OMG! OMG!” raced through my mind as I looked up at them. “They’ll think I’m exposing myself to their child.” But . . . dad made a happy double-fist YES! gesture, and mom glanced skyward with a benign “Okay by me” look on her face. The subway slowed and moments later the family exited. The kid wasn’t arrogant in the least, he was just curious, charmed in a perfectly normal young-boy way. And the parents were clearly relieved.

It’s perfectly normal at first for young boys to be shy around girls. Girls are the “other,” they might laugh at you—something grown men retain a dreaded fear of. But when boys do begin to notice girls, the first thing they notice are their breasts—another habit grown men retain. Okay, cheap joke, I couldn’t resist. But isn’t it true? Breasts are uniquely feminine, comforting, erotic, flesh pillows. Mine too, apparently, though I’m no spring chicken, and wasn’t back then. And even though I wasn’t dressed like a grannie, ultimately, it’s moot, because all the kid could see at that moment were my uniquely feminine attributes enjoying the benefits of a serviceable foundation garment.

Why were the parents so darned relieved to see their son admiring a bit of female anatomy? Both the couple and the boy seemed absolutely average to me. So why should the son’s age-appropriate curiosity warrant jubilation from both of them? It’s one thing for a father to want his son to be “all boy,” but for the mother to be hyper-sensitive as well? What might the backstory be on this?

This being circa 2010, Heather Has Two Mommies—a story about a little girl and the lesbian couple raising her—would have been on school library shelves for twenty years. Also in 2010, educational publisher Mason Crest announced a series of books focused on presenting the gay lifestyle as normal (The Gallup’s Modern Guide to Gay, Lesbian & Transgender Life). Dr. James T. Sears, founding editor of the Journal of LGBT Youth and senior consulting editor on the series, intoned in the press release: “Currently we are miseducating kids by providing a hetero-centric learning environment. We teach everything from a ‘straight’ perspective, fearing discussing alternative sexual details of history, literature, science, etc., will pollute the educational setting.” Golly, you think the organized indoctrination of children via the public school system to view being “straight” as intrinsically biased and morally inferior might have given that mom and dad the jitters?

It’s only gotten worse. Today, Florida’s Parental Rights Protection in Education Act, attacked with a “Don’t Say Gay” misdirect, merely calls for gay and transgender discussions not to start until after the third grade! Florida has nothing on New Jersey. In that state, planned sex-education lessons—which include instructions for children to be told that their gender identity is up to them—will begin in the first grade! (“Sex ed for 6-year-olds sparks fury,” New York Post, April 7, 2022). At last report N.J. Governor Murphy (D) is hemming and hawing, allowing maybe it shouldn’t start until the second grade! Recently an objection I voiced about all this was answered with the admonition that I should be compassionate towards the “different.” Fine as it goes, but what about compassion for the ordinary? When gay and transgender activist contingents gain the level of political power they now have and team up with state boards of education and the NEA (in lockstep with the radical Left) to invade public school systems, one-size-fits-all bureaucratic hell can reign supreme.

There is a saying in medicine: “Treat the patient in front of you.” As expressed in The British Medical Journal (BMJ) in regard to people with high blood pressure (BP): “Whilst these academic debates and new clinical trials take place, it is vital for clinicians to concentrate on the patient in front of them, and tailor the BP lowering regimen according to the patient’s clinical background and co-morbidities.” Do children standing before teachers deserve anything less? Although it is common for a young girl to go through a tomboy phase, will she still be thought of as simply a tomboy or will she now be labeled a “lesbian child”? Will a young boy’s normal shy-around-girls phase label him a budding homosexual? And let’s get them totally confused from the get-go by casting doubt in their malleable baby brains about whether they’re a girl or a boy in the first place! This isn’t seeing the needs of the child, it’s seeing the needs of the gay caboodle who want society to believe they are more numerous than they really are, established as fact by simply adding letters to their acronym and tossing around imaginary gender constructs unsupported by any rigorous scientific discipline. What science does exist is debatable and theoretical, some opining that in exceedingly rare cases some hormone receptors may be mutated and not function normally (see “Science shows transgender education doesn’t belong in schools,” New York Post, April 20, 2022).

So, if transgenderism exists at all it’s a rare abnormality, not a parade. Yet to satisfy their own needs, LGBT et al activists claim that kids they’ve merrily confused with popular mass hysteria who get sucked into thinking they are transgender are now children of the gay community. They aren’t. They are their parents’ children.

The motives of the gay activists are obvious; to gain power through politics and culture wars. The motives of left-wing politicians are obvious; to stay in power by jumping on whatever bandwagon the popular culture is driving. But what are the motives of those parents, thankfully as yet still a minority, who are all too ready to jump on that bandwagon and haul their kids on board with them? Why eagerly join an irrational chorus instead of calmly questioning how their child even got to this point in the first place? Politicians and activists are propelled by greed, which is ugly but logical. But parents? Consenting to drug-induced manipulation of their children’s hormones and mutilation of their bodies? What explanation can there be for this perversion of parental responsibility other than madness?

It happens. I’ve been thinking lately about the Jonestown mass suicide in 1978. A barebones recap for readers not familiar with the story: The “Reverend” Jim Jones was a cult leader, with credentials. He was heavily involved in political and charitable activity in California in the 1970s. He was the darling of liberals and had connections with prominent Democratic politicians. He named his cult the People’s Temple, which at its height had over 3000 members, his “Rainbow family,” as he called them. After reports of sexual abuse surfaced in 1974, threatening Jones with investigations, he started a commune, “Jonestown,” in Guyana, claiming he was building a “socialist paradise free from the oppression of the United States government.” In 1977, as abuse allegations escalated, Jones and 900 of his followers took up permanent residence there. The next year, after reports surfaced that people were being held against their will in Guyana, U.S. Representative Leo Ryan (D. California) led a delegation to the commune to investigate. While boarding a return flight with some Temple members who wished to leave, Ryan and four others were killed by gunmen on orders from Jones. Realizing the murders would bring the authorities to his “paradise,” Jones then instructed his followers to kill themselves, an event he termed “revolutionary suicide.” Over 600 adults and 304 children drank a cyanide-laced Flavor Aid drink. Some changed their minds, and were forcibly injected. But what is mind-boggling is the number of people who obeyed Jones, not only taking the poison themselves but lifting the cup to the lips of their own children! Cult-inspired, mass-hysteria-madness. What’s happening today feels like I’m watching Jonestown in slow motion, complete with “leaders” bearing credentials.