For the longest time, I found it difficult even to fathom the idea that our society would allow children without the capacity to fully contemplate the consequences of their own actions to be physically mutilated by surgeons or hormonally altered into grotesque and artificial shadows of the beautiful people they were created to be.
“This couldn’t possibly become a thing,” I remember telling myself. I stayed silent, thinking that it would only take one or two voices to out the perverts responsible for pushing this fad on our youth. When I was growing up, I remember hearing news stories about people who sexually molested or damaged children; they had to be offered special protection in prison because the moment the convicted thieves and murderers got them alone, their lives were abruptly ended by whatever means available.
Today, there is a parental civil rights bill pending in the Legislature (HB 10) that would recognize the fundamental right of parents to raise their own children according to their own values. The bill would importantly require school officials to disclose information about children’s sexuality and any medical or surgical choices they were contemplating, and it would prohibit government employees such as teachers or guidance counselors from keeping this information from parents, as they are now doing in the Manchester School District, for instance.
What amazes me is that there is any controversy about this bill at all. It’s simply common sense. When I was growing up, a teacher or administrator who taught or covered up this kind of information wouldn’t just risk losing their job, they might even have to run for their lives. The only issue I see with the bill is that it might protect some parents who are evil enough to allow their own children to mutilate their own genitals or chemically alter who God created them to be. In a perfect world, these are the parents who would lose custody of their children so they could be raised by parents who understand that a sound moral foundation is the basis for any functioning society, and history, reading, writing and arithmetic are the subjects that ought to be taught in school—that is, if they are so unfortunate to have to send the children to a government-run school.
It turns out, to my great pleasure, that my thinking might be rather popular, despite the completely corrupt and sexually deviant leaders who are pushing a different idea on all of us through the media and entertainment industry and in our halls of government. According to a NH Journal/Coefficient Poll released on Monday, Feb. 13, 2023, 59 percent of Granite State voters believe parents should have the final say on what gets taught to their children in the classroom, including 89 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of unaffiliated voters. More to the point, the poll also found that 80 percent of all voters believe that parents—not school officials—should make the final call on children’s health decisions. In one more specific data point, 78 percent of voters supported a parent’s right to know about their children’s activity surrounding sex or gender.
Again, this is empirically common sense, but we have allowed those with loud voices, microphones and publishing companies, and even some within institutions we used to believe were safe like our schools and even our churches, to tell us that evil is good, and good is evil. It’s time to call them out, and the tide is turning against them. The truth is, gender mutilation, whether chemical or surgical, is evil, and the people who do these things to themselves later regret it, and many seek to end their lives on account of the horrible mistakes they have made. Allow me to be clear: there is hope and there is help available for those who have made the wrong choices, and I can personally lead people to those resources, but today’s top story needs to be how we stop children and young adults from going down this warped path from this point forward. The first step is to stop sick and twisted school officials from teaching our children that transgenderism is normal and sex changes are just another medical procedure, or worse, encouraging them to go through with these things because “so many others are doing it.” And the very first step to accomplishing this goal is to pass the pending parental civil rights legislation and legally guarantee parents know about and can control their children’s decisions until they are old enough to make them for themselves. By that time, God willing, they will be raised up the way they should go.
Andrew Manuse is a pastor of First Fruits Ministries in Manchester and serves as chairman of RebuildNH.
