Advocates of things such as children’s “name and pronoun autonomy” and other LGBT-related pressures are part of a liberal faction that seeks to muffle any opposition, especially from parents. 

Their advantage in such restrictions is evident in the mostly one-sided outcry spurred on by recent censorship debates, such as with Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest in late August.

More obviously, the suspension and arrest of Irish schoolteacher Enoch Burke for criticism of transgender ideology opens a direct view into why the Left is particularly blatant in its hypocrisy on matters child-related. 

Speech really has become a culture-war battleground. So, when injustices such as Burke’s arrest come into the public eye, they filter in as useful tools. Why bother with something that works for the movement? And when the debate is over how to handle children, fairness is seen as a dangerous surrender. It seems that leftists’ protective instinct, even for those childless, kicks in anyway.

They feel an urge to protect children from their own parents. It is not a matter of freedom for children’s choices of expression — it is an attempt to transfer parental rights to some figure more ideologically aligned. No matter how much “gender inclusion policy” proponents want to make minors into little autonomous adults, they cannot do so outside of regulation that imitates the same parental help and guidance they reject.

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In fact, progressives are often more forceful on these matters than their conservative opponents who encourage a neutral, non-sexuality-or-ideology-influenced space for children. Gov. Tim Walz’s (D-MN) “trans refuge” law is a prime example: It allows for parental custody to be revoked in the event that there is a refusal to provide transgender affirmation. The movement does not just disempower parents, as a problem of free speech might indicate, but it parents children differently and guides them intentionally.

This deeper effort to shape children’s experiences to progressives’ standards comes from a lack elsewhere in their lives. The Democratic Party, their home base, does not push marriage and family life as the goods that they are. As a result, followers fill the lack by roundabout and unjust means.