This is absolutely ludicrous. Any policy which removes protections from an already at-risk group is inhumane and deliberately damaging. LGBTQ youth are already at elevated risk for suicide, with transgender or non-binary youth facing even greater risks. Compounded further, youth facing identity-based discrimination (including parental rejection or even attempts to “change” them) have an even further elevated risk level.
Ask one basic question: which parents are the ones least likely to already know what’s going on in the lives of gender-questioning children, the uncertainties they’re facing and the steps forward to help them approach life in the way that best suits them?
The answer is, of course, the parents who are least likely to be supportive in the face of that information - the parents who want to impose their will on their children, who believe that they can bully or threaten or worse in order to stop their child from seeking answers and exploring their identity.
That’s what makes this policy so dangerous - it targets the kids who will be hurt the most by it, and deliberately so. The playbook is the same as it always has been - target the vulnerable minorities and try to keep them in check as you establish rules that say they can’t exist where you are, or if they have to exist, create limits to how they can exist, and make it easier to abuse them verbally, socially, or even physically.
That’s what this really comes down to: this policy removes safeguards from some of the children in our community. You literally cannot deny that because that’s what it says on the box. If you support this policy, you don’t get to suggest that this is a misrepresentation of the facts - you have to own up to the idea that you believe it is fair and just that these kids be given less respect and deserve less dignity than their peers.
You have to acknowledge that this will hurt kids.