I am writing to strongly appose this legislation. My children are not legal adults; they are my dependents and as such I 100% have a right to know if they are exploring a change in their sexuality. This undermines our role as parents and also as a Catholic family. Gender identity is not a legal and political issue but a human, fundamental issue and one that the church has a strong opinion about. If faculty and staff at a school are allowed to let students wear hijabs and be exempt from celebrations involving different cultures or faiths, why are Christian students not allowed to be exempt from adhering to this law? If you are going to say that it is up to the family to practice those beliefs and to keep those beliefs at home, then you are contradicting your earlier statement about keeping parents out of the loop. How can we discuss these matters with our children if we do not know what they are choosing at school? If a child is allowed to be an athiest or to choose his/her own gender without risk of being taken out of his/her home, I also do not see why we must have a removal of science by threat in this law as well. The familial structure is now at risk in an already fragile time period. If you are worried about acceptance and tolerance at the family level, then this new policy should be worded differently to include mandatory counseling services as needed and not simply "parents will not know and will lose their child." This is infuriating and frightening. My children will not be bullied into a belief system that does not uphold their Christian values and I would never ask that of a non-Christian family either.