Virginia Democratic Congresswoman Elizabeth Guzman announced that she will introduce a bill to expand the definition of child abuse and neglect allegations to include parents and guardians who do not affirm their LGBT children.
Thus, parents in the state of Virginia could face a felony or misdemeanor charge if they do not affirm their children's sexual orientation and gender identity. The Democratic lawmaker, who plans to introduce the bill in the upcoming Virginia legislative session, confirmed to 7News that the intention is to prosecute parents who do not share the gender ideology chosen by their children:
It could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment.
The measure comes in response to the 'model policies' recently updated by Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, which advocates for the parental rights to make decisions regarding their children and require, among other matters, that the students use restrooms and join sports teams based on their birth sex, rather than their gender identity.
2022 Model Policies on the Privacy Dignity and Respect for All Students Town Hall by VozMedia on Scribd
Virginia governor: "Children don't belong to the state. They belong to families"
These policies provoked the discomfort of Democratic legislators, who are now trying to remove parents from the decisions made by their children.
The Virginia Department of Education argued that the guidelines under the previous (Democratic) administration "ignored parental rights and other legal and constitutional principles that significantly impact how schools educate students, including transgender students."
In an interview with Fox News, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin defended the fact that "children do not belong to the State. They belong to the families. And when a child is struggling with this type of decision, a parent should absolutely be the primary counselor and help them struggle with this decision."
A few days ago, thousands of students in Virginia walked out of classes in protest of the Republican governor's new model policies. Now this, another Democratic lawmaker making offensive manoeuvres against the state's parents. However, Governor Youngkin maintains that school districts and school administrators should not keep parents out of decisions about their children's sexual orientation and identity.
