(Pensacola, Florida; April 13, 2022,) – I’m gay. I have a vested interest in seeing young people born into the LBGT community treated with respect and human dignity exactly the way my generation was not treated as we grew up.
However, those who advocate (usually quite loudly) that we must teach ‘gender identity’ to kids who haven’t even hit puberty yet are nothing but groomers trying to recruit children into their demented club. These people are groomers targeting children.
Now, let’s first get a few things straight here. Teaching ‘gender identity’ as demanded by these groomers targeting our children is not the same thing as teaching basic human respect for all people. I, and most reasonable people, have no objection to teaching a first-grader that it’s rude (and downright mean) to make fun of two men or two women who are holding hands. There is no question that it’s entirely appropriate to teach children to be nice and polite to all people, even if the child doesn’t understand the relationship they see. That’s simple human courtesy.
However, there’s a vocal minority within the LGBT community and our ‘allies’ that seek to effectively recruit children, although they call it ‘gender identity education.’ A first-grader who barely knows how to tie his own shoes, or knows just enough of her colors and numbers to successfully start school, is not concerned with ‘gender identity’ unless the adult in the room—the authority figure—foists it upon them. The child will, of course, most likely hew to the teacher’s viewpoint simply because young children, as a whole, desperately want the adults in authority over them to be pleased with them.
The pre-frontal cortex of the human brain takes about 25 years on average to develop. This is the part of our brain we used to regulate emotion, control impulses, and make planning decisions by weighing risk vs. reward. In other words, the center of judgment in our brain is not fully mature until we’re in our 20s. The cerebellum, another part of our brains that regulate thought processes (again, important for making good behavioral judgments) also doesn’t hit maturity until we’re into our 20s (https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/adult-brain/).
This is why we don’t let kids under 16 drive, young adults under 18 join the military, or young adults drink until age 21. These are things with potentially and permanently life-altering consequences. One wrong move, and that young person’s entire life for decades afterward can be negatively affected. So, since we follow the science in our culture, how can an intelligent person who understands cognitive development advocate for allowing children whose brains are not mature at 5 years old, much less at 16 years old, make a decision such as taking puberty blockers, or having their genitalia mutilated when such decisions can’t ever be truly (much less safely) reversed?
There is no rational argument one can make to push such abuse on children. The only way to justify such use of children for one’s own agenda is to ignore actual scientific knowledge of our biological development and declare children as competent in all cognitive aspects as adults. This is patently absurd. Rational and critical thinking is a skill we learn (or are supposed to learn) during our teen years so we, as adults, can balance emotion, impulse, and logic to make healthy, long-term decisions.
If a 21-year-old decides they want their penis amputated and to go on hormone therapy because they believe they’re a transwoman, well, then, fine. That 21-year-old is still young, but they have hit a point where they’re cognitively an adult and have the capacity to understand the long-term ramifications of their choice. Even if we disagree with them, we have no moral or legal choice but to respect them as adults with agency to make that call.
A seven-year-old in first grade is not capable of understanding even the fact that ‘lifetime ramifications’ means a timespan longer than an hour or two. Yet these activist groomers screech that we who seek to protect children are totalitarian N@zis out to eradicate the LGBT community (odd that, as I’m gay…).
The recently bad-mouthed bill here in Florida, the laughingly and incorrectly labeled the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, is not a prohibition on support for LBGT youth. The Parental Rights in Education bill does not prevent even the teaching of ‘gender identity’ to kids who are old enough to actually understand it. The groomers squealing against this bill are incensed because my home state allows parents to have agency over their children’s lives and upbringing. These gender-identity activists hate this turn of events because they can’t ‘recruit’ children to ‘the cause’ if parents are in the way. In other words, this bunch of unrepentant groomers want the state to take over rearing the children so the activists can have their way by recruiting children!
Funny that. How much would these activists applaud the state taking over raising our kids if the state decided to teach the kids that homosexuality is evil? The activists only want to use the state’s power because their LGBT butts are chapped by the reality of biology. The inconvenient truth is that we in the LGBT community about only about 7% of the population. Personally, I don’t think human biology is going to suddenly change and upend the only means our species has of staying around here. Heterosexuals will always be the majority. That also means heterosexuals have more political power, and the unrepentant ‘gender identity’ groomers salivate at the idea of twisting young children—who aren’t even aware of what ‘sexual behavior’ actually is—to their cause by warping unformed minds to bolster LBGT numbers and gain political power.
I find this sickening. These activists are out to make themselves feel better about whatever horrible things life did to them. I spent 20 years in the Navy; 15 of those years I had to hide in the closet to keep my career. I know very well what it’s like to be marginalized and have to smile and ‘laugh’ at gay jokes and insults. I’ve had friends tell me, with all seriousness, they had ‘no problem’ with me being gay when they found out, but they didn’t want to hear about anything I do in the bedroom. I wonder if they have a problem with their heterosexual friends giving TMI about their bedroom activities, or did they think being gay makes me an exhibitionistic pervert?
However, none of those experiences provide even the shadow of justification for targeting impressionable, prepubescent children with what amounts to a recruitment campaign disguised as ‘gender identity education.’ It is neither the activist’s nor the state’s place to teach gender identity. That’s the purview of the parents. Period.
I’m a gay man, and I stand firmly, loudly, and publicly against those groomers targeting our society’s young children for their recruitment campaign. These classroom groomers don’t care about the child’s welfare; they care about advancing their agenda and making themselves feel special and powerful….at the expense of a child’s entire life.
They’re sick, and I won’t have it.
…Just my thoughts.
-Check out my video on this topic at: https://youtu.be/JJKaMmZagQw
# # #
Nathanael Miller’s Photojournalism Archives:
Instagram: @sparks1524
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sparks_photography/ #nathanaelmiller, #sparks1524, #guerrillaphotojournalism, #guerrillaphotojournalist, #journalist, #journalism, #photography, #photographer, #photojournalist, #novel, #novelist, #Disney, #protectchildren, #stophumantrafficking,