Subject: Pass Sage's Law HB532
Dear Education Committee Members,
I urge you to PASS Sage's Law. It is a basic child protection bill, ensuring parents are aware of critical mental health information about their own children, and children are not removed from loving families simply for raising girls as girls and boys as boys.
Parents need to know about and be in charge of their own children's welfare, as is their legal right and responsibility. They know and love their children more than any school or court official.
Most children who identify as transgender desist as they grow out of puberty. Social affirmation is an active intervention which can lock in an identity and set a child on a path to lifelong medicalization, sterilization, inability to orgasm, and many other known harms including impaired brain development, loss of bone health and various cancers.
There is no justification for schools or courts disrupting the bonds between parents and children on such uncertain grounds. However, Sage's Law takes no position on the type of support parents will provide minors struggling with gender dysphoria, it simply ensures the child's best interests are safeguarded by their parents, who know them best and have the legal right and responsibility to make medical and educational decisions.
When parents are kept in the dark their children are at greater risk of harm, as was the case in Sage's tragic story. There are now dozens of lawsuits against school districts that have secretly transitioned children. Schools like Sage's who deceive parents run a substantial legal risk when their policies result in harm to students.
Deceiving parents usurps their role and drives a wedge between them and their children, isolating children from their greatest protection.
Sage's Law does not change any school requirements for mandatory reporting of actual abuse, should a child need to be removed from a dangerous home. It simply ensures children are not removed from loving homes on ideological grounds, as was the case for Sage. Her removal from her home and placement in state custody nearly resulted in Sage's death.
This is not partisan issue, and it should not be a partisan vote. Surveys show the vast majority of Americans believe that schools should not deceive parents about gender transition, and that kids should not be taken away from parents who raise girls as girls and boys as boys.
This issue affects families of all backgrounds across the country. I urge you to show leadership for Virginia and other states, and vote YES for Sage's Law.
