Idaho gov. signs law requiring doctors, teachers to inform parents of child gender confusion

HB 822, the Pediatric Secretive Transitions Parental Rights Act, declares that any “primary or secondary educational institution, a child care provider, or a medical, behavioral, or mental health care provider … shall not withhold information from a child’s parent or guardian related to the parent’s child’s expressed interest in or desire for sex transition procedures”; must notify parents of a child’s desire to use opposite-sex names, pronouns, intimate facilities, or athletic teams within 72 hours; “shall not aid or abet a child’s efforts to socially transition without first obtaining written consent from the child’s parent”; and “shall not aid or abet a child’s efforts to obtain sex transition procedures” at all.

Violators would face penalties of up to $100,000 per violation, plus civil damages from parents and potential loss of professional licenses. “Sex changes” for minors are already illegal in Idaho, so the bill would prevent doctors or teachers from helping facilitate transitions across state lines, as well as cover “social” transitioning in addition to surgical or chemical measures.

“A loophole was left in the [previous] law, and it did not mention social transitions, the process by which vulnerable children are led into the pipeline,” explained Republican state Sen. Ben Toews. “This bill is before us today to close that loophole. This legislation upholds parental rights through transparency.”

Little signed the new law without comment amid multiple bills on unrelated subjects, Boise State Public Radio reports. HB 822 takes effect July 1.

A large body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.

Many oft-ignored detransitioners, individuals who attempted transitioning before regretting it and returning to life as their true sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion that “transitioning” is the best solution.

“Gender-affirming” physicians have also been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with an 2022 exposé about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”

Teachers overriding parents’ wishes is a particular concern, as the indoctrination of children with left-wing ideology on sexuality, race, and other agenda items has long been a major issue in American public schools, from book shelves to drag events to classroom materials to even “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas.