Socialist lawmaker says the quiet part out loud: 'There is no such thing as parental rights'

There is an effort under way across Canada to replicate American red states' success in bolstering parental rights.

The province of Saskatchewan ratified a parental bill of rights in October. New Brunswick now requires teachers to obtain parental consent before humoring students' cross-sex delusions. Alberta is poised to pass wide-sweeping policies and legislation that would not only prohibit children from undergoing sex-change mutilations and taking puberty blockers but would also keep parents abreast of their kids' efforts to transition at school and bar men from women's sports.

Radical LGBT activists, teachers' unions, and other champions of putting greater distance between parents and children are desperately fighting this campaign to strengthen parental rights. A socialist lawmaker in Ottawa recently gave away the thinking at the heart of their efforts: There were never any parental rights to begin with.

Randall Garrison, an NDP member of Parliament and an Israel-Hamas ceasefire advocate, is a non-straight LGBT activist who has condemned provincial efforts to strengthen parental rights and protect children from unnecessary, irreversible, and disfiguring medical interventions.

When asked about Alberta's planned legislation, Garrison, who apparently supports so-called "gender-affirming care" at any age but not "cosmetic surgeries on intersex children," said the quiet part out loud.

"I like to say, first of all, that there's no such thing as parental rights in Canada," said Garrison. "There are parental responsibilities. And in Canadian family law, the primary responsibility of parents is to support and affirm their kids."

"Children have rights in Canada," continued the LGBT activist, "and these kind of policies restrict the rights that children have in Canada."

Alberta is planning to ban the removal of genitals and healthy breasts on minors under the age of 17 as well as the provision of irreversible puberty blockers and hormone therapies to children 15 and younger — transmogrifying procedures Garrison apparently figures that children, alternatively unable to legally drink, get tattoos, or drive, should have a right to.

The province would further require parental notification and consent for a school to alter the name or pronouns of a child under the age of 15. For kids 16 and 17, the schools won't need permission but will nevertheless be required to notify the parents.

Additionally, parents would have the opportunity to opt their children out whenever a teacher plans to reach about so-called gender identity, sexual orientation, or sexuality, according to state media.

Finally, Alberta would bar male transvestites from participating in women's sports leagues.

Garrison's dismissal of parental rights echoes similar claims made in the U.S., not all of which have to do with the LGBT agenda.

In 2021, Kyle B. Brother, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and the chief scientific officer at the Norton Children's Research Institute, and Ellen Wright Clayton, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, penned an article for Politico entitled, "The Dangerous Legal Illusion of 'Parental Rights.'"

"When it comes to society's interest in protecting children, the legal precedent is unambiguous: The rights of their parents come second," wrote the professors. "Parents do have the freedom to direct the health care and education of their children, but these rights are not unlimited."

Brother and Clayton argued that children can, for example, be required to wear masks and undergo vaccinations even if parents are not on board.

The academics nearly offered Garrison's assessment word for word, writing, "We should spend less time thinking about the rights we claim for ourselves and more time thinking about our responsibilities to protect our children."

Other leftists have sought to undermine the concept of parental rights by claiming collective responsibility and state ownership over children.

In an April speech, President Joe Biden quoted a teacher as saying, "'There's no such thing as someone else's child.'"

The geriatric Democrat proceeded to say, "No such thing as someone else's child. Our nation's children are all our children."

The notion that children are effectively wards of the state has been codified in California and other Democratic states where authorities are legally required to refuse to reunite runaway children with their parents if the kids are looking to undergo sex-change mutilations.

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