Good intentions are not enough when it comes to dealing with our children. When government becomes heavy-handed and attempts to solve societal problems through intrusive programs with big price tags, bereft families should not be comforted by the notion that it was all done with the best interests of children in mind.
Reckless interference in a family's relationships and values can easily occur when, for instance, Child Protective Services does more than rescue a child who's being abused. Government programs now are causing families to split apart and imposing leftist progressive agendas on way too many children. This is happening in the home and at school. And it needs to stop.
One way this is occurring is through the expanded definition of “crisis” situations and the implementation of more suicide hotlines and child/parent disruptions. Yes, suicide rates among youth are high. There are admittedly many young people who are noticeably unstable, have few coping skills, and dwell in chaotic homes.
But past generations also experienced devastating circumstances. How did we ever exist before there were armies of counselors and social workers, with services covered by government funding and the claim that many, many more are needed immediately in schools and communities? In past times, troubled youth turned to parents, grandparents, friends, pastors, neighbors, and trusted teachers, few of whom had a master's degree in counseling.
And most of the time, they would not persuade a suicidal girl that the solution to her problems is to reject her parents’ wishes. None would urge her to seek therapeutic sessions and medication to “become” the opposite gender.
The elevated suicidality of today’s youth would diminish substantially if “LGBTQ” behaviors and abortion were removed from the promotional platform of today’s schools.
Reckless, non-scientific interference with gender confused adolescents is recommended by the American School Counseling Association and other woke leftist education groups. It’s justified so that a troubled girl with other emotional problems can “be who she really is.”
In Ohio, even though such transgender “affirmation” is now in violation of state law (House Bill 68), there is no doubt it is still being done. Do we want to give deeply misinformed “professionals” more access to more students to mess with their minds and hearts as they divide families?
And the concern is not just on this issue. A litany of progressive values are now cemented in counseling standards that can seriously derail our kids.
I want to cite two egregious examples of good intentions that most definitely will have bad results in some instances.
One comes from California, where California Family Council is sending out alarms over a new bill, AB 727, which will require schools to list The Trevor Project contact information on public school student IDs. The Trevor Project is a predatory, homosexual and trans propaganda group that masquerades as a youth suicide hotline. It is still routinely recommended as a resource by local school districts (including many in Ohio). Read about this atrocious organization HERE and HERE.
The Trevor phone counselor often steers kids in crisis as young as 13 to Trevor’s hook-up side gig, Trevor Space. At that site, there is no meaningful age verification. Adults are allowed in these conversations.
Counseling a suicidal teen by phone who wants to pursue same sex desires or disavow biological sex is a minefield. What is not needed on top of this is the activist who declares, “You are right, your parents are wrong, and you can find a new group of people who become your family.” So Trevor urges unstable kids to join Trevor Space, which features themed chat groups. California Family Council described the Trevor Space network groups which have names like “Our Dad Sucks,” “Moms Are Overrated,” and “Chosen Family Club,” where anonymous teen callers can scrap their biological families and be adopted by online “siblings” and “parents.
Yet, as we reported in a previous article, the Biden administration sub-contracted with Trevor Space to answer crisis calls from the new national suicide hotline, 988. The Trump administration is considering dropping Trevor, which would be terrific.
The second example is a greatly expanded emergency mental health service for Ohio’s youth and families, called MRSS (Mobile Response and Stabilization Service). As Governor Mike DeWine outlined in a recent press conference, it’s full of good intentions to rescue suicidal, violent or drug- using kids and their families in crisis situations. This framework deploys a team of people to stabilize the situation and get the child into a counseling arrangement. And it’s all “free” with Medicaid coverage in some cases. It has existed in larger Ohio cities but is now expanded to the whole state.
Several things, however, raise huge red flags. One, is that, regarding Ohio government agencies, these personnel were trained in 2022 by a representative of Ohio Administrative Services (an Ohio government agency) with an hour and a half of pro-“LGBTQIA2S+” propaganda, including pronoun use, the movement’s flags and symbols, and “information” about hate and homophobia from activist groups (well known for their distortions and anti-Christian bias). You can view the whole charade HERE.
Unless I have missed the announcement, there has been no effort to disavow that OAS training and the deeply discriminatory and offensive direction given to, for instance, the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and others who will be involved in the MRSS emergency response.
I know quite a few families with teens who announced plans to “transition” to the opposite gender, and those inclinations were sometimes developed under the influence of harmful counseling unknown to parents. It is currently a policy of the American School Counseling Association to recommend that interested adolescents be steered toward gender deviance even if parents know nothing. This is child abuse and family disruption mimicking “best practices” and a new identity by a teen often creates a huge family crisis which never had to happen.
DeWine’s expanded service will open the door to more family divisions, especially since the service will rely in some cases on both the policies of many pediatricians and children’s hospitals to allow teens to consent to their own care without parental consent, and an Ohio law passed under Democrat governor Dick Celeste allowing for youth at least 14 years- old to consent to counseling and health care for 30 days or 6 sessions without parental consent. The MRSS practice standards website specifically mentions this law and how helpful it will be.
Many of us would like to see this law repealed. Parents and guardians should always be consulted.
The potential harm is not just regarding gender confusion. Other situations where out-of-control teens may disrupt a family and spark a mental health emergency are the refusal of parents to allow a same sex attracted youth to “date” a person of the same sex. Storming out of the home and threatening to move in with an older homosexual is often the scenario where the “LGBTQ” community claims kids were “kicked out of their homes.” The truth is that teens self-separate after a huge fight with parents, and the teen has somewhere to go—bunking in with the corrupting adult homosexual, until the relationship breaks up.
What will the woke-trained Ohio agency professional likely do to get the family to reconcile? Urge the parents to “accept that your gay son was born this way,” which would be inaccurate? And if they won’t, the crisis responder will likely enable the high risk behavior by offering some temporary fix.
Or consider the girl who is pregnant, wants an abortion, and mom and dad are pleading with her to keep the baby. Or the rebellious teen who wants to stay out all night with sketchy friends. What’s the compromise here? There should be none. The teen should stay home. But after the teen makes an emergency call, the family is now flagged as “troubled” and justified parental discipline is undermined.
And these are only the home-based battles that may arise. MRSS will also respond at school, which brings possibly more grave misdirection. DeWine was joined in his MRSS press conference by the superintendent of Dublin (OH) Schools, John Marschhausen. Formerly the head of the Hilliard (OH) system, Marschhausen is a far-left liberal with a track record of endangering children through endorsement of every aspect of the DEI and “LGBTQ” agendas. See HERE , HERE and HERE.
What is a Republican governor doing in partnership with a radical like Marschhausen?
One other goofy aspect of MRSS is the use of “peer supporters,” also outlined in their standards of care. During DeWine’s press conference, he allowed two senior girls who were part of the Dublin Schools’ “Hope Squad” to speak. The use of peers as “trained counselors” is highly irresponsible, with a strong potential for misdirection.
What would happen without the MRSS service? Parents would decide on an emergency room visit or call the police. While I know we want to cut down ER visits, MRSS doesn’t seem like a good solution, because we are empowering youth to bypass parents and allow unrelated government people to become involved in explosive issues. They start directing traffic in your home, causing unnecessary family divisions, and long-term harm to the teen will result in too many cases.
We know there are crisis situations, but is the MRSS model the best solution? If DeWine issued a directive against the concerns listed above, it all might seem a bit better, but it still feels like big government overreach that precludes the decisions of mom and dad.
