Over the weekend, New York Magazine’s “Intelligencer” published an op-ed claiming that the parental rights movement is a threat to children and democracy.
In her column “Children Are Not Property,” senior writer Sarah Jones claims that “right-wing Christians” are embracing the parental rights movement as a way to indoctrinate and control their children “much like any domesticated animal.”
She argues that by advocating for parental rights, conservatives are betraying their belief that children belong to their parents. And since parents “own their children,” conservatives believe that parents can “dispose of the child as they see fit.”
Jones claims that what motivates the parental rights movement is conservatives’ love of authoritarianism. She claims the movement is just one path conservatives are using to capture the power of the state and impose an “authoritarian hierarchy on us all.”
Naturally, Jones drags abortion into her argument, claiming that conservatives want to “claim personhood” to unborn children because the unborn “cannot disobey.” She argues that for conservatives, the unborn are “more valuable” than a born child because the unborn are merely a “means to an end,” namely “the subjugation of women.” But as soon as the child is born, his “value depreciates.”
Jones’ column prompted an immediate pushback online, with critics arguing that Jones is implying that children belong, not to their parents, but to the state.
But Sarah Jones isn’t the only leftist portraying the parental rights movement as a threat to the left’s hegemony.
While speaking at a Human Rights Campaign event in Los Angeles last week, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi railed against the Republican-led House for passing the Parents Bill of Rights legislation against Democrat opposition.
Pelosi claimed that the bill, which she vowed will never be signed into law by President Biden, would have put the “safety and well-being” of children at risk by forcing schools to notify parents if their child identifies as “transgender.”
