Letters

In a recent column, Carlos Sandoval takes issue with “goose-stepping” tactics of conservatives who are simply trying to pause or slow down the rapidly advancing gender dysphoria that is gripping our youth today [“Pride and the Fourth,” Vistas, Opinion, June 29].

In far too many instances, children are being quietly promoted to question their sexuality at an age that most are unaware there is anything to question. Mr. Sandoval laments government bureaucrats who listen to their concerned constituents and parents who wish to limit the exposure of their children to explicit sexual content at such a young age. He opines that censorship, book bans and Big Brother are waiting at our doorstop because of conservative efforts at rational academic pursuits.

I would be the first to argue against book bans or censorship in an adult setting — but filing books in an age-appropriate manner from elementary through high school is hardly indicative of either. Parental concern over what is age-appropriate is legitimate. When Governor Ron DeSantis gave a press conference to highlight the “book ban hoax” and began reading excerpts from some contested books, the live feeds had to cut away, because the sexual content was too explicit for public consumption. Indeed, some of these restricted books are plainly pornographic.

Such scare tactics aren’t about books at all but another attempt by woke activist organizations looking to drive a wedge between conservative common sense and liberal fantasy.

Ten years ago, gender dysphoria was rare to nonexistent. Social media and current liberal activists are promoting such confusion among our youth in the form of gender-affirming lessons and health care for children who are far too young to be making such decisions on their own. Genital and body mutilation are becoming normal and acceptable procedures to affirm liberal insecurities.

Only a generation ago, youthful predilections would manifest themselves as cowboys, astronauts, or nurses and princesses. Boys were wrangling dinosaurs and girls riding imaginary unicorns as their playmates. Now, these same children are having their fertile imaginations honed toward perceived identity confusion and unease caused by a conflict between a person’s assigned sex at birth and their own gender identity.

Can you truly imagine all that going on in the mind of 10-year-old or younger before social media and social engineering in our elementary schools? Now, extrapolate that as these students matriculate into the higher grades.

Mr. Sandoval dismisses this not as grooming but as the normal track of a healthy education, even though the notion of an alternative gender may never have crossed the child’s mind.

I can understand Mr. Sandoval’s pride in some of the social progress that has been made, but certainly not the obvious excesses that he celebrates.

John Porta

Westhampton