I've seen a lot of crap being put about on the idea of parents' rights. I want to reject this idea outright.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PARENTS' RIGHTS.

Parents do not have "rights" over their children. The children have rights; the parents have responsibilities to see that those rights are upheld.

In order for the parents to have rights, then necessarily the child does not have them. The only situation in which we have allowed one human to usurp another's rights was slavery; and I would argue children are not property.

If they're not property, then they're people, and if they're people, then they have rights. If they have rights, parents can't.

This is such a crucial distinction. The parents don't have a right to have their child educated; the child has a right to a good education. The parents don't have the right to participate in sport; the child does. And so on.

Once you reframe the idea like this, that children are human beings with their own rights, you see what a disingenous line of attack this is from the right wing.

Parents have an awesome responsibility: the care and management of the human rights of beings not able to assert them for themselves. But it must be clear that the rights belong to the children, and that they are being safeguarded, not owned, by the parents.

This simple conceptual shift shows that children should have full bodily autonomy, including their right to assert consent to being touched by anyone (think touch sensitivity), and including the right to present as the gender they want. The right to religion, or freedom from it if they want. The rights are theirs, and the parents should have no power to abrogate those rights without due care and consideration.

Yes, by the way, I am a parent, as well as a grandparent. I stand by this. My kids are not my property, never were.