This might sound like a shitpost, but I promise you it's not. In 2007, the Supreme Court held 5–4 that children do not have First Amendment rights, in that a school is legally allowed to censor their speech *even when said children are not at school*.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick

There's something truly toxic and fucked up about the idea that children aren't independent people whom we owe a responsibility to, but are effectively a kind of property that can be controlled and coerced.

That view, enshrined in the incredibly fucked up framing of "parents' rights," is the same view that runs through KOSA, the UK's new censorship regime, YouTube's new "AI" filter, and so many other things.

I barely even have words for what a fucked up idea it is that parents have *rights* and not *responsibilities* where their children are concerned. It shouldn't have to be a radical statement to declare that *children are people*, but it is indeed quite radical, even amongst supposed "progressives."

Let me say it again, then: children are people.