According to its website, Hays Public Library offers plenty of activities for pre-K and elementary school-aged kids in the children’s department. Something else it offers? A large wall display featuring books about sexuality.
Examples include “Trans+: Love, Sex, Romance, and Being You,” which purports to be an “uncensored guide for teens who are transgender, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, or gender-fluid.” It also provides advice on “relationships, sex, and life as a trans or nonbinary individual.” Keep in mind, this is featured in an area of the library where many patrons are a decade below the age of consent.
What you won’t find, however, are books like “Johnny the Walrus” or “Elephants Are Not Birds,” both of which encourage children to accept their bodies as they are. While this message has always been valuable, it has become even more important in recent years. That’s evident from the growing number of young detransitioners—individuals who underwent “gender affirming care” as minors, only to later realize they made an irreversible mistake.
One of them is Kayla Lovdahl, an 18-year-old old California woman who is suing the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and four doctors for removing her breasts when she was just 13. The New York Post quotes her lawsuit as alleging that “they essentially handed Kayla the prescription pad, and allowed her naïve, emotional, childish, rollercoaster of feelings to dictate the so-called ‘treatment’ that she would receive.”
Meanwhile, fellow teenage detransitioner Chloe Cole recounted to Fox News in February how she was put on puberty blockers and testosterone at 13 before undergoing a double mastectomy at 15.
"Because of the testosterone, I have permanent changes to my bone structure that cannot be reversed,” she said. “And I have issues with my urinary tract, but I'm not sure whether I'll be able to conceive a child or be able to safely carry to term or to birth. And because of the mastectomy, I'll never be able to breastfeed."
Stories like theirs illustrate why so many parents have grown increasingly worried about radical gender ideology. It also makes clear why some are no longer comfortable with sending their kids to the library. Because while it claims to be a place “for the entire community,” those of us who want to protect our children clearly aren’t welcome.
Adam Peters,
Ellis County Republican Party Chairman
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