The war on parents’ rights continues unabated in California. The latest shocking episode involves new legislation currently making its way through the state legislature. If passed, it would allow children as young as 12 to “check themselves in” to group homes without parental consent. The legislation would apply to mental health professionals evaluating the safety of children. The bill’s authors claim that the measure is being considered in response to an increase in suicides among minority children, but it’s pretty obvious what this is really about. And this would amount to what can only be described as state-sanctioned kidnapping.  (Free Beacon)

California Democrats on Tuesday advanced a bill that would let children as young as 12 years old check into group homes without parental consent, which critics say would enable the “state-sanctioned kidnapping” of children.

The state’s Assembly Judiciary Committee approved the bill, which would allow mental health professionals to commit children to residential facilities upon request, even if the child had not claimed abuse or neglect. The bill instructs counselors to determine whether or not to inform a patient’s parents “after consulting with the minor.” The bill’s authors say their bill is meant to address recent increases in suicide among “youth, particularly Black and Latinx youth.”

This isn’t a minority issue. The bill’s language specifically calls out “LGBTQ+ youth” who face “rejection” of their “identity” from their parents. The bill’s authors allege that this results in them being denied “access to mental health services.”

In other words, this is just California’s latest attempt to indoctrinate as many children as possible into the social contagion of transgenderism that has been running amok in so many public schools. It’s also yet another example of the left’s position that children are the property of the state rather than the responsibility of their parents.

And this proposal obviously doesn’t have anything to do with actually providing mental health services to minors who are either experiencing genuine gender dysphoria or have been convinced that they are by their peers or counselors. This legislation is clearly geared toward feeding children into the “transition” pipeline via name changes followed by hormones, puberty blockers and genital mutilation surgery.

Since when did we start allowing 12-year-olds to make life-altering decisions in this fashion? If children are suffering actual abuse in their home environment, then by all means they should be removed to a place of safety while the parents or guardians are investigated. But preventing your child from being abducted into a cult is not “abuse.” It’s called parental responsibility. If a 12-year-old came to a California counselor complaining that their parents wouldn’t let them get a Mike Tyson face tattoo, would you remove them from their home and drop them off at the nearest tattoo parlor? (Tattooing a child is illegal in California, by the way, but you get the point.)

California is once again failing to read the room and they should be facing some blowback from the voters. The majority of parents, including many liberals, support parental rights in all the recent polling we’ve seen. Public schools are supposed to be centers for education, not indoctrination. And the state can not be allowed to enshrine this sort of official kidnapping in state law.