I was really shocked when I saw this anti-trans outing practice making its way north of the border. It wouldn't be something we would typically expect from progressive Canada. I really like what that New Brunswick child rights advocate has to say about the mechanism of the state, that parents don't have the right to leverage state power to force their children to behave or believe in certain ways.

That's a pretty simple concept, grounded in the idea that children are human beings with inalienable rights.

I think that's a concept that infuriates a lot of conservative people, who seem to believe or behave as if their children are their property.

That was certainly the assumption behind a US Supreme Court decision decades ago that allowed Amish parents not to educate their children to minimum state standards.

As a result, the 40% or so of Amish kids who leave the religion after they turn 18 find themselves struggling in a society that values education and offers very little opportunity to people like them with almost no education.

According to the United Nations and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, education is a human right that children possess independent of their parents.

Here in the United States, we have a very difficult time recognizing that children possess human rights. All the conservative uproar these days over transgender identities in schools revolve around children not possessing their own intrinsic human rights, and around the notion that it's appropriate for parents to leverage state power to force beliefs and practices on their own children.

So much for the land of the free.