Dear Editor:

The State has been expanding its role, responsibility, and power over us since the signing and ratification of our Constitution. We have gone from a short concise limiting of federal and state authority to a point where kitchen appliances and toilets are regulated. During the Covid pandemic, our government prescribed medical treatment and punishment for those who did not comply thereby injecting themselves between a doctor and patient. Even if correctly done, it is a chilling overreach of authority. 

Now, the state is injecting themselves between parents and children. Our schools are devoting significant time and resources into “Social Emotional Learning.” Laws are being changed to hide their involvement as they expand their role and responsibility as counselors and life coaches. The sexual orientation of our preteens is now of concern, even an obsession, of the state. Special interest groups and politicians are injecting themselves into a process which is life changing to the individual and has generational impact on families. There is little, if any, scientific basis for the policies being put in place. New laws are being debated to allow children to become wards of the state and obtain life-changing and irreversible medical care against their parents’ wishes long before the age of legal consent.

There are heart breaking testimonies of regret from some who did not recognize the impact and permanence of their decisions. Lives and dreams have been destroyed by gender reassignment and cannot be recovered. Other countries are pausing, stepping back, and questioning the validity of the process. The decline in young people’s mental health and the increase in drug use and suicides would indicate what we are doing is wrong.

We have done significant harm to our young people in the past few decades. We need to rethink the role and practice of the state in the raising and education of our children. I feel sorry for our young people. They have become pawns in a cultural war and power grab by our government and are suffering because of it.

Joe Grant

Wiscasset