Who is really protecting Idaho’s children?

February 16, 2023

By Dorothy Moon
IDGOP Chairwoman

Recently, several Idaho legislators introduced bills that would protect Idaho children from adults bent on using our children as vehicles for a radical gender ideology. Gender dysphoria is a controversial mental health condition that has seen a recent spike in diagnoses. While there are many contributors to this spike, some experts believe that growing levels of childhood and adolescent depression are contributing to this spike.

Whatever its cause, Idaho’s legislators are right to craft legislation that protects minors from irreversible surgeries or hormone treatments that can lead to infertility, anatomical mutilation and increased rates of suicidal ideation.

Unfortunately, our legislators’ efforts are facing an onslaught of special interest groups funded by, and supportive of, the radical Left.

One such group, Idaho Children Are Primary, has lobbied the Idaho Legislature through direct communication to oppose efforts to protect Idaho’s children.

Idaho Children Are Primary claims to be a bipartisan nonprofit. And yet their list of policy positions mirror those of the Biden Administration; advocacy for the continued use of Federal COVID monies here in Idaho, adoption of so-called Social Emotional Learning curriculum in Idaho schools and support for taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgeries for children.

Idaho Children Are Primary is like a lot of third-party advocacy groups operating in our state; they have a noble mission, many esteemed or respected community members on their board or staff and they claim a mantle of policy neutrality or “bipartisanship.”

And like many other lobbying groups, their advocacy and efforts to guide the direction of legislation and policy largely operate outside of the public eye. With politically connected board members and donors, groups like Idaho Children Are Primary can kill legislation with just a few phone calls or well-placed emails.

Part of the job of a political party is to remind citizens of the principles at stake in any policy discussion.

For example, with sex reassignment surgery: Should children be allowed — encouraged even — to engage in life-altering activities, including medical procedures, before they are capable of understanding the full implications of their choices?

To have a full-throated debate about the real cost of certain policies, we need advocacy groups to stop claiming neutrality and instead make plain what outcomes they really want to see established in our law.

Any interested Idahoan can visit our state party’s website at idgop.org and learn, in plain English, what our party stands for and what principles animate and inform our policy positions. We should expect the same transparency and fair dealing from groups like Idaho Children Are Primary.