Sacrificing Your Children on the Altar of Principle

A critical argument for those in the LGBTQ camp is that, unless LGBTQ individuals are accepted by their parents and peers, they are liable to commit suicide. This argument has a moral component. It can be argued that people who reject the premises of the LGBTQ movement are committing “literal” violence and endangering LGBTQ people with their “hate.” As such, the government is justified in acting against social conservatives in ways that might otherwise appear like a violation of conservatives’ freedom of speech and religion. There is also a practical component. As a parent, regardless of what you think of LGBTQ arguments, would you rather see your child become LGBTQ or be dead? I wish to take this argument head-on and ask are their principles worth sacrificing your children for?

I once did a post about the proper response of a parent whose daughters became bell-bottom-wearing, lesbian Nazis. To return to this basic premise, imagine that your child’s psychologist sat you down and solemnly explained that your child now identified as a Nazi. They prefer to be called Adolf and demand reconstructive surgery to become white and blond to match their “true Aryan ubermensch selves.” Finally, they wish to have a swastika tattooed on their forehead. The psychologist makes it clear that, unless you accept your child for who they “really are,” they are liable to kill themselves. As such, they put the question to you: would you rather be the parent of a living Nazi child or the parent of a dead child?

I would be willing to refuse the demands of such a kid. If a social worker attempted to aid my child in order to save their lives, I would insist that the government treat them no differently than any common kidnapper. This is not because I doubt what the psychologist told me but because I have principles that I am willing to die for and even willing to sacrifice my children for. I believe in classical liberalism and seek to impart those values to my children. If I had to choose between giving them the impression that I was ok was Nazism and seeing them dead, I would choose their deaths. I would even be open to the idea of outright killing them myself to protect society.

I do not think that this makes me a bad parent. The job of a parent is not merely to take care of their children’s bodies but also to prepare them to take their places within society. That larger society is more important than their lives and may require their sacrifice. Sometimes, parents must send their children off to war. My middle name comes from a nineteen-year-old cousin who was killed in Lebanon several months before I was born. His parents sent him off to serve in the IDF knowing that he might come back in a box and he did. Other parents must deal with children who come out of the closet as Nazis. While such parents might be tempted to simply love and accept their children for who they are, liberal democratic society demands that you reject such children even at the cost of their lives.

Sacrificing your children is certainly a high bar and there are many things I would not be willing to sacrifice them for. Despite being a traditionally observant Jew, I would rather my children reject Judaism than damage their mental health and put their lives at risk. If this means that I must accept their non-Jewish wives or even that they are in relationships deemed by Leviticus to be abominations, so be it. That being said, I do believe that human beings are born into societies and that we have no right to expect society to refashion itself to suit our convenience. As someone on the autism spectrum, this is something I am very conscious of. All my life, I have had to accept that I must either conform myself to the dictates of society or be prepared to pay a heavy price. You have the right to make your own lifestyle choices but other people have the right to disapprove of those life choices and to make their disapproval clear to you. If that disapproval causes you distress and psychological harm even to the point of driving you to suicide, that is on you and not them. Much as Nazism is an existential threat to liberal democracy, I fail to see how a liberal democracy can hope to survive citizens who believe that they not only have the negative liberty to make life choices but also the positive liberty to not have other people disapprove of them. I am willing to stand on this principle even at the cost of my children.

If my children become LGBTQ, I will still love them and want to be part of their lives. That being said, I would insist on my right to make my disapproval clear even to the point of taking largely symbolic actions like refusing to attend their same-sex wedding or granting permission for them to have “gender-affirming” surgery. I recognize that this is liable to cause them great distress and for that I am sorry but there are certain principles worth standing for even at great cost.       

On Coaching and Teaching

 

When working with students from disadvantaged communities, it is easy to fall into a negative cycle. These are students who are often even less inclined than most kids to read as they come from cultures that do not even offer the pretense of supporting reading. The parents are likely not going to be able to help them with homework so the temptation is to not give them homework in the first place. These students are often significantly behind their peers so it is tempting to keep the curriculum simple and not demand too much from them. We do not want these kids to become frustrated and drop out. While this sort of thinking may be founded upon good intentions, there is a trap. These students will, one day, go out into the world to compete for college placements and ultimately for jobs against students who have been given a vigorous education both at home and at school.   

Imagine being a basketball coach for a team of middle-class Jewish day school kids. These kids have their Judaic classes plus a variety of secular interests and hobbies besides for basketball. Most of these kids are here because they think it might be nice to hang out with their friends after school. Shooting a basketball and playing pickup ball is fun so why not join the team. You want them to run laps and do drills? How mean of you. Why are you yelling at them? They are doing their "best."  

I used to be one of those kids when I was in 5th grade at Columbus Torah Academy. I particularly remember one practice where the coach made us run ten laps around the gym. After finishing, I went to get a drink of water from a fountain in the gym. The coach yelled at me and then made the entire team run another ten laps. In essence, that practice consisted of us running laps. Why did he "waste" our time like that? We could have run laps at home. Shouldn't our couch have been actually teaching us how to play basketball? 

As an adult, I now recognize that the coach was right. One of the most essential parts of being on a team is to put yourself into the hands of a coach, recognizing that the coach understands the larger picture of what the team needs in order to win better than you do. As a player, if you do not understand this down to your very gut, the coach should cut you immediately even if you have Stephen Curry's 3-point shot. The greatest shot in the world is not going to help your team if you do not know how to get open and can easily become a trap if you lack the humility, when double-teamed, to accept that you might not be touching the ball that game. This might be the game for the number five guy on the team to be fed the ball and take those open shots.

To be clear, we were not a good team and regularly lost heavily to local Catholic schools like Saint Catherine’s and Saint Pius. I was certainly one of the lousier players even though I honestly tried. This was not our coach's fault. He did his job even if it was not a pleasant one. I do not believe that he acted out of any desire to beat down on elementary school boys. The fact was that we were going up against more talented teams and he had to make do with what he had. It would not have been kindness if he had told us we were great only for us to get blown out by reality. 

A more extreme version of the coach is the drill sergeant. Consider the example of the film Full Metal Jacket. It is easy to laugh at the antics of the sergeant but there is something truly tragic about his situation. The Vietnam War is in full blast and the recruits he is training are draftees. We can assume that they are not America's best and the brightest. These are kids who could not make it into college even to avoid military service in an actual war. The sergeant knows that many of these kids are going to die. It is his job to make sure that they do not get their squad mates killed. Then you have someone like Gomer Pyle who most certainly should never have been allowed into the army except that it was the job of some bureaucrat to meet a quota by drafting Pyle even if Pyle is going to get someone killed.

Being a teacher does not involve life and death responsibility like a drill sergeant but the stakes are higher than that of a coach. The worst that can happen if a coach fails at their job is that the kids will be humiliated for an evening by a better-prepared team, possibly leading some of the kids to conclude that they do not have a future in sports and, instead, should become accountants. If a teacher fails at their job, then students will graduate and apply or even start college not even realizing that they are not prepared because, all along, they were fed a fake education.

From this perspective, it seems logical to license teachers to do anything we allow coaches to do. Specifically, teachers should be allowed to accurately describe a student’s shortcomings to their faces and expel them from the classroom for failing to live up to basic standards. Furthermore, obedience should not be something up for negotiation but should be seen as the price of entrance. 

The reason why this does not happen is that the consequences of a teacher not doing their job are entirely long-term. There is no big game next week where the students will be crushed by a better-prepared squad. In practice, even exams usually fail to properly demonstrate that students are not up to task as they are created and administered by the teachers who have every incentive to not hurt their students’ self-esteem. Imagine if my coach had been allowed to schedule a game for us against our school kindergarten. We could have been an A+ team.

As teachers, we work under a further significant disadvantage. Students volunteer to join a team so the coach is free to kick anyone out if they do not get with the program no matter their individual talent. Most students who come to my class have no particular desire to study history. I have to be grateful to the students who do their work as they are told even if they then take a sip of water. If students tell me to "go F myself," the most I can do is report them to the administration, knowing full well that, at best, any punishment will be symbolic and that the student will be back in class the next day. I stand a greater chance of losing my job for "creating" a situation where a student might become "frustrated" enough to curse at me than that student has of being expelled from my class or from the school.       

I have taken to teaching some of my students to play chess. Chess teaches critical thinking and focus. You cannot simply do the first move that occurs to you. Most importantly for my students, chess is unforgiving in its exposure of your ignorance. You think you are smart; why did you just lose? Let us go over the game and see all the better moves that you should have seen if you were actually paying attention. There is no need to insult the students. The game itself can offer more biting criticism than I ever could. With chess, you do not need to wait several weeks for the big game to expose your failings; all chess needs in order to expose you is a few minutes.