Less TikTok, more meat packing

Missouri House Republicans voted to defund libraries, but defend 12 year olds getting married. That’s right, the GOP thinks it’s fine for parents to force their kids into what amounts to sexual slavery, but the chance of seeing a drawing of two naked men kissing is a line too far.

And of course states like Arkansas are trying to keep kids off social media, but reducing restrictions on child labor even as the US faces an illegal child labor crisis. Less TikTok and more meat packing for today’s youth.

The through-line of all of this is the “parents’ rights” movement, which is better understood as a movement to treat children as property. This column by Sarah Jones sums it up better than I could. One key passage:

In this perspective, rights aren’t innate. They’re determined instead by a person’s place in the conservative hierarchy. The opposite view — that everyone has rights by virtue of their humanity — requires us to change the way we commonly think of children. Liberals aren’t immune to the belief that children are property. The mainstream fearmongering over trans youth tells us that much. Yet combating the power of the parental rights movement requires an answering conviction in the rights of children.

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This post was adapted from a 2023 edition of my email newsletter.