Conservatives: if you had a child who came out as transgender, how would you react?

[Goldwater]

I would explain to them why I believe they are wrong from a religious, scientific and common sense point of view. If they continued to believe in it, I'm not sure what I would I do. I certainly wouldn't ever accept it and would take it is evidence that I was a complete failure as a parent. I would keep trying to persuade them against it and would restrict their access to material that promotes this sort of thing.

So would you rather lose your relationship with your kid than even begrudgingly accept them?

Why did you interpret his post to mean that?

What other way is there to interpret it?

[Goldwater]

PSA to those of you espousing an “I’ll disapprove of it but I’ll still love them” approach; you have no idea how much irreparable damage that will probably do to your relationship with your child. This isn’t something you can take an “agree to disagree” stance on and then just brush off, because they won’t see it that way. Shockingly, people don’t love to hear that there’s something fundamentally wrong with them, even if you throw in a “I still like you anyway!”

You might not want to hear it, but in most cases you have a choice between genuinely supporting their transition or losing touch with them. If you think that the former is so reprehensible that you would prefer the likelihood of the latter occurring, that’s on you. That truly is usually the reality of the situation.

This has a lot to do with the fact that these kids are constantly told by the larger trans rights culture that their parents hate them if they don't completely go along with it.   

What I said still stands, though, regardless of whether you think the child is being rational or not. You either accept it or you likely irreparably alienate them, even if you don't like that that's what your two options are. Why a parent who genuinely cares about their child would want to die on that hill instead of just being supportive so that they can maintain their relationship is beyond me, but many people evidently feel that way. All I'm saying is that no one should delude themselves into thinking that they can oppose their child's transition and come out the other side with their relationship mostly unscathed, because that will not happen in the vast majority of cases.

That's something awful about having a family member join a cult. There's a good chance they'll disown you if you try at all to dissuade them.

JFC, being trans isn't joining a cult.

[Goldwater]

Well, to start, they wouldn't. That would imply that I’ve failed as a parent.

Indeed, but not for the reasons that you think.