No one knows for sure who first said the phrase, “If your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.”

Whether it was Mark Twain, Abraham Maslow, or someone else, it perfectly describes Illinois Democrats’ latest push to usurp control over our state’s kids.

The main goal of SB 3316, which amends the existing Children’s Mental Health act, is to “implement universal mental health screening of students.”

To some, this may sound like a benign effort to help kids who genuinely need mental health services, but if there’s anything the last several years have told us, we should always beware a government that seeks to use the medical establishment to accomplish its goals.

This bill raises many red flags, but perhaps the largest one concerns parental authority. If signed into law, it’s not hard to imagine the myriad ways the government could (and likely would) use the policy to do everything from undermine parents to remove kids from their homes.

When you consider the last several years in our nation’s history, added to an increasingly progressive leadership in Illinois, SB3316 makes perfect sense. Between critical theory, LGBTQ+ ideology and activism, and a mental health epidemic, it isn’t any wonder that the proverbial hammer is looking for more and more nails to hit.

Another way to describe this bill is that it’s a solution looking for a problem. And what problems might alert the government’s mental health brigade? In radical Illinois, we can guarantee it wouldn’t stop at true mental illness, but might also include:

1. A child who is experiencing the normal struggles that characterize growing up
2. A child whose family is going through a loss or financial struggle
3. A girl who is in a tomboy phase
4. A boy who loves music and poetry
5. A boy who loves hunting and fishing
6. A child whose parent is a responsible gun owner and is teaching his own kids about their second amendment rights
7. A child who is being raised to believe that there are only two genders
8. A child who believes the One True God created the universe

The list could go on. There are so many ways this could be used to gain control over kids who genuinely DO NOT NEED mental health services, but who the state deems as being outside an arbitrary “norm” of their own design. And consider the undue stress and shame this brings on parents, especially if they are not strong in their convictions and prepared to stand up against this kind of pressure.

If they are told by a “professional” that their child is not “normal” or shows signs of mental illness, how many will submit out of fear that they are hurting their children?

Even when you consider those kids who might genuinely benefit from mental health care, there is a real danger of burdening them with diagnoses and fast-tracking them into treatments that are not appropriate or what their parents would choose. There isn’t any reason to believe Illinois would contract with mental health providers who don’t share their radical beliefs about sexuality, gender, and mental health in general, so it isn’t as though they can be implicitly trusted for their “expertise.”

The vast majority of parents would do anything to make sure their kids are healthy and getting what they need to thrive, but many wisely choose to seek second or third opinions and/or will seek out alternative treatments for a variety of reasons.

This bill would, in essence, go around parents
and remove their chance to do their jobs:
to care and advocate for their kids.

We now live in an era of self-diagnosis by social media, social contagions (just Google Tourette’s syndrome and social media or rapid-onset gender dysphoria), and skyrocketing anxiety in our kids and teens.

It’s not hyperbole to say that if social media disappeared tomorrow, the majority of kids would get better. That’s where the focus ought to be, but taking on social media doesn’t help the radicals in Springfield achieve their goal of greater control over a compliant citizenry.

Pathologizing as many kids as possible, however, does.

Public schools in Illinois have for years been pressuring and brainwashing students and their families into believing that toeing anything other than their woke line is nothing short of bigotry.

Now Big Government sees an opportunity to use schools and SB 3316 as a trojan horse to further inject their “values” in Illinois. This is a disaster in the making, and our kids deserve to be protected from it.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state senator to ask him/her to vote NO to SB 3316. School teachers and administrators must focus on academics: reading, writing and arithmetic. Proficiency rates in Illinois government schools are intolerably low.