Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed said during an appearance on 60 Minutes that parents cannot realistically shield their children from exposure to contentious social issues, including debates over transgender athletes competing in youth sports.
Asked by correspondent Ross Douthat about tensions between parents over transgender kids on sports teams — cases he described as involving “rights in conflict” — El-Sayed suggested the controversy is overstated.
“I don’t know that that’s actually true. I think we manufacture these social issues,” El-Sayed said.
He went on to argue that attempts by parents to keep children from encountering ideas they find “disagreeable” are outdated given how much access children already have to information through smartphones.
“You have an iPhone in your pocket, probably. Or is it iPhone or Samsung? You have a phone in your pocket, right? You can get access to everything and anything in the whole world, all the world’s information in your pocket,” he said.
“The notion somehow that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable, and that that is going to be because of school is so profoundly outdated,” El-Sayed continued. “Because of course you have all the information, and they have all the information.”
He said he views the “free flow of information” as valuable, and offered his view on parenting in that context.
“It’s really important, and the most important thing you can do is not try to protect a person from seeing a thing. It’s about trying to make sure that as you coach your kid through the world, that you are engaging with them and saying, ‘Here’s what I believe. Here’s what you may see in the world. You get to make your choices about who you’re going to be in the world, but that’s going to require us to make do with the fact that like the internet is a real thing.'”
Earlier remarks on prison placement
El-Sayed also drew criticism last month over separate comments on housing transgender inmates, calling it an “unfortunate choice” to place biological men who identify as women in men’s prisons.
“What you’re speaking to is too often a choice that we make about failing to invest resources to keep people safe, and when it comes to investing resources to keep people safe, I think it’s important for us to realize that these are unfortunate choices,” he said, adding these are “unfortunate choices that we make that force people into positions of danger.”
Democratic defections
The comments surfaced as El-Sayed’s campaign faces new strain within his own party. Over the weekend, Michigan Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers over El-Sayed, a break that other Michigan Democrats have since echoed just before Election Day.
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