Very good, and thankyou. That will have the social Marxists and SSM protagonists aflame. And yes, the deputy leader of the opposition is disgraceful, using as she did, a kid for a cynical political purpose. We have no idea what that child thought or said or, indeed, if he thought or said anything, but was just used, like a prop, for a drama-queen politician.

Ah yes, Gay Pride the real focus of this incorrigible anti equality activist?

And in the case of Kids, I believe, just puppets in play in this, I believe, bigot initiated activism?

I speak as someone raised partly by a single deserted mother, who, when we didn't have the social safety net of today, received little or no help from the Christian lobby, who judged her a faithless jezebel, unable to hold the family together? (on her back with legs spread)

And when the deprivations that attended keeping four young kids fed finally culminated in her barely alive fighting for her very life in a hospital emergency ward!

They helped with orphanage accommodation that also doubled in my case as a boy's borstal, where unimaginal cruelty reigned supreme!

That started with a daily daily whipping that only concluded with the exhaustion of the leather wielding enforcer, built like a russian shot putter, who finished her punitive activities by forcing me to strip naked and take an ice cold bath in the dead of winter!

Later, the Brothers needed no greenhide implements, which were replaced by bare knuckles and just being belted unconscious!

Perhaps that's how the church did use Kids as puppets, or live punching bags to take out their puritanical frustrations on!?

And it goes without saying, mealy mouthed activists will be sorry for my experiences! Sorry doesn't pay the rent or my food budget, fuel bill, the mortgage or medication requirements!

I know of single mums who are assisted by live in sisters or Dads whose brother may provide ongoing assistance in caring duties/financial assistance as was the case of an uncle and his younger brother!

Are those Kids at risk or being used as puppets? Or are they being used by anti gay activists as (real) puppets purely to advance a rusted on (thoroughly disgraced) ideological position?
Alan B.

Does the same go for parents indoctrinating their children into religion?

If children are too dumb to express their own entirely independently formulated views/feelings on a protest then how can they be capable of deciding on the much more complex thing that is religion?

Never mind that activists on the right side of the culture wars divide are just as likely to bring their children along to protest rallies that they participate in, including anti abortion rallies.

This is especially the case in the USA where the anti abortion (and even anti birth control) zealots are far more toxic in their zealotry.
They even promote their toxic zealotry outside of primary schools.

Two thoughts: 'None has taken an interest in, nor 'spoken up' for, the rights of children in these situations.’ Even given our rights-oriented culture, very few people give thought to the rights of the child. It is an obvious blind spot. We don’t think twice, for example, about deliberately severing a child from their biological parents in the interests of meeting so-called adult ’needs'.

Secondly, your final thought was interesting: 'If only children everywhere were allowed to develop their lives from innocence to reality in their own way, guided only by goodwill and human values, what a different World it would be.’ Where do so-called ‘good will’ and ‘human values’ (presumably nice ones!) come from? There is this false idea that we can, as a society, generate our own values out of nothing. Without a foundation of understanding where ‘good’ comes from, we are left morally feeble.