> It's a tough balance.

Sarcasm? We have both privacy and free roam rights for children in germany.

Talk about sane legislature!

Agreed. As an American raising a child in Europe, it's also strange that what I believe to be perfectly reasonable positions like "My child should have the right to play outside unbothered by police or busy-bodies", are not only opposed, but opposed because of other unrelated culture-war reasons. The reasoning seems to be that because (e.g.) some states allow parents to hit their children or otherwise do things that (I agree) are reprehensible, therefore parents should not have the right to allow their children outside. Baffling.

And yet home schooling is completely illegal in Germany, something that would be a complete deal breaker for me. But perhaps that speaks more to how bad public school is in the US, maybe it's freaking amazing in Germany?

I'm with you on this. Maybe it speaks a bit to opinions on public schools in the US, but even free access to the best public school in the world doesn't (imo) give someone the right to force it on others.

It might be my deficient theory of mind, but I cannot tell what you mean by «completely destroy their lives» and «conversion therapy» : do you mean self acceptance as gay of attempted biological conversion to match the sexual attraction with amputation and castration ?

Conversion therapy is the process of industrial scale bullying LGBT children into presenting as straight, with many such places going miles past the line of child abuse.

It's nothing to do with SRS, which is not offered to children anyway, so your dislike of that is irrelevant.

Breast amputations at 12 years old, genital surgery at 16. It is being done to children.

Conversion therapy is a form of torture usually based in Christianity that uses coercion and psychological pressure to force queer people to "fix" themselves and identify as cisgender heterosexual.