Transgenderism Trumping Parents’ Rights

A slew of recent news stories demonstrate the high stakes for parents whose children struggle with transgender confusion. They also demonstrate the variety of institutions pushing transgender ideology and threatening parental rights.

In British Columbia, the province’s Supreme Court declared that a 14-year-old girl may begin receiving testosterone injections – without her father’s consent. The Justice decided the teen’s “consent is sufficient for this treatment to proceed.” The girl began identifying as a boy at school two years go, but the father only found out when he saw her male name in the school yearbook. The school never informed him, following guidelines laid out in the BC Ministry of Education’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Policy.

You may think, “Well, that’s Canada,” but similar incidents are taking place here in the U.S.

  • In Texas, last year, news outlets reported that a mother filed a court order against the father of her twin 6-year-old sons. The mother, a pediatrician, believes one of the boys is a “gender expansive or transgender child,” while the father disagrees and refuses to encourage or embrace the boy’s alleged confusion.
  • Last year in Ohio, a judge removed a 17-year-old girl from the custody of her parents, giving custody to her grandparents. Her parents opposed allowing her to begin a process of “transitioning” into a male, beginning with taking male hormones and moving forward to surgeries.
  • A number of other parents of children struggling with sexual identity confusion have recently come out – anonymously – because they fear being reported to Child Protective Services for not supporting their children’s gender confusion and losing custody of them. Five moms told their stories in The Public Discourse, while The Christian Post reported another mom’s story.

These stories are heartbreaking, and they illustrate the fact that activists use a variety of means to impose their ideology on children and families, including: public schools, legislation and courts.

Education

Public schools are often the entry point for teaching children gender ideology, beginning as early as pre-school and kindergarten. Here are just three recent stories from across the nation.

  • In Colorado, parents from Boulder Valley School District filed a complaint after first graders at Superior Elementary School watched a “He, She, and They?!?” a “Queer Kid Stuff” YouTube video. Students also attended a musical presentation, “Raven’s True Self,” by “Phoenix, Colorado’s Transgender Choir,” about a transgender-identified bird.
  • In Virginia, transgender activist Sarah Mc Bride, a man living as a woman, read the book I Am Jazz, about a boy who lives as a girl, to a group of elementary school students. The president of the National Education Association also attended the reading.
  • A Washington, D.C. mother explains how her 13-year-old daughter began questioning that she was female, “Where did she get the idea she was transgender? From a school presentation—at a school where over 5 percent of the student body called themselves trans or nonbinary, and where several students were already on hormones, and one had a mastectomy at the age of sixteen.”

Local, state and federal legislation

LGBT activists and their allies use two primary means to foster transgenderism and undermine parental rights: “SOGI” laws and “SOCE” bans.

  • Laws that add “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI) to non-discrimination laws give “gender identity” the same protected status as race, sex and religion. Activists use such laws to push schools, medical professionals and parents to embrace transgender ideology.
  • At the federal level, Nancy Pelosi has stated that one of her chief priorities is passing the “Equality Act” which would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This would give transgender activists even more leverage over the medical profession, the courts and parental rights.
  • Cities and states have also passed bills banning licensed mental health professionals from engaging in “sexual orientation change efforts” (SOCE) with minors. These laws usually include language prohibiting help for minors with issues related to “gender identity or expression.” The legislation prevents licensed therapists from helping gender confused children embrace their bodily reality – and keep parents from seeking such help for their children and families.

Courts

In addition to the court cases cited above, a recent conference highlighted the willingness of transgender activists to use the courts to force parents to acquiesce to the use of puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones and surgery to for children confused about their bodily sex. The U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health (USPATH), an activist transgender organization, held its inaugural conference in February, 2017. Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, Medical Director of The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, attended the event. She’s also married to a transgender-identified activist, a woman who lives as a man.

At the USPATH Conference, Dr. Olson-Kennedy spoke about using the courts to override “recalcitrant” parents who don’t want their minor children subjected to puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones and invasive surgeries:

I can say that the stickiest situations I’ve had is where one parent is supportive and one isn’t and they share medical custody. And so we work really hard to bring both parents in and bring them both on board. … So it’s not my first line to go to court to get somebody what they need. But it is my second line and I will do it. We’ve been pretty successful in 5 or 6 situations where…we really had a recalcitrant parent that we just could not bring along.

Transgender advocates argue to the courts that not allowing children access to these experimental and potentially dangerous medical procedures – puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and numerous surgeries – amounts to “medical neglect.”

Another activist at the USPATH event, Dr. Michelle Forcier, talked about training family court judges and child protective services to intervene with parents who don’t affirm a child’s transgender identity:

We did education with judges in Rhode Island. So we spent a half day with family court judges, basically telling them this is what gender and transgender is…and it’s been deeply helpful with DCYF [Department of Children, Youth and Families] and our trans population.”

Engaging the Culture

It’s astonishing how quickly transgender ideology has entered the cultural mainstream. We realized it can be disheartening and frightening to read such stories about educators teaching children a false ideology, children struggling with their sexual identity, and courts and legislators undermining parental rights. Now, more than ever, Christians must courageously and kindly stand for truth. We’ll continue our work of informing you and providing resources to help you engage the culture on these difficult topics.

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