A jury in Texas has ruled against a father in a custody battle leaving the door open for the mother of a 7 year old boy in Texas (One of a set of male twins) to pursue at her option, the transition of one twin boy to a female.
Here is an opinion piece from The Washington Examiner
Here is a news piece from The Washington Examiner
Here is the report from KPRC in Texas
Here is a report from Lifesitenews
Here is a link to a website dedicated to the boy
Here is a link to Chad Felix Greene’s article in The Federalist
UPDATE
Judge rules that the father of James Younger will be allowed to Veto medical intervention. In other words, the father has not been stripped of all parental rights.
Oddly, I wasn’t able to find coverage on NBC, ABC, CNN, CBS or more than the briefest mention of it in local Texas papers. It is somewhat unsurprising that only “conservative” outlets are carrying the story.
A 7 year old?
WHAT?
It’s not even clear that the child has gender dysphoria. At 7 isn’t it natural, perhaps even expected for children to be curious about what it’s like to dress up? The experts in the case say the childs gender is still fluid.
Reading through the available, and no doubt biased, information points to a bitter divorce… correction annulment. I suspect that the annulment is a farce and that there is still some kind of pitched legal battle behind the scenes ongoing. To my rather suspicious mind it begs the questions, “Is the mother trying to use the child as a weapon? Is she willing to harm a child in order to harm the father?” The truly amazing thing is that she’s not the twins biological mother. Yes she gave birth to the boys, but the eggs were not her own.
Add to this, several years ago there was the case, in Seattle I believe, where biological parents (who happened to be Native Americans) won custody of a child. In this case the child had been given up at birth. The child had been adopted by a white suburban family and had never known anything other than that family. But the state in it’s infinite wisdom ordered the child surrendered to the Native American parents based on the biological connection.
By that logic, in the case of James, his father Jeffery should have a greater claim to custody of the two boys.
After all, at its heart this is a custody battle. It’s a father acting to protect one of his children from medical procedures that will have permanent, potentially negative effects. Isn’t this what custody battles are all about, or at least what they should be about?
I suppose what’s shocking to me is that the jury ruled against the father.
My shock is not about Transphobia, this is about a child who frankly is too young to understand the hubub and for whom nature should probably be allowed to take it’s course at least until the child can specifically say, “I want to be a girl.”
I have many reservations about transitioning children’s genders because of the long term physical damage. Think about it. Hormone replacement therapy is a lifelong commitment, and potentially life shortening in the case where you’re fighting the fundamental programming of the human body. Would any parent wish that for their child who didn’t need it, or was uncertain of the child’s wishes?
I found myself nodding as I read the opinion piece (above) by Brad Polumbo
This “transgender radicalism” has gone on long enough and been allowed to go too damn far.
Let children be children. All of us need to stop putting our hangups, fears, hatred, confusion, or political statements on them.
Our duty as adults, Straight, Gay, Transgendered, White, Black, Yellow, Red, Brown, whatever, is to protect children, any children, because they can’t protect themselves.
That means protecting their lives, innocence, and childhood, until they are ready to make their own choices. Even then, when they make poor choices and stumble, it is our duty to pick them up, dust off their clothes, put a band-aid on their boo boos (emotional, physical, or both) and tell them to try again.
That’s what being an adult is.
It depresses the shit out of me that so many so called “Adults” have forgotten that simple duty or have been terrorized into silence.
There used to be a saying, “There’s nothing worse than an X-smoker”. That statement is often true about an X anything. X- Smokers tend to be rabid about other people smoking, X-overweight people tend to point out what others are eating as fattening.
Perhaps X-Binary Genders are engaging in something similar? “ I’m happier now that I’ve transitioned and therefore everyone would be happier if they did too”
It’s a question that has more than once flitted through my mind.
I’m quite happy being a male. I like my body, (well except for the few creeping pounds of age). I like my genitalia and have no desire to change. (Well, larger would be nice, ahem) I recognize that may not be true of all people and your choice, is to make changes to your own bodies as you desire.
BUT, don’t you dictate my choices, or impose your beliefs about what I should feel or want, or how I should express my sexuality.
You see I, as an adult have to personal strength and conviction to say that, and the ability to defend my statement, just as you do.
Can the same be said of a child?
I realized that yesterday was the anniversary of my Dad’s death.
I have a monumental cleanup task waiting on me at the house in the mountains. Part of that task is a creation of my own in that I haven’t been there with enough energy to clean out the stacks of frankly un-necessary paper left in my office on my desk. I’ve already had trouble putting my stuff back in the house because the other person that lives there is a major packrat.
I suppose I’m getting to a point where I don’t place the same value on sentimentality that I once did. Things don’t matter all that much to me, Stuff is an anchor that makes it hard for you to move literally and figuratively.