The issue of transgenderism in children has not played much of a role in family court thus far, but if it’s handled the way a case I listened in on Wednesday May 24, 2022, was handled, our society is in for even more problems.
While there is a national debate surrounding transgender exposure to children, there is only one US family court case which has received enormous coverage involving this issue: the Younger case from Texas.
In that case, the child, born a boy, began to exhibit gender dysphoria; his dad blamed the boy’s mom, while his mom encouraged it.
Since it happened during a divorce, the court wrapped its tentacles around the issue as well.
The North Texas dad was sounding the alarm on social media and his blog about his bitter public custody battle over 7-year-old twins with his estranged wife, a pediatrician. The dispute focused on the social gender transition of one twin, who was assigned male at birth but lived as a girl at the mother’s house.
While the mother argued in court that their child drove her transition by choice, wearing dresses and choosing a girl’s name, Younger contended the child was happy to be a boy and that his wife was pushing the child to transition against their will.
His fight became a rallying cry for the hard right. On conservative websites and GOP politicians’ social media, Younger was held up as a victim, a tragic example of allowing the so-called leftist transgender agenda to continue unabated. His child’s birth name became a popular hashtag on Twitter.
Even Gov. Greg Abbott joined in, announcing on Twitter in 2019 that the state would look into the child’s case. Younger’s family became the first in Texas ever investigated by the state for child abuse based on treatment for a transitioning child. His ex-wife reported being threatened and harassed. And LGBTQ advocates denounced what they saw as the exploitation of a young, vulnerable child for political purposes.
But around Younger, the movement grew. The Texas GOP’s anti-trans policy endeavors evolved from angry political rhetoric to a raft of new proposed laws — and, last month, to child welfare investigators showing up at the doors of parents of transgender children on order of the governor.
I taped parts of a well publicized hearing from 2021, and that’s below.
I also found a case from Canada where a father was sanctioned for trying to refer to his daughter by her birth gender.
At this moment, a Vancouver postman named Rob Hoogland is sitting in a jail cell in British Columbia. He will be there until at least April 12, when he’s scheduled for a court date. At that time, he may be ordered to remain behind bars for a period yet to be determined.
Has Hoogland killed or robbed somebody? Is he an arsonist? A rapist? No. What did he do, then? Short answer: he tried to save his emotionally unstable daughter from self-destruction.
The long answer begins in the 2015–16 school year, when, as Hoogland recounted in a talk last October, his then fifth-grade daughter (he also has an older son) was getting into trouble at school and Hoogland and his estranged wife (whom he divorced in the spring of 2015) decided it might be good for her to see her school counselor. Since it’s forbidden by the British Columbia Supreme Court to make her name public, she’s referred to in legal documents as “A.B.” (Hoogland is “C.D.,” and the girl’s mother is “E.F.”)
Unknown to Hoogland, A.B. continued to see school counselors well into seventh grade, when one day she suddenly cut her hair very short. At the end of that school year, Hoogland saw that she was listed in her yearbook under a male name. It turned out that the school had been feeding her transgender ideology, and that she’d already begun “socially transitioning” to a male identity under the direction of a psychologist, Wallace Wong, who was encouraging her “to take testosterone.” To this end, Wong referred her to an endocrinologist at the Gender Clinic and Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.
I have not seen much other coverage of this issue.
So, does the transgender issue not come up much, or maybe, it’s handled properly when it does?
Given the hearing I listened in on yesterday this issue is probably far more prevalent than the media has thus far covered and it’s handled as poorly as family court handles everything else.
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