California Is Losing Its Mind

National Review Online

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

 

A California bill, AB 957, would require family courts to interpret a child’s “health, safety, and welfare” to “include a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity” for the purpose of custody disputes.

 

The bill, which has already passed the state assembly, was sponsored by Assemblymember Lori Wilson, who encouraged the transition of her own child, and who would like to see similar laws enacted in every state. It is of a piece with last year’s trans-tourism bill, encouraging out-of-state minors to travel to California to undergo transition treatments behind their parents’ backs, as well as a bill passed earlier this year requiring foster parents to agree to “best practices for providing care for LGBTQ+ youth,” including — of course — “gender-affirming care.”

 

Already we have seen the toxic effects of gender ideology infiltrating family law. Across the country, activist-minded judges are penalizing parents who don’t accept the claims of trans activists. Judges in California, Illinois, and Texas have denied custody rights to divorced parents opposed to, or even skeptical of, their child’s transition. In some cases, judges have received special “training” on these matters from transgender activists.

 

AB 957 goes even further than favoring one divorced parent over another for political reasons. In interpreting the refusal to affirm a gender identity as an affront to a child’s “health, safety and welfare,” the bill effectively defines non-affirmation as abuse, creating a precedent for much broader applications. If a parent can lose custody rights after a divorce for not affirming his or her child, what’s to stop the state from removing children from happily married or even single parents?

 

This is happening already in some jurisdictions. Take Abigail Martinez, a single mother of four, living in Los Angeles, Calif., whose trans-identifying teenager was removed from her custody in 2016 by a judge interpreting non-affirmation as “emotional abuse.” Oddly, the judge permitted Martinez to retain custody of her other three children and to continue working as a nanny. After three years of her daughter living in state custody and undergoing hormone treatments, the abuse charges against Martinez were changed by the Department of Child and Family Services from “substantiated” to “inconclusive.” But too late; the damage was already done. One month later, her daughter — by then a severely depressed 19-year-old who’d spent critical years away from her loving family — took her own life by kneeling in front of a freight train.

 

Laws like AB 957 would make stories like that of Martinez less an egregious outlier and closer to the new legal norm. In demanding parental affirmation, the bill sets no requirements for clinical evaluations and includes no mention of mental-health comorbidities. Whether they’re depressed, autistic, bullied, or sexual-abuse survivors: If children say they’re trans — they are trans. End of discussion.

 

Under such a broad definition of child abuse, even the wider community — schools, churches, and other organizations — could be obliged to “affirm.” And all this while — as we noted in our editorial yesterday — the global credibility of the “gender-affirming” model is crumbling. On trans issues, California is losing its collective mind.