The gobsmacking ignorance of Freddie deBoer

is truly astonishing

So Freddie has another post on trans issues. Comments are turned off as usual. (Not that I can comment there, I’ve been banned.) His post is about a pro-trans piece that appeared in the MSM, one that is deconstructed nicely by the indispensable Eliza Mondegreen. I will not dignify that original piece with a name or a link.

Freddie writes, “It’s difficult to think of a policy stance more likely to enflame otherwise disengaged parts of the electorate than the notion that we should cut parents out of medical decisions about their children.” He also says that such a thing has not occured, and could not possibly occur.

But what Freddie apparently does not know is that existing law in most of Blue America already allows the State to take kids away from their parents and “trans” them.

Yes, it’s true. It started with the odious Scott Weiner in California and his bill SB 107, a law that has now been copycatted in many other blue states.

Here are the relevant excerpts of the law:

From the SB 107 Bill Summary:

The bill would authorize a court to take temporary jurisdiction because a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care.

Family Code, Section 3424, as amended by SB 107:

(a) A court of this state has temporary emergency jurisdiction if the child is present in this state and the child has been abandoned or it is necessary in an emergency to protect the child because the child, or a sibling or parent of the child, is subjected to, or threatened with, mistreatment or abuse, or because the child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care, as defined by Section 16010.2 of the Welfare and Institutions Code.

(b) If there is no previous child custody determination that is entitled to be enforced under this part and a child custody proceeding has not been commenced in a court of a state having jurisdiction under Sections 3421 to 3423, inclusive, a child custody determination made under this section remains in effect until an order is obtained from a court of a state having jurisdiction under Sections 3421 to 3423, inclusive. If a child custody proceeding has not been or is not commenced in a court of a state having jurisdiction under Sections 3421 to 3423, inclusive, a child custody determination made under this section becomes a final determination, if it so provides and this state becomes the home state of the child.

This is often wrongly claimed to apply to kids from out-of-state only (which would be bad enough), or only if there is a dispute between two parents, but that is not true. This law is the only segment of California law that deals with this issue, and it makes no distinction between in-state and out-of-state kids.

What it means is that a family court judge in California now has the power to order a change in custody of a child if the child has been “unable to obtain gender affirming health care” for any reason, including that both parents object. The judge can first take temporary jurisdiciton (if no other court, in or out of state, has claimed jurisdiction), and then make that temporary jurisdiction permanent.

Some supposed “fact checkers” claim that it is very unlikely that judges will use this new power to contravene the will of the kid’s parents. That may or may not be true. But that the judges have this new power is not in serious question. The plain text of the law makes that very clear.

(If anyone wants to dispute this, please link to a relevant authority that is on point. I want to see actual text of actual California law or case law that supports any contrary claim. I have not found any myself.)

Also, “gender affirming health care” has a specific legal definition:

(b)(3)(A) “Gender affirming health care” means medically necessary health care that respects the gender identity of the patient, as experienced and defined by the patient, and may include, but is not limited to, the following:

(i) Interventions to suppress the development of endogenous secondary sex characteristics.

(ii) Interventions to align the patient's appearance or physical body with the patient's gender identity.

(iii) Interventions to alleviate symptoms of clinically significant distress resulting from gender dysphoria, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition.

So: puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-trait altering surgeries are all part of “gender affirming care”.

So Freddie is way behind. The dystopia that he thinks could not possibly happen is already here.

But all is not yet lost, we can still fight back:

https://protectkidsca.com