A stunner that undoubtedly will reverberate across the cultural agenda to promote transgenderism for children has come out of an Ohio court.
The ruling is that rejecting a child’s transgender fantasy is not evidence of parental unfitness.
That issue has erupted over and over in cases across the United States, and even is incorporated as social services agencies’ practice in leftist locations like Minnesota: Any parental opposition to a child’s fantasy that he or she is the opposite gender is considered unfitness on the part of the parent.
There even have been cases where children have been taken away from parents who oppose the agenda that so prominently was promoted from the Oval Office by Joe Biden.
Parents have had their rights stripped, and children have been given transgender “treatments” that injure them for life, under that concept.
But now a footnote in a ruling from the Ohio Court of Appeals has gone to opposite direction.
That said:
There is no requirement in Ohio law that parents must unquestioningly accept and support their minor children’s claims of transsexual identity or preferred pronouns. In fact, this issue remains hotly-contested socially, politically, and legally. As an example, the State of Ohio has banned so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors because of the inherent risk of providing such treatments to minors, whose minds are developing and may change. That statute is currently being litigated. Meanwhile, the United States Supreme Court has upheld a similar ban in Tennessee. Quite recently, Justice Barrett, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh, emphasized that “the doctrine of substantive due process has long embraced a parent’s right to raise her child, which includes the right to participate in significant decisions about her child’s mental health.”
The court noted that the parents’ reaction to a daughter’s transgender claims in the case at hand appeared “cautious” and presented “no serious concern.”
The court noted a therapist confirmed the daughter “tended to change her sexuality every four to fie weeks” and said that “Children who struggle with these issues deserve sober and sensitive guidance, and Ohio law does not require parents unquestioningly to accept whatever their children say about their gender identity or sexuality at that particular moment.”
A side note in the case included the determination from the court that, “There is also a possible suggestion in the state’s brief and in the juvenile court’s decision that Mother and Father should be faulted, in a best-interest analysis, for not unquestioningly supporting Sara’s turn away from their family’s Messianic Judaism. This is also not supported by Ohio law. Parents are free to assist and guide their children in the development of their religious faith … .”
The case was decided by judges Matthew R. Byrne, Robert A. Hendrickson and Robin N. Piper.
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley noted that in a recent case in Iceland, “a father was stripped of his custodial rights after criticizing the gender transition of his minor child.”
He explained the Ohio court decision found there were “other elements,” involving the use of drugs, violence and such that weighed against the parents’ custody in the case of In Re S.B.
In fact, the ruling from the Court of Appeals 12th Appellate District in Clinton County affirmed a juvenile court decision to take the child out of the home for those other reasons.
The family situation was in turmoil. The daughter, Sara, was born in 2010 and her parents divorced in 2015. Mother later remarried “Second Husband,” which gave Sara two stepsisters.
The ruling explained the mother, Sara and the stepsisters were staying temporarily with mother’s adult daughter “Kim” when “Police arrested and charged Mother with domestic violence after she was alleged to have physically assaulted Kim during a domestic dispute. During the police investigation, Mother revealed that Sara and her stepsisters had been living in Clinton County in Mother’s Jeep after Second Husband lost his job and abandoned them.”
The result was a state agency report that the girls were homeless and exposed to domestic violence.
“While Mother was in jail, Sara and the stepsisters initially stayed with Kim, but they were soon placed with a foster family. That placement ended after Sara struck one of the stepsisters. Sara was then placed at One Way Farm for a couple of weeks.”
The mother and father both then tested positive for drugs or alcohol, and state officials filed for emergency custody, and Sara went to a residential treatment program.
The stepsisters’ cases were being addressed separately.
The ruling explained that eventually Sara was placed with “Karen,” the father’s adult daughter from a previous relationship.
The state moved to sever the parents’ rights permanently after Sara, as a teen, expressed that desire, and the agency recommended Sara be adopted by Karen, who had expressed a willingness.
