OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images
ByAmanda Prestigiacomo
@amandapresto
November 27, 2018
A Texas father is fighting for his son in court after pushing back on his ex-wife's claim that their six-year-old is a transgender girl.
According to court documents, the young boy only dresses as a girl when he's with his mother, who has enrolled him in first-grade as a female named "Luna." The father, however, contends that his son consistently chooses to wear boy's clothes, "violently refuses to wear girl’s clothes at my home," and identifies as a boy when he is with him.
The Federalist reports that the mother has accused the father of child abuse in their divorce proceedings "for not affirming James as transgender" and is looking to strip the dad of his parental rights. "She is also seeking to require him to pay for the child’s visits to a transgender-affirming therapist and transgender medical alterations, which may include hormonal sterilization starting at age eight," the report adds.
The father has been legally barred from speaking to his child about sexuality and gender from a scientific or religious perspective and from dressing his son in boys' clothes; instead, he has to offer both girls' and boys' outfits. The boy consistently refuses to wear dresses, according to the father.
The boy was diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a gender transition therapist the mother, a pediatrician, chose for her son to see. According to the therapist's notes, the boy chose to identify as a girl when he was in sessions alone with his mother; alternatively, he chose to identify as a boy when he was in sessions alone with his father. The Federalist reports:
[A] dossier filed with the Dallas court says that, under the skilled eyes of the therapist, the child was presented two pieces of paper, one with the word “James” and one with the word “Luna,” and asked to pick the name he preferred. When the appointment only included his mother, James selected Luna, the name and gender he uses at his mother’s home and in his first-grade classroom. When the appointment was only with his father, however, James pointed to the boy name James, not the girl name.
Moreover, the father has collected testimony from parents of his son's friends and a church leader who say they have only seen the six-year-old identify as a male.
The boy's pastor, Christ Church Carrollton Bill Lovell, said, "Based on the three occasions I’ve spent time with him, I’d say he acts and looks unmistakably like a healthy six-year-old boy. ... I am praying for [him], an average six-year-old boy, a sweet-natured, intelligent, lovable and at this point particularly vulnerable young man, caught up in a titanic clash of worldviews."
"His mother came to pick up the boys to take them to [his brother’s] soccer game," recalled Sarah Scott, a family friend and mother of three sons who are close with the boy. "[He] hugged his dad and said, 'Love you.' He refused to go to the soccer game as a girl with mom and stayed with dad. That evening they came to our house."
Needless to say, the gender dysphoria diagnosis is being contested by the boy's dad.
Walt Heyer, author of Trans Life Survivors and former transgender female, warns that the potential diagnosis could ruin the boy's life, similar to what he went through after he was secretly cross-dressed by this grandmother for two-and-a-half years as a young boy.
"The diagnosis is critical, because labeling a child with gender dysphoria can trigger a series of physical and mental consequences for the child and has legal ramifications in the ongoing custody case. Get it wrong," Heyer writes at The Federalist, the boy's "life is irrevocably harmed."
The boy's "precious young life hinges purely on the diagnosis of gender dysphoria by a therapist who wraps herself in rainbow colors, affirms the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and dismisses evidence to the contrary," argues Heyer. "Remove the 'rainbow' from [the] diagnosis, and it crumbles under the weight of the criteria for the diagnosis of gender dysphoria."
The author warned, "If we do not save [the boy] from a misdiagnosis, his next step is chemical castration at age eight, only two years away."
The family fighting to save the boy from the potential misdiagnosis has set up a website called "Save James."
To read the full report, click here.
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