A Catholic couple in Indiana has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Hoosier State Supreme Court decision that permitted the state’s Department of Child Services to kidnap their child because the couple wouldn’t go along with his new “gender identity.”
When the boy declared that he was a girl, Mary and Jeremy Cox said nothing doing.
Then began their nightmare, now four years running. The state seized their son and put him in a home where his “gender” would be “affirmed,” a decision with which the state’s courts agreed.
Legalized Kidnapping
The trouble began for the Coxes in December 2019 when their son — A.C. in court papers — left them a note to say he identified as a girl.
Devout Catholics, the Coxes understandably refused to use his “preferred pronouns” or a girl’s name. The couple sought psychiatric help for the boy not only because of his false belief that he was a girl but also because he had an eating disorder. They did, however, compromise on calling him “A.”
Indiana’s child savers stepped in when someone falsely reported that the parents were emotionally neglecting the boy, not least by refusing to use the state’s “LGBTQ” resources to “help” him. That justified what amounts to legalized kidnapping.
The crux of the case is this: Even though the state eventually admitted that the Coxes were fit parents and did not abuse their son, the courts still permitted the state agency to hold him against the parents’ wishes on ideological grounds. The courts said leftist gender ideology prevails over the rights of parents. Most notably, they lost their right to raise their son as they saw fit and by the lights of their religion.
The writ of certiorari filed by the Becket religious liberty law firm in October summarized the case this way:
The Indiana Department of Child Services (“DCS”) initiated an investigation of the Parents’ home because they were not referring to their child, A.C. (a biological male), using a cross-gender name and cross-gender pronouns. (App.127a-128a) (“… She should be in a home where she is excepted [sic] for who she is.”) The trial court then removed A.C. from the Parents’ custody — and never returned A.C. to their home — even after DCS voluntarily dismissed all allegations of neglect and abuse against them. The trial court also barred M.C. and J.C. from speaking to A.C. about the entire topic of sex and gender while allowing and even requiring speech from an opposite viewpoint.
Despite acknowledging that the Parents here are fit parents, the Indiana Court of Appeals astonishingly upheld the removal of A.C. from the Parents’ home and determined that the trial court’s orders barring the Parents’ speech were permissible prior restraints.
The Indiana Supreme Court, again, went along with the outrage.
The writ says the courts ignored medical evidence and trampled the First Amendment-protected rights of the parents. Indeed, “the medical evidence in this case supported the Parents’ contention that they were providing for all of A.C.’s physical needs, that they had not abused or neglected A.C., and that A.C. needed to learn to respect the Parents’ religious beliefs even if A.C. strongly held a different viewpoint.”
Last week, they filed a brief in the case.
A Petition for All Parents
Though A.C. has aged out of foster care, for the Coxes, the case is far from moot. And they aren’t just fighting for themselves, or to protect the rest of their children from the leftist child savers who would turn them over to “gender-affirming” homes.
They want the Court to stop any other state from arrogating the right to seize children from Christian parents who rightly reject “transgender” propaganda.
“This is what every parent is afraid of. We love our son and wanted to care for him, but the state of Indiana robbed us of that opportunity by taking him from our home and banning us from speaking to him about gender,” the couple said. “We are hopeful that the Justices will take our case and protect other parents from having to endure the nightmare we did.”
“If this can happen in Indiana, it can happen anywhere,” said Becket’s senior counsel Lori Windham:
Tearing a child away from loving parents because of their religious beliefs, which are shared by millions of Americans, is an outrage to the law, parental rights, and basic human decency. If the Supreme Court doesn’t take this case, how many times will this happen to other families?
Other Legal Battles
The Coxes’ legal battle against transgender madness isn’t the only one. Last year, Luka Hein sued the doctors who mutilated her because she falsely believed she was a man instead of providing psychiatric treatment for mental health struggles that began when her parents divorced, troubles that worsened after an online sex deviant groomed her online.
A pro-”transgender” headshrinker persuaded Hein to seek help with “LGBTQ” support groups.
Thereafter, doctors lopped off her breasts and pumped her full of male hormones.
Hein’s lawsuit was filed by the Center for American Liberty, which also sued on behalf of another woman.
Dr. Paul McHugh, psychiatry professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University, says youngster such as A.C. with “gender dysphoria” have a disorder similar to anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder, he says.
“Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction,” he wrote in 2015:
“The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.”
Unhappily for the Coxes, Indiana’s courts did not agree.
