An Ohio transgender teen is fighting his parents in court over the right to receive affirming therapy to assist with his transition.
His parents do not accept his gender identity and want him to receive “Christian-based” therapy instead, reports WCPO.
The 16-year-old is asking the court to allow him to receive treatment for his gender dysphoria at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Earlier this year, Hamilton County Job and Family Services filed a complaint against the parents for denying him treatment, and asked for temporary custody of the teen out of concern for his well-being. The boy has since been placed with his grandparents while the court fight rages on.
The boy had been seeing a therapist at Children’s Hospital, but his parents put a stop to the sessions, refusing to acknowledge his gender identity and objecting to allowing him to present as male. They later allowed him to resume the therapy because of his anxiety and depression.
Judge Sylvia Hendon closed the hearing to the media in order to protect the family’s privacy, but a complaint filed with the court revealed details of what led the teen to challenge his parents in court.
According to that complaint, the boy’s therapist told the boy’s father that he didn’t “have the coping skills to manage the home situation.” The boy’s mother emailed back, saying she and her husband would find a Christian therapist to treat their child.
In November 2016, the teen emailed a local crisis hotline, telling them that his father had told him to kill himself and his mother refused to put him in any therapy that wasn’t “Christian-based.”
The teen claims at one point he was forced to sit in a room and listen to Bible scriptures for over six hours at a time.
In December 2016, the teen tried to read a letter to his parents explaining his feelings, but his mother screamed at him and called him a liar, causing him to shake and curl up into “the fetal position.”
The trial was expected to continue this week, after which Hendon will determine whether the teen’s wishes trump those of the parents.
The teen’s fight has drawn comparisons to that of Leelah Alcorn, a 16-year-old transgender girl who clashed with her parents over her desire to transition.
Alcorn left behind a suicide note blaming her parents for forcing her to undergo conversion therapy, after which she killed herself by walking into traffic on a major interstate and getting struck by a car.
Daniel Stultz, the manager of Safe and Supported at Lighthouse Youth and Family Services, criticized the parents’ approach to their son’s gender identity.
“We know that when a young person is told they can’t go to therapy to support who they are, that has really detrimental effects,” Stultz told WCPO. “Imagine being told that some really important part of yourself isn’t valid, isn’t important, isn’t respected. That has huge impacts on how we view ourselves and our self-worth.”
The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, quietly reinstated an anti-harassment policy that once forbade users from misgendering or deadnaming others.
However, it is unclear if the change will stay in place following comments from owner Elon Musk.
Musk, who has sought to portray himself as a proponent of "free speech," removed the policy in April 2023, responding to users who complained after being banned for expressing anti-transgender sentiment.
In a recently updated section of the platform's policies, the company says that, where required by local laws, the platform will reduce the visibility of posts that "purposefully use different pronouns to address someone other than what that person uses for themselves, or that use a previous name that someone no longer goes by as part of their transition."
Westboro Baptist Church, a radical right-wing organization known for its anti-gay vitriol, picketed outside the high school once attended by Nex Benedict, a nonbinary 16-year-old who died the day after an altercation in the school's bathroom.
But a pro-LGBTQ alliance of hundreds of people showed up to counter-protest, outnumbering the church members and expressing support for the students at Owasso High School in Owasso, Oklahoma.
The Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, announced earlier this week that it intended to hold two "public preaching" events in Owasso on Wednesday, March 6 -- one outside the school board headquarters, and the other outside Owasso High.
The company that makes Doritos is facing calls for a boycott after the brand aligned with a transgender influencer with a history of problematic social media posts.
Doritos partnered with Samantha Hudson, a transgender singer, actor, and political activist from Spain with 370,000 Instagram followers, for a social media campaign promoting the brand, releasing an Instagram video on Sunday.
But the campaign was soon interrupted after conservative and anti-LGBTQ online activists unearthed social media posts that the now-24-year-old Hudson had written as a 15-year-old or 16-year-old back in 2015.
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