800 Broadway building, where the Hamilton County courts are housed – Photo: Derek Jensen, via Wikimedia.
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.”
A bill introduced in Oklahoma would not only bar doctors from prescribing transition-related health care treatments to youth suffering from gender dysphoria, but would criminalize any medical provider who prescribes such treatments to adults in their late teens and twenties.
The measure, introduced by Sen. David Bullard (R-Durant), would make any physician who prescribes gender-affirming treatments for gender dysphoria to anyone under the age of 26 -- or who refers a patient to a medical professional who provides such treatments -- guilty of a felony.
The law would allow doctors who prescribe such treatments to be prosecuted for up to 40 years after prescribing the treatments, and would allow anyone who undergoes such treatments but later experiences regret to sue within that same 40-year time period.
"I don't call Miss Universe a beauty pageant anymore," says Anne Jakapong Jakrajutatip. "I call it a women's empowerment competition."
A 43-year-old billionaire, based in Thailand, Jakapong Jakrajutatip is the new -- and sole -- owner of The Miss Universe Organization, which, in addition to the Miss Universe pageant, also operates Miss USA and Miss Teen USA. Her company, JKN Global Group, one of Asia's largest content management services, purchased the pageant in October 2022 from Endeavor, who, in turn, had bought it from Donald Trump, the owner for well over a decade.
The irony here is truly sweet, given the former President's horrific, bigoted rants against the transgender community, particularly in his rallies. Why? Because Anne Jakapong Jakrajutatip is transgender.
In a video released on Tuesday, former President Donald Trump vowed that if re-elected to the presidency, he would sign laws that penalized doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors, discourage acknowledgment of gender-nonconformity, and require schools to promote the concept of the nuclear family.
In the video, posted to Truth Social and Rumble, the former president said that, if elected to the White House once more in 2024, he would direct federal agencies to police and ultimately "stop" gender-affirming medical interventions for minors, which he equated to "child abuse" and "child sexual mutilation."
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