A judge in Cincinnati has granted legal custody of a 17-year-old transgender boy to his grandparents, paving the way for the teen to potentially undergo hormone therapy, reports the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Judge Sylvia Hendon determined that the teen’s maternal grandparents, who accept their grandson’s gender identity, were better suited to make decisions for the teen, who experienced depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation after his parents refused to acknowledge his feelings of gender dysphoria.
The boy’s parents had previously taken him to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in November 2016 to seek psychiatric help for feelings of anxiety and depression. But they were shocked when the hospital diagnosed their child with gender dysphoria, and tried to seek out “Christian-based” treatment rather than gender-affirming counseling and therapies offered by the hospital.
When the teen began backsliding and expressing suicidal thoughts, hospital staff contacted Hamilton County Job and Family Services, which eventually placed the teen with his grandparents.
The boy’s parents partially relented, allowing him to receive traditional therapy and psychiatric counseling at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
Reportedly, the teen has been excelling both academically and musically since receiving that therapy. But his parents continued to fight the hospital’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria and attempted to block the hospital from offering hormone therapy to aid their son’s transition.
The son’s attorney argued in court that his client felt unsafe in the home, and had accused his parents of attempting to subject him to forms of conversion therapy, including being forced to sit in a room and listen to Bible scriptures for more than six hours at a time.
The teen’s parents had previously noted that they wanted their child to continue living with his grandparents even if they were granted decision-making power. But Hendon eventually decided that that power was best left to the grandparents.
However, Hendon has set forth several conditions before the boy can receive hormone therapy. One of those conditions is that the teen must be evaluated by an independent psychologist not affiliated with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. That evaluation, Hendon said, should look at “the issue of consistency in the child’s gender presentation and feelings of nonconformity.”
Hendon also expressed alarm — and a degree of skepticism — around a statement by the director of the hospital’s Transgender Health Clinic, who had told the court that 100 percent of patients seen by the clinic are considered “appropriate candidates for continued gender treatment.” As such, she sympathized with the teen’s parents, who, she noted, were surprised and confused over the hospital’s diagnosis.
Hendon called on Ohio state lawmakers to craft legislation that would allow juvenile courts to evaluate whether a juvenile should have the right to consent to transition-related therapy, noting that similar family disputes are likely to arise in the future.
Living with Change, a local pro-transgender organization in the Cincinnati area, praised Hendon’s decision “to put the safety and medical care of the child first.”
“Forty-one percent of transgender youth attempt suicide in their lifetime, making access to medically necessary care an incredibly important part of living a healthy and complete life,” the organization said in a statement.
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman seeking to block New York Attorney General Letitia James from taking legal action against the county and Blakeman for an executive order he issued barring transgender women from playing sports at county-owned facilities.
U.S. District Court Judge Nusrat Choudhury, of the Eastern District of New York, tossed out Blakeman's lawsuit, which preemptively sought to prevent James from suing him or Nassau County over the transgender exclusion policy.
Under the ban, issued by Blakeman in February, county officials will deny permits for all athletic facilities -- including pools, fields, courts, or auditoriums -- to any female-designated sports teams that cannot provide evidence, including original birth certificates, proving that every single one of their members was assigned female at birth.
The Rainbow Youth Project USA says calls to its suicide prevention hotline from LGBTQ youth in Oklahoma spiked by more than 200% following the much-publicized death of nonbinary teenager Nex Benedict.
According to the organization, the hotline typically fields an average of 325 calls per month from LGBTQ youth in Oklahoma. But after news of Benedict's death began to spread, the volume of calls from Oklahomans spiked by 238%, reaching 1,097 calls for the month.
To handle the increased volume, Rainbow Youth Project USA created a rapid response team to assist troubled youth and parents calling in, particularly from Owasso, where Benedict lived.
A city council member for a U.S.-Mexico border town was overwhelmingly voted out of office in a recall election after she came out as transgender.
Calexico Council Member and former Mayor Raúl Ureña -- who uses all pronouns but prefers "she" -- was first elected to the city council in 2020, at age 23.
She was hailed in recent years as a progressive hero challenging the political status quo in the town of about 38,000, located in California, just across the border from Mexicali, Mexico.
In 2020, Ureña had succeeded former Council Member David Romero, who went to federal prison after being convicted in a bribery scandal.
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