California Democrats Are Coming After Your Kids
By DEACON MIKE MANNO
The problem of one-party control is being amply demonstrated in the State of California. In case you have not heard, California has now become a sanctuary state for gender confused children who are seeking a refuge from their parents who do not countenance their little ones — some not yet old enough to drive — making medical decisions for themselves that will affect their lives in a largely negative way. So why don’t we just let California be California? After all, just let those people suffer under the radical leftists that they elect.
Here’s why: The new bill, SB 107, sponsored by left-wing political gadfly State Sen. Scott Wiener, and the usual zoo animals that comprise the legislature’s majority party, is looking beyond California into your state to authorize political kidnapping of any kid in the United States to be brought to California for transgender affirming care; that means everything from puberty blockers to surgery.
A little bit of law is necessary to see the harm these animals are doing. There is something called the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act. When issues arise over which state has jurisdiction over a minor, the act determines which state’s courts have jurisdiction. So, as happens in inter-state child custody disputes, the law provides a legal guideline on which state has, and which state has not, jurisdiction over the child.
Naturally, if a divorce case, for example, is started in one state a parent cannot take a child to another and seek redress there. Now obviously there are some exceptions (consult your lawyer), but where there is no pending litigation, such as when an aunt or grandparent in different states take temporary custody over a child recently orphaned, the rule when I practiced juvenile law was to prefer jurisdiction in the state where the child resided for the greater part of the last six months.
But the wrecking crew that is the California legislature has specifically abrogated the uniform act and gives California courts the jurisdiction over any child in the state regardless of how the child got there, including those children who are runaways as well as those taken to the state without the permission of the child’s parents. We — at least those of us in old school legal thought — call that kidnapping. But, of course, there is nothing old school about the creatures who run such things in — do I dare call it? — the Golden State. Now, no matter how a child reaches the state a judge has the legal authority to name a temporary guardian for that child and when his parents find him, the state prohibits the release of any information to them. So nice to see what these God-fearing Democrats are doing.
The practical effect of this is if you live in a state that has some common sense, it is still possible you can lose your child to California, now indoctrinated by the little tike’s school into believing that he or she might have been born into the wrong body. If he can just make it to that bastion of fruit and nuts (its political product not to be confused with its agricultural output), he can free himself from your parental control regardless of his age.
But there may be some relief in sight. Just last week a conservative legal organization, Advocates for Faith and Freedom, filed a federal lawsuit to stop the enforcement of SB 107. The author of that suit, Mariah Gondeiro, was recently on my radio program to explain the litigation. The legislation, she said, is objectionable on at least three commonsense counts: It encourages children to flee to California to get transgender services; it gives California courts temporary jurisdiction regardless where the child hails from, and it bars parents from obtaining any medical or psychological information about their own child.
SB 107 also creates a carve-out from the law that prohibits parties from obtaining jurisdiction in California by engaging in “unjustifiable conduct.” It explicitly states that “taking of a child [from] the person who has legal custody is not unjustifiable conduct if done to pursue gender transition procedures in California.”
When Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law, he claimed he did so because “states across the country [were] passing laws to demonize the transgender community.” Bless his little heart. In legal terms SB 107 violates several constitutional provisions including:
Violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution by “stripping parents of their fundamental right to direct the upbringing and care of their children, including accessing their child’s medical records” as well as failing to define the terms “gender-affirming care or “gender-affirming health care.” It also allows the children to be removed to California. Violation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution by denying states the right to adjudicate juvenile matters in their own state.
“The Full Faith and Credit Clause demands that state court judgments be accorded full effect in the courts of other states and precludes states from adopting any policy of hostility” towards the public acts of another state, says the suit. “California has neither a legitimate nor legal interest in exceeding its jurisdiction by taking deeply personal, intimate, and life-altering medical decisions of out of state children into their own hands,” the suit argues. The lawsuit was just filed so we have some time before a final decision is handed down, but Ms. Gondeiro is asking for a pre-enforcement injunction against the law. In the meantime, expect numerous amicus briefs to be filed by red state attorneys general from around the country, as well as numerous interested parties, both pro SB 107 and anti.
One who, perhaps inexplicably for some, will not be supporting the bill is a group called Gays Against Groomers. We visited on the radio with Jaimee Michell, the president and founder of that group, who is fighting the transgender effort to target children. “There is no such thing as a child born in the wrong body,” she says and blames radical fringe groups for pushing that agenda. “We do not condone this. . . . We are not a monolith, the majority of people in the gay community, and that includes trans people, do not condone this. There is definitely what I like to call the ‘alphabet mafia’ — or ‘LGBT, Inc.’ — it is more of a political movement.”
Unfortunately, she says, those fringe groups are backed by numerous other political groups, including the White House, to push an agenda most gays do not support. She has two main goals for her organization: stop promoting transgenderism on children and to protect her community so that it can regain some of its respectability that it has achieved in recent years, and is now losing due to this controversy.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every weekend on Faith On Trial or podcast at https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/ the episode referred to in this article is #354.)
