By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD
I’m beginning to wonder what the legal/political system and the transgender community is doing to our children. There seems to be a never-ending string of stories about parents and students seeking justice in our courts only to have judges immediately adopt the “trans” view of the world.
The latest is Connecticut Federal District Judge Robert N. Chatigny, a Clinton appointee. He was later an Obama nominee to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals whose nomination died in the Senate after his fitness to serve was questioned over several matters that he handled in his district courtroom.
Judge Chatigny is presiding over the case of three high school girls who are suing to prevent boys, claiming to be transgendered girls, from participating in girls’ athletic programs. All of the three teenagers were sidelined in girls’ track meets by two boys, claiming to be girls, who ran (literally) away with all the top medals and awards.
Lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom, who represent the real girls, were told by the Honorable Judge Chatigny, that in court they must refer to the boys not as male but as transgender girls. Thus, the good judge has apparently decided the case already since the boys’ masculinity is the essence of the case which, apparently now cannot be argued due to some Orwellian judicial concept.
The lawyers, by the way, have asked that the judge be removed from the case. He should be, but whether or not he will is still — at this writing — up in the air.
In another “trans” case, a federal judge ruled that high school girls had no right to “visual bodily privacy” in school locker rooms and showers that were open to boys claiming they were trans-female. And in a Colorado case several years ago, a judge told the girls their privacy rights were subordinate to the right of a biological male to use the girls’ showers.
But that’s not the whole story. In both the United States and Canada, judges and school officials are becoming complicit in encouraging students to transgender even in spite of parents who are objecting to the procedure. School officials are taking it upon themselves to covertly suggest that students who are having episodes of depression or other emotional problems are in that position because they are in the wrong body.
When parents object, they risk having their children removed from their custody, as was done to an Ohio parent. But one Canadian story takes the cake.
Robert Hoogland is the father of a 14-year-old girl with whom he shared custody with his former wife. Under the terms of the custody agreement, both father and mother had equal say in their daughter’s medical decisions.
For several years the girl, unbeknownst to the parents, was counseled by school staffers, a psychologist, and LGBT activists that the depression she was feeling was due to the fact that she was really a “he”; apparently none of the “professionals” thought her parents’ divorce might have had something to do with depression.
At first both parents were opposed to any medical intervention to “correct” the girl’s gender dysphoria. Dad filed suit against the school and the doctors involved in the girl’s therapy. A court-appointed attorney was provided for the girl who, incidentally, was what the father described as a “radical lesbian lawyer.” Ultimately the mother was persuaded to drop her objections to any medical procedure and the judge ordered that the girl could begin to undergo the medical procedures to “change” her sex despite her father’s continued objections.
The medical procedures were then started on his daughter including puberty-blockers and male hormones. The hospital consent forms, which he refused to sign, indicated that the drugs used were experimental and could cause sterility and unhealthy bone growth, and that their effects were irreversible.
The court then placed a gag order on dad. He was not allowed to speak to the press or the public about what was happening, and he was further prohibited to speak to his daughter about it. The court also ordered the father to refer to his daughter with male pronouns.
After the gag order expired, due to the court not meeting because of the coronavirus, he told his story to MassResistance Canada. He spoke about the judge, Michael Tammen. “At one point, I used a female pronoun referring to my daughter, and he reprimanded me, saying ‘How dare you!’ In fact, he stood up and screamed at me in the courtroom for doing that. He said, ‘Why did you do that?’ And I said, ‘I did because I’m the only one doing what is in the best interest of my daughter.’ He really didn’t like my saying that. This is the terrible state of the judicial system in Canada.
“My daughter is the subject of state-sponsored child abuse. She’s being sterilized and her body is being mutilated — under a transgender agenda that is being promoted throughout all the schools. The schools here are using a radical program called ‘SOGI 123.’ Its lunatic message to children is: ‘Everyone has a sexual orientation and gender identity.’ It’s become a program that a lot of other jurisdictions are looking at and using as a prototype, so it’s not just in British Columbia. They are using it in other provinces. And I think that some of the states like Washington State are taking a look at it, and using it, as well.”
The SOGI 123 program attempts to teach the difference between sex and gender identity. It is primarily used in elementary schools to introduce the concepts of transgenderism and builds on that basis in later grades. According to its website:
“SOGI 123 helps educators make schools inclusive and safe for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities (SOGI). At a SOGI-inclusive school, students’ biological sex does not limit their interests and opportunities, and their sexual orientation and how they understand and express their gender are welcomed without discrimination.”
Mr. Hoogland has tried to maintain a relationship with his daughter/faux son. He told the interviewer: “A couple weeks ago, she wanted to move in here, back with me. And then I got the excuse back from them: ‘Well, we can’t do that because of the coronavirus.’ They found another reason to keep her from me. I asked, ‘Has my daughter been out of the country? Has she traveled?’ And they were just mute on that point.”
We’ve reported here similar cases from around the United States, thus far none quite as blatant as this, although some come very close. The word to the wise here is that all parents need to keep a close watch on their local schools. The schools are where these problems usually start, as we have seen in the growing number of cases where your daughters are being forced to share locker rooms and shower facilities with the boy down the street.
I am convinced that this gets its start because too many parents are not paying attention to what is happening to their kids’ schools, except, perhaps, for sports. Voting in school board elections around the country probably has the lowest turnout in any election, thus the teachers’ unions — mostly very left leaning — whose members do show up can, in effect, choose their own bosses: the boards of education that run and set policy for the district.
The other problem, of course, is that sometimes the person who chooses the judges is sympathetic to those far-left, new age policies. You get to pick both. Remember that when you cast your ballots this fall. As they say, it’s for the kids.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday morning on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
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