Radical Trans Movement Empowers ‘Busybody Progressives’ to Separate Confused Teens from Their Parents

Virginia has become ground zero in the national political battle over how much control parents should have over their children’s lives.

One state Democratic delegate, Elizabeth Guzman, warned Virginians in mid October that she intends to introduce legislation that would expand the definition of child abuse to hold parents criminally liable for refusing to embrace their child’s gender dysphoria.

Under Guzman’s proposed legislation, so-called mandatory reporters such as therapists and teachers would be legally obligated to report parents to child-protective services for objecting to the “gender affirmation” approach currently in vogue in education.

Asked what the penalty for “not affirming” a child’s identity would be, Guzman left open the possibility of charging uncooperative parents with felonies or, failing that, threatening their employment.

“Well, we first have to complete an investigation. It could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment,” Guzman told a local ABC affiliate.

While Guzman’s unprecedented proposal stands virtually no chance of passing the Virginia legislature as currently constituted, her words didn’t seem like an idle threat to “Eric,” a Northern Virginia father whose daughter threatened to run away from home with the help of a sympathetic local mother after coming out to her parents as transgender. Eric received a text from his 13-year-old daughter in 2019 informing him and his wife that she would henceforth be identifying as non-binary and would not be returning home. Instead, she’d be going to stay with a friend whose mom fully supported her transition.

Eric, a middle-aged professional, asked that his real name not be used in order to protect the identity of his daughter, “Emma,” whom National Review agreed to refer to pseudonymously. Eric also refused to identify the local mother he believes tried to separate his daughter from him on the grounds that doing so might expose his daughter to backlash. His account of what transpired is backed up by a text message from his daughter that was provided to National Review.

“Hey Mom/Dad!” began the note from Emma, informing Eric and his wife of her decision:

This is probably really odd, for me to call you to check your messages and hang up on you, but there is something important I need to tell you. I am bisexual (Attracted to two genders. For me they are male and female.) and I am non-binary (I am specifically agender which means I don’t have a gender) and I use they/them pronouns.

I’d also like to say this is not a joke and no-one influenced me or tricked me to think I am this way. This is who I really am. I don’t know if you’ll accept me, so I’ll probably be crashing at a friends house, so don’t worry about me. I also shared a webtoon that talks about this kind of stuff, along with another webtoon that has some parents talking with their child after they found out (In case you need a guidline for what to say.)

After receiving the message, Eric was convinced that his daughter had fallen under the sway of her friend’s “busybody progressive” mother, who had his daughter in the car with her when Emma sent the text message. When Eric and his wife called the woman, she refused to drop off their daughter until Eric’s wife threatened her with legal action — a threat that wouldn’t hold any weight if Guzman’s bill became law in Virginia.

Eric panicked.

“At the time, I had the momentary fear of losing my child due to CPS. A busybody progressive mother of a classmate of my daughter’s, who knew little about my daughter’s specific situation, thought that my wife and I were abusive parents. . . . She wanted to house my daughter at her house,” Eric told National Review.

It took Eric’s wife threatening her with “false imprisonment charges to get that woman to drop off my daughter,” he said.

Eric is just one of a growing number of Virginia parents galvanized by the threat the modern progressive movement poses to parental rights. Governor Glenn Youngkin came into office by highlighting the anxieties these parents feel, focusing specifically on the recent leftist push to introduce critical gender theory into K–12 education.

Concerns about parental rights aren’t limited to culture-warring conservatives. Eric voted for Youngkin but said “trans issues weren’t a factor” in the decision. Despite his skepticism of gender politics, Eric stipulated that he’s “moderate on social issues, not a social conservative. I have no desire to ban first-trimester abortions. . . . I supported gay marriage before Obama did. I used to vote for Democrats occasionally.”

Since being elected last year, Youngkin has made good on his parental-rights campaign promises, announcing in September that parental permission is now required before teachers begin addressing students by new pronouns or allowing them to use bathrooms formerly reserved for the opposite sex. It was this announcement that prompted Guzman’s legislative threat.

“The day that Gov. Youngkin wanted to implement this policy, I immediately texted the policy lead of that committee and said, this is how we’re going to push back,” Guzman told the ABC affiliate.

The Virginia parents who elected Youngkin aren’t alone: a recent New York Times survey of registered voters found that nearly three-quarters of Americans are “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed to instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary schools.

Eric also isn’t alone in being threatened with the loss of his child: A growing number of Americans and Canadians have lost custody of their children for not assenting to gender-reassignment surgery or puberty-blocking hormone treatment. In the case of San Francisco–based software engineer Ted Hudacko, his own wife led the charge to strip him of custody rights, Abigail Shrier reported.

Ted’s wife won sole custody of their son, Drew, because Ted was skeptical that puberty blockers were a proper medical intervention for a gender-dysphoric 16-year-old. Nevertheless, with the backing of California Superior Court Judge Joni Hiramoto, Ted was stripped of his parental rights. The purple-haired judge never recused herself from the case despite being the mother of a trans child and publicly supporting youth medical transitions.

Similar cases have cropped up in Arizona and British Columbia, Canada.

Jeannette Cooper, a self-described “radical feminist” from Chicago, lost custody of her daughter along virtually identical lines.

“I don’t think there are any bounds on what it means to be female other than to exist in a female body. There is nothing that I have to do to become female. I simply am. I can dress whatever way I want. I can cut my hair off, grow it long, I can change my clothes. I am still female. Any behavior that I have is female because it is mine,” Cooper told the Independent Women’s Forum, summarizing her views of transgenderism. These commonplace beliefs were perceived by her daughter as “unaffirming” and abusive — and she was stripped of her parental rights.

Guzman’s promise to criminalize Virginia parents intent on defending their children would place people like Eric in jeopardy. Although Emma never accused her parents of abuse, what would have happened to them if a “busybody progressive” reported them to CPS today? Had Emma experienced gender dysphoria within Guzman’s proposed framework, Eric may very well have been stripped of basic parental rights, as many others have been.

The erosion of parental rights in Virginia is even more unsettling given the education establishment’s capture by gender ideologues. Many school boards scoffed at Governor Youngkin’s decision to bring parents back to the decision-making table in September. Districts including Fairfax County (FCPS), Loudoun County (LCPS), and Arlington (APS) were more concerned with assuaging student fears of transphobia than reassuring parents they would have a say in their child’s upbringing.

The districts’ public statements sound like they were ripped from a gender-studies syllabus.

The superintendent of APS sent a note out to the community stating, “We value the many diverse identities within our schools, where every student can authentically express themselves, including those in the LGBTQIA+ community.” FCPS superintendent Michelle Reid said much the same.

Activist students who support the views of those Northern Virginia administrators have begun to agitate. In September, a student-led group, Pride Liberation Project, orchestrated a walkout to protest Youngkin’s parental-rights initiative, involving nearly a hundred schools and thousands of students.

Lost in this scramble to accommodate gender-dysphoric youth and teens is the murky and unsettled science underpinning much of the pro-affirmation side. The United Kingdom’s National Health Service announced in late October, following an internal investigation, that most youth cases of gender dysphoria desist when the children enter adolescence.

Emma was no different: Within months, Eric says, Emma had abandoned any identification as either non-binary or bisexual.

Eric was tough on himself for being an absent father, for not being attentive enough to Emma’s needs, for not seeing the warning signs before they manifested that day in 2019.

“Being a mediocre father, I actually did not pry a lot as to why my daughter did this and said this,” he said.

Under Guzman’s legislation, though, the underlying reasons for Emma’s transition wouldn’t matter, and Eric and his wife could be made into criminals for trying to find out what they were.