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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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The state of Minnesota has passed a trans refuge bill.

Specifically, the bill would prohibit the enforcement of a court order for removal of a child or enforcement of another state’s law being applied in a pending child protection action in Minnesota when the law of another state allows the child to be removed from the parent or guardian for receiving medically necessary health care or mental health care that respects the gender-identity of the patient.

From my reading of this (not a lawyer, obvs): previously if a child ran away from home, and was found, the child would be returned to the child's parents. Now, however, if a child runs away from home, and claims a "transgender identity" the state will use its powers to keep the child from its parents.

This seems: absolutely pants-shittingly insane to me? Like I'm sortof reeling from disbelief at this and am still trying to figure out what I'm missing. This also seems to imply that if a child runs away to Minnesota, that the child will be kept in Minnesota away from his or her parents.

Can anybody help me understand this? This goes so far beyond anything that I had even considered in the realm of possibility that I'm sure I must be misunderstanding this.

As a related side note: I am reaching a point where reading things on this topic is becoming incredibly difficult. There seems to be so many seemingly double/triple/quadruple entendre words that its hard to follow.

If you consider children to be actual people with rights, then you reject the fundamental right of the parent to mold them into whatever they please.

Forget trans, every cultural standard that removes agency from children is up for review for exclusion from the eschaton.

Parents as the only role model and as an absolute force in a child's life is a single point of failure, at best it's a benevolent dictatorship and at worst its tyranny.

Parents as the only role model and as an absolute force in a child's life is a single point of failure

Single point of failure, are you sure you meant this? It sounds like if there is any failure in the arrangement it is unevenly massively distributed amongst billions of different parents. Rather it sounds antifragile fail-safe against a variety of centralization schemes attempting to improve the human condition.

When you remove parents from the upbringing of children, or at least remove their authority, you likely end up with some state apparatus, perhaps public schooling, which as we see in America there is the potential there for them to transition into groomatories by enterprising trans/trans humanist actors championing, of course what else, “human rights”. This is the single point of failure, not the variety of family life.

Except that Texas will take your kids away and charge you with child abuse if you let them take puberty blockers rather than allow that variety of family life to flourish. As far as I know most U.S. states have some proceedings to take away your child if you abuse them, and is there anyone who is such a believer in parental rights that they would allow a pedophile widower to retain custody of a 12-year-old after impregnating her? It's not really a meta-dispute about centralized state authority vs. anti-fragile family life, it's an object-level dispute over whether puberty blockers and/or hormones constitute child abuse. Texas thinks it does and will take your child away to be raised by bureaucrats, Minnesota thinks it doesn't and will refuse to enforce Texas's rulings stripping a parent of custody if their kid is in Minnesota.

People in this thread are then very concerned that Minnesota's claim of emergency temporary jurisdiction over child custody proceedings means they will also emancipate runaways. So far has shown themselves to be an expert on Minnesota custody laws and explained whether jurisdiction over a custody proceeding also means jurisdiction to hear a termination of parental rights by a minor, and/or whether refusing to allow a child to receive gender-affirming care would be grounds for termination of parental rights in the absence of other abuse.

Except that Texas will take your kids away and charge you with child abuse if you let them take puberty blockers rather than allow that variety of family life to flourish.

"Allow that variety of family life to flourish" in this instance parses to this reader much like "Allow that variety of MRSA to flourish"