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Notes -
California here I come, right back where I started from:
The bill hasn't passed yet and they are still adding and deleting parts, but in general Scott "Leather Man" Weiner is co-sponsoring this little gem:
"Existing law governs the determination of child custody and visitation in contested proceedings and requires the court, for purposes of deciding custody, to determine the best interests of the child based on certain factors, including, among other things, the health, safety, and welfare of the child.
This bill, for purposes of this provision, would include a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child."
"SECTION 1. Section 3011 of the Family Code is amended to read:
(1) (A) The health, safety, and welfare of the child.
(B) As used in this paragraph, the health, safety, and welfare of the child includes a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity."
I'm not particularly skilled at contextualizing legal stuff, so I'm probably misunderstanding, but as far as I can tell this is exclusively in the domain of resolving child custody disputes? Which I covered in the sentence after you quoted - I'm aware of that, and even though I disagree 'leaning towards one private party over another in cases where both have reasonable claims over a child' is an entirely different, and much less alarming, issue than 'the state seizing a child from a private party'.
Separately - this seems to both strike a gender identity point and add a gender identity point? Is this the amendment itself being changed, so that it still does add a gender identity part but differently, or does it not actually change the law, but just make trans stuff included under 'health, safety, and welfare' instead of a separate point?
It's the first step on "CPS taking kids away for being abusive, where "abusive" means 'does not affirm/support trans identity'".
So an "otherwise normal household" where the parents are divorcing and both are looking for custody, the court can consider Parent A to be an abusive parent if they don't accept that Johnny is now Susie. If this bill goes through, and it may or may not. But I think as straws in the wind it's indicative. After all, if it is "abuse" not to affirm your kid's gender identity, the next step is to protect trans kids by taking them out of abusive households.
My view is if a kid is 16 and insists they're trans, there's room to look for professional help about that. The kid is 18 and legally an adult, a parent may hate the idea but the kid can do what they want (so long as they're ready to move out and live independently). A kid is 12 and some dipshit counsellor with ear spools and green hair dye is giving them chest binders, new pronouns, and hiding it all from the parents? Not the job of the school, and if the school genuinely thinks the child is at risk of abuse (and I mean "beaten, assaulted, locked up, starved, yelled at abusively etc." and not "honey, are you sure? maybe you should talk to your therapist about this?") then they should be doing their job as mandatory reporters.
Because it's the worst of both worlds if the school goes "Well we actively lied to the parents about Jordynne (new name) being a boy and using 'he/him' pronouns in school and us letting him use the boys' locker room, because we feared his parents would be abusive to him, but we had no problem letting him go home every day to an abusive home with abusive parents where he was in danger of abuse (because let's be real, his parents were not going to beat or starve him)".
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