The parents of a 14-year-old boy with Asperger’s and autism were threatened over their refusal to allow him to undergo a sex change.

According to the Daily Mail, they were warned by authorities that, if the obstinance continued, their son would be placed into foster care.

The UK couple — who wish to remain anonymous — said a National Health Service Gender Identity clinic informed them the boy should be put on hormone blockers to prevent him from going through normal adolescence because he thought he was a girl. The parents believed their son’s autism played heavily into his confusion, and they refused to allow permanent damage to be done to him.

After they extracted him from the clinic, the child’s public school reported the mom and dad to child services. Their crime? Emotional abuse.

After the boy told the school he had been barred from treatment, a teacher told his parents that they should find alternative accommodation for their son or else he would be put into temporary foster care. And the school reported the couple to children’s services for being ‘emotionally abusive’ to their son by not supporting his wish to change gender.

And they weren’t kidding:

A month later, the local authority placed him in a child protection plan after social workers concluded he was likely to suffer ‘significant harm’ under his parents’ care.

The only way the pair avoided losing their son to foster care was an arrangement for him to live with a family friend.

Earlier this year, he was allowed to move back home.

The parents came out to the Daily Mail in the aftermath of stories about at least three children who were ripped from their mothers and fathers due to gender change refusal.

The child’s mother claimed the experience almost destroyed their family:

The mother, who asked to remain anonymous, told how the experience almost ‘broke’ the family.
She said: ‘I’m absolutely devastated. When I saw the report that social services wrote about us and saw the words “emotional abuse”, I just broke down.

‘All we were doing was trying to get him to pause and think about his actions. My biggest worry as a mum is my child gets pushed down this route, becomes a woman, goes through the surgery, then gets to 25 and says, “I’ve made a mistake.”’

Here’s how it all started:

The family’s problems began in 2015 when the boy started struggling to cope with the pressures of secondary school due to his Asperger’s and autism. He started to self-harm and his parents asked his GP to refer him to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

During an appointment with a child psychotherapist, the boy announced he believed he was female. His parents said he had never mentioned such a belief to them previously and suspected that his sudden interest in changing gender may have been another of his autistic obsessions. However, they agreed for him to be referred on to the Leeds branch of the Tavistock Clinic – the only NHS service for under-18s who are confused about their gender.

When society reaches a point where parents let the state take possession of their children’s future, we’ve surrendered our lives to the rule of totalitarianism.

Have we, in the U.S., already let go of family autonomy? What about things such as this, this, and this?

No matter your positions on particular cultural, social, or sexual issues, outside of abject academics, it seems to me, it should be left to parents to teach their children and guide their futures. Not schools. Not the state.

Otherwise, that’s a state of fascism and the antithesis of the United States — a place where individual freedom should ring. Much louder than the gong of authoritarianism.

-Alex

Relevant RedState links in this article: here, here, and here.

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