Posted on 04/09/2023 7:01:25 PM PDT by RaceBannon
COMMENTARY BY Portrait of Katrina Trinko Katrina Trinko @KatrinaTrinko Katrina Trinko is editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal. Send an email to Katrina.
In California, “stranger danger” may be about to acquire a whole new meaning.
Forget warning kids. It’s the parents in California who will need to be terrified of strangers if a new bill passes.
Snuck into AB 665, legislation ostensibly about extending mental health care to lower-income California youths, is a provision that effectively would terminate parents’ rights over their kids as soon as they turn 12.
The California Family Council warns that this bill “would allow children as young as 12 years old to consent to being placed into state funded group homes without parental permission or knowledge.”
As long as a mental health professional signs off on it, the kids can go to such a group home—and it doesn’t matter what their parents think.
“This bill gives a stranger, a school psychologist, power to decide whether a sixth or seventh grader comes home from school that day, and that’s terrifying,” Erin Friday, a California mom of two teens, tells The Daily Signal.
“This bill is essentially stating that parents are criminals that have to prove their innocence to get their child back,” adds Friday, who is a leader of the parent advocacy group Our Duty.
Seriously?
That provision was no accident. The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, celebrated the California law in a 2010 report as a “useful model for state or federal legislation to address mental illness among LGBT youth.”
“LGBT youth are likely to avoid using public mental health services if they believe that doing so will cause them to have to reveal their LGBT status to their parents or peers,” the Center for American Progress report said.
That same report also made the case that mental health services were vital for suicide prevention for LGBT youth: “Providing LGBT adolescents with access to mental health services is essential to helping them cope with the extreme pressures that have led many of them to consider suicide.”
But the data suggests that California’s Mental Health Services for At-Risk Youth Act hasn’t had the effect its boosters hoped for. In 2010, the year the legislation passed, 92 minors in California committed suicide, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nor was 2010 an outlier: Looking at the years 2000-2010, an average of 82 minors a year committed suicide. From 2011-2020, the last year for which data is available, 106 minors a year on average committed suicide in California.
So much for the success of the 2010 law.
Yet instead of reexamining and reforming the old law—which did allow 12-year-olds to access psychological care without parental permission or knowledge, but not residential services—California legislators are now seriously considering expanding the 2010 law and allowing 12-year-olds to go to residential treatment without parental permission.
Of course, that’s an outrageous slap in the face to parental rights.
But it’s also unlikely to help the kids who are troubled and seeking treatment. Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, a licensed clinical social worker since 1999, wrote on her Substack: “In my experience, working with youth in a school setting without parental involvement was ineffective. It was when the parents gave input, shared their point of view and communicated with their teen, [that] the real healing began.”
Garfield-Jaeger, who testified against the new California bill, also warned about the dangers of placing minors in new residences.
“I worked in group homes I know what they are really like, and they are far from ideal,” the social worker said in her testimony. “Residential facilities lead kids to adopt new harmful habits, such as drug use, self-harm, and violent behavior.”
“Youth residential facilities are usually unlocked, and many kids run away into the hands of sex traffickers,” she added.
Why are California lawmakers trying to make it easier for kids to face such horrible fates?
The unspoken reason seems likely here: California lawmakers know that plenty of parents have concerns about minors who pursue gender transition. These are valid concerns: gender transition medical procedures, even for minors, can be extensive—and some of it is irreversible.
The growing “detransitioner” movement highlights how some people receive transgender treatment, and then have regrets.
“I shouldn’t have been allowed to go through this,” Chloe Cole, a detransitioner who regretted her gender transition after having breast removal surgery at 16, told “The Daily Signal Podcast” in January.
But California lawmakers don’t want parents to be able to stand in the way of their minor children making these life-changing decisions.
“It is apparent that one result of this bill will be the removal of trans-identified children from the family home,” Garfield-Jaeger said in her testimony. “In the dystopian nightmare we are in, if a parent doesn’t use the child’s chosen pronoun or name, they are labeled dangerous.”
In an interview with Fox News, Friday referred to this legislation as “state-sanctioned kidnapping.”
She’s right—and it’s terrifying that California lawmakers are considering legalizing, not penalizing, kidnapping.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
As long as a mental health professional signs off on it, the kids can go to such a group home—and it doesn’t matter what their parents think.
“This bill gives a stranger, a school psychologist, power to decide whether a sixth or seventh grader comes home from school that day, and that’s terrifying,” Erin Friday, a California mom of two teens, tells The Daily Signal.
“This bill is essentially stating that parents are criminals that have to prove their innocence to get their child back,” adds Friday, who is a leader of the parent advocacy group Our Duty.
Sounds like human trafficking to me.
Modern day Hitler Youth in the making.
Californians spend most their lives
Living in a groomer’s paradise.
Californians spend most their lives
Living in a groomer’s paradise.
You can thank Hollyweird for this shtick!
Are those song lyrics?
Almost.
My ‘poetic license’ of Coolio’s “Gangsters Paradise”
While the remaining whites in California will say “aw shucks” when they lose their kids to the state, the Muslims there may react a bit ‘livelier’, and I’ll be first to defend them.
it , like a lot of other laws, will only be enforced against whites. when applicable to others, the left will say you cant enforce the law because “thats just their culture”
And of course, now someone who can show a journeyman electrician card is much more to be considered a trusted professional that someone with a Phd diploma for phycology.
The unintended consequences of these laws will be more parents homeschooling or leaving the state altogether.
At some point there will be class action lawsuits by young adults who were victimized in these group homes.
Until then many children and their families will suffer.
Good point. Seldom brought up, if ever, in discussions.
They have a stern opinion about parents being in charge of their children’s welfare and direction.
For others the African proverb that gave the title to Hillary’s book It Takes A Village gave the Dems the chance to say the socialist state should take over the children from the parents. And undermine the nuclear family, value of a father and having a belief in God.
Vladimir Lenin:
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
And if the kid gets into state custody and decides they have made a terrible mistake, well, just too bad! You are now property of the state and you WILL go through with the mutilation, because you really don’t know what is best for you. Being just a kid and all.
In leftist bastions, children are the PROPERTY of the state. See Cuba.
Why any body remains in California anymore is highly questionable.
Sounds like a solid admission that LBGT is a mental illness.
EC
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