Part 2: How Family Acceptance Research Was Misinterpreted and Institutionalized

And how it was used to hurt families

If you did not read Part I from yesterday, please click here. (Sorry for the previous typo in the title.)

For those who’ve read about the state of Texas dispatching CPS to investigate families that transitioned children, a tale like Sage’s may be hard to believe. After all, Kimberly Shappley, mother of celebrated trans kid Kai, said relatives had threatened to call CPS for socially transitioning her. Back in 2000, suburban Ohio parents John and Sherry Lipscomb had allowed their six-year-old son Zachary to live as Aurora, seeking a legal name change and asking the school principal to enroll her as Rori; someone called Franklin County Children Services on them, and FCCS removed Aurora from the home. Rori was ill, the judge said, and the parents weren’t providing proper care. After that, the Lipscomb’s were treated like “pariahs.”

The parents, it turned out, had severe mental health problems themselves, and had already voluntarily worked with FCCS. Rori was on the autism spectrum and suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Later, Rori’s dad decided he also wanted to transition. Nonetheless, the parents had retained custody until the gender issues went public.

The Lipscombs were subjected to an abuse of state power in the name of gendered beliefs. That seemed to be happening again in the 2020s, but in the opposite way; rather than parents being unfit because they transitioned their kids, they were unfit if they didn’t.

I could find no statistics on how many parents have lost custody of their children, or have been investigated by CPS for abuse because they wouldn’t affirm. But I’ve now heard many such stories—most of them, though not all, from liberal-leaning parents.