California’s new S.B. 107
, which Gov.
Gavin Newsom
signed on Sept. 29, is a harrowing example of what happens when radical gender theory becomes radical legislation. California has no shortage of leftist policies on the books, but this time, the state’s law affects not just Californians but families in other states.
Sponsored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat, S.B. 107 essentially makes California a sanctuary state for families of children seeking “gender-affirming” healthcare. It’s not alarmist to say the new law is a twofold nightmare: first for how it affirms in law the idea that children need gender intervention by way of social transitioning, cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and sex reassignment surgery, and second for its blatant effort to empower courts to unravel the fabric of families and the decision-making power of parents, particularly those parents who may be divorced or parents of children struggling with gender dysphoria, the idea that their gender and feelings don’t align.
Under S.B. 107, if a parent doesn’t agree with his or her child transitioning, that parent may be denied information about his or her own child’s health. The law gives courts the ability to strip parents who reside elsewhere, meaning in other states, of their parental rights if their children travel to California claiming they’ve been denied gender intervention healthcare and are seeking it there. The bill, by design, overrides the legal jurisdiction of a child’s home state, all in the name of radical gender theory and gender-intervention methods masquerading as healthcare. This is not only in direct contravention of state and federal laws already on the books about child custody and jurisdiction, but this may well be used as a scapegoat, pitting parents who are already embroiled in high-conflict divorce and custody cases against each other, heaping even more litigation and child custody issues on top of an already-tragic situation.
It’s easy to see how it would affect real-life cases. Following their tumultuous divorce, Jeff Younger’s ex-wife Anne Georgulas wanted one of their twin boys to begin gender intervention treatment. In 2021, a judge wrote a court order saying that while Georgulas was granted most parental rights, neither parent may begin gender intervention treatment, including puberty blockers or sex reassignment surgery, without the other parent’s consent. It was considered a win for Younger and worried parents who could imagine facing something similar. On Sept. 21, a Dallas district judge signed an order allowing Georgulas to leave Texas, where both parents and children live. Younger alleges Georgulas has testified under oath that she wants to move to California, and he believes she intends to do so in order for their son to begin gender intervention treatment.
Policy experts and parents in California, Republicans and Democrats alike, have been attempting to inform families and lawmakers in California and beyond about the effect this will have on states outside California.
“The bill substitutes California’s judgment about a child’s healthcare for those of loving parents, even if the child is from out of state or from another country,” Emilie Kao, senior counsel and vice president of advocacy strategy for Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Washington Examiner. “This bill could cause irreversible harms to children who will be subjected to medical experimentation in the name of gender ideology. This dangerously undermines the ability of parents to be involved in critical decisions about their child’s mental and physical health. California authorities will subject children to the off-label use of hormones and to surgeries that can cause permanent damage, including sterility.”
Though Newsom signed the law, it earned zealous opponents in California, even some lifelong Democrats. Erin Friday, a 50-something-year-old mother in the San Francisco Bay area, has never voted for a Republican in her life and supports same-sex marriage. Now, she doesn’t know if she can cast her ballot for a Democrat again after seeing this bill become law.
“Sen. Scott Weiner — he’s not the puppet. He’s the puppeteer,” she told the Washington Examiner. “If he wanted the law to provide a sanctuary for families who want to get ‘gender-affirming’ care, he could have written it that way. That’s not what this law does. What he did was he changed our family code. Every single state can be affected by this.”
Friday has a bit of experience with this situation. Her daughter became, as she calls it, “gender confused” just before and during the pandemic after hearing a third party teach in her public school sex education class that it was possible to have female body parts and “a boy brain.” Advocates call this the “Genderbread” person and use the outline of a gingerbread man to explain gender fluidity.
For two years, the daughter fought Friday on the issue. Friday supported her, spoke truth to her, and relentlessly bombarded her with logic and love. Finally, Friday’s daughter seemed to grow out of the desire to be “transgender,” a word Friday won’t use because she feels it’s fabricated and reeks of radical gender theory activism. She’s grateful her daughter has rejected gender intervention, but it opened her eyes to another world.
Now, Friday says the outcomes of this law could have innumerable nightmare scenarios: One might be parents in other states who are divorced and share custody of their children, particularly if the breakup was already high-conflict. She said the law obliterates on-the-books state and federal jurisdiction laws that are already in place to safeguard parents and children.
“The most egregious part of the law is that the noncustodial parent could abscond with one of the kids under the guise of gender-affirming care and they can get safety, temporary emergency jurisdiction,” Friday said. Under this law, the state can welcome the defiant child and noncustodial parent with open arms, and gender intervention treatment can begin. “This law eviscerates any kind of guardrail for children, paid for by taxpayers, so they don’t even have to worry about the cost of treatment. If your child came here from another state claiming they couldn’t get care, you’ll have to come get your child out of California’s clutches.”
Now, after seeing how this bill really affects other states, Friday has become an activist, testifying to the California State Assembly’s Judiciary Committee and rallying with other unlikely allies.
One of those allies is Chloe Cole. At just 18 years old, Cole, too, bravely testified against S.B. 107 before it passed. She knows firsthand the effects of gender intervention disguised as gender-affirming care. At age 12, she began to believe she didn’t want to be a weak or overly sexualized woman, so she must be a boy. When she sought professional help, the medical community gave her testosterone at age 13. Then, doctors put her on the fast track to a medical transition, a sex reassignment surgery, and she had a double mastectomy at 15. At 16, she “detransitioned,” meaning she regrets those changes and now embraces her sex and gender as a female.
“This wasn’t a misdiagnosis. It was mistreatment,” Cole said in her testimony.
Greg Burt, director of Capitol engagement at the California Family Council, said the one-two punch of this law, solidifying gender intervention treatment and California as a sanctuary state for gender-confused children, will be devastating for children and parents alike who are just trying to fight back against this new contagion that’s sweeping young people, especially teenage girls.
“This is the worst nightmare parents would have where the state is willing to remove their children from their custody because they don’t want them to be sterilized and their body parts removed as treatment … something that’s permanent,” he told the Washington Examiner. Burt said he worries the latter distracts from the former, which is still a vital part of this and is still controversial nationwide. “We should be debating whether [treatments] are abuse or not. That’s what the debate should be about, whether this is causing permanent damage to a kid.”
As devastating as this new law in California appears to be, all is not entirely lost. Many opponents think the law simply won’t hold up in court if challenged, particularly at the Supreme Court. The concern is that, even if it were to be struck down, that would take several years.
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“What about the damage done to the kids and families in the meantime?” Friday asked.
For now, a swift litigation campaign against the law’s constitutionality is the only hope opponents have of it taking hold of as few families as possible. When it is inevitably struck down, Friday said she would like someone to be held accountable for propagating years of gender intervention care through life-altering cross-sex hormones and sex reassignment surgeries. Even then, she’s not holding her breath that anyone will apologize or take responsibility.
“The tragedy is that these laws are going to safeguard these monsters who are doing this to these kids,” she said. “In the end, the doctors are going to point to the law and the legislatures are going to point to the doctors — and they’ll point to each other and then point them at the mothers.”
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She is an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
