Father's Rights Revoked Over Pronouns, Then He Gets Charged $200,000 for His Son's Gender Transition

Noted writer Abigail Shrier is warning parents about how one particular case concerning a transgender-identifying minor shows how gender ideology has "infiltrated" family law. 

Writing recently in the City Journal, Shrier tells the story of Ted Hudacko's combative divorce case in which a California Superior Court judge not only took away of his custody over his 16-year-old son but that he would also have no say in the boy's medical gender transition. 

Shrier noted the judge kept pressing Hudacko to accept that his teenage son was actually a girl. 

The judge even corrected the father in court about the use of pronouns when referring to his son in court, reminding him to use the word "they" instead of "he."

Hudacko "had used the 'he' pronoun because he remained deeply skeptical that the boy he'd coached in little league—the son he'd once seen crushing on a cute girl in his fifth-grade class—was actually a young woman," Shrier explained. 

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The father told the judge he did not want his son to begin a medical transition. But within a few months, the court ended his parental relationship with the boy, giving him no say in stopping a scheduled medical transition for which he would later be charged more than $200,000. 

Shrier, the author of the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, cautions that gender ideology "also frames the unintended consequences of medical professionals' fudging science, rewriting medical definitions, and tolerating shoddy research to placate activists."

"At each stage, doctors may have thought: Where was the harm? And so, as a consequence, judges now decide the fate of children and their families based on phony, medically unsubstantiated metaphysics, as if it were factual that all adolescents have an immutable, ineffable 'gender identity,' knowable only to the adolescents themselves," she continued. 

"This is gender ideology—the belief, not backed by any meaningful empirical evidence, that we all have an ineffable gender identity, knowable only to us. This identity has no observable markers, and it is immutable (until the moment we change our minds and reveal ourselves as 'gender-fluid,' of course). It is promoted by virtually every practitioner of 'gender-affirming care,' it is unfalsifiable, and its hold on our legal system is gaining ground," Shrier warned. 

The writer pointed out that the once-mental condition known as "gender dysphoria" is out and "gender incongruence" is now deemed to be a physical condition. 

"Courts are adopting this view and seeing a child who has a feeling of gender dysphoria as no different from one born with a cleft palate," she wrote. 

As CBN News reported last October, the U.S. State Department issued its first passport with an "X" designation for the passport holder's gender. The historic move shows the full force of the transgender movement.

It's part of a new policy that allows anyone to change the gender on their passport with no medical certification required. The three choices: male, female, or "X." The "X" designation is designed for people who identify as transgender or intersex--those born with both male and female characteristics.

The State Department emphasizes that passport holders can self-select their gender as part of its overall goal to promote human rights for people who identify as LGBTQI+.

At the time, Shrier called it "one of the clearest indications that gender ideology has infiltrated the highest levels of the federal government."

At the same time, Republican-led states are pushing back against transgender activism.

New research is also raising questions about transgender medicine. 

Dr. Lisa Littman has a study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, showing that the majority of those who have de-transitioned, that is, reversed their initial decision to change their gender identity, say they did not receive an adequate evaluation from a medical care provider before they initially transitioned.

Speaking on the Megyn Kelly Show she said it's heartbreaking what's happened to some of these patients. "These young people didn't get the evaluation, the support, the kind of mental health services that they needed and instead, were really rushed to medical transition and surgery," she said.