California Passes Bill Requiring Parents to Affirm Kids’ Gender ‘Transitions’
The California State Assembly passed a bill Friday that would require judges in child custody cases to consider whether a parent has affirmed a child’s “gender transition” by making “gender affirmation” an equal part of a child’s “health, safety, and welfare” under state law.
Democratic lawmakers’ bill, AB 957, passed the Assembly by a vote of 57-16 along party lines. The California Senate passed the bill Wednesday, 30-9, also along party lines.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill into law. Under it, parents who refuse to participate in transgenderism by pretending that their child is a different gender could be guilty of failing to provide for the “health, safety, and welfare” of their child—therefore losing custody to another parent or the state.
Assemblymember Lori Wilson, D-Suisun City, whose child identifies as transgender, wrote the bill and introduced it Feb. 14. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, co-sponsored the measure.
The Daily Signal previously reported that Wiener amended the bill June 6, altering AB 957 from requiring a judge to consider whether a child experiencing gender dysphoria was “affirmed” by parents to making “gender affirmation,” an essential need of a child in California.
“Gender affirmation” isn’t defined or explained in AB 957 or any other California law, drawing concerns over interpretation.
Susannah Luthi, who covers California for The Washington Free Beacon, pointed out: “The bill makes no distinctions regarding the age of a child, how long a child has identified as transgender, or affirmation of social transition versus medical sex-change treatments.”
Greg Price, communications director for the State Freedom Caucus Network, reported that bill author Wilson had said: “Parents affirm their children. Typically, it happens when their gender identity matches their biological gender. But when it doesn’t, the affirmation starts to wane. … Our duty as parents is to affirm our children.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/08/california-passes-ab957/
********************************************Nebraska Detransitioner Sues Medical Providers for Removing Her Breasts at 16
Detransitioner Luka Hein is suing the medical providers who surgically amputated her breasts at the age of 16 in 2018, “leaving her physically and psychologically scarred.”
“Proceeding straight to breast amputation in a depressed, anxiety-ridden, gender-confused adolescent, who was incapable of understanding the lasting consequences of her decision, constitutes negligence for which Defendants are jointly and severally liable,” Hein’s lawsuit states.
Hein, now 21, is one of a growing number of young women who are coming forward to sue the doctors and therapists who propelled them along the path toward surgical and hormonal transition. A detransitioner is someone who sought to change his or her gender through hormonal or surgical interventions and ultimately regretted the attempt and returned to living as his or her biological sex.
Hein’s lawsuit describes how she struggled through her parents’ divorce in her early teens, how she was groomed online by predatory adults, struggled dramatically with her mental health, and ultimately was put on testosterone for four years, causing disruptions in her endocrine system, heart damage, her voice to deepen, pain throughout her body, and “permanent dysregulation of her reproductive organs.”
Represented by the Pittsburgh-based nonprofit legal group Center for American Liberty, Hein is accusing her doctors of causing her physical pain and mental suffering, both past and future, heavy medical expenses, permanent impairment of her earning capacity, inconvenience and loss of enjoyment of life, and permanent scarring, injury, and disability.
“As a proximate result of the actions of the Defendants, and each of them, Luka’s breasts were surgically amputated, leaving her physically and psychologically scarred,” the lawsuit says. “If she has not also suffered the loss of her fertility, Luka has lost her ability to breastfeed, thereby depriving her of the maternal benefits of nursing.”
The filing continues: “Luka’s future children will be deprived of the natural bonding effects and nutritional benefits of breastfeeding.”
The suit names University of Nebraska Medical Center; Nebraska Medicine; Nahia J. Amoura, M.D.; Perry Johnson, M.D.; Stephan Barrientos, M.D.; and psychotherapist Megan Smith-Sallans. Nebraska Medicine declined to comment, and the rest of the medical professionals did not respond to requests for comment.
In July, 21-year-old Texas detransitioner Soren Aldaco filed a lawsuit alleging that her doctors behaved more like “ideologues” than medical professionals and that they did not properly take her autism, depression, anxiety, and other comorbidities into account when they evaluated her for an attempted gender transition.
“The repercussions of these interventions have led to Soren’s permanent disfigurement and profound psychological scarring,” the suit alleges. “The Defendants’ breaches of their fiduciary duties are only underscored by the fact that each Defendant met Soren and facilitated these ‘therapies’ at a pivotal juncture in Soren’s life—when she was grappling not only with the universal challenges of adolescence and body image, but also with a complex amalgamation of diagnosed mental health comorbidities and other psychological and social disorders.”
Earlier in July, Prisha Mosley filed a lawsuit accusing her doctors and therapists of rushing her down a dangerous and life-altering path. Both Mosley and Aldaco are represented by Campbell Miller Payne PLLC. Detransitioners Chloe Cole and Layla Jane, represented by the Center for American Liberty, have also recently announced high-profile lawsuits against medical practitioners at Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Permanente Medical Group.
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Róisín Murphy and the limits of the new authoritarianism
Has cancel culture finally met its match? Have the new blacklisters who hasten to erase anyone who gives voice to a view that displeases them finally had their comeuppance? The roaring success of Róisín Murphy’s new album, Hit Parade, suggests it’s possible. The digital inquisitors tried to silence the queen of new disco over her sinful utterances on puberty blockers, and yet she’s soaring up the charts. Meet Róisín the Uncancellable.
It is wonderful to see elitist intolerance of wrongthink crash against the shores of decency and liberty
All sorts of mud and insults were hurled at Murphy when it was revealed she is sceptical of puberty blockers. Pumping gender-confused kids full of hormone suppressants is… absolutely desolate’, she said on her private Facebook page.
Millions will nod in agreement with her fruitily expressed, eminently sensible comments. Not the trans lobby, though, or its legion allies among the bourgeois left. In their eyes, it is blasphemy to question the synthetic prevention of puberty in bewildered youths, and anyone who does so must be sent packing from polite society. Murphy was given her marching orders.
Her metaphorical tarring and feathering was as swift as it was brutal. Virtual mobs declared her finished. They swore not to buy her album. They damned her as a phobe, a bigot, a traitor to her LGBTQ fanbase. Her record company reportedly called off all promotions for Hit Parade. Some of her public appearances were cancelled.
Then there were the reviews. They gushed over her album – it really is as good as everyone says – while shaming its maker as a possessor of wicked beliefs. This record comes with an ‘ugly stain’, said the Guardian, sounding for all the world like a neo-religious crackpot. One reviewer branded Murphy ‘cowardly’ and ‘disappointing’ and suggested she ‘unlearn [her] ignorance’. It was bleak stuff.
Now the BBC has been dragged into the ‘Get Róisín’ hysteria. Two five-hour shows of Murphy’s songs and interviews were put together by its 6 Music radio channel and were due to go out next week. But they’ve been scrubbed. Instead, in a switcheroo that will dishearten music lovers everywhere, ‘new shows have been made to feature woke rapper Little Simz’, says the Mail.
The BBC denies that its replacement of Róisín is an act of cancel culture. It is normal in 6 Music’s ever-changing schedule that things get shifted around, it says. Let’s give Auntie the benefit of the doubt. But if there is so much as a speck of truth in the concern that the Beeb sidelined Murphy because of her views on puberty blockers, it will be the final straw. The corporation is meant to be impartial. It cannot be allowed to punish artists for their beliefs. Some kind of action will be required if the unscheduling of Murphy turns out to have been in any way ideological.
Now here’s the hilarious twist in this tale: the cancellers have failed. Far from being banished beyond the pale, Murphy is enjoying the greatest success of her career. She has shot to number two on the UK album charts. Her album is being raved over. Some say it’s the album of the year. Both old fans and new fans are doing the thing we were severely warned not to: listening to Róisín Murphy.
The mob’s pitchforks have been blunted by the public’s common sense. The bitter howls for the censure of a disobedient woman have failed to break beyond their own tragic little echo chambers. A combination of a public love of good music and old-fashioned solidarity – witness the armies of gender-critical women who said they would buy Murphy’s album as a screw you to her pointy-fingered denouncers – has ensured that Hit Parade is a hit.
It is wonderful to see elitist intolerance of wrongthink crash against the shores of decency and liberty. Of course we should not be complacent. The very attempt to cancel Murphy, however forlorn, confirms the censorship instinct is alive and raging. To my mind, Murphy’s witch-hunting was one of the worst of recent times. Even for a privately stated comment, and a perfectly rational one at that, she had the guillotine of cancellation rolled out for her. This will act as a chilling warning to women everywhere, famous and unfamous.
It tells them that everything they say, privately and publicly, everything they think, is being keenly watched by the mob. Speak out of turn and they’ll darken your door. Murphy might have survived this menace – less well-known women might not.
We have seen, clearly now, the misogyny in today’s shaming campaigns against women who question any aspect of transgenderism. Some self-styled LGBTQ activists even gloated that they could bring Murphy down. We’re your biggest fans and now we’re going to switch off your income and stardom, they effectively said. It’s like these men – they were mostly men – think they own her. They have no idea how much they sound like those brutes of Old Hollywood who loved to remind their starlets, ‘We built you up and we can knock you down’.
They can’t knock down Murphy, though. The rest of us have seen to that. Murphy’s success is proof that cancel culture can be held at bay by solidarity, reason and a love for art. Let’s keep it up
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/roisin-murphy-and-the-limits-of-the-new-authoritarianism/
***********************************************Two cases of political correctness distorting justice in Australia
The parallels between the investigations and the prosecutions of former political staffer Bruce Lehrmann and former police officer Zachary Rolfe are unmistakable and disturbing.
In both cases, a hasty investigation and charging of a young man for a serious crime was accompanied by diarised police concerns about lack of evidence.
In both cases, the politicisation of events by politicians and other senior figures occurred against a backdrop of social movements fuelling a febrile environment.
In both cases, a pattern of non-disclosure of material to defence lawyers put at risk their ability to properly defend their clients.
The difference is that the public has now had the benefit of a thorough public inquiry into the exercise of state power in the Lehrmann matter.
If we are to trust in all aspects of the criminal justice system, from policing to prosecutors, the issues raised by Rolfe’s lawyers and reported by The Australian’s Kristin Shorten today must be investigated. An internal police investigation is not enough.
There should be a transparent and meticulous public inquiry by a skilled and fearless senior judge into the circumstances surrounding the investigation and prosecution of Rolfe.
That the former constable was unanimously found not guilty by 12 jurors within a few hours is not a reason for institutions that wield tremendous power against a citizen to avoid a public inquiry into their behaviour.
The Northern Territory’s new Police Commissioner, Michael Murphy, has an opportunity to start his term in office by encouraging proper and overdue public scrutiny of the most controversial police investigation in the Territory’s history.
In his letter to Murphy on June 16 this year, Rolfe’s lawyer, Luke Officer, laid out serious concerns about the conduct of Detective Senior Sergeant Wayne Newell. They included claims that Newell amended and edited an expert report, that he obtained opinions from a purported expert denying the lethality of the scissors that Walker used to stab Rolfe and threaten his partner, even though that expert said it would be inappropriate for her to give evidence, and that Newell withheld supplementary opinions given by two other experts to him about the lethality of the scissors that would have assisted defence but were revealed only during the trial.
The Darwin-based lawyer in his letter says it was only down to “sheer luck” that he became aware of the undisclosed material.
Again, by sheer chance, Rolfe’s lawyers became aware of a series of draft police coronial reports – known as the “Pollock reports” – that police had not given to the DPP, and could therefore not share with Rolfe’s defence team.
When making his order for disclosure of those reports, Supreme Court judge Dean Mildren said: “If the documents are never revealed, it may be that an innocent person has been wrongly convicted. It is to be hoped that this situation will not occur in the future.”
In his final report into the investigation and prosecution of Lehrmann, Walter Sofronoff explained why full disclosure was central to our trust in the criminal justice system by ensuring a fair trial, and addressing the imbalance of power and resources between the state and a citizen. “Criminal litigation is not a poker game in which a prosecutor can hide the cards,” he wrote.
In the Lehrmann case, the former DPP was exposed as failing to disclose material.
In the Rolfe matter, disclosure failures concern police.
Disclosure duties are the same for police and prosecutors because both are instruments of enormous state power, just as the damage to a defendant, and our trust in the criminal justice system, is the same whether non-disclosure is by a prosecutor or by police.
Many other parts of the Rolfe saga echo the Lehrmann case. For example, police diary entries reveal senior police officers expressed concerns at charging Rolfe before sufficient evidence had been amassed.
Just as the Lehrmann saga unfolded against the background of the #metoo movement and nationwide March 4 Justice protests, the arrest, prosecution and trial of Rolfe occurred as the Black Lives Matters movement grew in prominence, alongside “Justice for Walker” protests nationwide.
More concerning than the wild west of social media, which became hunting grounds for Lehrmann and Rolfe, leaders behaved badly. On November 12, three days after the fatal shooting, then-commissioner Jamie Chalker and chief minister Michael Gunner travelled to Yuendumu, where the latter told the community there would be an independent investigation into the shooting and “consequences will flow as a result.”
Recall that former prime minister Scott Morrison delivered an apology in parliament to Brittany Higgins, saying “I’m sorry to Ms Higgins for the terrible things that took place here”.
On the morning after Gunner’s comments – hours before Rolfe was charged – the NT’s then Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Ken Fleming attended a rally at Alice Springs, where thousands gathered to protest after Walker’s death, and said “one of the most important messages today is ‘Black Lives Matter’.
“Anybody who says contrary to that is guilty of corrupt behaviour,” he said.
A promised ICAC investigation into the shooting was to be headed by Fleming but after his rally speech, he was forced to remove himself from the probe and soon after retired. The probe never eventuated.
In 2022, after Rolfe was acquitted, ICAC investigated whether his murder charge had been politically influenced by Gunner or anyone else and found the claims were baseless.
If those leading our most powerful institutions do not show respect for this fundamental value, why would other politicians, let alone citizens who serve on a jury?
There are other matters of concern in Operation Charwell – the criminal investigation of the shooting. The police’s mission statement included this: “To provide a brief of evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions in support of the offence as alleged against Constable Zachary Rolfe.”
The mission for police should have been to conduct a complete, accurate and reliable investigation of all evidence: that which supported the charge against Rolfe and that which did not.
According to police notes, a report was commissioned from a US criminologist about Rolfe’s use of force after NSW police advised NT police that “They were not keen to put themselves into the firing line if their SME [subject matter expert] offered an opinion that may be adverse.”
Did this mean NSW police didn’t want to express opinions that did not fit charging Rolfe?
The US criminologist, paid almost $100,000 for his 12-page report, was not provided with all the information on the incident but senior police told him via email that “it is important we make sure we have a good fit otherwise I will struggle to be able to convince my bosses of the value in utilising your extensive expertise”.
Given that Rolfe was arrested, did a “good fit” mean a report that fitted the mission statement of “in support of the offence” of murder?
If there is an ICAC investigation underway into these serious issues, the corruption watchdog won’t tell us.
The NT Police Professional Standards Command advised Rolfe’s lawyer that the Office of Ombudsman NT refused to investigate, stating it was “not in the public interest”. In response to Rolfe’s June complaint, the head of the PSC said he did not consider any further action was required.
It is passing strange that when The Australian sent questions to NT police on Monday, they said they were investigating Rolfe’s complaints. What is going on?
Had there not been a full public inquiry in the ACT, we would never have learned about serious wrongdoing by then DPP Shane Drumgold. The Rolfe fiasco raises similarly concerning questions about the conduct of police.
Only a thorough and public inquiry can settle concerns that Rolfe was the victim of brute politics, misguided social movements, a deeply flawed police investigation and serious failures to disclose material his lawyers should have had to properly defend him.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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