(The Center Square) – Ohio government agencies would be barred from defining a parent as “harmful” or “dangerous” for affirming their child’s biological sex rather than their gender, under a bill introduced in the Ohio legislature.
The proposed legislation, House Bill 693, is called the Affirming Families First Act and is sponsored by Republican State Reps. Gary Click and Josh Williams, among others.
It is the most comprehensive bill of its kind in the nation, according to Laura Hanford, Senior Policy Analyst with the Heritage Foundation.
“Government agencies may not proactively solicit information from minors on the sexual orientation of gender identity of expression,” Click said at a news conference describing the provisions of the bill. “They may not compel parents to confirm a child’s false perceptions about their sex or about their so-called gender identity.”
The legislation would also prohibit agencies from contracting with organizations to provide educational materials that suggest it is harmful to affirm a child’s sex rather than confirm a child’s confusion about their sexual identity.
The bill also prohibits denying a person the right to serve as a foster parent “because they will not confirm the child’s misperception of being the opposite sex,” Click said.
The legislation was prompted by “radical gender ideology” which has infiltrated child protective services, Hanford said.
“Families across the U.S. have been torn apart in the shadows, torn apart by idealogues in state systems that were designed to protect children but are destroying them instead,” Hanford said at the news conference. “Teachers, social workers, judges, blinded by radical gender ideology have worked together to tear children from families who love them but refuse to destroy their bodies with hormones and surgeries or to call them by false pronouns.”
Five years ago, a student enrolled in a high school in Virginia and said she identified as a boy, Hanford said.
“The school never bothered to check the information the mother had shared about her fragile mental health but treated her as a boy and told her to use the boy’s restroom,” Hanford said. “She was badly bullied and assaulted in the boy’s bathroom, but the school kept her parents in the dark.”
Two days later, the student ran away, and she was “caught and trafficked by predators across state lines,” said Hanford.
When the FBI found her, the judge refused to return her to her parents, but was instead sent to a state-run home, Hanford said.
“Her parents were finally accused of abuse charges, but it was too late,” Hanford said. “None of the letters her mother wrote had reached her in custody.”
She ran away again and was “horrifically exploited,” before she was found in Texas, Hanford said.
“After she returned home, she told her mother she wasn’t really a boy,” said Hanford. “She had just wanted to make friends and thought that would help.”
