I personally know the mother and child in the video below this picture. I know other families like theirs who are fleeing Texas because they have to choose between their transgender child’s right-to-life or stay in Texas.
The same is certainly true in parts of the Catholic Church although some parts are very welcoming. The way the Catholic Church fights for the unborn should be the same way they fight for lives like this child, her family, and other families like theirs. Thankfully, I think at least some of the Church is waking up, not just in the Catholic world but in other Christian traditions and even other religious traditions. Parents of LBGTQIA+ children shouldn’t have to leave their families, churches, communities, and their home states because The Religious Right wants to invoke terror on those children who have biological and psychological variances in gender and sexuality. Note that it is rare for a doctor of gender-affirming care to prescribe anything permanent to a child under the age of 18. The medical consensus doesn’t typically advise it. Most children under 18 are given reversible puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy in the adolescents years only if it’s needed. Yet, still, this is only the family’s business. Please watch this video and digest reality.
What amazes me is that I will show certain conservatives (not all) this and give life and death scenarios, yet they still judge. Even moreso, some even want the child and mother dead while calling themselves “Followers of Christ.” This mom and her child both have received death threats for going public with the truth of being “Trans in Texas.”
This is part of why I stay Catholic, to defend families like this from within the Church. I believe that when the Catholic Church is safe for families like this, society will be safe. Some trads are more concerned about “defending the teachings of the Church” than whether children like this live or die and are allowed to grow up safe from within their families and faith communities. Some trads call themselves “pro-life” as they do everything they can to shove God and the Church out of these Catholic families’ lives, destroy them, and push them into the hands of Religious trauma recovery where I serve part-time..
Being a parent of Neurodiverse children and practitioner, different is “my bag.” Disabled, Neurodiverse, and LBGTQIA+ children and their families are all I know. As I mentioned previously, the rate of of the LBGTQIA+ experience is 3 to 6 times higher in families who have children with other neurodiversity such as Autism. Yet again, many trads don’t want to hear such science.
As I told my Archbishop, I refuse to allow the Catholic Right to push out my family and families like ours. Serving in disability advocacy gave me the skills to fulfill the ultimate calling, being the pro-life advocate for disabled, Neurodiverse, and LBGTQIA+ children and their families in Churches, Schools, and society. Following science means they are all fully-included. If we don’t follow science, children will die.
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