America


Gender-Changing Kids a New Weapon in Custody Disputes


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Judges overrule parents opposed to surgeries. BY ALICE GIORDANO


n a disturbing trend, parents in divorces are successfully using claims that their children need gender-transition treatment as a


means to win sole custody. A review by Newsmax of custody


disputes across the U.S. shows that family court judges favor parents who push for their children, some as young as 8, to take puberty blockers or undergo even more drastic mea- sures, such as gender reassignment surgery — this, despite expert opin- ion to the contrary. If both parents oppose gender transitioning their kids, some family court judges transfer custody to the state so treatments can begin. “The best interest of the child has


been replaced by the liberal interest in the child,” California mom Abigail Martinez told Newsmax. In 2019, her 19-year-old daughter


Yaeli Galdamez committed suicide by lying in front of a high-speed train. Four years earlier, a family court


judge awarded custody of Yaeli to the state of California after her school reported Martinez to child protection services for not abiding with its push to transition the teenage girl to a boy. Among the documents detailing Martinez’s battle with the legal sys- tem are emails and texts showing the girl wanted out of the court-ordered gender-transition treatments long before they stopped. More recently, a New York dad lost custody to his ex-wife over tran-


28 NEWSMAX | FEBRUARY 2025


sitioning their 5-year-old son. Dennis Hannon was not only


stripped of custody by a family court judge over his objections, but he was also ordered to pay $145 per session for his son’s gender-transition ther- apy.


When the therapy sessions didn’t


end with a diagnosis of gender dys- phoria for the kindergartener, the judge’s answer was to strip Hannon of medical decision-making author- ity over his son. A Chicago judge stripped Jean-


nette Cooper of custody after she objected to her ex-husband’s push to transition their 12-year-old daughter to a boy. The judge ruled Cooper, who had


primary custody, was depriving her daughter of “a medical necessity.” Cooper called the ruling the result


of a “social contagion.” California attorney Erin Friday


is the founder of Our Duty USA, an international group dedicated to providing legal representation to parents on the losing side of gender- transition custody rulings. She told Newsmax it’s not by simple error or lack of information that judges are stripping custodial rights from parents opposed to gender-transition


treatment for their children. “They are being specially trained


that parents who do not gender affirm should not get the children,” she said. “Parents against gender treatments don’t stand a chance in custody disputes.” Friday started her organization


after finding herself in her own unex- pected fight against what she called a well-oiled network to transition her otherwise “pretty girly” 12-year-old daughter. She described an entire cottage


industry, or what she called a “cabal,” that is cashing in on the gender-tran- sition custody movement — from court-ordered therapists to creators of trans-educational curriculum. A constitutional argument in


favor of transitioning the genders of children is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court. Behind the challenge are three Tennessee families asking the court to render a state law banning gender- transition treatments of minors as discriminatory. The Volunteer State is one of 26


that have passed laws banning or restricting gender-transition care of minors. Another is Alabama, where parents of “trans kids” have also


A Chicago judge stripped Jeannette Cooper of custody aſter she objected to her ex-husband’s push to transition their 12-year-old daughter to a boy.


IURII KRASILNIKOV


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