ANDREA PICCIOTTI-BAYER: Gender Ideology Is The New ‘Parental Alienation’

Americans are locked in a crazy custody battle for their children – with the government.

The Biden-Harris administration and state governments, such as Gov. Tim Walz’s Minnesota, are supporting the attempts of gender ideologues to sever the parent-child relationship. As a result, we’re witnessing a sinister new form of “parental alienation.”

Often emerging during high-conflict divorce and custody proceedings, parental alienation is defined as “a strategy whereby one parent intentionally displays to the child unjustified negativity aimed at the other parent.” Its purpose is “to damage the child’s relationship with the other parent and to turn the child’s emotions against that other parent.” Inflicting parental alienation on a child is considered “on par with physical and sexual abuse” and treated as a form of child psychological abuse. Estrangement from a child is  devastating for the alienated parent.

Enter today’s trans-craze.

Abigail Shrier’s 2020 book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” highlighted the heartbreaking stories of parents of the adolescent girls seduced by this social contagion. Public schools, social media and ‘treating” professionals typically played starring roles in promoting the madness; parents, meanwhile, were often kept in the dark.

The tactics of gender ideologues who aim to distance confused children from their parents are akin to those used in nasty custody disputes. And it’s time to hold certain elected officials, like Harris and Walz, accountable for their roles in promoting the alienation.

For example, the Biden-Harris Department of Health and Human Services finalized rules earlier this year requiring states and tribal agencies to guarantee that children in foster care who identify as “LGBTQI+” receive “safe and appropriate care” by ensuring that a “designated placement” is available.

A prospective foster family can only be certified as a “designated placement” if they agree to (1) establish “an environment that supports the child’s LGBTQI+ status or identity,” (2) “be trained with the appropriate knowledge and skills to provide for the needs of the child related to the child’s self-identified sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression,” and (3) “facilitate the child’s access to age- or developmentally appropriate resources, services, and activities that support their health and well-being.”

Anyone unwilling to genuflect to these demands of gender ideology, including those who do so because of sincerely held Christian beliefs, is considered unqualified to care for LGBTQ-identifying children. In short, Christians need not apply.

One Christian foster family, the Harmons of Tim Walz’s Minnesota, were just barely able to escape this trans-insanity. Jay and Nancy Harmon fostered three sisters for two years before successfully adopting them last December. The girls endured unimaginable abuse and neglect at the hands of their biological parents. The eldest girl claimed to be “nonbinary” and officials said the Harmons were not the “right fit” to adopt the girls because of their Christian faith. It was only after the children’s therapist stepped in to recommend all three girls be adopted by the Harmons that officials backed down.

The girls were adopted last December.

The Biden-Harris standards for what constitutes “safe and appropriate care” for LGBTQ-identifying kids in our nation’s foster care system can easily be applied to the care and custody of all LGBTQ-identifying children. In fact, one mother from Kamala Harris’s California recently came forward to talk about losing custody of her daughter for a period of months because she was not “affirming.” The mother, widowed with two children, has pursued a career as a Christian counselor.

And what about avuncular Tim Walz, who claims to be a champion for youth? In addition to overseeing a social services program that put the Harmon family through unimaginable angst, Walz signed a new law that grants Minnesota courts “temporary emergency jurisdiction” during custody disputes, permitting it to ignore state lines if a child “has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care.” He has been celebrated for making Minnesota a “trans refuge.”

The New York Times recently “fact-checked” vice presidential hopeful and Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance for warning that the Minnesota law would “take children away from their parents if their parents don’t want to do sex changes.” Vance and concerned organizations were “unable to name a case in which that has happened, pointing instead to hypothetical scenarios,” asserted the Times. But the draconian law has only just taken effect. It’s only a matter of time before the cases start piling up.

With the election nearly upon us, it’s time to face the horrifying reality that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz back policies and practices that alienate confused children from loving parents in order to advance the interests of gender ideology. This is nothing less than government-sponsored parental alienation. The question now is whether we let it continue.

AndreaPicciotti–Bayer is director of the Conscience Project.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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