approves of it strongly james told you that his mother dresses him and girl's closing uses hair clips puts nail polish on him was that was my immediate reaction would be to get in touch with his mom and ask why you do that why was what was an explanation did you have to talk about it. well 1st of all i just wanted to verify and i sent her a text and you know are you actually telling james that he's a girl and she's just replied simply yes and then refused to talk to me about it. then the next time that it became an issue was when when he had his sort of coming out party she took him to his 5th birthday party and address she just essentially wouldn't speak to me about it but is it normal that because you are just as much a parent as she is is it normal that yes as an answer and off for for for your son to be heading towards a gender change no it's absolutely not normal i'm

a joint managing conservatory in texas and that means that we share parental rights but there was one key parental right that the court did not give me and it was the right to consent to psychiatric and psychological treatment and that's kind of how she's gotten around she's saying that this is psychiatric treatment and so i have no rights in that regarding this issue with my son. so james being dressed as a girl his name was changed to lou now he did girls' bathroom at school so if everything goes ahead like james his mother wants your 7 year old boy it will be given puberty blocking hormones and in a couple of years will undergo sex change surgery. i mean it's kind of hard to ask but how does it make you feel. look i consider this to be child abuse and the sexual mutilation of children on a on an industrial scale so it makes me feel terrible i can't believe that

a mother would do this to her son and i cannot believe that the state of texas would allow it and sanction but we have clinics right here in texas the do sex changes on children all the time so your ex-wife face accusing you of child abuse towards james what exactly is she implying by abuse she's saying that it's psychologically abusive to james i will not affirm his fake female identity and she has gone to court and file that what's called a motion to modify it's a thinly veiled parental termination request saying that i have to go to a transgender education class if i don't attend a class or achieve satisfactory marks then i can be jailed for contempt i can be jailed if i use male pronouns for james or show him in public as a boy or if i cut his hair in a boy's hairstyle. and if all those things if i do any of those things she wants

them to essentially allow no overnight stays only a few days a month saying my son she wants to remove all and my influence from his life but you're saying that when he's with you he never ever wants to dress like a girl or are like act like a girl could he be that when he's with you he's afraid to be a girl like you're saying he's afraid to be a boy with his mom well you know i've had people ask me this but here's here's a good way to understand how that couldn't be true james dresses as a boy at his mother's house when i go to pick him up from his mother's house he comes out of the house some boys clothing so he's comfortable wearing boy's clothes at his mother's house and at my house he's just uncomfortable being a girl in front of his father and i would just say what red blooded texan boy wouldn't be uncomfortable doing that. so james has a twin brother did it ever occur to you why and who is a patrician sorry treating only one of the boys like a girl she has

a certain parenting pattern which i probably can't go into we'll talk about it at trial but she tends to pick a loser child than a winner child and james is the one who got the attention i mean she was reading him books on transgender kids when he was really young and setting them up as heroes for him as as young as 2 of the what but how are the boys communicating with each other they become extremely adept at knowing what pronouns to use and what home although i have i have had interesting problems you know we're orthodox christians and my son jude has a lot of trouble understanding why he has to lie at his mother's home because we're we're commanded not to lie and we were out with i'm teaching my sons how to track animals like i learned when i was a boy so we're we're tracking rabbits and we get pretty dirty out by the creek we're taking a shower and the boys are good men and just points down at james and says look at these and he's not a girl he's a boy why do after column

a girl and under my car under the current orders i am under from the court i actually can't answer that question i'm i'm legally prohibited from trying to convince james that he's a girl i mean a boy but have you and so i didn't answer the question have you ever asked him to do you want to be a girl have you ever posed a question to him. and he says no he likes being a boy and all of his best friends are boys they're their favorite activity is wrestling. so if that's what he says in court why is court so adamant citing the mom well what he actually it's a great question so one what he's actually told the court so the court. asked us to take them to social services and let the boys express their preferences and what james said was he wants to be a girl his mom's home and avoid his dad's home. so years we want both his parents to love him. you know badly in court for full custody over james but as of now you

can't call james by his name can't dress him with male pronouns can't share your thoughts with a how do you to communicate. so the temporary orders that i'm under before you go to final trial actually do allow me to address them as james and use male pronouns but i cannot do that in front of 3rd parties who know him as a girl so basically i can't go to school i keep him away from any friends he might have at school that know him as a girl and in my home he's known as james and i use male pronouns what i'm prohibited from doing right now is trying to convince him that he's actually a boy that's that's prevented me from teaching him traditional orthodox christian teachings on sexuality and gender i can let him go to sunday school at my church st john the baptist church and you busy texas and you know i'm even a little trepidation about reading from the book of genesis you know as we go through our bible readings after pasko so i've had

a lot of trouble communicating with them on religious issues and on basic things that you would expect you know you do have to teach boys issues around self-control how they should deal with women older women being respectful to females of their peer group you know it's very difficult for me to figure out how to do this without violating that order. but you were able to do that with your other son right. yes yes so thank goodness james models a lot of his brother so and they're very close right oh very close very very close for what i understand your x. spouse on has got the school and doctors on her side who supports you you have. so one of the one of the issues is that many of the christian foundations you know we talk to allies defending freedom for example they're the ones who defended the baker of colorado. they really don't get involved in family law cases because

family courts are basically lawless they just don't fall statutes they're willing to help us when we get to the appeals level what we have done is we have found experts in the canal adjusts pediatric endocrinologist psychologists who have a deep understanding of what the actual transgender research shows and they're prepared to testify that the basic claims that and george wallace is making about my son are false. how far are you ready to go to fight for james being a boy there are no limits to a show go to protect my son one of the one of the big problems that that i'm going to face eventually is in the state of taxes right now the courts position is that all of this is medical child support. so i have to pay for him to go to you know a therapist who's teaching him that he's a girl i have to pay for the hormone suppression of puberty which actually

chemically castrate boys and prevents the growth of their sexual organs and if he goes onto a surgical transition that would be medical child support as well that have to pay for that and the simple fact of the matter is you know parents over their children at a very minimum not to harm them and i'm not paying for any of this i'm not going to participate in abuse of my son and the way. i mean i don't know how it works in america exactly bikini theoretically take it to the supreme court. well everyone i've talked to fully expects that this case will go to the texas supreme court. i would not be surprised if after that it goes into the federal court and could make its way up there everyone i've talked to including people at the attorney general's office says that they fully expect it will go to the texas supreme court i can assure you that whoever wins on october 15th whoever wins that trial it will be appealed and whoever wins the appeal it will be appealed to the supreme court of

texas there's no question about it one of the reasons this case is so interesting to a lot of the legal authorities is my son does not present exclusively as one gender hicks' he has a normal gender self identity with me and he has an abnormal so gender self identity with his mother and so it's the question here is how do the courts decide how or how should the law decide what should be the role of the courts in deciding how the parents work through a disagreement about that. well jeff i wish it courage and from the bottom of my heart i wish for the outcome to be the best possible for your kids thank you for sharing your story i think you were talking to jeff who is struggling to keep his 70 james a boy they break will discuss sex change their opinion for children sociologists already stay with us.

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when my father. we have to do. i think.

it's an indication of how. we move towards we are. winning because we have the people in power but we are. as u.s. russia relations remain in a deep freeze europe is taking a different path when it comes to russia some are calling it. the u.k. regarding hong kong indeed old colonial hobbits. through. the.

same situation. that. and we're back in the studio discussing gender reassignment therapy for children before the break we were talking to jeff younger who is fighting to keep his 7 year old son a boy and now we're joined by sociologist frank furedi to discuss the ongoing debate on whether young children should be subject to

a sex change treatment frank furedi welcome to the show really really great to have you with us i know i've just interviewed a man who's 77 year old son identifies as a girl when with his mother and the boy with his father how often do children get confused by their own parents when it comes to the issue of gender identity. well i mean kids are always confused about who they are even at the best of times. i think what what has happened is that because of a very powerful culture of. gender identification which encourages people i think to be confused about who they are. it has meant that children are very often. you know react very differently between who they are for example if you chart if you if you think your mother. is so open

minded that doesn't care whether you are as a boy you remain a boy that you might play up to that and you kind of play the role of somebody who's very confused about their identity if you've got a father who's fairly clear that his son who's born biologically is a boy is a boy then the boy will behave differently with him because a lot of the time that the cop on the signals parents give them that you've been saying that parents who avoid assigning a biological gender to their children are irresponsible because they make it even more difficult for their kids to identify themselves with a certain gender what should parents do i mean where is the balance between guiding children and developing their gender identification and imposing gender roles on them. well i think that there's a very big difference between children sex. or are born either boys or as girls

in almost every single instance i think that parents at that point need to bring them up as either boys or as girls. and see how things evolve i think it's wrong for parents to become preoccupied by gender identity it's not something that the vast majority of children ever think about very much it's not something that they experiment with to begin with i think that the danger today is is that we have a very strong political and cultural pressure on the part of parents to be much more relaxed about the boundaries that used to exist between boys and girls and as the boundaries are questioned so a lot of parents get confused and i think the job of parent is to wait and see and if it is is the case that when a girl or a boy decide that the age of 14 or 15 that maybe there's something other than.

the biology dictates then the parents can make a judgment call that it's a different judgment call in every case and there's no formulaic way of dealing with this that parents are transgender children often explain that at the age of 2 or 3 their children clearly say that they are the opposite sex can you really take what a 3 year old kid tells you for app proclamation of gender identity. when they're if you're sensible i think as i don't let's me know that children see a lot of things that or. just momentarily illusions at the age of 2 or 3 we obviously have to listen to them but we don't know that 23 year olds dictate to us how their child is going to evolve and how this should be. treated by adults i think very often what a lot of parents get confused by is that both boys and girls very often. want

to be maybe one to want to play a different kind of roles for example i know my own son when he was 3 for love ballets and dressed up in pink and even insisted that we get him a dog but these days if a teacher or and i both seized them i draw the conclusion that my son was actually . gender wise a girl a potential woman whereas in fact he was just merely experimented pretty much in the way that a lot of young girls are dumb boys and they like playing and pretending that they're boys that's the normal way that children a lot of and it's very important that we don't rush and make premature judgements about those things well yeah because i mean if a kid announces that they're a lizard or a cat or i don't know a poke him on does that mean that the parents will have to like support their child's freedom of expression and will have to like treated accordingly it's absurd

. it is a very i think that. parents should have the freedom to make judgment calls us to what they do very often you don't necessarily want to thwart a child aspiration of death at all possible but if you think that their particular demand that they put upon you if they want to play in a particular kind of way is not something you think is good for them then you as a parent are totally entitled just to say no because you're now gold or alternately responsible for the male being of their child you know it's your duty to make sure that they go in the right kind of direction and at the moment unfortunately a lot of parents are encouraged to award the taking responsibility. assuming a duty for their well throw their children handed over to all kinds of professionals and this is i think one of the reasons why transcultural is

flourishing so much in the western world so being different has always been like a cult thing among young people you know someone attention other kids it's just a form of protest against any authority let it be school or parents and as trance culture increasingly gains ground as questioning gender just become a new ways so to speak or breaking the system for some kids. you know i think you're right i remember when i was doing some lectures in the states. i'm not i met mary i met parents who were very proud of the fact that they were trans killer a transgender and what they were really proud about was that they thought this was really cool this is very edgy the children weren't being conformist they made their own way they decided who they wanted to be and for them this was a really wonderful really wonderful development and i think in many respects they

were complicit in creating a context in a situation where the children got a child is almost incentivized to identify in this particular way to gain attention and validation and recognition. so you think critical of schools in scotland for keeping parents out of the loop if their child was hinted at willingness to change sex however there are some families where children are suppressed by their parents for a multitude of reasons can you really blame any school for stepping in if they fear for the child well i think this is a very important question because. you know mothers and fathers have got some very difficult judgments to make very often they do thing is. children and i do think it's in the kids' best interests. that a lot of people might not approve of and one of the problems that we have is at the moment parents are being continually survey did being judged. and people

overlook the fact that most of the time 99100 the mother and the father knows far better what's in the real interest of a child than anybody else i think that to understand a child you have to a relationship with that child you got to live with that child and that's what parents do and what i'm really worried about is that this intimate important relationship between 2 generations gets to some extent undermined and destroyed when teachers or other professionals. or to that somebody imagine that they know better than the parent what the kid needs and i think if you go down that road then the very fabric of the family will be seriously weakened and diminished so in some schools children are obliged to wear gender neutral uniforms like in france they switched out mom and dad for parent one and 2 so that their peers with same sex

parents don't feel discriminated. modern society is promoting freedom of expression all over the place but is this freedom ending up suppressed at the he has to political correctness and gender equality. it's very paradoxical because. despite all the claims that we support the freedom of expression. what we are really saying is that some forms of expression are supported freely others are closed down and for example there are many people with religious convictions. ability to express their religion freely for to to speak when they tried to bring up their children in accordance with their religious beliefs are prevented from doing so so for example in england. jewish people and muslim people have been told that they're not allowed to segregate goes from boys or keep them in

a different part of fast so that's not allowed but other forms of expression are and to me what we are really doing here is kind of creating a double standard whereby it's perfectly ok for you to sort of be gender neutral and to celebrate gender neutrality but if you actually believe that there's a fundamental difference between boys and girls or at least an important difference between boys and girls and you want your boy to be a boy and a girl to be a girl and not neutral that's frowned upon and that's kind of criticized and in some cases it is criminalized so i think there's a double standard here and i for one i'm of the belief that at the end of the day gender neutrality can be a very dangerous idiology because it basically destroys the particularity of human being is the difference between you and me or important and to eradicate that and

just to say well it's the same thing that's of this neutral approach to human life actually destroys the wonderful element of difference that part that's part and parcel of our humanity. sank is so much for this wonderful inside were talking. and. problem 1st. that's. next time.

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so the temporary orders that i'm under before i go to final trial actually do allow me to address them as james and his male pronouns but i cannot do that in front of 3rd parties who know him as a girl so basically i can't go to a school i keep them away from any friends he might have at school that know him as a girl and at my home he's known as james and i use male pronouns what i'm prohibited from doing right now is trying to convince him that he's actually a boy. and that. we. don't see them. even some of the.

headlining this hour on r t the u.k. government told us an investigation after an embarrassing leak of diplomatic cables which describe ministration as and that clumsy and dysfunctional. protesters gather for a 2nd consecutive day in the georgian capital tbilisi to vent their anger over a local t.v. host a vicious explained to phil denunciation of the russian president. united states launches a new strategy to counter what it calls the kremlin's malign influence during a sharp response from moscow which has branded the initiative and see russian propaganda also ahead of your for you right now. alex gale a 7 year old boy in the u.s. state of texas is caught up in a bit of cuss.