Texas father Jeff Younger is not losing hope in his custody battle for his twin 7-year old boys James and Jude. Younger’s ex-wife Anne Georgulas won sole managing conservatorship of the boys from a Dallas jury on Oct. 21. Georgulas seeks to affirm James’ transition to a girl, with the new name “Luna,” while Younger fights for a “wait and see” approach that he says could allow James to grow out of his alleged gender dysphoria.
“There is hope. The jury verdict basically kicked it back to the judge, and so the judge is going to be able to decide everything, and nobody will get a sole conservatorship,” Younger told The Epoch Times. Now, Democrat Judge Kim Cooks of the 255th Family District Court holds the family’s future in her hands at a Oct. 24 morning hearing in Dallas.
“The judge can decide all the conservatorship rights” including possession of the children, Younger said. “I’ll be a joint managing conservator, but you can be a joint managing conservator but only have notification rights not decision rights.” Younger noted that even if the judge does not change the current arrangement, Younger still would not be able to prevent his ex-wife’s medical decisions for his son. Younger and Georgulas had their children together through an egg donor.
Younger said that he hopes the judge will put him in charge of some decisions for his son, to allow him to take his son off the “affirming protocol,” which pushes the boy to double down on gender dysphoria, and put him instead on the “wait and see protocol,” which enables the child to grow out of the gender dysphoric mindset on his own.
Younger said that he expects to be held to a gag order on Oct. 24 preventing him from speaking to the press in the future. Younger is still in close contact with his two boys.
“My son doesn’t really know this conflict is going on. James is trying to basically make his parents love him, and he’s doing whatever it takes for his parents to love him. He dresses as a girl because he wants his mother to love him. Jude is confronted with an ethical challenge as a young man. When he goes to his mother’s home, he is lying. He is struggling with how he is supposed to lie,” Younger said.
“Unfortunately due to the publicity of this trial, a bunch of nutcases has sent threatening messages to the judge, which is not helping me,” Younger said. The perplexed father said that his ex-wife was a moderate liberal during their relationship who became a full-fledged leftist after they split.
“Hopefully the judge understands and won’t hold it against me like the jury did.”
“She went public first,” Younger said, claiming that his ex-wife posted photographs of his son in a dress on Facebook and on a work-related website.
“My experts testified to: if you have a kid who is gender dysphoric, and you don’t do anything, you don’t affirm him, maybe you let him do girl gender play within some limits, 80 to 90 percent of them just pass through it by the time they go through puberty,” Younger said.
“Of the children that go on the affirming approach, many, many more of them go on to medical transition, which is hormones and surgery. So the affirming approach presents all kinds of long-term risk to the child,” Younger said.
“She’s changed her tune. She just wants to affirm her son’s choices and let him be a girl—and the medical transition is off the table,” Younger of his ex-wife’s stated plans for their son. “The problem is, we presented at the trial all kinds of evidence that she does want to go on to medical transition, including a hormone suppression of puberty at 8 or 9.”
“The counselor treating my son referred James to the Genesis Clinic to ‘explore the medical side of treatment,’” Younger said.
Younger said that he might appeal if he loses the judge’s decision on Oct. 24.
As for what the jury’s verdict means to him, Younger expressed deep concern for the future of American society.
“We put up an email from Ms. Georgulas to me in which she contemplates removing the penis from her son. We showed that to the jury. They saw it 20 minutes before they went into deliberations, and when they came out they voted 11 to 1 against me. What that tells me is that conservatives can no longer rely on a social consensus that basically agrees with traditional family values,” Younger said.
“The two sides in this conflict in America—I used to call them liberals and conservatives, but what are conservatives conserving? There’s nothing left to conserve. They’ve lost every battle with the political left for the last 60 years. It’s a battle between liberals and traditionalists. It’s not a political ideology that is separating us, it’s not superficial beliefs about politics or policies. We are leading ontologically different lives, and those differences that we have are fundamentally irreconcilable. There can be no compromise,” Younger said.
“I think that the liberals and the traditionalists don’t even agree on what a person is. I think liberals think of a person as a collection of largely unconscious desires, and the body as a computer designed to satisfy those desires. Traditionalists think of a person made in the image of God, but has lost the likeness of God. And because of that image, it carries with it an indelible dignity that no political movement, no government, no circumstance, no tragedy, no triumph, can remove. That’s a totally different view of what a human being is, and the aim of what a good life ought to be,” Younger said.
“The society liberals want is a society of license. Liberalism cannot support social norms of any kind, and we traditionalists know that all societies are built on cultural norms. Fundamentally, we cannot reconcile. Sadly, the boundary line between traditionalists and liberals has driven right through my family.”
Anne Georgulas’ legal team did not return a request for comment by press time.
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