The conservative Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom has set its focus on a new issue, now coming for the new California law that offers legal refuge to transgender youths.
Alliance Defending Freedom works to curtail rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people and to slash women’s reproductive and health rights. The group wants to expand the Christian religion within schools and governments.
It is one of the most organized Christian legal interest groups in the U.S. according to its budget, caseload, and network of allied attorneys.
The group has come out staunchly against contraception, abortion, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that aims to legally protect transgender youths and their parents if they flee conservative states that have restricted access to gender-affirming care.
The bill seeks to “offer refuge” to trans minors and their families “if they’re being criminalized in their home states,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, who introduced the bill, said on Twitter after Newsom signed it.
Alliance Defending Freedom is against the bill.
Senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, Emilie Kao, told Fox News that he believes the new California state law is “a drastic overreach.”
Kao claimed that the bill violates parents’ rights to direct how children are brought up.
Wiener said states like Texas and Alabama “are seeking to tear these families apart,” referring to efforts in both states to bar parents from providing their trans children with medical care like puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called on the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to ““conduct a prompt and thorough investigation” of any reported instances of minors undergoing “elective procedures for gender transitioning.” He also encouraged anyone who works with children in the state and regular citizens to report parents providing such care.
The state courts have blocked most of the investigations that were opened.
In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill that makes it a felony for medical professionals to provide gender-affirming medical care to people under 19. A judge partially blocked enforcement of that law in May.
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