How a Texas Custody Battle Over a Trans Child Became the Latest Flashpoint for Conservatives

They’re conjuring up a phantom—a misleading but effective lie that has spread up to some of the highest levels of power

The judge overseeing their annulment case found that “Younger committed fraud by inducing Georgulas into marriage.” Georgulas was also awarded $45,045 to cover the costs of a truck she purchased but was sold by Younger after their separation.

According to the Dallas Morning News, both Georgulas and Younger had joint custody of their twins after the divorce, and Georgulas was given “the right to make decisions about the children’s medical and psychological treatment, among other issues, provided she notified Younger.”

Shortly after their marriage was annulled, Luna, then a three-year-old still known by her birth name, began expressing a desire to wear dresses. Georgulas took Luna to a therapist, who told her that Luna had gender dysphoria. More, from the Washington Post:

At that point, the father was paying maximum child support and had standard custody in Texas: He saw the twins once a week for two hours and had them sleep over at his apartment two weekends a month. They spent the rest of their time with Georgulas, who had noticed that the child, known by the name James at the time, wanted to wear dresses and look like the female characters from the Disney movie “Frozen.”

Georgulas took Luna to see a therapist, who diagnosed the child with gender dysphoria — a mismatch between the gender assigned at birth and the one they identified with. From there, the therapist laid out steps on how to make the child feel affirmed, like letting Luna paint their nails and putting them in a dress, as the mother did when the twins turned 5.

All of this is perfectly in line with standard practices in how to treat trans children; when Luna began attending elementary school, she presented as a girl. According to Georgulas and in line with their custody agreement, Younger was notified about all of this. Younger, however, refused to accept his child’s gender identity. In 2018, Georgulas filed a lawsuit to modify her custody arrangement with Younger, writing in her petition that “in response to Luna’s choices, the Father has engaged in increasingly aggressive behavior, including physical force, toward the Mother,” as well as “emotionally abusive behavior toward the child,” including bullying her about her hair, then cutting her hair, not using the correct gender pronouns, and refusing to dress her in gender-affirming clothing. She also asked for a restraining order to prevent Younger from approaching Luna’s school or telling other parents, students, and teachers at the school “that the gender of Luna is different than a girl, named Luna.”

It’s worth mentioning here that Georgulas wasn’t asking for sole custody of her twins; in her petition, she asked that the court merely limit Luna’s overnight stays with her father “if he fails to affirm Luna,” and order Younger to attend counseling or classes “associated with being the parent of a transgender child or a potentially transgender child.”

Younger responded, however, by asking for full custody of both Luna and her twin brother. Not content with keeping their legal battle inside the courtroom, he then launched a full-on media campaign, complete with a website run by a family friend by the name of Sarah Scott and an online fundraiser to ostensibly cover his legal costs. To date, he has raised more than $86,000 from almost 2,000 people.

Rightwing media quickly leaped on the story. The first major news article about Younger came courtesy of the Federalist, written by noted transphobe Walt Heyer, on November 26, 2018. As Heyer, who claims to have transitioned and then later detransitioned, wrote, he met Scott, who told him of Younger’s custody battle, on a trip to Texas. “If we do not save James from a misdiagnosis, his next step is chemical castration at age eight, only two years away,” Heyer wrote. (Heyer here is referring to puberty blockers, which are typically given to children, at the very earliest, at the age of 10; far from “chemical castration,” if one stops taking puberty blockers, one’s development continues as it would have in the absence of the blockers.)

Heyer’s article set off the conservative shitstorm and handwringing. A few days later, both a writer at the Christian Post and the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher, who writes often and alarmingly about what he calls “transgender mass hysteria,” wrote about Younger’s custody case. “I don’t care what the propaganda says, I believe that almost no parent would want their son or daughter to become transgendered,” Dreher wrote, warning darkly, like Heyer did, that Luna’s mother “can start chemical castration at age 8.”

Georgulas has remained relatively quiet; news articles have suggested that she would prefer to not make both her and her child the target of rightwing news attention. (As the Dallas Morning News reported, she “sought unsuccessfully to have the court file sealed.”) Meanwhile, Younger has done lengthy interviews with rightwing media outlets and shared videos of Luna in an effort to make his case, coming off less like a concerned parent and more like an outright bigot who should have no role in parenting any child, let alone a trans child. In an interview on a podcast, Younger described Georgulas’s affirmation of Luna as “sexual abuse” and “torture.”

But Younger has won, at least for now. On Thursday, two days after a jury ruled 11-1 that Younger should not get sole custody of Luna, the judge in the case made a startling, if typical, decision, essentially disregarding the jury’s guidance in favor of the state’s default standard. The two parents, she decided, would share joint conservatorship of Luna, giving Younger a say in how and when Luna will continue to transition, if she chooses to do so in the future.

Who doesn’t want to protect children, after all?

While we may not hear much more from Younger, at least directly—the judge in her ruling also imposed a gag order on him, preventing him from speaking to the media—he is already being lauded as a hero by the right. As for Georgulas, as Buzzfeed reported on Thursday, she may soon be the subject of an investigation by the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services, after the attorney general’s office, in a letter, urged the agency to “investigate possible child abuse” against Luna, “whose mother has proposed chemically and surgically altering his biological sex based on her belief that he may identify as a girl,” adding that DFPS should “protect the boy in question [from] permanent and potentially irreversible harm by his mother.” As the Texas Tribune noted, Assistant Attorney General Jeff Mateer, who authored the letter, once described trans children as part of “Satan’s plan.” Republican state representatives in Texas have already promised to introduce bills that would, as one put it, “add ‘Transitioning of a Minor’ as Child Abuse,” as well one that would prohibit the use of puberty blockers for children.

Conservatives, who have launched a full-on attack on trans rights as the new front of their war on LGBTQ rights, have come to realize that painting trans children as the supposedly unwitting victims of child abuse is a potentially winning issue. Who doesn’t want to protect children, after all? But it’s clear that this is less about the well-being of individual children and more about enforcing gender roles. Conservatives are heavily invested in this battle, and the futures of children like Luna will increasingly become little more than political fodder.