Child Removed From Home for Improper Pronoun Usage. Parents Have a Message for the Rest of the Country.

Child Removed From Home for Improper Pronoun Usage. Parents Have a Message for the Rest of the Country.

A Catholic couple in Indiana are seeking support from the Supreme Court in hopes that they will hold their state accountable after they took their child from their home after they declined to use his chosen name and pronouns. 

Mary and Jeremy Cox were investigated by Indiana officials after refusing to refer to their son using pronouns and a name inconsistent with his biological sex. They filed an appeal to a previous ruling with the Supreme Court, in M.C. and J.C. v. Indiana Department of Child Services. 

Becket, a law group focused on cases relating to religious liberty, is pursuing the case on the Coxes’ behalf. They argue that state courts allowed Indiana to keep the child from living in his parents’ home due to their disagreement with the child’s gender identity based on their religious beliefs. 

Following the investigation, Becket notes, The court dismissed “all allegations of abuse and neglect against them,” yet still refused to return their son to them, arguing that the disagreement over gender identity was distressing to their child. 

Lori Windham, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, told Fox News that no parent should ever have to endure what the Coxes have experienced.

“Keeping a child away from loving parents because of their religious beliefs — even when the state admits there was no abuse or neglect — is wrong and it’s against the law,” she said. “The Court should take this case and make clear that other states can’t take children away because of ideological disagreements.”

In 2019, the Coxes’ son told them that he identified as a girl. The parents, devout Catholics, believed that God created human beings with an immutable sex, and would not refer to him using different pronouns nor a new name. In addition, the Coxes believed their son was struggling with underlying mental health conditions, including an eating disorder, so they sought therapeutic care for both.

However, in 2021, Indiana officials began investigating the Coxes after it was reported that they were not referring to their child by his preferred gender identity. They removed the teen from his parents’ custody and placed him in a “gender-affirming” home. 

Indiana officials made unsubstantiated claims of abuse, claiming that the Coxes made the child’s eating disorder worse, despite the fact that it worsened after he was removed and placed in a transition-affirming home. 

“This is what every parent is afraid of,” Mary and Jeremy Cox said in a press release. “We love our son and wanted to care for him, but the state of Indiana robbed us of that opportunity by taking him from our home and banning us from speaking to him about gender.”

“We are hopeful that the Justices will take our case and protect other parents from having to endure the nightmare we did,” they added. 

When the case was first heard, Indiana officials argued that the child “should be in a home where she is accepted for who she is,” restricting the parents’ visitation time to a few hours once a week, which barred them from speaking to him about their religious views on human sexuality and gender identity. Even though the court determined the Coxes were fit parents, it upheld the removal of their child which was later upheld by the appeals court. 

“If this can happen in Indiana, it can happen anywhere,” Windham said. “Tearing a child away from loving parents because of their religious beliefs, which are shared by millions of Americans, is an outrage to the law, parental rights, and basic human decency. If the Supreme Court doesn’t take this case, how many times will this happen to other families?” 

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