Over the years, at various points, I’ve talked about the very long-running case involving Jeff Younger, his ex-wife Anne Georgulas, and their twin sons. A custody battle has unfolded for the better part of a decade concerning whether or not one of those twins — James, who’s now 12-years-old — should be allowed to “transition” into a girl. The boys’ mother thinks that’s a good idea, and she’s been pushing it for quite some time. The boy’s father has been fighting to prevent it from happening.

Already — based on these facts alone — this should’ve been the single shortest custody battle in the history of the American legal system. When one parent looks at a boy and says “that’s really a girl,” then the case is closed. That parent shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near her child, or any other child for that matter. The parent who has a basic grasp of reality is clearly more fit and capable than the parent who doesn’t.

But that’s not how Jeff Younger’s case has played out. Instead, in both Texas and California, there have been years of legal battles over custody. And last week, these legal battles came to a tragic but predictable conclusion, with a California court awarding full custody to Anne. She will now be free to raise her boy as though he’s a girl, including by chemically castrating him if she chooses to do so.

Those are the basic outlines of the case, which are about as disturbing as you can imagine. But as you look into the details, somehow it gets even worse. This is a legal battle that makes it very clear that Democrats and trans activists don’t simply aspire to take children away from their parents. This dispute reveals that, in our legal system, they can already do it — and they can do it pretty easily, as it turns out.

Before I get to all of those arguments, let’s start at the beginning. Jeff Younger married Anne in 2010. Both were members of the Orthodox Church. And almost immediately, there was a problem.

Younger explained what happened in a recent interview with Tim Pool. At the end of this clip, he mentions a video involving his son James. Watch:

 

This is a process that, according to Jeff, began when his son was just two-years-old. And he says it involved a lot of heavy-handed pressure from his wife, as well as some very deranged interpretations of his son’s behavior.

For example, according to Younger, his wife would tell his son that, if he wanted to stay out of trouble, he wouldn’t act like a boy. Not exactly subtle. Also, at some point, James apparently picked out a silver purse at Target that had a multicolored unicorn on it. The fact that a little kid thought that a shiny thing with a flying horse on it is cool, apparently means he’s a girl. He also selected a girls’ toy in a McDonald’s happy mail. This was some of the very thin and incredibly bizarre “evidence” that apparently led Younger’s wife to conclude that their son was really a girl.

By the time his son was three-years-old, Jeff could tell that this would be a case of “he said, she said.” So to protect himself and his son, he eventually shot that video on his iPhone. As you saw, it shows his son saying, very clearly, that his alleged “gender identity” was influenced in some way by his mother.

Younger has also said that his wife tried to enroll their son in a “gender clinic” in Dallas at age five. He stated last year that, “pediatrician records show that she intended to chemically castrate him at age 8 or 9.”

Eventually the litigation began in Dallas, as James’ school began facilitating his supposed “transition,” and his mother demanded that his father “affirm” his so-called “gender identity.” And in 2019, the court in Dallas made a number of findings that are very alarming, to say the least. For example, the court determined that:

The Mother changed James’ name to Luna on her own volition. The Court finds that the Mother asked the child if he still wanted to be called James. The Court finds that James did not initiate the conversation about having his name changed.

Of course, even if James had “initiated” a conversation about changing his name, it wouldn’t mean anything. Children will initiate a lot of conversations that don’t demand the immediate affirmation of their parents — or any kind of affirmation whatsoever. My five-year-old recently initiated a conversation about having candy for breakfast. But the conversation didn’t last very long. The answer was no, and that was that. Yet in this case, the court found that James didn’t even bring up the idea of changing his name. Obviously, that’s an idea that was forced on him.

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There’s a lot of other disturbing information in this court ruling, too. Keep in mind as you hear this, we’re talking about a boy who’s seven-years-old at the time of this ruling:

The Court finds Dr. Albritton [a psychologist and expert witness] stated when the boys were brought by their Mother for a joint interview, James presented wearing high heels and dress and he was a little overdressed. Your typical girl might be wearing leggings and sandals, but he seemed to be pretty dramatic in his dress. And [the doctor] experienced the same thing when he went to the house.

This is a phenomenon that we see all the time with adults who identify as transgender. They’re preoccupied with appearing as women, and so they try to match every conceivable feminine stereotype that comes to mind, all at the same time. These are the same people who supposedly reject the idea of a gender binary. But then you’ll find them with overdone eyelashes, tons of makeup, tacky dresses and a framed poster of “Legally Blond” on their wall, all because they’re desperate to conform to their cartoonish perception of womanhood. And in this case, that was happening to James — except clearly, James wasn’t responsible for it. It wasn’t something he was doing, but rather something being done to him.

And there’s evidence, in this court ruling, that James’ mother wasn’t just interested in making his child “look” like a girl. There are indications that his mother also wanted to chemically castrate him, as well — or at least that she was open to the idea:

The Court finds that when the Mother was asked, With regards to puberty blockers, it is a very big deal. It is a very significant decision for parents and families to make. Q: Shouldn’t sterilization only be done if it is to save patient’ life? A: No.

In other words, it’s fine to sterilize children in order to affirm whatever they say their “gender” is.

The result of this Dallas case from 2019 was that joint custody was awarded. Both parents had to agree before any medical decisions were made involving their son, including any alleged “gender transitioning.” In her ruling, the judge faulted the mother for pushing too hard to complete this transition. And she faulted Jeff for going public with the dispute and raising money off it, even though that seems like a pretty reasonable thing for a father to do under these circumstances.

Later on, there was apparently an incident in school in which James told the school counselor that he didn’t want to be a girl anymore.

Somehow, Jeff was blamed for this, and he lost custody of his son. Watch:

So he lost all contact with his son because of this incident. That’s what the courts determined would be the ‘just” outcome.

Even after this ruling, however, Texas courts still didn’t allow Younger’s ex-wife to chemically castrate their child. And she agreed, in her interactions with the court, that she wouldn’t do it. That was the red line here. And it held up throughout these proceedings.

But then, in September of 2022, Younger’s wife fled with her two sons to California, which had just passed a so-called “sanctuary state” law. It allows parents to take children to California for the purpose of “transitioning” them, without fearing legal repercussions. In response, Younger immediately went to the Texas Supreme Court, requesting an order for the children to be returned to Texas.

But the Texas Supreme Court refused, saying it was mere speculation that Younger’s wife would attempt to castrate his children. After all, she had agreed not to do so. Of course, the ruling was ridiculous. There was no “speculation” here. California was inviting parents to come there to castrate their kids. And Younger’s ex-wife was accepting the invitation.

Then the inevitable happened. A superior court judge in California awarded Younger’s wife full custody of their children — including the authority to pursue so-called “gender affirming” treatments, such as chemical castration. As Jeff wrote in a statement:

I lost all parental rights to my sons. Goodbye, boys. Perhaps, we will meet when you are adults. California Judge Juhas gave my ex-wife authority to castrate my son, James. All contact with my boys must be supervised. I won’t do that… Let my story be a cautionary one for young men. Fathers have no rights to their children. Do not enter the family law system.

Now, the fight isn’t actually over. Jeff will keep up the battle in the courts. He’s also calling on the incoming Trump administration to do whatever it can to halt these procedures in hospitals nationwide, including in the state of California. Trump has already promised to issue an executive order, “instructing every federal agency to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age.” This is the kind of order that, very quickly, can lead to the end of so-called “trans medicine.” Congress also needs to take up a federal ban on gender mutilation of children. It should be a top priority of the next administration. But for now, this where things stand, legally.

In his statement, Younger didn’t just discuss the legal and personal ramifications of this case, as serious as they are. He also made a broader point, calling his case a “cautionary tale for young men.” He told them not to, “enter the family law system.”

In previous posts, Jeff has elaborated on what he means by that. For example, a couple of weeks ago, he wrote:

Men now refuse to marry. Most are forgoing children. A huge movement is forming of single men using surrogates to have children. It is a rational response to the terrible laws governing marriage and divorce in family courts. My sons have experienced the loss of their father, seen the courts try to destroy their father, observed their father’s effective enslavement to the state, watched endless humiliation rituals against their father, and watched their mother orchestrate it all. Tens of millions of young men have observed the same thing in their families. They are not going to marry into a totalitarian system like Family Court. No amount of theology or argument will overcome their own experience and observations.

No one who’s familiar with the details of Jeff Younger’s case can deny that he’s correct about the family court system. This has been a completely irrational and entirely unjust series of proceedings, to the point of cruelty and barbarism. And indeed, what happened here is very much a cautionary tale.

But I think it’s important to say one thing, which is that the moral of the story here isn’t that men should avoid marriage. To give up on marriage is to give up on the family, and giving up on the family is giving up on human civilization itself. We are in a fight for our civilization. We cannot win the fight with an unconditional surrender, which is what it would mean for us to abandon the family.

The moral of the story, then, is that young men must be absolutely sure that they are marrying women whose fundamental values are totally aligned with their own.

Speaking personally, there is essentially a zero percent chance that my wife would ever try to take any of my sons and do this to them. She’d rather be dead. She feels just as strongly as I do about the subject. If you’re a single man and the woman you’re dating is not that solidly opposed to this kind of medical abuse, you should run in the other direction as fast as you can. To be clear, that’s not a criticism of Jeff Younger in any way. There are very few fathers on this planet who can begin to comprehend what he’s experiencing right now, and what he’s experienced for the past decade. We have no real insight into his relationship with his ex-wife, beyond what we have from court documents and what he says in interviews. 

But it’s critical to point out that, in general, this kind of outcome isn’t inevitable. Yes, the goal now is to change the laws (and the legal precedents) so that nothing like this ever happens again. And there’s a very real possibility that the Trump administration will accomplish that. At the same time, young men need to think about what they can do to avoid a situation where they have to rely on the government to protect their parental rights in the first place.

Yes there are cases where you might marry someone who then proceeds to turn into a totally different person, in a way that was utterly unforeseeable. That can happen. Anything can happen. Whether that is what happened in Jeff Younger’s case, I truly don’t know. But in the vast, vast majority of cases, that is not how it works, because that is just not how human beings work. In almost every case where your wife turns out to be a radically self-centered, far-Left, feminist whack job, it’s because she always was all of those things. In most cases, people do not mutate into monsters out of nowhere. They were always monsters. All you have to do is pay attention, and be willing to notice the warning signs.

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Is it technically possible that my wife could go insane and wake up tomorrow, or in ten years, as an avid proponent of child castration, abortion, and other horrors? Well, I can’t say it’s impossible, in the sense that adding two plus two to make ten is impossible. It’s technically possible that my wife goes insane in that way, to the exact same degree that it’s technically possible that I go insane in that way. Maybe I suffer some sort of traumatic brain injury that has that effect, or maybe I fall into a vat of acid and that’s how I become a super villain. It’s possible, technically, but I’m really not worried about that happening — in my case or hers. A lot of things are technically possible but you don’t change your behavior because of it. It’s technically possible that my house could collapse on us tonight and kill everyone inside it. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to force my family to sleep outside.

In almost every case where a house suddenly collapses, it’s because there were structural problems that you could easily notice — or should have noticed — before disaster struck. And in almost every case where your wife turns out to be a horrible beast — or if you’re a young woman, your husband — there were plenty of warning signs. Just pay attention to those. And marry someone who aligns with you on the most fundamental issues. A person whose foundational values are in full agreement with your own. This will give you a very, very good chance of avoiding great heartache down the road.

None of that is to blame Jeff Younger for anything, certainly. He has been in a valiant battle to save his son. I have immense respect and sympathy for him. My point is just to give a word of advice to any young single people who hear these kinds of stories and feel understandably terrified by them. As Jeff Younger would be the first to tell you, you have to put yourself in a situation where you won’t have to rely on the court system or the government.

Hopefully the laws will continue to change in the direction of sanity and protecting children from abuse. But in the meantime, you’re on your own. Act accordingly.