This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The justices on the Supreme Court are being asked to intervene in a case in which a child was taken from his parents when their religious beliefs "distressed" him.
According to Becket, the Catholic couple, from Indiana, is asking to hold the state accountable for taking their son and keeping him.
Their offense?
They would not refer to their son with pronouns and a name inconsistent with his biological sex.
Leftist bureaucrats across the nation, under Joe Biden's leadership, have tried to make promoting transgenderism mandatory, even for parents. They fiddle with the regulations and rules until they can define NOT promoting transgenderism as child abuse, and then use their own definitions to take confused and troubled children away from concerned parents.
The state of Indiana "investigated" Mary and Jeremy Cox, and then took the child.
The state kept him after determining that they disagreed with the child, motivated by their religious beliefs, about human sexuality.
"With the help of Becket and attorney Joshua Hershberger, the Coxes today filed their reply brief at the Supreme Court, asking the justices to take their case," the legal team explained.
Their case developed starting in 2019 when their son said he identified as a girl.
"Because of their religious belief that God creates human beings with immutable sex—male or female—they could not refer to him using pronouns and a name inconsistent with his biology. The Coxes also believed that he needed help for underlying mental health concerns, including an eating disorder. To address both issues, they provided therapeutic care for their child’s gender dysphoria and scheduled appointments with a specialist to help him with the eating disorder. In 2021, Indiana began investigating the Coxes after a report that they were not referring to their child by his preferred gender identity. Indiana then removed the teen from the parents’ custody and placed him in a home that would affirm his preferred identity," the lawyers explained.
"This is what every parent is afraid of. 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," the parents said in a statement.
Indiana officials have claimed the child needs to be in a home where adults go along with his claim to be a girl.
As the case developed, the state abruptly admitted that there was no abuse, but instead claimed their faith-based beliefs were "distressing" to their son.
A lower court agreed that the state should take the boy, and imposed a gag order on the parents.
"If this can happen in Indiana, it can happen anywhere. 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,” said Lori Windham, vice president and senior counsel at Becket.
