Jeff Younger is campaigning to be elected to the Texas House of Representatives to represent District 63 on a mission to change how the state of Texas handles family law.
He shared that his passion to focus on family law is the result of his divorce, in which he lost custody of his children and his say in the healthcare of his 9-year-old child.
“The judge took my kids away from me,” Younger said.
He knows firsthand how family court works because he experienced it personally.
“People don’t know that the family courts operate with no oversight from the higher courts,” Jeff Younger said in an interview. “You cannot appeal interlocutory judgments in the court. So, when a judge does this like the judge took my kids away from me, you can’t appeal. There’s no oversight by a higher court to double-check these judges, and that needs to change. We need to be able to appeal interlocutory judgments that affect children in family court.”
A previous ruling established a joint conservatorship between Younger and his ex-wife, Anne Georgulas.
However, according to Younger, last year Dallas County Judge Mary Brown granted the mother, Ms. Georgulas, sole decision-making power over the healthcare and education of their 9-year-old, who is being socialized as a girl against Younger’s wishes.
“The judge, Mary Brown in 301st District Court, took my children away from me last summer, precisely because I’m talking about this publicly,” Younger said. “She said because I’m telling people what they’re doing to my son, that I can’t see my children anymore. She’s allowed my son to be socially transitioned. They call him by a fake girl’s name.”
An Aug. 3, 2021 court order shows that while Georgulas was granted most parental rights, neither parent may treat the child with hormones or sex-reassignment surgery without both parents’ consent or court order.
While “gender-affirming care” can include mental health, medical treatment, and in some cases, hormone usage, sex-reassignment surgeries, also called gender-affirming surgeries, typically involve procedures such as orchiectomies, vaginoplasty, mastectomies, hysterectomies, and phalloplasty.
“Despite the order, Ms. Georgulas skirts to the very edge of legality,” Younger said of his ex-wife. “She covers James after his evening showers with transgender lotions that add estrogens to his body. She feeds him high estrogen foods. She dresses him in girl’s clothes. He goes to school as a girl. He uses the girl’s restroom. Ms. Georgulas and the school faculty teach James that he really is a girl. He is one court order away from chemical castration. Still, I’m grateful that she hasn’t been able to put him on puberty blockers or hormones.”
Reached on her cellphone, Georgulas declined to comment.
Younger wants to prevent childhood transitioning to ensure the same thing does not happen in other families.
“It should absolutely not be allowed to transition children in the state of Texas,” Younger said. “That needs to be illegal.”
Dr. Miriam Grossman, a child-adolescent psychiatrist, commented, “We have to be much more cautious and careful about medicalization instead of making it more available at an earlier age.”
She explained, “To become medicalized means to take puberty blockers, which is almost always followed by opposite sex hormones. That is the biggest decision that anyone is going to make in their whole lives. We’re talking irreversible physical changes like infertility and all sorts of secondary sex characteristics, such as voice lowering, which is permanent for girls.”
However, Michelle Beckley (D), who currently represents House District 65 and is campaigning for Lieutenant Governor, alleges that the practice of gender affirming care has been politicized.
“Our medicine in this country has progressed and that decision is between the family and their doctor,” Beckley told The Dallas Express. “A lot of this is because of the gerrymandering we have in Texas. If we had nonpartisan redistricting, we wouldn’t be affected by this. These kinds of topics would not come up.”
Gerrymandering is the process of manipulating election boundaries.
Beckley says if districts were more nonpartisan, it would help balance the scales when it comes to such divisive issues.
“Races would not be decided in the primary where oftentimes the more extreme policy wins,” Beckley added. “Competitive districts mean higher voter turnout where day to day issues are more important.”
If elected, Younger will replace Tan Parker as state representative for Flower Mound, Lewisville, and portions of Denton County.
“The state has determined that it owns your child, and the state is going to do with the children whatever they want, and that’s why I’m running for office in House District 63,” Younger said. “Part of my platform is to change how we deal with family law and to make significant changes to family law so that it’s very clear that parents are in control of their children’s lives even in divorce. Children don’t become wards of the state just because one parent wants a divorce.”
Younger’s priority will be introducing legislation that outlaws sex-altering surgery on children. Texas State Senator Bob Hall proposed similar legislation in Senate Bill 1311 last year, but it failed to pass.
“Establishment Republicans had big problems with criminal penalties for sexually mutilating kids,” Younger added.
Bob Hall told The Dallas Express that he tried very hard to get SB 1311 approved.
“I had the bill,” he said. “I carried the bill to stop the mutilation of kids under 18 years old. This is not a discrimination thing. This is protecting children because we know this gender dysphoria is something that does happen to kids. They get confused. God doesn’t make us all complete when we’re born. It’s something that happens over time with mental and organ development. It’s called puberty.”
Gender dysphoria, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is a condition of psychological distress experienced by individuals whose gender identities differ from the sex they were assigned at birth.
It’s possible that a child like Younger’s, who was determined to be a male at birth and is allegedly now being socialized as a girl, can still grow up to be heterosexual, according Dr. Grossman.
“But he’ll have a very hard time,” she said. “I think he’ll be very confused and that he’s being set up to have a hard time in life.”
Psychologist Dr. Ken Zucker told the Epoch Times that the results of two studies showed 88% of boys and girls who were experiencing gender dysphoria – but had not yet socially transitioned – later reported as teens and young adults that gender dysphoria was no longer an issue and they were comfortable identifying with the gender they were assumed to be at birth.
“We don’t let children under 18 get tattoos, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, or vote, and so, I cannot imagine why we allow their body parts to be cut off,” Hall added. “There was a great outcry about this, and the governor directed the head of Child Protective Services (CPS) to make it child abuse. Until that happened, the CPS policy was to treat parents that did not go along with a child’s desire to transition as child abuse. That was just the opposite.”
Warren Norred, who is campaigning for the District 10 Senate Seat, said that if he is elected and Hall re-introduces the same or similar bill, he would second the motion to enable a floor discussion.
“It is child abuse to take a child’s ephemeral feelings and change their gender based on that,” Norred told The Dallas Express. “Children have to be taught. Some of them are hardwired better than others, and the idea that we should let them make permanent changes to their body on the basis of shallow passing ideas is insane. The adults who think that are clearly not responsible people. It’s crazy.”