• What Happened: President Trump declared at the State of the Union that no state should be allowed to remove children from their parents for refusing to affirm a transgender identity.
  • Why It Matters: This is already happening. Courts in Indiana and New York have stripped parents of custody rights after they declined to affirm their child's transgender identity.
  • Bottom Line: Trump's statement puts the federal government on record against state-sponsored removal of children from parents over gender identity disagreements.

President Donald Trump said out loud at the State of the Union what millions of American parents have been quietly terrified about for years.

"Surely we can all agree that no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents' arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents' will," Trump told Congress on Tuesday night, warning that the state is gunning for our children.

This is not a hypothetical. It is already happening across the country, and in many cases it is happening specifically to families of faith.

In Indiana, Mary and Jeremy Cox had their teenage child removed from their home by the Department of Child Services after they declined to affirm their child's transgender identity based on their religious convictions. The Indiana Court of Appeals sided with the state, ruling that while parents have the right to exercise their religious beliefs, they cannot do so in a way the court deems harmful to a child. The Supreme Court declined to hear their appeal. A family that prayed together, raised their child in the church, and held fast to what Scripture teaches about how God creates human beings lost that child to a government agency.

In New York, Dennis Hannon lost primary custody of his nine-year-old son after objecting to a gender transition that had been occurring since the child was two without his knowledge. Courts ordered him to pay for gender therapy and eventually stripped him of medical authority over his own child entirely.

God ordained the family before He ordained government. The Book of Proverbs makes clear that it is parents, not the state, who are entrusted with training up a child. Deuteronomy charges mothers and fathers with passing faith, values, and truth to the next generation. No court, no legislature, and no ideology has the authority to override what God placed in the hands of parents from the beginning of creation.

Trump drew a clear line Tuesday night. Families of faith who believe God does not make mistakes when He creates a child in His image deserve the full protection of the federal government against a system that would punish them for that belief.

American parents have a God-given right to raise their children. It is long past time someone in Washington said so plainly.