The head of a conservative anti-transgender group based in Langley slammed a recent court decision that banned the father from speaking out about the case of his transgender son.
The 14-year-old, identified as AB in court documents to maintain anonymity, asked the court to prevent his father, identified as CD, from giving interviews or speaking to social media groups about the case.
In an April 15 ruling, Justice Francesca Marzari agreed with AB and issued a protection order.
It restrains CD, the father, from attempting to persuade his son from abandoning ongoing hormone therapy, addressing AB by his birth name, or referring to AB as a girl or with female pronouns – either directly or to other people.
CD is also banned from directly, or through others, publicly sharing information about AB’s sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or medical status, except with lawyers involved in the case or doctors involved with AB’s care.
The protection order is set to last a year and could be extended by the court.
The social media group referred to by the judge is Culture Guard, organized by Langley’s Kari Simpson.
Simpson, who has been a conservative activist for decades, has posted interviews with the father on the Culture Guard website, with his back to the camera.
“In those interviews, CD refers to AB as female, and expresses both his rejection of the permanence of AB’s gender identity and his opposition to AB’s chosen course of treatment,” the judge explained in her ruling.
“CD expresses pleasure at the breadth of attention and publication his story is getting, and expresses hope that Breitbart and Fox News might also cover his story.”
The judge pointed to comments on one Culture Guard story included suggesting the abduction or disowning of AB. In another media outlet, commenters on a different article encouraged AB to kill himself.
The court case began with a battle over hormone therapy for AB, who has identified as a boy since he was 11.
CD objected to AB beginning the hormone therapy, and it was delayed for several months, until Justice Gregory Bowdon ruled earlier this year that it should go forward, for the mental health and well being of AB.
AB testified directly about the Culture Guard videos, saying he could not bear to watch them.
“I love my father,” AB testified. “I want to have his name as my middle name… But I cannot be around him unless he respects who I am and my gender identity. It messes with my head, and I cannot stand his berating me all the time.
“I am concerned for my physical and emotional safety around my dad, and very worried what he will do.”
A lawyer for AB, barbara findlay, said it’s uncertain whether previous videos posted on Culture Guard would fall under the judge’s order, but that lawyers for AB could make an application to have them removed.
Simpson posted a video about Marzari’s recent ruling.
“The April 8th proceeding had one objective – basically to silence the father,” Simpson said in a video posted April 10.
She criticized Marzari for the judge’s past involvement with West Coast LEAF (Legal Action and Education Fund), where Marzari was a board member and provided pro bono legal services, including arguing before the Supreme Court of Canada.
Simpson referred to LEAF as a “radical feminist association” and described it as “a very pro-abortion, murder-the-babies-while-in-the-womb kind of organization.”
She referred to transgender people as “men who want to pretend that they’re women.”
Simpson has come to prominence again in recent years for organizing opposition to the SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) course materials available in B.C. schools.
She has drawn controversy for protests that involved the Soldiers of Odin, and for saying she invited members of the Hells Angels to an anti-SOGI rally in Vancouver.
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