When a couple learn they’ve become parents, one of the first things they do — even before the baby arrives — is think of a name. It’s a big deal, often involving long debates and family traditions. In the case of a first child, the planning that go into it sometimes make D-Day look like a walk on a beach. Naming a child is one of the most serious, life-shaping choices parents make.
Enter California.
A bill (A1084) making its way through the state Legislature seeks to insert the state into the name process. It’s part of a trio of bills whose cumulative effect is to usurp parental rights.
A1084 changes procedures for people wanting to change their names (and state vital records) to “conform to their gender identity.” In the case of minors, it directs a state court to expedite such changes within two weeks if the name change petition is countersigned by all “living parents.”
If either parent does not sign the petition, the court is directed to do whatever it thinks suffices to provide “actual notice” to that parent of the request. It says the name change should be granted except for “good cause.” Lest there be no question, the bill explicitly says objection to gender transition is not “good cause.”
At first glance, the bill seems to suggest that it is addressing a dissenting parent. “Legislative Counsel’s Digest” speaks of cases where both parents refuse to sign on. Even there, presumably, the child’s request may be granted despite the parents’ wishes.
What’s wrong with this picture? At least four things.
First, by continuing the enshrining of gender ideology into state law, it makes state vital records lie. “Sex” ceases to have any real meaning; it becomes a conventional title, almost like a name, “assigned at birth.” State records do not conform to reality.
Second, by empowering minors to unilateral action on name changes, the bill makes a mockery of the status “minor.” The bill itself provides for adults to file name changes without objection. If objection to gender ideology is not a legitimate cause for a parental objection to stand, what is? A minor who can effectuate a name change but still remains a minor in parental care means that California deprives parents of their rights but not their obligations towards that minor. (There’s no doubt some legislators might welcome stripping such “non-affirming” mothers and fathers of their parental rights.) Why can’t the minor wait until 18?
Third, by interfering with the name parents gave a child, the state is making itself a de facto “co-parent.” What A1084 essentially says is that if the parents and child disagree over a name, the third “parent” — California — gets to decide. Even if only one parent dissents, California makes itself the party that decides what should be an intramarital/intra-parental matter. Maybe, in deference, all parents should now give their offspring the middle name “Gavin.”
Fourth, by inserting itself between parents who disagree over their child’s proposed name change, California destabilizes marriages. Not only does the state decide which parent’s views “count,” but — as noted — it likely also prejudices views about “fitness” of that dissenting parents in matters like custody or visitation should the marital situation degenerate thanks to California making marriage into a ménage-à-trois. California makes itself a co-parent but not a marriage counselor.
If this bill is ever enacted, its constitutionality should immediately be challenged. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, whose centennial we just observed, makes clear that parental rights to direct the upbringing of a child are constitutionally protected. Against rights enjoying so high a threshold of constitutional protection, California offers no compelling reasons why it should be allowed to insert itself into the adjudication of minors’ names when the same outcome can be achieved without involving parental rights once the child reaches the age of majority.
No doubt some will invoke the specter of “trans suicide” as pseudo-justification for involving California in giving out names. Make no mistake about it: “Mental health” and “therapy” are the new siren calls to lull parents into submitting to the loss of their parental rights by the state that knows better. That’s obvious in Governor J.B. Pritzker’s recent law mandating annual state “mental health counseling” for all Illinois public school children above a certain grade. Parents need to fight back hard for their rights.
California’s power-grab is a more egregious example, but states (and school districts) are already practicing soft power-grabs by permitting children to use names in school without parental knowledge or consent. A case headed this fall to the Supreme Court from Massachusetts — Foote v. Ludlow School Committee — seeks to put an end to such concealment.
The idea that giving a name — like being conceived in a given sex — is something “assigned at birth” is a lie. The fact that names are given exposes the lie of the myth of isolated, individual autonomy: Nobody’s “identity” in this world is self-made. Conferring a name incorporates one into something — a family, a history, a tradition, a reality — bigger than himself.
In the Jewish and Christian traditions, nobody changes his own name. “Abram” doesn’t decide to throw in an extra “ha,” and Simon doesn’t express his inner geologist. Yes, in the biblical world, names bespeak identity — identity given by God, not self-invented, and certainly not self-invented with the collusion of a California superior court judge.
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