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An Ohio court has removed a teenaged girl from the custody of her parents because they refused to consent to dangerous and experimental medical treatment. The teenager wants to undergo irreversible treatment (hormones and probably sex-reassignment surgery) that she hopes will alleviate the depression associated with her gender dysphoria. Based on 1) the scientific facts that such treatment will convert her into a lifelong medical patient and probably fail to alleviate her suicidal tendencies, 2) their religious belief that created reality is unalterable, and 3) their fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their minor child, the parents said no.

But the court concluded they have no right to make that decision. If they reject the radical new orthodoxy that replaces science with ideology, their authority to act for the good of their child is simply extinguished.

This shocking decision can be traced to the Obergefell case, in which the Supreme Court discovered a right to same-sex marriage. Leftists and libertarians assured us the ruling would be harmless, but the Ohio case illustrates the tragic shortsightedness of that position.

LGBT ideologues had no intention of stopping with the legal sanction of marriage. Their goal was twofold: to eradicate the significance of biological sex differences entirely, regardless of the damage done to innocents; and to silence and ultimately obliterate any dissent, if necessary by dismantling social structures and belief systems. The ideologues are winning.

With breathtaking speed, the universe of innocent people being damaged has expanded to include creative professionals who decline to participate in same-sex wedding events; girls who object to sharing shower facilities with biological boys; female athletes who can’t compete with bigger, stronger male athletes; mental-health professionals who adhere to the science about sex and gender; soldiers whose very lives depend on having emotionally and physically stable comrades; and vulnerable children who are being pushed into life-altering decisions they are incapable of making.

Innocents must suffer to achieve utopia. But utopia will remain elusive if dissenting institutions are allowed to remain. What sorts of institutions? Families and religions.

An early attack on families – specifically on parental authority -- was the 2005 refusal of Massachusetts public-school administrators to let parents remove their children from classroom lessons equating heterosexual and homosexual relationships. Because same-sex marriage was legal in the state, the court ruled, schools could ignore parents’ wishes about their children’s education. The Ohio court has now extended that concept to denying parents’ wishes concerning the medical treatment of their child.

But it could get worse. The argument for limiting parents’ rights can be easily extended to limiting couples’ rights to be parents in the first place. Soon, couples who disagree with the LGBT agenda will be deemed unfit for adoptive or foster parenthood. This has already happened in Great Britain and Canada, where Christians have been banned from providing families to needy children.

It’s happening in this country as well. Illinois bureaucrats have imposed a policy that only couples who embrace all aspects of the LGBT creed may foster a child who identifies as L, G, B, or T. A similar view was expressed at a recent Senate hearing in Georgia, where a Methodist minister lectured that adoption agencies or prospective parents who disagree with her support of LGBT ideology shouldn’t be allowed any role in adoptions or fostering, period.

If Biblical/traditional views about sex and marriage disqualify a couple from adopting or fostering, the logical next step is to deem parents who hold such views unfit to raise their biological children. The Ohio court has taken the first step down that road, which leads to the radicals’ attack on religion as well as families.

Attempts to protect faith-based child-placement agencies from having to violate their religious principles as a requirement for state licensure have provoked outrage. (This was the context of the Methodist minister’s tirade.) The faith-based principles must be stamped out, even if needy children suffer as a result.

In this worldview, no religion should be allowed to dissent in any forum. As the Solicitor General admitted in the Obergefell argument, Christian schools will probably have to abandon the tenets of their faith in personnel and other policies. When quoting Scripture has become “hate speech,” clergy will do so at their peril. The radicals have already come for the sermons; can further persecution be ruled out?

Reasonable Americans must understand that it’s folly to try to compromise with these sexual ideologues. As long as parents are allowed to retain any authority over their children, and religions are allowed to teach anything contrary to the new orthodoxy, the revolution will be incomplete. Noncompliant individuals and institutions must therefore be destroyed.

This isn’t merely a political dispute. It’s a battle over civilization itself.