When Trump Decides Who Gets to Be a Parent

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You're seven months pregnant. You and your wife planned this baby—chose the donor, decorated the nursery. But when you give birth in Tennessee, only your name goes on the birth certificate. Your wife—the person who held your hair while you puked for three months, who assembled the crib at 2 AM—she's legally nobody to your child. A stranger. Without standing to make medical decisions or sign permission slips.

Unless she adopts. Unless you have money for lawyers. Unless the state decides she deserves it.

But what happens when the master rewrites the goddamn tools themselves? When Chief Justice John Roberts and five other justices decide that discriminating against transgender children doesn't count as discrimination? When Donald Trump signs an executive order declaring that the federal government will only recognize "two sexes, male and female," erasing every trans and nonbinary person from official fucking existence? When states pass laws allowing adoption agencies to refuse you based on "religious beliefs"—as if your love is a sin they're entitled to reject?

Let me walk you through exactly how the machinery of oppression works.

On June 18, 2025, the Supreme Court decided United States v. Skrmetti. Six justices—Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Gorsuch—ruled that Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which bans puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors, does not violate the Equal Protection Clause <1>. They held that the law only needs to pass "rational basis review," the lowest standard scrutiny.

THE RECEIPTS:

• Tennessee SB1 prohibits healthcare providers from prescribing puberty blockers or hormones to help minors align with their gender identity—but allows the exact same goddamn medications for cisgender kids with precocious puberty or other conditions

• The Court's majority claimed this isn't sex discrimination because it's based on "age and medical treatment," ignoring that the law explicitly treats trans kids differently than cis kids receiving identical fucking medications

• Justice Sotomayor, dissenting with Justices Kagan and Jackson, called this exactly what it is: discrimination wrapped in medical language

This wasn't an isolated case. This was the goddamn blueprint. Twenty-six states now have some form of ban on gender-affirming care for people under 18. And it connects directly to parental rights because these laws don't just target kids—they strip parents of the right to make medical decisions for their own children.

Translation: They built a whole fucking system—from the courts to the legislatures to the executive branch—all working together to deny LGBTQIA+ families the same rights given to every straight, cisgender family without question.

Morning. Your son's school calls. He fell on the playground—nothing serious, but they need parental consent for the nurse to give him Tylenol. You're his parent. You raised him from birth. But you're not on his birth certificate because you're the non-biological mom, and your adoption paperwork is pending. The school secretary says she'll need to call your wife instead. Your son is crying in the background, asking for you.

Afternoon. The pediatrician's office won't release test results to you. HIPAA, they explain. You're not listed as the legal guardian. You sit in the parking lot, hands shaking on the steering wheel, trying to explain to a receptionist that you're his goddamn mother.

Evening. You research second-parent adoption requirements. It'll cost $3,000 minimum. You'll need a lawyer, a home study, background checks, and at least six fucking months. In fourteen states, adoption agencies are legally permitted to reject you based on religious objections to your marriage. In some jurisdictions, there's no clear path to second-parent adoption at all. You're supposed to just... hope nothing bad happens.

The daily cost includes:

Here's what destroys me: You can do everything right—be married, both be on the birth certificate in your home state, have medical power of attorney—and still lose custody if you travel to the wrong state. Still get turned away from the hospital where your child is having emergency surgery. Still be erased if your spouse dies and their family challenges your parental rights.

And somehow, we're supposed to build families in a system designed to dismantle them.

They claim these laws protect religious liberty. They say faith-based adoption agencies shouldn't be forced to violate their beliefs.

Except—and I cannot stress this enough—these agencies receive millions in taxpayer funding to provide public service.

WHAT THEY SAY:

"Religious freedom means we can choose who we serve." — Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, defending discrimination in adoption services

WHAT THE DATA SHOWS:

This isn't religious freedom. This is state-sanctioned discrimination that leaves children in institutional care rather than place them with qualified, loving parents who happen to be queer. It's cruelty dressed up as piety, funded by our own tax dollars.

The synthesis is clear: We're watching a coordinated assault on LGBTQIA+ families across every level of government—from the Supreme Court to state legislatures to the executive branch—all designed to make our existence legally precarious.

Not "complex policy debates." Not "states' rights." Not "protecting children."

Systematic erasure.

Look at how these systems reinforce each other:

• How the Skrmetti decision gives legal cover to states banning trans healthcare, which then makes it harder for trans parents to maintain custody

• How Trump's Executive Order 14168 denies federal recognition of trans and nonbinary people, affecting everything from passports to insurance coverage to birth certificates

• How religious exemption laws in adoption mirror bathroom bills mirror sports bans—all built on the same fucked-up logic that LGBTQIA+ people are dangerous, unfit, unnatural

• How non-biological parents in same-sex couples face barriers that opposite-sex stepparents never encounter, even post-Obergefell

This is what bell hooks warned us about: systems of domination are interlocking. You can't fight for trans kids' healthcare without fighting for parental recognition. You can't secure adoption rights without challenging religious discrimination. You can't protect one part of our community without protecting all of us.

What does it say that we have to spend thousands of dollars and months of legal proceedings to prove we're parents to the children we're already raising? What does it say that Supreme Court justices can look at trans kids and their families and decide their suffering doesn't count as discrimination?

Tomorrow, another parent will be turned away from their child's hospital room. Another adoption agency will cite religious beliefs while cashing government checks. Another family will flee across state lines for their trans child's healthcare.

But here's what these bastards keep fucking forgetting: We've been building families in hostile territory for decades. We know how to survive systems designed to break us.

Tonight, queer parents across the country are filing second-parent adoption paperwork. Creating powers of attorney. Building chosen family networks the law refuses to recognize but that keep our kids safe anyway. Organizing mutual aid funds to help families afford legal protections. Calling legislators. Filing lawsuits. Refusing—always refusing—to let the state decide who deserves to be a parent.

This is what survival looks like when the government says you don't exist: Small acts, strategic documentation, communities that hold each other when the law won't. Not because we're heroes. Because we're parents, and we'll burn the whole fucking system down before we let it take our children.

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