In recent decades, the state has increasingly inserted itself into domains once reserved for parents, often overriding parental judgment and values. Schools, social-service agencies, and an elaborate therapeutic bureaucracy have weakened the ability of parents—especially Catholic parents—to raise their own children according to their faith.
The 2026 case of Joseph and Arlene Kutzko in Massachusetts illustrates this problem.
Their daughter Sophie was socially “transitioned” to a male gender at school without the parents’ knowledge. She was 15 years old when she was counseled secretly at school about her gender dysphoria—without her parents’ knowledge—by school counselors. Those counselors supported Sophie’s gender transition even though they knew that her Catholic parents opposed gender ideology on religious grounds. When Sophie told her school counselors that her parents were against her gender transitioning, school officials apparently redefined any such reluctance to allow gender transitioning as a form of abuse.
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