RICHMOND, Virginia (LifeSiteNews) — A leftist Virginia delegate has backed down on her plans to reintroduce a bill that could lead to police investigations of parents for not “affirming” their children’s homosexual or gender dysphoric inclinations.
Delegate Elizabeth Guzman will no longer introduce her legislation to send police or child protective services after parents, in the face of backlash. She said her legislation has been misrepresented.
🧵As a social worker & mom of 4, I will always fight to protect LGBTQ children from abuse. 🧵 to set the record straight on a misleading news piece from a Sinclair-owned affiliate that mischaracterized a pro-safety, anti-abuse bill I introduced in 2020 to protect LGBTQ youth. 1/
— Elizabeth Guzman (@guzman4virginia) October 14, 2022
“The 2020 bill was a child safety bill that would have simply protected children from ‘physical or mental injury on the basis of the child’s gender identity or sexual orientation,’ ” Guzman tweeted. “The way the bill was presented in the article was patently wrong.”
House Minority Leader Don Scott said the legislation would be “dead on arrival,” according to the Washington Post.
Governor Glenn Youngkin’s team said in a statement to media that “the goal of Democrat lawmakers in Virginia is to criminalize parents who are trying to be involved in their children’s lives. Children belong to families not to the state and Virginians can count on Governor Youngkin to continue empowering parents in the Commonwealth.”
Guzman said she planned to reintroduce the legislation specifically to counteract Governor Glenn Youngkin’s new policies which state that schools cannot “transition” kids without their parent’s knowledge and consent.
READ: GOP candidate slams opponent’s agenda of sexualization, gender manipulation in schools
Her reference to an “article” refers to an October 13 story by WJLA where Guzman clearly stated she would use police resources and social workers to go after parents who did not support their LGBT child’s decision.
“If the child shares with those mandated reporters, what they are going through, we are talking about not only physical abuse or mental abuse, what the job of that mandated reporter is to inform Child Protective Services (CPS),” Guzman told the ABC affiliate. “And then that’s how everybody gets involved. There’s also an investigation in place that is not only from a social worker but there’s also a police investigation before we make the decision that there is going to be a CPS charge.”
The 7News reported that Nick Minock asked Guzman specifically what the penalties would be “if the investigation concludes that a parent is not affirming of their LGBTQ child.”
“Well, we first have to complete an investigation,” Guzman said in her response. “It could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment.”
Guzman said in a tweet thread that her record had been “distorted.”
But WJLA posted the full interview where Guzman, who repeatedly refers to her work as a social worker, notes that she is not an “attorney” when asked for clarification on what “affirmation” means in her own legislation. Furthermore, LGBT activists have repeatedly cited mental health as a reason to chemically and genitally mutilate children and use their “preferred pronouns.”
Utterly horrifying.
These zealots think they are your children’s parents, and they’ll put you in jail if you disagree. https://t.co/Rz0pTpNssf
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 14, 2022
“How do you define affirmation, in terms of, the scope of the bill,” Minock asked
“I’m not an attorney,” Guzman said. But she shared that her “goal” is to “help children, accept them for who they are.”
Here is @guzman4virginia stating that her “goal of the bill is to accept [LGBT] children for who they are” and “help parents to become a support system.” pic.twitter.com/fE31BxZF96
— Matt Lamb (@MattLamb22) October 17, 2022
Minock then specifically asked about Catholic or Muslim parents who don’t support LGBT ideology and how her legislation could infringe on the First Amendment.
Guzman said she has been asked that before and as a “religious person” she “goes by what the Bible says” and that means to “love everyone” and that it is no one’s job to “judge” people.
Guzman’s office did not respond to a request for comment on her legislation and a copy of the bill on October 14. LifeSiteNews specifically asked about prison time for parents who don’t support their children’s embrace of LGBT inclinations.
The Family Foundation of Virginia criticized the bill in a statement to LifeSiteNews.
“It is abundantly clear that the ideological Left and radical LBGTQ groups are scheming together to find ways to demonize and punish loving parents, with the intent of driving wedges between them and their children,” President Virginia Cobb told LifeSiteNews. “We saw a version of this bill in 2020, and the purpose is to force parents to abdicate their role to nurture and guide their children through life, and submit to a child’s view or the state’s view of sex and sexuality regardless of the lifelong harms it poses to the child.”
Cobb said the bill is “offensive” and “weakens the role of parents and conflicts with the core biblical principle that family is the basic unit and building block of the society.”