A ‘transgender’ activist Democrat and his wife are housing an autistic, gender-confused teenage girl in Colorado against her mother’s wishes, and dismissive police officers refused to intervene.
(LifeSiteNews) -- LGBT activists in Colorado are housing a gender-confused teenage girl against her mother’s wishes, and local law enforcement refused to intervene to enforce her parental rights while the girl was still a minor.
The Daily Wire reports that the unidentified then-17-year-old, who suffers from autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder, was advised by a school counselor to attend LGBT support groups and terminate parental negotiation. Her issues worsened when her mother, Cynthia Stein, underwent cancer treatment in 2023, and she ran away from home after her mother announced intentions to move to Denver.
She returned, but ran away again on December 21, this time to the home of her former math teacher, JoAnn Smotherman, and her spouse, “trans-identifying” former Democratic candidate "Vivian" Smotherman.
Stein confronted the couple at their home on January 5 and called the police. However, the responding deputies of the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office merely confirmed the girl wasn’t being held against her will and beyond that dismissed Stein’s objection, which the Wire says it confirmed by reviewing the police report and body camera footage.
“Basically, as long as I know that everybody’s okay, that’s really the extent of law enforcement involvement, you know what I mean? I don’t know. I don’t know what else to say,” one deputy said.
“I mean yes, by legal standard you’re technically a minor as a 17-year-old,” the deputy told the teen, but “as long as you’re not being held against your will or kidnapped or anything awful like that, things get a little more complicated when we hit 17-years-old and have the ability to drive and go places and make decisions about who we hang out with.” One even said that a 17-year-old and who had filed for emancipation was “certainly not what I would consider a ‘child.’”
Upon returning to their vehicle, the officers could be heard laughing about the “meltdown” the girl’s mother and her friends would have.
“She is a minor. I don’t care if she’s a day away from 18. A minor is a minor, and she does not have my permission to be here,” Stein told the police, one of whom responded that “minor and child are different” and that the incident was “on a civil level” that “does not rise to the level of law enforcement involvement.”
“Smotherman stepped in and took advantage of my kid. She’s just inserted herself into my family, and I still can’t get her out,” Stein told the Wire. “I just can’t stress to you enough how floored I am that this woman has gotten away with what she has, and that there is nothing that I can do to make it right or hold her accountable.”
Stein’s daughter has since turned eighteen, yet has been unable to so much as contact her. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that I’m heartbroken not to be able to share this milestone with her,” she said. “She and I actually share the same birthday so it’s a double whammy for me. I’m devastated at the idea that she thinks I hate her and never want her in my life again.”
A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence and that “transition” procedures fail to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Yet Colorado has been notoriously hostile to those who dissent from LGBT dictates, such as banning counseling for minors dealing with unwanted gender confusion or homosexual inclinations (which is currently before the Supreme Court), attempting to legally punish small businesses for refusing to participate in pro-LGBT messages, forcing female students to share restrooms with males, and even proposing legislation to make it a crime to “misgender” the deceased on death certificates (i.e., to accurately identify their sex on official medical records).
