Gil and Gabriella Reid live on a 48-acre farm outside Anderson, a town in South Carolina where a church and historic courthouse dominate the quaint central square.
They raise sheep and chickens and grow rye, clover, and Bermuda grass for feed. It’s where their daughters helped out with collecting eggs and tending the livestock.
Life is quiet on the farm, with picturesque vistas of windswept sunflower fields and shamrock-green pastures. Until recently, the world’s troubles seemed far away, like the murmur of a distant radio.
But even a farm in rural South Carolina isn’t safe from social justice strife.
Like many parents across the country, the Reids find themselves battling radical gender ideology. It has torn their family apart, they say.
In the fall of 2022, the Reids discovered that their 17-year-old daughter wanted to transition to be a boy, the couple told The Epoch Times. Against their wishes, she left home.
For about four months, they didn’t know she was living with the family of one of her high school teachers.
As they tried to understand what was happening, Anderson School District 2 denied the Reids’ request to view their daughter’s mental health records, citing privacy laws, according to the couple.
During this time, the Reids faced two neglect investigations brought on by complaints from their daughter and the family with whom she was staying. The Reids say the accusations weren’t true but served to put them on the defensive.
State documents provided by the parents indicate that they were cleared of wrongdoing.
But it left the Reids feeling that the entire system—from the schools to social services and the law—had been weaponized against them.
Extreme Ideologies
Over the past two years, parents across the country have discovered that their children’s schools are pushing extreme ideologies.They learned that teachers were telling children they can choose their gender. They found lessons pushing tenets of critical race theory that divide people into groups—oppressors or victims—based on gender or race.
Many schools were using the Biden administration’s guidance on Title IX to substitute gender identity for biological sex. And that was cited as justification for supporting a student’s desire to “transition” to a new gender, use a different name or pronouns, and keep that a secret from parents.
These incidents have sparked lawsuits and legislation.
Transgender activists contend that minors should have the right to change their gender and that the government should protect that right.
In response, conservative lawmakers in some states have introduced legislation to counter what they say are destructive policies that destroy families and harm children and society.
These bills would require school districts to create parental involvement policies and would prohibit care providers from soliciting or providing health care services to children without written parental permission.
Halting Gender Modification for Minors
South Carolina is aligned with a broader effort in Republican-controlled legislatures nationwide to stop gender modification procedures for minors.Another dozen states, including Texas and Florida, are considering similar bans.
At least 11 states—Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah, South Dakota, and West Virginia—have already enacted laws restricting or banning transgender procedures for minors.
Schools shouldn’t be a place of indoctrination, and parents’ rights to raise their children are being subverted, according to Kristen Huber, chief communications officer for Citizens Defending Freedom.
“School districts work behind closed doors, actively suppressing parental involvement in their students’ education,” Huber told The Epoch Times in an email.
The issue of a parent’s right to access his or her child’s medical and mental health records isn’t clear in South Carolina, making the matter ripe for legislation, according to Hal Frampton, senior attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group.
Parents need more clarity on their rights to care for their children and direct their children’s upbringing, education, and medical treatment, Frampton told The Epoch Times.
Predicaments such as the one faced by the Reid family have driven more states to delineate parental rights, he said.
“We’re seeing these kinds of situations occur more and more where schools are transitioning children, or children are accessing transition-related care or something of that nature, without a parent’s knowledge or consent,” Frampton said.
When the laws need to be clarified, the courts settle disputes.
Keeping Secrets From Parents
In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in Boston, the parents of an 11-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy are suing the town of Ludlow, Massachusetts, the Ludlow School Committee, and a string of staff members. The parents’ lawsuit claims that school officials and staffers were hiding information concerning discussions on gender transition with their children.During the 2020–21 school year, Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri learned that their 11-year-old daughter had spoken with a teacher about depression, low self-esteem, and possible same-sex attraction, according to the lawsuit.
Silvestri emailed her daughter’s other teachers, informing them that they would be getting professional help for her, according to the lawsuit. She asked that no one have any private conversations with the girl regarding the matter.
But when their daughter emailed her teachers that she identified as “genderqueer” two months later, a school counselor disregarded the parents’ request, the lawsuit alleges.
According to the lawsuit, the counselor met privately with the child and told the staff to conceal the student’s new preferred name and pronouns.
At about that time, the parents learned that their son also had expressed an alternate gender identity, according to the lawsuit.
The school’s librarian—who was affiliated with Translate Gender, an organization that shares resources about gender and gender identity—was meeting secretly with children, the lawsuit alleges.
The parents complained that Ludlow school personnel concealed critical information about their children and “publicly maligned” their assertion of parental rights as “thinly-veiled intolerance,” according to the lawsuit.
Changing Genders Is ‘Hip’
The Reids partially blame their daughter’s school for her confusion.Gil Reid said he believes that she was exposed to LGBT lifestyles from “social media and the modern educational system.”
“She has learned that homosexual behavior and all this trans stuff is very, very popular and very hip,” he said. “She says she wants to be an individual. But what she really wants is to be in the mainstream, or what’s really popular now.”
Things started spiraling out of control when the teen told her parents in September 2022 that she wanted to transition to be a boy, Gabriella Reid said.
At about this time, Gabriella Reid found out her daughter was wearing a chest binder to flatten her shape.
She tried talking to her daughter, she said, telling her God created her as a girl.
But the teen argued that she had the right to be a boy if that’s how she felt and that she had been talking to someone at school about it, her mother said.
The Reids wouldn’t agree to go along with their daughter’s desire to “transition.” They allowed her to speak to their family doctor about her gender dysphoria, they said. But the girl grew increasingly angry when the doctor didn’t affirm her.
She went missing on Oct. 25, 2022.
Gabriella Reid thought her daughter had come home on the bus but quickly realized that the girl wasn’t in the house, she said.
A sheriff’s report categorized the incident as a runaway call. The report states that deputies contacted a school resource officer, who gave a possible address for their daughter.
Eventually, deputies found her and brought her home that night. Deputies wouldn’t say where their daughter had been, the Reids said. And their daughter was defiant, also refusing to say, Gil Reid said.
“‘If they didn’t tell you where I was at, I don’t have to tell you where I was,’” he recalled her saying.
Gabriella Reid was simply relieved their daughter was home safe, she said.
A System Stacked Against Parents
This time, a social worker showed up at their home, saying their daughter claimed that they were neglecting to feed her, they said.The accusation was false, the parents insisted. They asked the social worker where their daughter was.
Their daughter was in a safe place, the social worker told them.
The social worker recommended letting her stay there but wouldn’t say with whom the girl was staying, the parents said.
“Our kids have never been without,” Gabriella Reid said. “Their wants, their needs have always been met, even before they even think it sometimes, it seems.”
Lenox-Mae Reid backed up her parents’ testimony, saying her sister was never deprived of food at home.
“She would go into the pantry so many times during the day eating anything,” she said.
The visit from the social worker was worrisome, the couple said. They felt attacked and like they were at a “significant disadvantage,” Gil Reid said.
“We were a little bit afraid, to be honest with you—that we were somehow about to be roped into a situation where we were going to be blamed for something that we hadn’t done and have her just taken away from us completely,” he said.
They didn’t want to have to keep calling sheriff’s deputies to bring their daughter back home, the parents said. They never gave permission for her to stay with anyone. And they never gave up their parental rights, they said.
But they felt helpless, at that point, to bring her back again, they said.
About four months later, on Feb. 14, Gil Reid received a text message from a number he didn’t recognize.
The message was asking permission to get “medical treatment” for his daughter. He didn’t respond and still hadn’t confirmed where his daughter was staying, he said.
The question seemed odd, Gil Reid said, because his daughter could seek medical attention on her own at 16, according to state law.
That same day, another social worker showed up at their home, saying a complaint had been filed accusing the parents of neglecting their daughter’s medical needs.
The new social worker then revealed that their daughter was staying with her teacher, the parents said. The teacher’s husband had sent the text asking for “treatment,” they were told.
A document from the South Carolina Department of Social Services (DSS) shows that the complaint of neglecting their daughter’s medical needs was investigated and classified as “unfounded.”
‘Intentionally Attacked’
Looking back, Gil Reid said he feels that his daughter was able to manipulate the school system.The school never alerted them that their daughter was experiencing gender confusion, his wife noted.
The teacher “has colluded to remove our child from our home without calls and due process whatsoever,” Gil Reid said. And the school system is responsible, he said.
“They have intentionally attacked us in a way to keep us on the defensive,” he said.
But Jason Johns, Anderson School District 2 superintendent, told the Reids in an April email that many of their assertions were incorrect.
Johns told the Reids that he was sorry for the trouble they were experiencing.
However, he said, DSS indicated that there was an agreement between the Reids and another family concerning their daughter’s living arrangements.
“The school only became aware of this arrangement in January,” Johns wrote.
“The school does not have the authority to dictate where a student lives. This is between that student and their parents.”
He also told Gabriella Reid that teachers were directed to use pronouns “consistent with her birth certificate,” when referring to her daughter, along with her birth name.
Johns also said the school had made more than “25 phone calls and emails” to a school portal concerning their daughter. But the Reids said those calls were made through encrypted messages that they didn’t recognize as being from the school district.
Hoping to Reunite
Gil Reid said he still has hope for a positive outcome. But it might be too late, he said.“I would have never dreamt this would happen in my backyard,” he said.
Gabriella Reid said she talked with her daughter last week after learning that the girl had left the teacher’s home and was living with a friend. She told her daughter that she loved her and wanted her to come home.
Her conversation with her daughter gave her hope. She was relieved to learn that the girl hadn’t moved further in transitioning.
“She’s the last thing I think about, and I pray for, and the first thing I see [in my mind]” each day, Gabriella Reid said.
Lenox-Mae Reid said she knows her family isn’t alone in dealing with gender ideology. She said families need to understand that it isn’t their fault and that they aren’t alone.
“It’s the way that society is trying to purposely groom and manipulate children,” she said.
Lenox-Mae Reid loves her sister, she said. But she also loves her parents and feels their anguish.
“My parents are so heartbroken over this,” she said. “It’s almost like they’re shells of themselves walking around.”
The gender ideology struggle is bewildering for families, Lenox-Mae Reid said.
“People don’t understand what it’s like until you see somebody close to you going through it,” she said.
“It really is disturbing, because that person is choosing to reject what they were born as and wanting to turn into something just completely unnatural.”
