Sage’s Law

Back in the summer of 2021, Virginia’s Appomattox County High School decided to hide the fact that a teenage girl named Sage identified as a boy from her parents. According to a piece on The Federalist, that decision resulted in a chain of horrific events that not only sent Sage through a terrible ride through the state’s juvenile justice system but left her at the hands of sexual predators two times.

The Federalist recounts how Sage was adopted by her grandmother Michele after Michele’s son, Sage’s father, died. Sage struggled with problems from the loss of her father. She received medical and mental health treatments, and the schools had always informed Michele if there were any issues.

When Sage began coping with gender dysphoria, she began wearing boys’ clothes and identified as a boy while at school using a male name and pronouns. She was lonely and bullied and wanted to find a place to fit in. No one informed her parents, and a school counselor told her that she could use the boys’ bathroom. The boys in the school followed her around, touching and threatening her with a knife and rape. At one point she was slammed up against a wall. The school had concerns and contacted Michele without disclosing Sage’s gender dysphoria. Sage ran away and was located nine days later in Maryland, having been sexually assaulted. She had been kidnapped and taken there. Transgender children are often the target of predators, and some sites that were recommended to her by a school counselor led to pornography and older men.

Michele traveled to Maryland, where her daughter was being held in juvenile detention. They saw Sage via video screen and the pair told each other they loved one another. Despite this, Sage’s court-appointed attorney, Aneesa Khan, told the court that Sage did not want to come home because Michele and her husband Roger had abused her due to her new gender. Sage said that Khan told her to say that her parents hit and starved her so that Khan could win the case and Sage could be placed in a foster home that would affirm her gender.

Judge Robert Kershaw moved Sage from solitary confinement to a children’s home, where she was housed with the boys and frequently assaulted. During this time, Sage continued to see Kershaw for hearings and Khan had school counselors testify against Michele and Roger. Khan even told Sage the lie that her parents did not want her anymore because she was transgender. Sage never received any of the cards and letters that her mother sent her. Sage skipped school while at the home and smoked marijuana. Khan said that she didn’t care if Sage did drugs, so long as she won the case. Khan also contacted one of Sage’s Maryland school friends to help her contact Sage, and Sage’s case became known in her school.

While Michele tried to get her daughter placed in treatment, Kershaw denied her efforts and placed the child in a center called  North Spring, where Sage’s gender would be affirmed. Sage cut off her ankle monitor and fled the center. She was located in Texas by marshals who were acting on a tip on social media. She had been imprisoned, raped, beaten, and starved by a predator. Michele finally got to see her daughter and have a real conversation with her.

Sage was again placed in North Spring on lockdown and was heavily medicated. Her counselor pressured her to have a mastectomy. During a visit, Sage told Michele that she no longer wanted to be a boy and wanted some girls’ clothes. It took the work of attorney  Josh Hetzler with the Founding Freedoms Law Center to help Sage finally return to her parents and home.

Sage was not just a victim of predators. She was also the victim of a school system that was beholden and dedicated to the trans agenda, a lawyer who placed her own interest above her client’s, and a judge, doctors, and counselors who wanted to push the aforementioned agenda. She was a victim of a cultural phenomenon that sees children as a means to justify their own life choices, regardless of the consequences to the child.

In response to all of this, Republican Virginia Delegate Dave LaRock drafted and introduced “HB 2432 Sage’s Law; Minors and students self-identifying as a gender different from biological sex.” The bill requires that if school employees in Virginia believe that a student is identifying as a gender different than their biological one, the employee must contact at least one of the student’s parents to see if the parent is aware of the situation and if the parent either wishes to obtain counseling for the student or if counseling has already been obtained. It also prohibits counselors, social workers, psychologists, or counseling personnel from encouraging or coercing the minor to keep their perceived gender identity from their parents. It also mandates that raising a child as a member of their biological sex or referring to them as their biological gender (including medical decisions or those regarding mental health) cannot be considered abuse or neglect.

Related: Kiss My Straight, White, Hockey-Loving A**! The LGBT Schizoids Need to Sit This One Out

LaRocks’s office issued the following statement Thursday:

Sage’s Law seeks to address several failures of government that were experienced first-hand by a Virginia teenager and her parents over the past year. Michele Blair, the mother of the bill’s namesake shared her story of being intentionally kept in the dark about her daughter’s gender struggles while at school from both teachers and counselors, which led to Sage being bullied, assaulted, sex-trafficked, and then kept from returning to her parents after she was rescued because of unfounded claims of child abuse. Sage’s story is heartbreaking and compelling.

“Virginia law needs to be absolutely clear that affirming a child’s biological sex does not justify taking a child away from their family. Subjective determinations of whether a family’s beliefs are “abuse and neglect” are not acceptable. Teachers, school counselors, social service workers and courts must respect the parent’s fundamental rights in the parent-child relationship by involving parents immediately when a child is experiencing serious challenges. The horrific treatment of Sage Blair has shown the need to provide protections for parents and children in Virginia.,” said Delegate Dave LaRock.

Victoria Cobb, President of The Family Foundation of Virginia said, “In Virginia, possibly like no other state, the role of parents has taken center stage. Parents have been demanding more respect from teachers, administrators, counselors and frankly from the way they are treated or should I say mistreated in Virginia law, the parent’s rights revival is long overdue. Parents are begging for Virginia laws to honor the fact that they, not the government or a school administrator or counselor are, other than very rare exceptions, the very best people to help their child walk through life’s difficulties.”

Joshua Hetzler, Legal Counsel for the Founding Freedom’s Law Center said, “It cannot be overlooked that much of what happened in Sage’s school came after former Governor Northam’s administration’s Model Policies for Transgender students took effect, which The Founding Freedoms Law Center tried to stop from being implemented, and adamantly warned that this sort of thing would happen. Now Sage’s story is representative of the ways children are at risk of being harmed all across Virginia, and their parents are being shut out of critical life decisions. Sage’s law was born out of the necessity to help ensure that this never happens again to any child or parents in Virginia.”

You can watch the Thursday press conference below:

The Left and Big Gender do not want Sage’s story to get out. They see stories like these as threats to their narrative. Egos and money are tied up in this. But since Sage was brave enough to come forward, her story should be told as often and loudly as possible.