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00:00:20.940The Daily Wire had the article here. This was written by Megan Brock.
00:00:24.000Ohio may protect parents who won't affirm their child's gender identity. Quote, no parent should lose custody, face a state intervention, or be deemed simply unfit for affirming a child's sex.
00:00:37.000So the guest that I wanted to bring on is Josh Williams. He's a representative from Ohio, and he's the co-sponsor of this bill.
00:00:44.120Again, it really interested me. I've been really interested recently in the state-level politics.
00:00:48.460At TimCast, we are able, not to flex, but fairly easily bring on sitting congressmen and these sorts of things.
00:00:56.660But it's the state levels that really fascinates me, because I get really exasperated with the way that a lot of these state GOPs operate and conduct themselves.
00:01:04.440It's not enough action for some of these states that are deep red.
00:01:07.980So when I see stuff like this, I want to hear, what are you doing that a lot of these other Republicans just can't seem to figure out?
00:01:13.380So I don't know. Kellan, do we have any updates?
00:01:15.220Nothing yet. I guess we can go take a look in there and see if he's in there.
00:01:27.800Yes, sir. So we're live. I just wanted to bring you in.
00:01:30.780Obviously, a lot in the news over the last weekend, but I wanted to bring you in to kind of switch gears a little bit.
00:01:37.600Obviously, we were leading in discussing the bill that you were co-sponsoring in the great state of Ohio.
00:01:43.280I wanted to ask you broadly, what is the meat and potatoes of this bill?
00:01:49.540And then also for the people in the audience who don't know, who are you?
00:01:52.400Where did you come from? Why are you on their screen? What's going on?
00:01:55.020So I don't know if you could give people kind of the spiel here.
00:01:58.920Yes, I'm State Representative Josh Williams.
00:02:01.320I serve in the Ohio House of Representatives.
00:02:03.700I'm serving in my first term in majority leadership as majority whip here in the Ohio House.
00:02:10.560We're talking about the Affirming Families First Act.
00:02:13.280What this legislation does is it makes sure that the state government at every level, including our local and county level,
00:02:20.700cannot allege that a parent is abusing their child by refusing to affirm their gender identity or sexual orientation.
00:02:30.020Under the Biden administration, $10 million went to a university to do a study of a program to classify every kid in the foster care system
00:02:40.100or who came in contact with protective services according to their sexuality and gender orientation,
00:02:47.380and then categorize whether or not the foster parent, adoptive parent, or biological parent was affirming.
00:02:53.160Part of that money came to Cuyahoga County, who came up with a firm program where they kept record of every child
00:03:00.840that came in contact with the Department of Protective Services, of Children Protective Services,
00:03:07.740and their sexual orientation and gender identity, classifying kids as young as five
00:03:12.620according to their sexual orientation or gender identity, and then classifying their parents
00:03:18.100and tracking whether or not those parents were affirming of the child's sexual orientation or gender identity,
00:03:24.840forming the basis for a national executive order by the president making this a firm rule under the Biden administration
00:03:31.820that President Trump was inclined to, you know, reverse when he took office.
00:03:37.100But unfortunately, he had to reverse it.
00:03:39.120And we found out just through the reporting that came out of the Daily Wire that this happened right here in the state of Ohio.
00:03:45.540Mm-hmm. Unbelievable. So obviously the situation, you know, people have heard some, I guess,
00:03:50.940more high-profile instances of this happening, you know, like a divorce gets messy and these sorts of things.
00:03:56.760How often is this occurring? How often is, you know, the government stepping in and sort of taking away parents' rights
00:04:03.780to parenting their children? How frequent is this? Because like I said, I mean, we do see some high-profile cases,
00:04:09.400but, you know, I've also heard just from word of mouth, like things happening in my community quite extensively,
00:26:17.260Then it'll be followed by opponent testimony.
00:26:19.780I'm sure there's going to be hundreds of people that come in opposition saying that I'm going to be causing kids to commit suicide because I'm not affirming them.
00:26:27.760But we know the studies have shown the opposite.
00:26:31.300And that's why Europe has stopped transitioning kids when they were the first ones that were doing it.
00:26:38.440I mean, that hasn't talked about enough, by the way, is that Europe's already abandoned this whole crazy science project because they're like, whoa, this is not good.
00:26:46.460Well, thank you very much for hopping on here.
00:26:49.140Obviously, with the news this weekend, I think it's good to give people some insight back on what's going on domestically because sometimes people get so fixated on the timeline.
00:26:58.660They miss some of these really important, like tangible things that are happening in their own state.
00:27:03.200So with that, where can people find you to get more?