"Kidnapping Bill" Advances on Stealth Maneuver

and guess what i mean by "stealth maneuver"

California’s AB 665, which would allow children down to the age of 12 to be taken to residential mental health facilities without parental consent (see background here and here), advanced through a committee vote this week, and now heads for the Assembly floor:

The debate wasn’t a debate. If you played video of testimony from proponents and opponents of the bill separately, without telling anyone they were talking about the same thing, no one would ever figure out they were having an exchange over the same question. You can watch the whole very strange thing here by fast-forwarding to 2:03:53 (because the committee also discusses other legislation on the same video), but be prepared for a bizarre feeling of out-of-body dissociation.

Start with the pro-665ers. The sponsor of the bill in the lower house, Asm. Wendy Carrillo, framed the legislation as a gift for poor children that would "expand access to mental health care for young people” and “empower young people to address their mental health needs." Other proponents are framing the question the same way; see this example from the National Center for Youth Law:

But this is a tactic, because the argument in favor of the bill is entirely about differences between private insurers and government health care coverage for “outpatient mental health treatment.” No one — zero, not a single person or organization — addressed the actual text of the bill, which says over and over again that it will make “residential shelter services” available for minors without parental consent. You can read the text of the bill here, and compare what the bill actually does to what its proponents are saying in support of it. They are not the same. The argument in favor of the bill is not about the bill: If you oppose AB 665, the bill allowing counselors to take children from their families and send them to residential mental health facilities without parental consent, then you don’t want poor kids to have outpatient mental health services. It’s three-card monte as a legislative technique.

Starting at 2:11:57, if you want to skip to this moment, the incredibly jarring opposition testimony suddenly seems to take up a whole different question. Erin Friday, an attorney and mother who successfully fought who her own daughter’s transgender identity, says this to the committee:

The analysis is wrong. This bill does not merely align two existing statutes... What it does it greatly expand the power of a counselor relative to residential facilities. This bill permits a counselor to decide if a child 12 or older is mature enough to be placed in a facility away from his parents without any claim of abuse or indication that the child is in danger... This bill is state-sanctioned kidnapping.

Then, at 2:14:15, here’s more opposition testimony from Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, a social worker and former school counselor:

AB 665 is harmful to minors. School counselors are being trained to keep secrets from parents, and take on an anti-therapeutic, activist role. Instead of working with families, counselors are now dividing families –– deliberately turning children against loving parents... It is apparent that one result of this bill would be the removal of trans-identified children from the home. In this dystopian nightmare we're living in, if a parent doesn't use a child's chosen pronouns or name, they're labeled dangerous.

So the opposition testimony was about the bill, while the testimony from advocates of the bill changed the subject.

Presented with two sets of pro and anti testimony that seemed to be about entirely different legislation, the committee…said nothing, literally nothing — with the sole exception of Vice-Chair Bill Essayli, a Riverside-area Republican, who briefly and politely explained that he was “concerned about a bigger issue that's happening in California, which is the erosion of parental rights." Then, with no other debate or discussion, they voted, and the bill moved forward.

The terms of the debate have been revealed. A bill that allows mental health professionals to take children from parents will be sold this way: “All children in California deserve access to mental health services to live full and thriving lives, and care for their emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing.” The bill will pass on the basis of a careful act of misdirection, without a radical and immediate shift in public awareness and clearly expressed parental opposition. So far, it’s working.