I’ve written before about dubious “the sinister trans cult stole my children” articles: all too often they turn out to demonstrate that some parents find it easier to blame sinister, shadowy forces than their own shortcomings when their grown-up children cut all contact. But I’ve rarely seen an example as downright awful as this one.

This is from The Christian Post last year, and it’s being widely circulated again by anti-trans types. I’m not linking to it because it’s just hateful and packed with some really, really unpleasant stuff.

The “kids” are in their twenties and thirties. The “anguished mom” is “tormented Lynn Meagher”.

Meagher lost contact with her son for nearly a decade after he came out as transgender. She reconnected with him in 2013, which was a struggle because she didn’t feel she could call him “she” or a woman, and use his preferred female name while remaining true to her beliefs — particularly that sex cannot be changed and no amount of cosmetic surgery can alter biology.

“I did the best I could to have a relationship with him where I just loved him for himself, and was hoping that we could just disagree on what we disagreed with and love each other anyway,” Meagher said.

Got that? I just want to love you for who you are, except for the “who you are” stuff. Incidentally, did you count the deliberate misgenderings in those two paragraphs? I make it eight.

The thing about grown-up children is that they can speak for themselves. Here’s Meagher’s daughter, posting in November in a discussion about the article.

She didn’t lose me to a cult. She lost me to her racism (she’s a Proud Boy). She lost me to her abuse (she threw me against the wall so I would stop crying). She lost me to her transphobia (she collected signatures for the anti-trans bathroom petition). She lost me to her greed (she stole survivors’ benefits the federal gov’t gave me to buy herself fur coats and a car). She lost me to her cruelty…

The Proud Boys are a US far-right group. If they’re not actually neo-Nazis, they’re incredibly good friends with many people who are.

Just in case you had any doubts about this woman’s eligibility for the Mother of The Year award, here’s a message from her son, responding to an article critical of his mother.

thank you thank you thank you for addressing her, her hateful rhetoric, and the article she wrote (which was originally uploaded with mine and my siblings full names, and was found when a friend of mine had searched my name for my top surgery fundraiser, basically outing me as trans to future employers. it makes my situation more manageable to know that people see through her BS, even without knowing about the emotional/religious abuse and physical violence she inflicted on all of her children and husband for years. thank you.

The article notes that our anguished mom has made lots of new friends, not just from far-right groups but also some of the leading lights of the UK anti-trans movement. They gave her “lots of hugs.” Which sounds like more love than she ever gave her children.