A California father said he’s been granted full custody of his 4-year-old son following a protracted legal battle with the boy’s mother — who allegedly forced the child to wear dresses and glitter because she wanted to raise him as non-binary.
Harrison Tinsley told “The Daily Signal Podcast” that he prevailed in the years-long court battle to win full physical custody of Sawyer, which the dad likened to “watching a miracle.”
“I know he’s a boy. He wants to be a boy. He adamantly expresses that,” Tinsley told host Virginia Allen. “If you say anything to the contrary he gets very upset.”
Tinsley alleged that Sawyer’s mother — who he said identifies as a lesbian and non-binary herself — tried to push her gender ideology onto the child from the time he was a baby.
This included a cruel campaign of gaslighting like referring to Sawyer with they/them pronouns over his protestations, and forcing him to wear girls’ diapers, dresses and makeup, the dad claimed.
On a GiveSendGo page raising funds for his legal fight, Tinsley told of his initial joy at learning his then-girlfriend was pregnant in 2019.
“Unfortunately that excitement turned to pain when his mother, who suffers from serious underlying mental health problems, abruptly ended our relationship and prevented me from seeing Sawyer,” he wrote.
After fighting an uphill battle in California’s progressive court system for a year, he was finally able to meet his son for the first time when Sawyer was 15 months old.
But Sawyer’s mother’s gender obsession only grew, and the boy remained subject to all manner of manipulative tactics, the dad alleged.
“She threw Sawyer a girly themed party for his second birthday where she made him wear a dress donned with a sheriff’s badge,” Tinsley told the outlet.
In another incident, the mother took the child to Disneyland but refused to let him go on any rides unless he wore the princess shoes she had bought for him, the dad alleged.
After learning Sawyer’s mother had been arrested for felony child endangerment, Tinsley filed for full custody in San Francisco Superior Court last year, claiming that she had “slandered and defamed” him for years. The details of that arrest and incident are unclear.
The dad said he presented the court with mountains of evidence — including eight hours of police bodycam footage and over 800 pages of supporting documents — but the court sided with Sawyer’s mother, he said.
Tinsley appealed the decision last December, and claims that Child Protective Services in San Francisco became involved following an alleged “incident,” about which he declined to further elaborate.
CPS investigated and then recommended Tinsley be granted full custody of the boy, and that the mother be subject to regular drug and alcohol testing, he claimed.
Tinsley acknowledged that the investigators more than likely had different politics than him, but said he was “grateful” to them for “[putting] politics aside and [doing] what they felt was best” for the child.
“His mom tried to paint me as some right-wing hillbilly from Mississippi or something even though I had nothing to do with the investigation,” he told the outlet.
“And that shouldn’t matter anyway, of course, but in reality I’m just some California dude with long hair and skinny jeans, so that’s ridiculous to make that up about me.”
Tinsley calls Sawyer his “best friend” and “the most amazing, greatest blessing” of his life, and now that he’s back with his dad he gets to focus on just being a regular kid, with no one trying to force him into an ideological box.
“Kids don’t care about sex or identity or all of these fake weird concepts, they just care about having fun and spending time with their parents.”
The reports did not identify Tinsley’s ex. Attempts to reach a lawyer listed as representing her in the court proceedings were not immediately successful Wednesday.
