Nine months ago, Ohio Republican Rodney Creech was a pariah in Columbus.
Old allegations regarding gross sexual misconduct with a minor relative resurfaced, and a Preble County Republican was kicked off the committee and called for to resign by House Speaker Matt Huffman.
Creech denied the allegations and was not charged in the case following a state investigation.
“Like President Trump,” he said in a 2025 statement, “I am no stranger to false media attacks.”
A southwest Ohio lawmaker remained serene last week restored to four committees, announced his candidacy for re-election to a fourth term in the Ohio House of Representatives and has been officially endorsed by the Ohio Republican Party.
But w Post on FacebookCreech referenced a widely discredited theory – often brought up in family courts to debunk, obfuscate and divert attention from allegations of child abuse in child custody disputes – to dispel allegations made against him by a minor teenage family member as “just textbook parental alienation.”
The psychological concept of parental alienation syndrome – rejected by most mental health professionals, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the World Health Organization – portrays allegations of child abuse against a parent as a deliberate attempt by one parent to alienate a vulnerable minor from the other parent.
Transforms alleged child abuse into a lie used against a parent in contentious child custody cases.
Creech posted on his official website (which no longer exists) “signs and symptoms” of parental alienation syndrome and said his accuser was “just trying to paint me in a bad light.”
Shortly after a House Republican invoked “parental alienation” over allegations of inappropriately touching a minor and getting into a minor’s bed with an erection, according to the Ohio Bureau of Investigation, the same term appeared in recent anti-trans legislation introduced by two other Republican state legislators.
Ohio House Bill 693, sponsored by Representatives Gary Click and Josh Williams, protects parents against abuse and neglect investigations launched solely because of the refusal to recognize a child’s preferred gender identity – this is an allegation by right-wing media that lawmakers have mentioned and which is firmly questioned by child welfare agency officials.
But let’s put aside the absurd premise of Ohio House Bill 693 that overworked and understaffed child protective services and guardianship court workers have it in common that parents do not approve of the preferred name, pronouns, or medical care of a child who identifies as transgender.
The legislation is there partisan a construct indifferent to facts.
Click and Williams, two pillars of the Republican Party characterized by mediocrity in the General Assembly and malice towards all things trans, presented a mid-term solution blessed by the religious right lobbyists at the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Christian Virtue.
Click, a Sandusky County Republican and retired pastor, has a track record of using juvenile transgender Ohioans to break out of a MAGA base bent on fear and hatred of what it doesn’t understand.
He was the lead sponsor of Ohio House Bill 68 in 2024 overrode the governor’s veto to enact a ban on transgender health care for Ohio youth, which included hormone therapy and puberty blocking drugs, and prevented transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.
So why not propose another anti-transgender bill before the November election to throw more red meat to extremists at the expense of defenseless children?
Click’s “Affirm Family First” legislation affirms parents’ right to ignore gender dysphoria as mental statepotentially undoes local bans on conversion therapydescribed as a “hateful, misleading and dangerous practice discredited by over 28 major medical organizations” and possibly increases the risk of child neglect and abuse in an already marginalized and ostracized demographic that is subject to abuse and worse.
But the retired pastor preached about protecting the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit and dismissed concerns about protecting the rights of children who could face grave backlash or harassment at home because of their identity.
“Abuse is abuse,” Click shrugged.
Co-sponsor Williams, who wants to position himself on the right side of the extreme in the crowd GOP primary race for Ohio’s 9th place congressional district, insisted that Ohio House Bill 693 was intended to curb government overreach and protect parents from punishment simply for “raising children in accordance with biological reality.”
Plus, as the Sylvania Republican said, “confirming that biological sex is not abuse, neglect, or contrary to the best interests of the child.”
But can such a general statement, based on moral certainty resulting from the legislation that parents know best, protect perpetrators of violence against children from prosecution under the guise of ideological immunity?
And he was “parental alienation” added to the anti-transgender bill as a justification for prioritizing the rights of parents over the rights of transgender children in cases of credible allegations of abuse?
Ohio House Bill 693 would include a legal definition pseudoscience of parental alienation to Ohio law as “a mental and emotional condition in which, without good cause, a minor child rejects an appropriate parent, guardian, or legal guardian or strongly allys with another parent or with a person or group of persons who do not have legal custody or control over the minor, sometimes referred to as a “chosen family.”
This would likely mean that a link to any external support network could be used as evidence of parental alienation to discredit any allegations by survivors of abuse in child custody or guardianship proceedings.
Interestingly, parental alienation has gained recent political prestige both as a defense against salacious accusations that paint lawmakers in a bad lightweight and transphobic legislation masquerading as parental rights. 🔥
