Former University of Arizona professor Daniel Grossenbach is suing the school over alleged retaliation over his views on gender policies in his children’s school district. Grossenbach, who taught ethics as an adjunct instructor from 2020 to 2023, was a contract faculty member (as opposed to tenured faculty) and was terminated after a cancel campaign over his voicing objections to the policies. The lawsuit presents a familiar free speech controversy in higher education, where conservatives or libertarians are targeted for their views outside of universities, while those on the left are rarely subject to such campaigns.
Daniel Grossenbach says the university was pressured to terminate his contract in November 2023 after receiving anonymous complaints about his parental rights advocacy in his children’s school district. Grossenbach is the father of two students at Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD) and founded a parental rights group called SaveCFSD in 2023. The group fought “policies and practices of hiding minors’ mental health information as a violation of fundamental parental rights.” The impetus of the group was gender identity surveys of students that allegedly led to lists of students who preferred different names and pronouns without notifying parents.
Grossenbach’s advocacy is clearly protected speech under the First Amendment. Grossenbach alleges that he was fired due to anonymous complaints accusing him of leading an “anti-gay hate group,” engaging in anti-LBGTQ speech on social media, and spreading “misinformation.” However, the university insisted that his position was eliminated because of funding for new full-time roles.
The problem is that, after he was terminated, the school posted other openings for adjunct professors in the ethics department and Grossenbach alleges that the university withheld documents showing that administrators were responding to the complaints. The lawsuit paints a rather conflicted picture for the university. While we have not seen the university’s answer to the complaint, the pattern is a familiar one.
The support enjoyed by faculty on the far left is in sharp contrast to the treatment given to faculty with moderate, conservative, or libertarian views. This includes blocking figures from speaking on campuses due to their political views. Conservatives and libertarians understand that they have no cushion or protection in any controversy.
The University of Arizona’s lack of transparency and conflicting record raise very serious free speech questions in this case. The litigation could create an important precedent if allowed to proceed into discovery and trial.
He is represented by Liberty Counsel, which is alleging violations of the First and 14th Amendments, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and Arizona’s public records law.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – The left will hate this. Still, I’m asking for thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families due to the transgender shooting attack at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minnesota.
WATCH: Tim Walz Speaks at Press Conference Following Church Shooting by Transgender, Refuses to Mention Hate Crime Against Catholics or Shooter’s Trans Identity – Leftist Mayor Blames Guns and Hate Towards Transgenders!
By Jordan Conradson – The Gateway Pundit – Aug 27, 2025
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey spoke during a press conference on Wednesday, hours after the shooting at a Catholic church and K-8 school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As The Gateway Pundit reported, a transgender gunman opened fire, shooting through the windows of the church at Annunciation Catholic School as students attended mass during the first week of the school year. His manifesto was posted to YouTube before the shooting, and it was revealed that he wrote “kill Donald Trump” on one of his guns. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara confirmed that the shooter, a male in his early 20s, opened fire on children as they attended mass at the school, killing at least two children and injuring 14 children and three adults. Police say he… READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, Elon Musk, and President Trump.
Transgender rights supporters and opponent rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court as the high court hears arguments in a case on transgender health rights on December 04, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietch via Getty Images)
In one of the most-anticipated decisions of its 2024-25 term, United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court held that a Tennessee law prohibiting so-called “gender-affirming” medical interventions for minors does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. That was the only question before the Supreme Court, and it got the answer right.
Tennessee is among more than 20 states that prohibit such medical interventions for minors. Its law, called SB1, allows doctors to prescribe drugs such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones or to perform certain surgeries only to treat specific medical conditions. These include congenital defects, disease, or physical injury. It prohibits their use in cases of “gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, [and] gender incongruence.”
Three minors who wanted to identify with the opposite sex and their parents challenged SB1, arguing that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement that states provide the “equal protection of the laws.” They argued that SB1 was just like more familiar laws that discriminate based on sex, which the Supreme Court already held must meet a higher legal standard. The Biden administration also joined the case to oppose the Tennessee law.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which includes Tennessee, didn’t buy it and neither did the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 6-3 opinion, refusing to find a “sex-based classification” in a statute that, to state the obvious, does not classify based on sex. SB1 applies to all minors, regardless of sex. The only distinctions it makes are age (it applies to minors, not adults) and the medical use of the particular surgeries and drugs. Neither of these has anything to do with sex.
Every Supreme Court decision has two parts: the judgment, which is typically a yes/no answer to a specific legal question, and the opinion, which explains the reasons for the judgment. The judgment decides the case before the Court and the opinion can impact other cases. Here, Roberts’ opinion addressed some important issues that will no doubt be raised in other cases.
He emphasized, for example, that our understanding of gender is constantly changing and that the advisability and efficacy of medical interventions in cases of gender dysphoria or incongruence is being hotly debated. In fact, Roberts pointed out, several European countries that jumped on the “gender-affirming” care bandwagon have reversed course, “rais[ing] significant concerns regarding the potential harms associated with using puberty blockers and hormones to treat transgender minors.”
In addition, the Court refused to extend its controversial decision in Bostock v. Clayton County from the statutory to the constitutional context. In Bostock, the Supreme Court held that firing someone who is gay or “transgender” amounts to discrimination “because of” sex, violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Liberal activists want the Supreme Court to reach the same conclusion with respect to the Equal Protection Clause. Roberts refused, explaining the important differences between SB1 and “the logic of Bostock.”
Unless a law discriminates on the basis of things such as race, religion, or sex, courts are not going to second-guess legislative judgments about policy issues. This decision means that gender-related laws like SB1 are in the broad category of matters, such as regulating the practice of medicine generally, that the people and their elected representatives must handle. SB1, Roberts wrote, “clearly meets this standard.”
Like European countries have concluded, the Tennessee legislature argued that any perceived discordance between sex and gender can be resolved by an approach far less invasive and permanent than surgery or drugs and will likely produce better outcomes.
Challenges to similar laws in other states raise the same Equal Protection Clause issue and whether parents have a right, under the Due Process Clause of the same Fourteenth Amendment, to obtain medical interventions for their minor children. This decision should settle the first issue, but the second will likely find its way to the Supreme Court as litigation elsewhere continues.
In recent polls, many Americans say that the Supreme Court decides cases based more on politics than law. The Court can fuel that perception when it makes up rights that are not in the Constitution’s text, or tries to reach a result that is politically, but not judicially, correct. This is not one of those cases. The Court applied basic Equal Protection Clause analysis and came to the obvious, and objectively correct, conclusion. As Roberts concluded, the Equal Protection Clause does not resolve “fierce scientific and policy debates” like those today that relate to gender. That’s our job as citizens.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Elon has been on an all-out assault against Trump. Like a petulant child, he’s reacting to the fact that he couldn’t buy Trump’s favor for his personal ventures.
WTH! Elon Musk Announces SpaceX Will Decommission the Dragon Spacecraft Immediately – Says Trump Should be Impeached!
By Jordan Conradson – The Gateway Pundit – June 5, 2025
Elon Musk has threatened to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, previously used in March to rescue astronauts that were left stranded by Biden, “immediately” in response to President Trump’s threat to terminate Elon’s government contracts and subsidies. Tension between Trump and Elon Musk boiled over on Thursday after the President responded to the SpaceX founder’s thrashing of the Big Beautiful Act and its spending levels, sparking a very public feud between the two. Trump told reporters on Thursday that Musk is seemingly “upset because we took the EV mandate” and suggested he was also unhappy that Trump pulled the nomination of Musk’s friend, Jared Isaacman, for NASA administrator… READ MORE
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Men are taking over in girls’ sports in Minnesota. During a semifinal game, one player on an opposing team reportedly turned to her father in the stands and asked, “Why can’t you do something?”
Transgender pitcher leads Champlin Park softball to state championship win with 6–0 shutout
By Jenna Gloeb – AlphaNea.org – June 6, 2025
During a semifinal game, one player on an opposing team reportedly turned to her father in the stands and asked, “Why can’t you do something?” Marissa Rothenberger, a transgender athlete at the center of a statewide controversy, pitched a complete-game shutout Friday to lead the Champlin Park Rebels to a 6–0 victory over the Bloomington Jefferson Jaguars in the Class 4A Minnesota State High School Softball Championship. Rothenberger, the Rebels’ junior right-hander, allowed no runs and helped seal Champlin Park’s historic postseason run with a dominant performance on the mound… READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, Elon Musk, and President Trump.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has sent a message loud and clear to the Pentagon’s top brass, letting them know it’s time to start phasing out service members who identify as transgender. In a video shared on X with the caption “TRANS is out at the DOD,” Hegseth emphasized, “This is what the American people voted for.”
Hegseth’s memo gives active-duty transgender-identifying service members until June 6 to voluntarily separate from the military. Reservists have until July 7 to do the same. Those choosing to leave can receive voluntary separation pay.
After this window closes, any service members diagnosed with or having a history of gender dysphoria will be discharged. The Pentagon had reported back in February that there were 4,240 troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria, though the actual number might be higher. Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, mentioned that approximately 1,000 service members have identified themselves as having gender dysphoria. These individuals will begin the separation process voluntarily.
Hegseth’s memo referenced President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14183, which prioritizes military excellence and readiness. The memo stated that expressing a gender identity different from one’s biological sex fails to meet the necessary standards for military service.
Trump’s policy emphasizes that the military must maintain high standards for readiness, cohesion, and integrity. The accommodations and health issues faced by gender-dysphoric individuals are seen as incompatible with these standards.
Hegseth’s memo followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to temporarily stay a lower court’s injunction against Trump’s transgender military ban. This stay is pending the government’s appeal before the Ninth Circuit Court.
The three liberal justices on the Supreme Court expressed that they would have denied the Trump administration’s request for a stay in U.S. v. Shilling. Activist groups like Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation have criticized the stay, calling it a setback for transgender service members.
These groups argue that the policy has more to do with prejudice than military readiness. The criticism hasn’t swayed the administration, which views the policy as a step towards strengthening military standards.
In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, Hegseth gave a speech declaring, “We are leaving wokeness and weakness behind.” He emphasized a shift away from focusing on pronouns and other progressive issues.
The Pentagon’s official account on X echoed Hegseth’s sentiments, stating, “No more pronouns. No more drag shows. No more dudes in dresses. NO MORE TRANS AT THE DOD.”
Beyond just readiness, these policy changes might also lead to financial savings. The military has reportedly spent $52 million on medical expenses related to transgender service members since 2015.
These expenses include treatments such as hormone therapy and surgeries. The New York Times highlighted these costs as part of the ongoing debate over the policy.
The administration’s stance remains clear: the focus is on military effectiveness and preparedness. The policy aims to streamline and strengthen the military by adhering to traditional standards. While the debate continues, the administration is unwavering in its direction. The military is expected to align with these newly reinforced standards of excellence and integrity.
As the separation process begins, the military is set to stay committed to its core values. This move is seen as a return to focusing on the essentials for a strong defense force.
The policy has sparked discussions across various platforms, with strong opinions on both sides. However, the administration maintains its course towards reinforcing military readiness.
The changes are poised to impact many service members, prompting a reevaluation of military policies. As the situation develops, the focus remains on maintaining a robust and prepared military force.
This decision marks a significant moment in the administration’s efforts to prioritize military capability. The focus is shifting back to traditional values and standards within the armed forces.
Brittany Mays is a dedicated mother and passionate conservative news and opinion writer. With a sharp eye for current events and a commitment to traditional values, Brittany delivers thoughtful commentary on the issues shaping today’s world. Balancing her role as a parent with her love for writing, she strives to inspire others with her insights on faith, family, and freedom.
The Supreme Court has recently allowed the Trump administration’s ban on transgender individuals serving in the military to go forward. This decision came despite opposition from Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who stood firmly against the administration’s request. The court’s order was unsigned, yet it marks a significant win for those advocating for traditional military standards.
Many years after the Biden administration had encouraged diversity and inclusion initiatives, the Supreme Court’s decision pauses a ruling by U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle. Judge Settle, based in Seattle, had previously found Trump’s transgender military ban to be unconstitutional, calling it “unsupported, dramatic and facially unfair.” This ruling has been viewed as a victory for those who prioritize military readiness and cohesion over social experiments.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had declined to halt Judge Settle’s decision, paving the way for increased liberal protests. Critics of the ban argue that it is another example of discrimination against the LGBTQ community. However, supporters believe it is essential for maintaining the strength and unity of the armed forces.
President Trump, upon returning to office, issued a directive excluding individuals with gender dysphoria from military service. The Biden administration, in contrast, had opened the doors to transgender individuals, some of whom sought expensive gender reassignment surgeries funded by taxpayers. Trump’s administration put an end to this practice, asserting that military resources should be focused on defense rather than personal medical procedures.
There is an ongoing debate about the impact of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on military effectiveness. Some argue that individuals who prioritize personal identity over collective mission might not uphold the values required of service members. Critics fear that such policies could lead to a military less prepared to defend the nation in times of crisis.
The exact number of transgender service members remains uncertain, with estimates ranging from 4,240 to 14,000 across all military branches. The discrepancy in numbers highlights the challenges in assessing the impact of the ban on military personnel. Regardless, the Trump administration remains committed to a military that emphasizes traditional values and readiness.
Trump’s appointment of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense has been a turning point for recruitment efforts. Under his leadership, the military has seen an increase in enlistment numbers, reversing the decline experienced during the Biden years. Hegseth’s policies align with a vision of a strong, focused military force.
The Supreme Court’s decision is part of a series of victories for the Trump administration. The court’s rulings have consistently reinforced the administration’s commitment to conservative policies. This latest decision represents a significant step in reshaping military policy to align with these values.
Despite criticism from left-leaning media outlets, the ban is seen by supporters as a necessary measure. They argue that it upholds the integrity and effectiveness of the armed forces. Meanwhile, detractors claim it targets individuals who do not identify with their birth-assigned gender, sparking heated debates.
The Trump administration’s stance on military policy reflects a broader conservative agenda. This approach emphasizes traditional values, national security, and fiscal responsibility. Under this framework, military policies are designed to prioritize defense over social issues.
As the administration moves forward, the impact of these decisions on the military remains a topic of discussion. Proponents believe these steps strengthen the armed forces, ensuring they are well-prepared for any challenges. Critics, however, continue to voice concerns about the exclusion of transgender individuals.
The Supreme Court’s ruling has ignited discussions across the nation. Supporters of the ban argue that it aligns with the values of selflessness and humility required of service members. Opponents, on the other hand, view it as a setback for LGBTQ rights.
While the decision is controversial, it underscores the administration’s focus on military priorities. This approach resonates with those who believe in a disciplined, unified military force. The debate over transgender service members continues to be a focal point in discussions about military policy.
The Trump administration’s policies reflect a broader commitment to conservative principles. This includes a focus on national security and a rejection of policies perceived as social experiments. The administration’s stance is clear: the military’s mission should not be compromised by external pressures.
As the nation watches these developments unfold, the future of military policy remains in the spotlight. Supporters of the ban emphasize the importance of maintaining a strong, cohesive military. Critics continue to challenge the decision, advocating for inclusivity and diversity within the armed forces.
The Supreme Court’s decision has sparked reactions from various corners of the political spectrum. While some celebrate it as a victory for military readiness, others decry it as an attack on personal freedom. The conversation around transgender individuals in the military is far from over, with passionate arguments on both sides.
Parental rights are emerging as one of the major civil liberties movements of this generation — and one of the greatest conflicts between the right and the left in this country. For example, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled schools can hide a change of gender in young children from their parents. Now, Colorado is poised to pass a law that would threaten the custody rights of parents who “deadname” or “misgender” their own children. If a parent does not adopt a child’s new pronouns or name, they could be found to have exercised “coercive control” and lose custody in divorce proceedings in favor of a more enlightened parent.
As someone who grew up in an Italian family, I must confess that I thought “coercive control” of a parent was called . . . well . . . parenting. I can still remember my Sicilian mother brandishing a broom in front of our door to prevent one of my sisters from going out with a boy that she did not like. She simply declared “I gave you life, I can take it away” and my sister went back upstairs.
I admit the Italian parental style can be a bit shocking for outsiders and misunderstood by many. (My Irish father would sit bemused in the kitchen). In reality, it was all drama, but you knew that it conveyed not anger but love.
Under the new proposal, House Bill 25-1312, Colorado would use the “Kelly Loving Act” to make “deadnaming” and “misgendering” children a factor in child custody disputes. Referring to your child’s biological gender or given name or pronoun would now be considered harmful and abusive, inviting a court to take your child away from you as a coercive parent.
“Section 2 provides that, when making child custody decisions and determining the best interests of a child for purposes of parenting time, a court shall consider deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual’s gender-affirming health-care services as types of coercive control. A court shall consider reports of coercive control when determining the allocation of parental responsibilities in accordance with the best interests of the child.”
So, the state will require parents to adopt a gender, name, and pronoun that they believe are harmful for their children. Many such parents may believe that a young child should proceed slowly and not make such changes as they consider the implications of such decisions.
One question is whether this would be limited to custody proceedings or eventually expand to families generally. If this is deemed abusive or harmful during custody battles, it would also be presumably abusive or harmful outside of such proceedings. The fear is that the underlying conclusions could support a view of a household being abusive and not being in the best interests of the child.
Notably, the Supreme Court will now be considering a Colorado case involving a ban on counselors offering “conversion therapy” for children. Under the state rule, a counselor can lose her license if she agrees to such counseling at the request of her parents. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit tossed the challenge, ruling that conversion therapy is harmful and the rule is part of an effort to regulate the healthcare profession.
“This bill is the bare minimum of what we can do as a state, and the fact that we have to legislate for people to not bully and misgender and deadname people because of whatever insecurities they might have is sad to me. Why can’t we just respect one another? Why can’t we just understand that someone else’s identity has nothing to do with me or you?”
The bill passed the committee on a straight party vote with Republicans in opposition. I believe that the Democrats are not just ignoring parental rights but political realities. They will find that this is not a partisan issue. It is a primal issue. For parents, Democratic politicians like Garcia fail to “understand” that it has a lot “to do with them.” They are the parents of these children. If Democrats do not “understand” that, they are likely soon to find that out.
Gender ideology is unraveling. It’s fraud all the way down. There is no good evidence that “transitioning” helps anyone, especially children. And people are realizing that the entire premise — that a boy can somehow be born into a female body, or vice versa — is superstitious nonsense. Indeed, transgender ideology is so insane that the coalition against it ranges from conservative Christians to lesbian feminists.
Transgender ideology has many enemies, but the most effective are those who have been victimized by wrongly named “gender-affirming care,” especially the detransitioners who have realized that so-called transition is a pursuit of the impossible, driven by lies. The power of their testimony was displayed during the recent Detrans Awareness Day, which was organized by Genspect and hosted at the U.S. Capitol on March 12. There were interviews and meetings with administration officials and members of Congress. The public centerpiece was an outstanding series of panel discussions involving activists, doctors, policy experts, and especially detransitioners.
The first panel included Dr. Eithan Haim, the whistleblower whom the Biden administration persecuted after he exposed the continued medical “transition” of children in Texas. He warned that transgender programs resist being shut down and explained how doctors may be committing fraud to keep performing trans experiments on children. Put simply, they may deliberately use the wrong billing codes to hide what they are doing.
For example, if a girl claims to be transgender, a doctor might change her chart to show her as male, which is easily done in the Epic medical records system, and then “diagnose” her with testosterone deficiency. The doctor could then prescribe testosterone for her and get either private insurance or the government to pay for it without them knowing it was to “transition” a child. Leftist groups are promoting this scheme, publishing literal guides to committing insurance fraud.
Transgender ideologues are resorting to insurance fraud because of laws and policies restricting the medical fraud that is “gender-affirming care.” Pro-trans doctors were confident that if they just kept transing people, eventually evidence would come in and vindicate them, but the opposite happened. Among other examples, the U.K.’s Cass Report foundthere is no good evidence that performing transgender medical interventions on children helps them. It has also been revealed that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) suppressed a review of the evidence it had commissioned, and that Johanna Olson-Kennedy, one of the nation’s leading pro-transgender pediatric doctors, is suppressing the results of her own taxpayer-funded study.
Detransitioners are flesh-and-blood proof of what the numbers show. Their testimonies indict a medical profession that is either in the grip of radical gender ideology or cowed by those who are, and which has therefore betrayed its duties to patients and the public. The detransitioners speaking in the Capitol described a conveyor-belt approach to transgender medical interventions that quickly affirmed trans identities and encouraged each new step of so-called transition.
Thus they were harmed by those who were charged above all with doing them no harm. In the words of Laura Becker, “I have to wear a mastectomy bra for the rest of my life because I was lied to.” She “was a traumatized girl” who needed help, not a “gay trans man” who needed her breasts cut off.
The malfeasance of the medical system is fed by the internet (increasingly joined by the school systems and social services), which is filled with encouragement to embrace a transgender identity. Instead of addressing trauma or the difficulties of being different, there is the false hope of fleeing into another identity.
The online world and transgender ideology intersect in other malevolent ways. As Chloe Cole put it, exposure to online pornography makes many young women want to escape their femininity; if that is what being a woman is, many girls will want nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, Forrest Smith noted that for males there is often a sexual aspect to the desire to transition, which may also be the result of pornography exposure and use.
Though there are common themes to their stories, and insights to be gained from them, detransitioners are not interchangeable, so it was important to have more of them sharing their distinct experiences. Yes, some detransitioners are more publicly prominent and polished, but they are hardly alone. As Detrans Awareness Day demonstrated, the number of people speaking out about the harms transgender ideology inflicted on them is increasing.
These detransitioners are leading the way to defeat radical gender ideology. Their stories expose the lies and fraud of “gender-affirming care.” Their boldness in speaking out informs both politicians and the public. And their lawsuits against the medical systems that have injured them will likely be the final nail in the coffin of the medical industry’s embrace of transgenderism.
Suing “gender” doctors may make “gender-affirming care” impossible by making it uninsurable. As Soren Aldaco explained, it is not about money but about holding the medical system accountable. The first lawsuits will be the hardest. But it will get easier after the first few wins, and then the floodgates will open as trans-experimenting doctors are rightly sued into oblivion for their fraud and malpractice.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a fellow in the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Two House Democrats have voted alongside Republican lawmakers to ban athletes born male from participating on girls’ school sports teams. The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, led by Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., would amend federal law to specify that student athletes must participate in school sports teams that coincide with their gender at birth.
Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and Vicente Gonzales, D-Texas, were the lone Democrats to vote for the bill when it passed 218 to 206. Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C., voted “present.”
All three won re-election on razor-thin margins in districts that have trended redder over the years.
Senate Republicans have already signaled they are aiming to take up the bill soon.
Republicans have been pushing to restrict transgender sports participation, particularly for girls’ teams. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The change would apply to all federally funded schools from kindergarten through high school, as well as colleges and universities that receive federal dollars.
It comes after several Democrats spoke out against their own party’s laser focus on inclusivity and progressivism, arguing that the far-left did not leave any room for dissent on issues like transgender youth. Notably, however, some Democrats who raised such issues – like Reps. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and Seth Moulton, D-Mass. – voted against the bill.
Republicans have championed the bill as a bid to protect women and girls from unfair athletic standards.
Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube first introduced the bill in the 118th Congress. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., challenged Democrats on the bill during his weekly press conference on Tuesday.
“Everyone’s talking about their children today. I’ve got two sons and two daughters, and we see the difference. Of course everyone does. And it’s kind of silly to deny it,” Johnson said. “The American people sent a clear message in November. They want us to return to common sense, and we’re going to see if Democrats have heard that message.”
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., said during debate on the bill,“Why are we even having to discuss this? It’s amazing to me that the idea that we would have XY chromosome males competing and taking the place of women and girls in sports is just mind-blowing.Where are we in society that we’re doing this? Where are the feminists? Where are the people who fought so hard to get rights for women?” LaMalfa asked.
But the majority of Democrats were vehemently opposed to the bill, with Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., and others dubbing it “The GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act.”1
Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Ore., argued, “This bill sets an unfair playing field that any parent can raise a concern that a transgender girl is playing on a girls’ team,” while noting such cases were rare.
“These decisions should be left to parents, coaches, teachers, and families – not D.C. politicians. In addition, this bill could open the door to young girls experiencing intrusive questioning, or worse. I will not rubber stamp bad policy. Republicans should stop focusing on culture wars and start getting to work on lowering costs, investing in public education, and increasing access to affordable health care,” freshman Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., said after the bill passed.
The bill previously passed the House in 2023 in a 219 to 203 vote, but it was never taken up in the formerly Democratic-controlled Senate.
Elizabeth Elkind is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital leading coverage of the House of Representatives. Previous digital bylines seen at Daily Mail and CBS News.
Follow on Twitter at @liz_elkind and send tips to elizabeth.elkind@fox.com
The Biden administration’s Title IX rules expanding regulations for LGBTQ+ students have been struck down nationwide after a federal judge in Kentucky found they overstepped the president’s authority. In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves scrapped the entire 1,500-page regulation after deciding it was “fatally” tainted by legal shortcomings. The rule had already been halted in 26 states after a wave of legal challenges by Republican states. President-elect Donald Trump previously promised to end the rules “on day one” and made anti-transgender themes a centerpiece of his campaign.
The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. In a statement, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called it a “victory for the protection of girls’ privacy in locker rooms and showers, and for the freedom to speak biologically accurate pronouns.”
The Education Department did not immediately comment on the decision.
The Biden administration ignited controversy when it finalized the new rules last year. The regulation expanded Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding discrimination based on sex in education, to also prevent discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. It also expanded the definition of harassment to include a broader range of misconduct.
Civil rights advocates hailed it as a victory, saying it gave LGBTQ+ students new recourse against discrimination. But it drew outrage from conservatives who said it could be used to protect transgender athletes in girls’ sports.
The rule didn’t explicitly address athletics and mostly detailed how schools and colleges were required to respond to cases of discrimination and sexual assault. A separate proposal dealing with transgender athletes in sports was put on the backburner and later revoked after it became a focal point of Trump’s campaign. In his decision, Reeves found the Education Department overstepped its authority by expanding the scope of Title IX.
There’s nothing in the 1972 law suggesting that it should cover any more than it has since Congress created it, Reeves wrote. He called it an “attempt to bypass the legislative process and completely transform Title IX.”
The judge also found that it violated free speech rights by requiring teachers to use pronouns aligning with a student’s gender identity.
“The First Amendment does not permit the government to chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,” Reeves wrote.
Rather than carve out certain aspects of the rule, Reeves decided it was best to toss the regulation in its entirety and revert to a previous interpretation of Title IX. He said his decision will “simply ‘cause a return to the status quo’ that existed for more than 50 years prior to its effective date.”
Among the biggest critics of the rule was Betsy DeVos, former education secretary during Trump’s first term. On the social media site X, she wrote that the “radical, unfair, illegal, and absurd Biden Title IX rewrite is GONE.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Crime scene tape stretches around Abundant Life Christian School as police continue to investigate the shooting committed by 15-year-old student Natalie Rupnow on Dec. 17, in Madison, Wisconsin. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Just days before Christian students’ scheduled vacation to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a lonely and radicalized high school student opened fire inside Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, killing two people and wounding six more. Police say 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name “Samantha,” opened fire with a 9mm handgun during study hall before turning the gun on herself. Now, an apparent manifesto shows the child’s turbulent home life, isolation, adoption of neo-Nazi views, idolization of school shooters, and her wish to further “evolution” drove her to the brink.
Two Remain in Critical Condition
Rupnow attended Abundant Life, a Christian school founded in 1978, with approximately 400 students from kindergarten through high school, serving 200 families across 56 churches in Dane County. She opened fire in a room of students of mixed ages, killing one teenage student and one teacher. Six people were injured: one teacher and five students. Two of the victims were released from SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital on Monday. Two victims remain in critical condition.
A second grade teacher called 911 to report the shooting at 10:57 a.m. (The local police chief originally reported erroneously that a second grade student made the call.) Police officers responded to the scene immediately, with 17 ambulances and numerous fire trucks. Law enforcement officers found Rupnow bleeding profusely from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot at 11:05 a.m. Rupnow was pronounced dead from suicide in the ambulance en route to a local hospital. The school notified parents at 11:29 a.m.
Rebekah Smith, the mother of a fellow student, told The New York Times that she believed Rupnow had enrolled as a new student in the Christian school at the beginning of the year, in hopes it would help her turn her life around.
The school does not have a metal detector or dedicated, on-campus security personnel, but has security protocols and participated in a government program to harden soft targets against mass shootings. The school kept all doors locked, conducted lockdown and evacuation drills, and broadcast an announcement telling students, “Lockdown. This is not a drill.” Pastor Kellen Lewis, whose four children attend the school, said its safety measures “probably helped save some lives” and “gave my kids that very important sense of agency—that no matter what was going on, they knew what to do.”
Parents and community leaders continue searching for what drove the teenager to murder her fellow students, with many drawing a parallel between Rupnow’s shooting and last March’s mass shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School by Audrey “Aidan” Hale. The 28-year-old Hale, who identified as transgender, killed six people: three children in the third grade class and three adults.
“I don’t know whether [the shooter] was transgender or not,” said Shon Barnes, police chief in the famously liberal city of Madison, on Monday. “I don’t think that whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may have wanted to identify. And I wish people would kind of leave their own personal biases out of this.”
“At this time, identifying a motive is our top priority. But at this time, it appears that the motive was a combination of factors,” Barnes added Tuesday. Police have begun scouring social media profiles identified with Rupnow, saying she appears to have idolized school shooters and adopted the neo-Nazi views espoused by the Columbine shooters.
A purported manifesto may offer insight into the mixture of toxic traits that sent the 15-year-old over the edge.
Purported Manifesto Shows Divorce, Hatred of Humanity, Racism, and Support for ‘the Revolution’
One link on Rupnow’s social media accounts linked to a document purported to be her manifesto. A reporter for Reduxx said, after speaking with Rupnow’s boyfriend, she verified the authenticity of a six-page manifesto titled “War Against Humanity.” In it, Rupnow expresses her admiration for the Columbine High School shooters, as well as racial collectivist terrorist Patrick Crusius, and Brazilian school shooter Guilherme Taucci.
“Humanity is filth,” she wrote. “My parents are scum.” The document notes her parents divorced, although she claims it did not affect her at all.
“I’ve grown to hate people, and society,” she wrote. “[A]ll of you and the world have done is pick on me and tease me.” Rupnow wrote of “getting teased and pushed around” at school, where “I always got picked on.”
“My so-called family never included me because I was too weird for them. … My father will always make me stand out in the worst possible way,” stated the manifesto. “I hate humanity for forcing me into this little hole.”
The manifesto expresses profound isolation, which observers believe she filled with harmful online content. “[M]y parents admit they didn’t want me. … I’m always the one who sat out or sat in another room because they didn’t want to interact with me at any point in time, then I stayed in my room all day long and all night and after and before school as well,” she wrote.
“I planned on shooting myself a while ago, but I thought maybe its [sic] better for evolution” to engage in a mass shooting.
Rupnow engages in racially charged rhetoric, indicating another possible motive for her shooting.
“The human scum is color, and how people are raised,” she wrote. She also used a racial epithet for black people.
“The Revolution should be well,” she said. “I am part of the real thought and the real revolution.”
“We need revolution,” she insisted.
“The wolf hunts its prey. … There is nothing more than filth,” the document concluded.
Police are aware of the manifesto but have not officially said Rupnow authored it. “A document about this shooting is circulating at this time on social media, but we have not verified its authenticity,” said Barnes.
Democrats Promote Gun Control
Democrats seized on the tragedy to promote gun control legislation. “Jill and I are praying for all the victims today,” said President Joe Biden in a statement released Monday, before pivoting promptly to eroding Americans’ Second Amendment rights. “Congress must pass commonsense gun safety laws: Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.” Vice President Kamala Harris promoted a similar litany of gun restrictions Monday evening, including regulations of how law-abiding citizens store firearms at home.
None of those proposals would have apparently affected the Abundant Life Christian School shooting. “I got the weapons by lies and manipulation and my fathers [sic] stupidity,” wrote Rupnow in her alleged manifesto. “There would have been no way to change what has happened.”
A Family in Crisis
Family experts say family breakdown leads to loneliness, which can lead to resentment and online radicalization. “This seems to be a family in crisis, and in a way, it could be really anyone’s family. She wrote about feeling very alone, and it seemed that she spent a lot of time alone and a lot of time on the internet, and she had come to sort of idolize other school shooters,” said Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council. “I hope that the families that are listening to this show and families everywhere will spend the holidays with their kids, really engaging with them and looking honestly at your own family and saying: ‘Is there a child of mine who’s feeling left out, who’s feeling alone? And how much time are they in their room, behind closed doors? And do I need to just go in that room with them and just sit with them and be with them?’”
Rupnow, like other recent school shooters, is female—a trend Kilgannon mourns. “We have a pornified culture, and we also have an incredible glorification of violence in our culture. Both are a function of being in a culture of death rather than a culture of life,” Kilgannon told“Washington Watch,” guest hosted by former congressman Jody Hice, on Tuesday. “The result of that is going to be that it’s not just going to be the boys who will take these aggressive actions, but you’re going to see this behavior adopted by the girls. And that really, for me as a woman, is very, very chilling and very sad.”
As of this writing, the school remains closed. It posted the following notice on its website:
“In response to the devastating tragedy at Abundant Life Christian School (ALCS) on Monday, December 16, United Way of Dane County has established the Abundant Life Christian School Emergency and Recovery Fund. All funds raised will go directly to ALCS to support those impacted by the tragic events. To give, visit www.unitedwaydanecounty.org or text help4ALCS to 40403.”
Barnes said, “We have to come together and do everything we can to support our students to prevent news conferences like these from happening again and again and again.”
‘Christ Came to Us in a Family’
Hice found the alleged manifesto “heartbreaking,” but said her violence should serve as a wake-up call “for those parents who think that a Christian school is all they need.”
Kilgannon agreed that, while attending a Christian school gives children “a huge advantage,” it can “never replace the relationship that we’ll have with our own children and that our children will have with each other if we’re blessed with more than one child. Christ came to us in a family. He could have come as King of the universe, but He chose to come humbly into a family.”
“He adopted us into His family,” noted Hice.
“Of course, I want to offer every parent in this situation love, consolation, and grace—whether it’s the parents of the perpetrator or her victims,” Kilgannon told The Washington Stand exclusively. “We all have questions we need to ask, and answer, as parents. Were there any warning signs missed by the parents and the school? Are there drugs (prescription or not) involved that increased suicidal ideation over time? How is her therapist coping? Are we praying for all these issues? Are we loving our difficult people enough especially in these challenging times? The family is in crisis. At this holy time of year, let’s take whatever time we have and spend it with our loved ones, aspiring to love each other more and more each day.”
The shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, immediately prompted renewed calls for gun control from President Joe Biden and others. As I have previously written, these calls often appear entirely disconnected from the actual crime or the constitutional protections afforded gun owners, including President Biden demanding a ban on assault weapons after a shooting with a handgun.
President Biden’s call for greater background checks and enforcement was a bit incongruous after he pardoned his own son on gun charges. More importantly, the Wisconsin case only highlighted why these standard demands for gun control would not have impacted that case.
This was a juvenile who is believed to have used a 9mm handgun in the attack. Natalie Rupnow, 15, was not supposed to have a gun and would not have gone through background checks. While both Biden and Kamala Harris have raised limiting or banning the popular 9mm, Harris admits that she is one of millions with the weapon and it would not be subject to any of these proposals.
The president once again denounced the availability of what he collectively calls “assault weapons,” a common reference to such popular models as the AR-15. Efforts to ban this model have already failed in the courts on constitutional grounds, though litigation is continuing on that issue.
In 2008, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment as encompassing an individual right to bear arms. The Supreme Court further strengthened the right in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen.
That is why laws to ban or curtail sales of the AR-15 run into constitutional barriers. Even the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a California ban on adults under 21 purchasing semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15.
These calls for greater gun controls remain either factually ambiguous or legally dubious. For example, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe declared after the Wisconsin shooting that it is time to “change the context of gun ownership.” While admitting that he did not know all of the facts, McCabe said:
We’re [going] nowhere because it keeps happening. We know it’s going to happen again. It’s happening today. It’s going to happen again in the near future. I can guarantee you that and every time it happens, we do just about nothing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can’t do. We could do things. We could — we could support and enact legislation that changes the — the — the context of gun ownership in this country and emphasizes gun safety and responsibility with the firearms that you own and keeping them out of the hands of children and doing — and really vigorous, consistent background checks across the country. We could stop selling people — stop — you — eliminate the ability to purchase guns without a background check.
It is unclear what “changing the context” means, particularly when the context is first and foremost constitutional.
Likewise, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) called for his House colleagues to “stand up to gun manufacturers” but stopped short of explaining what that would actually mean:
Thoughts and prayers without action means more school shootings, more dead kids.
More ACTION is needed by our elected officials.
And more BACKBONE to stand up to gun manufacturers.
This is uniquely a United States problem that doesn't have to happen.
Pocan has previously called for “common sense” laws without tackling the more difficult question of how to produce the sweeping changes given the narrow scope of constitutional limits for an individual right.
Wisconsin has robust gun control laws that did not prevent this shooting because Rupnow was not subject to the background checks and other regulations. She was not supposed to have the weapon and 9mm is not one of the guns that Democrats are calling to ban.
None of this means that people of good faith should not work on new initiatives and measures to combat gun violence. However, politicians like President Biden have misled the public for years about the narrow range of constitutional options for gun control legislation. The suggestion is that “this did not have to happen” despite the fact that none of these proposals would have stopped this from happening.
In a tragedy of this magnitude, our leaders have a duty, first and foremost, of honesty in speaking with the public.
In the aftermath of the contentious Supreme Court arguments in United States v. Skrmetti over state bans on puberty blockers and gender-altering surgeries, the United Kingdom reaffirmed that it finds the risks far outweigh the benefits of such treatments for minors under the currently available scientific evidence. The move by the liberal Labour Party stands in sharp contrast with the portrayal of the Biden Administration and the treatment of the subject by the liberal justices. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was widely criticized for analogizing puberty-blocking drugs to taking aspirin. It appears that doctors in the UK are not ready to tell minors to just “take two puberty blockers and call me in the morning.”
UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting said last week, “Children’s health care must always be evidence-led. The independent expert Commission on Human Medicines found that the current prescribing and care pathway for gender dysphoria and incongruence presents an unacceptable safety risk for children and young people.”
The decision follows the release of the Cass Review, which was raised by the conservative justices as contradicting the factual representations of the Biden Administration, even leading Justice Samuel Alito to suggest that Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and the government might not have fulfilled their duty of candor to the tribunal. He noted that the Cass study found scant evidence that the benefits of transgender treatment are greater than the risks. He then delivered the haymaker: “I wonder if you would like to stand by the statement in your position or if you think it would now be appropriate to modify that and withdraw your statement.”
🔥🔥🔥Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito presses Elizabeth Prelogar on the experimental nature of "gender-affirming care."
Streeting cited significant doubts about the benefits of puberty blockers while noting the “significant risks” to children.
The government will allow puberty blockers to be administered to children in clinical trials. It is not clear if the Supreme Court will take “judicial notice” of the new decision, but it can.
In fairness to Sotomayor, she was trying to argue that all treatments have risks in making her aspirin analogy. Yet, the comment was taken as trivializing the alleged harm and trauma raised by many in this debate. These studies clearly show greater risks than those associated with aspirin. However, what the Biden Administration was arguing (and the liberal justices were seemingly supporting) is that states would be barred by the Court from reaching the same conclusion as the UK and other countries. Indeed, Streeting echoed what the states argued to the Supreme Court that the government must “act with caution and care when it comes to this vulnerable group of young people, and follow the expert advice.”
When Clementine Breen began getting puberty blockers at age 12, she had no idea she was agreeing to become a lifelong patient. Breen, now a 20-year-old detransitioner, filed a lawsuit last Thursday against prominent child-gender specialist Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, alleging medical negligence.
Breen says Olson-Kennedy pushed her into irreversible transgender medical interventions at only 12 without proper psychological testing or monitoring of her mental health and the side effects of hormone regimens.
“I think telling me that the only treatment for my body issues was transitioning was kind of the worst thing for me, because in retrospect, I just have PTSD,” Breen told The Daily Signal.“I just needed treatment for what happened to me when I was a kid.”
Breen, currently a student at University of California-Los Angeles, not only began taking puberty blockers at 12 and testosterone at 13; she then had “top surgery”—a double mastectomy—at 14.
When she was 12, Breen went to her school guidance counselor to discuss negative feelings about her body. She didn’t know that her history as a victim of sexual abuse could be causing her discomfort with her identity as a woman.
“I was sexually assaulted when I was really young,” she said in an interview, “so I had a lot of like negative feelings about being a girl and being female. When I first expressed those feelings and looked for answers about that online, the first thing that came up was gender dysphoria and possible gender incongruence.”
Breen and the school guidance counselor reached the conclusion that she was transgender. But the counselor told her parents and teachers before she was sure that was the identity she wanted to claim, Breen said. Breen’s parents took her to see Olson-Kennedy, medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. The hospital told The Daily Signal it does not “comment on pending litigation; and out of respect for patient privacy and in compliance with state and federal laws, we do not comment on specific patients and/or their treatment.”
Although Breen said her parents expected Olson-Kennedy to conclude that their daughter wasn’t transgender, since Breen experienced no gender dysphoria as a child, the doctor immediately affirmed that the preteen was a boy.
“At first it was a lot of surface-level questions about how I fit in and how I felt with my peers and how I felt about being a girl and what I wanted my future to look like,” Breen said. “I had so many negative feelings about being a girl, so I felt weirdly very validated when [Olson-Kennedy] told me that there was a very clear diagnosis of something physically wrong with my body and that it wasn’t me that was the problem.”
Olson-Kennedy convinced her parents to allow her to begin taking puberty blockers by telling them that the process was reversible, Breen told The Daily Signal. Shortly before she turned 14, Olson-Kennedy started her on testosterone.
“She proposed the idea of ‘Would you rather have a dead daughter or living son’ to my parents, and I was not suicidal at the time,” Breen recalled. “So, I think she was sort of presenting that and the really grave statistics that are actually somewhat inaccurate to my parents, to incentivize them to keep going with the treatment.”
But the drugs only made Breen’s mental health worse.
“I was never actively suicidal before testosterone, but I was actively suicidal post-testosterone,” she recalled, “and I was much more symptomatic of things like depression or things that they were saying to my parents that they were treating with the cross-sex hormones.”
At 14, Breen underwent a double mastectomy to remove her breasts. Her mental state immediately got worse, and her anxiety developed into what she describes as a “psychotic break.”
“What really, really upset me is that I will never be able to breastfeed, and I will have to get surgery every 10 years to replace the implants, and it won’t look as natural as it should have been,” she said. “I will never know what my body should have looked like.”
"I will never know what my body should have looked like."
🦎Detransitioner Clementine Breen, 20, is suing top child gender doctor Johanna Olson-Kennedy for medical negligence.
She now regrets her double mastectomy and years taking hormones, which she was told were reversible.… pic.twitter.com/bre3ct3Bha
Earlier this year, Breen began to discuss the past sexual abuse in therapy and to accept her female body.
“It wasn’t until I had actually gone through therapy that I started thinking, ‘Why am I really doing this?’ And I started actually picturing my future and when I got to college and I was in an all-male dorm,” she said, “and I just started looking around me. And I didn’t feel like I was living as myself.”
“I was living as somebody I created to run away from myself,” Breen told The Daily Signal.
At first, the 20-year-old didn’t want to go public. But as she reflected on her experience with Olson-Kennedy and the specialist’s “egregious” standard of care, Breen said, she became sure she needed to speak out.
Detrans Law, also known as the Law Firm of Campbell Miller Payne, is the legal representative for Breen in coordination with LiMandri & Jonna LLP and the Center for American Liberty.
“It would feel great to know not just that I would be getting justice, but that in the future, children would be treated better,” she said. “Because I think every child is entitled to proper diagnoses, proper mental health care, and I really hope that this [lawsuit] can change something about the standard of care.”
The butchery of young girls in the name of transgenderism must stop, Mark Trammell, executive director and general counsel of the Center for American Liberty, told The Daily Signal.
“It’s alarming how many young girls have been victimized by the gender-industrial complex,” Trammell said. “It’s imperative that every American takes a bold stand in the face of cancel culture to defend these girls’ innocence and basic human rights. If they’re not old enough to consent to a tattoo, they’re certainly not old enough to consent to double mastectomies and cross-sex hormones that alter their future.”
Olson-Kennedy came under fire in October for admitting to hiding the results of a two-year, $10 million, taxpayer-funded study that showed puberty blockers don’t improve children’s mental health. The physician directed the study, which involved putting 95 children who struggled with gender dysphoria on puberty blockers. The data won’t be released because “the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court,” New York Times reporter Azeen Ghorayshi writes, summarizing Olson-Kennedy’s reasoning.
Based on her own experiences, Breen said, transgender medical interventions for children should be illegal. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last Wednesday in a case that is expected to decide whether states may ban irreversible transgender medical interventions for children.
In United States v. Skrmetti, the high court will decide whether a Tennessee law banning puberty blockers, hormone replacement regimens, and transgender surgeries for children is constitutional.
“I think it is important to tell kids that there’s nothing wrong with them physically, they’re perfect the way they are. And if they feel ashamed of who they are and ashamed of their body, that’s not their fault,” Breen said. “It’s other people’s fault for making them feel that way and learning to love yourself is the best thing you can do for yourself.”
Breen is hesitant to say transitioning is the wrong choice for everyone. But she doesn’t think kids can consent to procedures that are so “life-altering and impact fertility, impact function, impact your health, cholesterol, [and] bone density,” she said.
“A child can’t consent to becoming a lifelong patient,” Breen said.
When Clementine started puberty blockers at age 12, she had no idea it would irreversibly impact her health, fertility, bone density, and more.
"A child can't consent to becoming a lifelong patient," she told @DailySignal
When Clementine Breen started on puberty blockers, she was a 12-year-old child with no idea she wanted children of her own one day, she said. She shouldn’t have been allowed to make a decision that would potentially make her infertile, Breen added.
“I really hope in the future I can just move forward from this and live a happy life as a woman,” she said. “I really hope to be a mother one day. Hopefully, that’s possible. I have no idea. I hope I can just move forward from this and spend the rest of my life as who I was supposed to be.”
Looking back, Breen told The Daily Signal, she wishes that rather than prescribing puberty blockers, Olson-Kennedy had told her that puberty is uncomfortable for everyone, especially girls who experienced sexual abuse.
“If she had just asked me if I had gone through sexual abuse, or if I had weird experiences in my childhood that may change my opinions about gender, I think I might have come to a different conclusion,” Breen said. “So, I really wish she sort of interrogated my ideas about womanhood.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Wednesday announced a new policy to prevent transgender women from using women’s bathrooms on the House side of Capitol Hill, Politicoreported. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., previously introduced a bill to ban transgender women from using Capitol bathrooms designated for women after Delaware Democrat Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, a transgender woman, became the first transgender person elected to Congress earlier this month.
“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” Johnson wrote in a statement. “It is important to note that each Member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol. Women deserve women’s only spaces.”
Johnson later told reporters that “like all House policies, it’s enforceable. And we have single-sex facilities for a reason, and women deserve women’s only spaces.”
Democrat lawmakers on Wednesday introduced a resolution to mark the Transgender Day of Remembrance that would memorialize transgender people around the world who were violently killed in the past year. In a statement Monday, McBride denounced Mace’s resolution and the controversy over bathroom usage as a distraction.
“This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing,” McBride said. “We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and childcare, not manufacturing culture wars.”
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Families are at risk under the Biden/HARRIS regime promoting taking away parental rights in the name of helping supposedly Transgender children. It is just one of many tyrannical policies on their list if she wins the Oval Office.
Paramount Global, Which Also Owns CBS, Rejects Ad Exposing Taxpayer Funded Child Transgender Mutilation Surgeries
By Margaret Flavin – The Gateway pundit – Oct 5, 2024
In yet another example of legacy media being the marketing wing for Democrats, Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, has rejected a series of advertisements from CatholicVote. The ad highlights the dangers of these surgeries as well as the disturbing fact that U.S. taxpayers are often footing the bill. The Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively obtained emails announcing the rejection: “Taxpayers, especially parents, deserve to know that they are paying for devastating and permanent surgeries that destroy the healthy body parts of children,” president of CatholicVote, Brian Burch, told the DCNF. “CBS and Paramount have been particularly aggressive in pushing transgenderism in mass media, so why would they be afraid to discuss what that means in reality for everyday families whose kids are receiving their pro-transgender messaging?”… READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
New data shows U.S. hospitals performed at least 5,747 gender-disfiguring surgeries on minors between 2019 and 2023, according to a database released by Do No Harm, an advocacy group of medical professionals. The data also show 13,994 American children received other transgender treatments, such as puberty-blocking and opposite-sex hormones, in those four years.
Most of the children receiving such procedures were girls between the ages of 12 and 17, the database indicates. Medical practitioners made more than $119 million from the procedures, the data says.
This week, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) kicked out of its vendor hall four young Americans who returned to affirming their given sex after experiencing transgender medicine. A similar group of “desisters” met a warm welcome last month in Orlando, Florida, at the Catholic Medical Association’s Annual Educational Conference. That medical conference hosted 750 medical practitioners from around the nation and featured a panel of detransitioned young adults.
At the CMA event, seven young adults who were permanently injured by sex-transition procedures publicly explained the harm these treatments cause. These young adults were given a voice at a U.S. annual medical conference for the first time, to inform and educate health practitioners about the irreparable harm caused by “gender medicine.”
“CMA’s decision to invite detransitioners to speak at this year’s conference signals a deepening in the divisions in the medical community about how to best address gender distress in young people,” a CMA press release notes. “It also shows the commitment by CMA leaders to recognize and provide care to those harmed by these common practices.”
Particularly in American “gender medicine,” negative and harmful effects have been ignored, and at times suppressed, by some major medical organizations, said Tim Millea, MD, the chairman of CMA’s Conscience Rights Protection Task Force. He said this contradicts the long-held scientific tradition of allowing “ideas to be discussed and debated in an open, honest and transparent manner.”
‘Medicine’s Ability to Harm Is Nearly Limitless’
Pediatrician Patrick Hunter, a Florida Board of Medicine member, organized the panel. He said he was aiming to “bring to light to the harm that is being done, and to improve the overall care for trans-identified youth.”
“No one should want what is happening to these youth and young adults,” Hunter said. “The fact that harm and regret is happening should not be tolerated by our profession. The lack of concern and the unwillingness to acknowledge it should concern everyone in the medical profession.”
One detransitioner, Prisha Mosley, told CMA attendees she was manipulated by activists and therapists into accepting testosterone injections and a double mastectomy as a minor.
“It is important for doctors to learn how to stop the damage and to try and heal what’s been done. It is wrong for the very profession who hurt detransitioners to also routinely turn us away,” she said in the CMA’s press release about the event. “I’m grateful for any medical professional who is willing to listen.”
Hunter said he has heard from nearly 100 youth who regret their transitions and found the panelists’ stories “very painful.”“Medicine’s ability to harm is nearly limitless, while the ability to cure does have limitations,” Hunter said.
“This is why the principle of ‘First, do not harm’ is sound and universally accepted,” he said. “It acknowledges our need for humility, our need to know where our limits lie, and when we should and should not act.”
Refusing to Acknowledge Detransitioners
Hunter said he proposed the panel to multiple medical organizations, encouraging more groups to hear detransitioners speak. Both the AAP and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) rejected the proposal, he said, matching the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) stance of ignoring detransitioners. WPATH’s leadership has said that recognizing these patients is “considered off limits for many in our community.”
“Patients are being harmed by sex transition. That cannot be disputed,” Hunter said. “Medical evidence fails to show that patients will reliably benefit. If the medical profession will not recognize and learn from those that are being harmed, we are failing as professionals, but more importantly we are failing the patients that are being harmed. The medical profession has lost its way.”
The Stop the Harm Database highlights a “dirty dozen” of the U.S. hospitals that perform the most sex-disfigurement surgeries on minors. They are:
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Connecticut Children’s Medical Center
Children’s Minnesota
Seattle Children’s
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
Boston Children’s Hospital
Rady Children’s Hospital
Children’s National Medical Center
UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland
Children’s Hospital Colorado
UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
The database also lists the employers of the U.S. doctors who billed the most for performing child mutilation surgeries from 2019 to 2023. The top-billing doctor for child sex surgeries in that timeframe worked at Boston Children’s hospital and charged more than $5 million for the procedures.
“California, one of the first states to declare itself a ‘sanctuary state’ for transgender procedures, also had the most irreversible surgeries, with 1,359 minors undergoing surgical procedures, followed by Oregon with 357, Washington with 330, Pennsylvania with 316 and Massachusetts with 300,” Fox News reported on the Do No Harm data.
Warring Medical Organizations
Many European countries have curtailed or halted gender medicine interventions in approximately the last year, based on experience and research demonstrating its serious damage to children. Yet most American medical organizations have remained staunch advocates, dismissing well-documented risks and complications associated with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries.
The United Kingdom’s release of the Cass Review in April and leaked WPATH files indicating that organization pushes medicine without informed consent sent clear messages about transgender medicine that American medical organizations such as the AMA and the AAP have largely dismissed or ignored. They are ignoring “objective and evidence-based data,” Millea said.
Still, some U.S. medical organizations do oppose gender mutilation, including the American College of Pediatricians, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, American College of Family Medicine, and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. The “Doctors Protecting Children Declaration,” published by ACPEDS, represents thousands of health care workers who want such practices ended.
“A number of cases have been and will continue to be filed in courts around the country, challenging the federal and state mandates for transgender interventions and the freedom of medical professionals to challenge these methods and refuse to participate in them,” Millea said.
The CMA will support court cases to halt this harm in medicine, joining other organizations’ challenges in the form of amicus briefs, and if necessary, serving as plaintiffs, Millea said.
Last month, state attorneys general sent a letter to the AAP president demanding the AAP defend its support of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions for minors with gender dysphoria. The attorney generals requested a thorough explanation of this non-evidence-based policy by October 8.
“I heard from many attendees that the panel discussion was the most important thing they heard all week, and maybe at any conference,” Hunter said. “The medical profession cannot remain silent any longer. We must take action and speak out. We must seek regulation of the profession so that evidence-based, ethical, and effective care is provided for trans-identified youth. We must return medicine to its roots where we care for the individual, and not use the patient to make money, or forward social or political agendas.”
Ashley Bateman is a policy writer for The Heartland Institute and blogger for Ascension Press. Her work has been featured in The Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The New York Post, The American Thinker and numerous other publications. She previously worked as an adjunct scholar for The Lexington Institute and as editor, writer and photographer for The Warner Weekly, a publication for the American military community in Bamberg, Germany. Ashley is a board member at a Catholic homeschool cooperative in Virginia. She homeschools her four incredible children along with her brilliant engineer/scientist husband.
In prior columns, academic articles, and my book, “The Indispensable Right, I discuss the never-ending litigation targeting Jack Phillips, the Christian baker who declined to make cakes that violated his religious beliefs. Phillips continues to be the subject of continuing lawsuits despite the Supreme Court upholding his right to decline to make expressive products for ceremonies or celebrations that he finds immoral. Now the Colorado Supreme Court has dismissed an action brought by a transgender lawyer against the cake shop and its owner.
Phillips has been the target of an unrelenting litigation campaign for over a decade.
In 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins asked Phillips to make a cake for their same-sex marriage. As a devout Christian, Phillips declined. He would sell any pre-made cakes to customers, but said that he could not morally make a cake for same-sex marriages.
That refusal turned Phillips’ tiny bakery into ground zero for the long-standing battle between religious rights and anti-discrimination laws. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission found that Phillips must make the cakes under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA).
The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in what many of us hoped would be a final resolution of this conflict. I had long criticized the framing of the case (and other cases) under the religious clauses as opposed to taking this as a matter of free speech. In the end, the Supreme Court punted in a maddening 2018 decision that technically ruled in favor of Phillips based on a finding that the Commission showed anti-religious bias against Phillips.
As a result, Phillips was thrown back into an endless grind of litigation as activists targeted his bakery for additional challenges by demanding cakes with other messages that Phillips found offensive.
In 2023, the Supreme Court delivered a major victory for free speech in 303 Creative v. Elenis when it ruled that Lorie Smith, a Christian website designer, could refuse service to a same-sex marriage. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote “the framers designed the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to protect the ‘freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think.’ … They did so because they saw the freedom of speech ‘both as an end and as a means.’”
The decision was not just a vindication for Smith but Phillips. However, Phillips continued to languish in the Colorado system, spending over a decade in non-stop challenges and lawsuits. Because the Supreme Court could not reach a clear resolution, it left Phillips to the continued pursuit of activists targeting his bakery.
The latest dispute began when Autumn Scardina spoke to the wife of Phillips and requested a pink cake with blue frosting to celebrate her gender transition. When the shop declined, Scardina filed an anti-discrimination claim with the Colorado Civil Rights Division (“the Division”) under section 24-34-306, C.R.S. (2024).
In her complaint, Scardina suggested that this was not a targeting of the famous cake shop but merely an effort to get a birthday cake.
In the complaint, Scardina wrote: “Ms. Scardina repeatedly heard Defendants’ advertisements that they were “happy” to sell birthday cakes to LGBT individuals. Hopeful that these claims were true, on June 26, 2017, Ms. Scardina called Masterpiece Cakeshop from Denver to order a birthday cake for her upcoming birthday.”
The shop said that they could make such a cake. However, “Ms. Scardina then informed Masterpiece Cakeshop that the requested design had personal significance for her because it reflects her status as a transgender female.” When the shop noted that it did not make cakes for gender transitions, Scardina insisted that it was for her birthday.
Having established the basis for the lawsuit, she then filed an administrative action. Eventually, however, she jumped from the administrative process into the courts. That would prove the procedural problem for the Colorado Supreme Court.
Scardina prevailed in the lower courts but the case was dismissed by the Colorado Supreme Court on technical grounds.
Justice Melissa Hart wrote in the Colorado Supreme Court’s majority opinion that
“The underlying constitutional question this case raises has become the focus of intense public debate: How should governments balance the rights of transgender individuals to be free from discrimination in places of public accommodation with the rights of religious business owners when they are operating in the public market? We cannot answer that question.”
The most notable aspect of this opinion is that, after a decade, Phillips is still being dragged through the courts despite the fact that the Supreme Court has recognized his free speech right to decline such contracts.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has defended Phillips and Jake Warner, ADF senior counsel, stated “Enough is enough. Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone.”
It is doubtful that activists will heed that request.
The 2023 Nashville school shooter responsible for the deaths of half a dozen Christians expressed disdain for Christianity and her parents’ biblical beliefs, according to a copy of her long-hidden manifesto released on Tuesday. Obtained and published by The Tennessee Star, the 90-page journal documents the mental breakdown of Audrey Hale leading up to her attack on The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, in March 2023. Hale, who identified as a male, killed six people during her rampage, including three small children.
The journal released by the Star offers insight into Hale’s gender confusion and how it induced her apparent disdain for Christianity. In one segment of the document, she seemingly lamented biblical teaching that all children are made in the image of God, writing, “If God won’t give me a boy body in heaven, then Jesus is a f-ggot.”
She also attacked her parents for apparently holding similar beliefs, writing that “conservative religion gay sh-t makes them believe that the child they are given should stay that way.”
“Father is delusional … tells me ‘it gets better + better,’” Hale separately wrote. “OLD MAN, YOU’RE FULL OF SH-T. You don’t feel good every damn day. F-GGOT F-CK.”
“A terrible feeling to know that I am nothing of the gender I was born of,” she added.
Hale’s writings also indicate an alleged fascination with left-wing racial politics. In the early pages of the journal, she wrote, “No brown girls, no love,” and “Brown love is the most beautiful kind.”
As Evita Duffy-Alfonso previously wrote in these pages, contents from Hale’s spiral notebook published last year by conservative commentator Steven Crowder allegedly showed “that the transgender-identifying killer targeted Christian school children because they are white.” Both the journal and notebook were recovered by law enforcement from Hale’s vehicle following the horrific attack, according to the Star.
“[G]oing to fancy private schools with those fancy khakis + sports backpacks w/ their daddies mustangs + convertibles,” Hale purportedly wrote in the notebook. “I wish to shoot you weak-ss d-cks w/ your mop yellow hair wanna kill all you little crackers!!! Bunch of little f-ggots w/ your white privileges.”
Tuesday’s release of the journal comes amid year-long efforts by local and federal authorities to keep its contents hidden from the public. A month after the shooting, Metro Nashville Council Member Courtney Johnston told the New York Post the FBI defended its refusal to release the manifesto by claiming, as she described, it “was a blueprint on total destruction” and “would be astronomically dangerous” if it fell into the “wrong person’s hands.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
We have previously discussed the cancel campaigns targeting JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. Rowling was not only the greatest selling author of all time but a wildly popular writer until she publicly opposed certain transgender policies as inimical to the advances in feminism. Now, she is the target of a lawsuit by Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, the gold-medal winning athlete who had previously failed a gender test to confirm that she is a female fighter. We previously discussed that global debate, but Khelif is now accusing Rowling out of many thousands of critics of being a cyberbully. X owner Elon Musk has also been named in the lawsuit.
She held her ground after Scotland passed a draconian law, the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. The new crime under the law covers “stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. That crime covers insulting comments and anything “that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive.”
Rowling has been the target of a global campaign due to her rejection of transgender laws and policies. Many on the left have unleashed book bans and burnings. I have been critical of that campaign. Even third parties who have supported Rowling’s right to free speech have been targeted in cancel campaigns.
Rowling previously posted various responses to the controversy on her X account on August 7, including: “For the record, bombarding me with pictures of athletic women to ‘teach’ me that women don’t all look like Barbie is like spamming me with pics of differently shaped potatoes to prove rocks are edible. I can still see the difference and you look frankly bonkers.”
She later also posted: “Commentators pretending critics of the IOC’s reliance on documents rather than sex testing think Khelif is trans are straw-manning. I don’t claim Khelif is trans. My objection, and that of many others, is to male violence against women becoming an Olympic sport.”
She further wrote on X how she was concerned over both boxers challenged over their gender at the Olympics: “What will it take to end this insanity? A female boxer left with life-altering injuries? A female boxer killed?”
France has eviscerated free speech protections over the last few decades with speech criminalization laws. There is some question whether the French laws would apply to tweets made outside of the country. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar. At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism.
In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.”
Rowling has every right to be heard on the Olympic boxing controversy. This debate raises core issues that touch on a wide array of political speech. Khelif has the ability to refute these claims through the exercise of her own free speech. As in the past battles fought by Rowley, her effort to advocate for women’s rights is also a major test over free speech in Europe.
“It is not hateful to demand fairness in sports for girls,” Samantha Ponder posted on X in 2023. (Thaddaeus McAdams/WireImage)
Turns out defending women’s sports is a no-go if you want a long career at ESPN. Samantha Ponder, host of “Sunday NFL Countdown,” has been fired, according to The Athletic. Supposedly Ponder, who was reportedly in a three-year, $3 million-plus contract, was axed “for financial reasons, as ESPN nears the conclusion of its fiscal year at the end of September,” the sports publication owned by The New York Times reported.
Yeah, right.
Just this January, ESPN put out a glowing press release about how “Sunday NFL Countdown” was thriving. The show “earned its most-watched regular season since 2019 and its second-best since 2016 … . The viewership marks a significant 8% jump from the 2022 season and was up 15% from the 2021 season,” the sports network boasted, noting additionally that “Sunday NFL Countdown” had increased its audience among women and young adults.
Maybe the spike in viewers for the 2023 season was because Ponder was expressing popular views.
Ponder made waves in May of 2023 when she retweeted former collegiate swimming champion Riley Gaines, who competed against Lia Thomas, a biological male, and has since become an outspoken advocate of banning men from women’s sports.
I barely said anything publicly abt this issue & I’ve had so many ppl msg me, stop me in the street to say thank you+ tell me stories abt girls who are afraid to speak up for fear of lost employment/being called hateful. It is not hateful to demand fairness in sports for girls https://t.co/teNoMDWNW4
— Samantha Steele Ponder (@samponder) May 25, 2023
“It is not hateful to demand fairness in sports for girls,” Ponder wrote on X. When a user accused of her being a “transphobe,” Ponder responded, “call me whatever names you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is inherently unfair for biological males to compete in female sports. It’s literally the reason they were separate in the first place + the reason we needed Title IX[.]”
But that wasn’t the end of the controversy.
USA Today sports columnist Nancy Armour warned, “Don’t be fooled by the people who screech about ‘fairness’ to cloak their bigotry toward transgender girls and women … . This is, and always was, about hate, fear, and ignorance.”
It’s likely Ponder also received backlash from ESPN honchos for her posts. Her former colleague, Sage Steele, told Gaines her own social media posts about Thomas earned her a scolding. “I was asked to stop tweeting about it. I was asked to stop doing anything, saying anything about it on social media because I was offending others at the company,” Steele said in December, according to the New York Post.
Meanwhile, it’s not like ESPN was banning all talk about transgender participation in women’s sports. In March of 2023, the network honored Lia Thomas during a special on … Women’s History Month.
But it’s Ponder, Steele, and Gaines—not ESPN or Nancy Armour—who are expressing the view held by most Americans. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 69% of Americans believe that athletes should only be able to play “on teams that match birth gender.” In January, a poll by NORC at the University of Chicago found that 66% of Americans thought transgender girls should never or rarely be allowed to play on girls’ teams.
More recently, Ponder praised Italian boxer Angela Carini, who forfeited her Paris Olympics boxing match on Aug. 1against Algerian Imane Khelif, who seems likely to have XY chromosomes, not XX chromosomes. “Proud of this woman,” wrote Ponder of Carini. (Khelif, meanwhile, went on to win the gold medal for women’s boxing in Paris.)
Earlier this year, Ponder also defended Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, who came under fire from the Left for advocating, in a commencement speech at a Catholic college, traditional values and suggesting women would find fulfillment as wives and mothers.
— Samantha Steele Ponder (@samponder) May 17, 2024
In an Instagram story, Ponder decried a petition to fire Butker as “unamerican.”
“Personally, I agreed with a few things he said … especially that most women are more excited/proud of their families than their day jobs,” she wrote, although Ponder also noted some areas she disagreed with Butker on.
If the bosses at ESPN were wise, they’d realize that Ponder’s views are the same as those of many of their audience members. Firing Ponder, who has been with the network since 2011, sends a clear message that genuinely feminist sports fans aren’t welcome. Sure, the network might point to football analyst Kirk Herbstreit, who recently shared his own views about transgender athletes. Responding to the question “Do men belong in women’s sports?” Herbstreit wrote, “Of course not.”
But while Herbstreit hasn’t been fired (yet), he’s also a man. Ponder, as ESPN executives probably realize all too well, is more compelling on this issue. “Ponder had emerged as the only female voice inside Disney since Sage Steele’s departure to speak out against ‘trans women’ (as in men) competing in women’s sports,” writes OutKick’s Bobby Burack.
So, Ponder had to go.
If ESPN was about making money, it’s unlikely the popular Ponder would be fired. But like too many companies these days, ESPN seems to be about forcing its values on all Americans, not making money. No doubt, Ponder will land at another outlet. But Americans shouldn’t forget that ESPN has effectively sided with the men who want to be in women’s locker rooms and stealing records and wins from hardworking female athletes, not the women who just want a fair shot to compete.
Protesters march Aug. 3 in London in the wake of Dr. Hilary Cass’ warning about the harms of so-called gender-affirming care. A newly revealed email shows a U.S. health official supports “puberty blockers” while admitting they increase the risk of suicide. (Matthew Chattle/Future Publishing/Getty Images)
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Former officials in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration condemned what they described as the FDA’s duplicity in allowing off-label use of so-called puberty blockers while loudly condemning the use of far safer drugs to treat COVID-19.
“During the Trump administration, the media falsely accused us daily of ‘politicizing America’s public health agencies.’ Yet the same media is now silent on [Vice President Kamala] Harris and [President Joe] Biden’s FDA’s anti-science, purely political insanity,” Brian Harrison, former chief of staff at HHS and now a member of the Texas House of Representatives, told The Daily Signal in a written statement.
“We’ve now learned that the same FDA that banned mothers from importing safe formula for starving babies and kept safe COVID treatments from patients was apparently pushing dangerous puberty blockers for kids,” Harrison added.
In the Jan. 25, 2022, email, Shannon Sullivan, clinical team leader at the FDA’s Division of General Endocrinology, noted that the agency’s Division of Metabolism and Endocrinology Products performed a “safety review of the GnRH agonist class in pediatric patients in 2016/2017.”
GnRH stands for “Gonadatropin-releasing hormone.” GnRH agonists prevent the natural release of testosterone and estrogen that initiate puberty.
“Our review focused on suicidal ideation/depression, seizures, and bone health,” Sullivan wrote in the 2022 email. Although most of the minors in the study suffered from central precocious puberty (in which puberty starts too early), she said, “a handful were transgender kids using the drugs off-label.”
“We found no effect on bone (after factoring in catch-up growth), including no increase in fracture risk,” she noted. “We did find increased risk of depression and suicidality, as well as increased seizure risk and we issued [safety-related labeling changes].”
Yet, as The Daily Signal reported, Sullivan went on to recommend approving GnRH agonists for minors.
The FDA’s Division of Urology, Obstetrics, and Gynecology, she wrote, “has done a patient listening session with trans kids and separately with trans adults, which I participated in, and there is definitely a need for these drugs to be approved for gender transition, as they are typically not covered by insurance and are expensive out of pocket.”
Sullivan also said that “no company has come in” to provide “GnRH agonists in the transgender population” yet. However, she added, “it was my understanding” that the FDA division “would take these applications if and when they do come in.”
Screenshot
Transgender activists claim that minors who identify with the gender opposite their biological sex need experimental medical alterations such as GnRH agonists either to prevent puberty or to force their bodies to resemble the bodies of the opposite sex. Activists mask the nature of these interventions with the term “gender-affirming care” and insist that without these interventions, kids will commit suicide.
Roger Severino, former director of the Office of Civil Rights at HHS and now vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation, emphasized the contradiction between the rhetoric supporting “gender-affirming care” and the findings noted by the FDA’s Sullivan.
“HHS still claims puberty blockers for 12-year-olds are fully ‘reversible,’ seemingly oblivious to the fact that suicide is as irreversible as it gets,” Severino quipped.
FDA’s Duplicity on COVID-19, ‘Puberty Blockers’
David Gortler, a Yale University-trained pharmacologist who previously was a senior adviser to the FDA commissioner on policy and drug safety, raised the alarm about GnRH agonists for minors. Gortler told The Daily Signal that the Food and Drug Administration is being “duplicitous” in how it uses its Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS), a database of reactions to certain drugs that users report to the FDA.
The FDA relied heavily on the reporting system’s data to declare that hydroxychloroquine was unsafe after finding only a few hundred reports of adverse events, he said, but the agency dismisses a considerably higher number of such reports for GnRH agonists.
“GnRH agonists account for 70,000 adverse reports,” Gortler said. “While these reports still need to be reviewed, it is a remarkable number of adverse events for what should be a niche, otherwise rarely clinically indicated, class of drugs.”
Yet the FDA often dismisses these reports as “not confirmed”; “not establishing causation”; “no definitive proof”; and “not establishing a rate of occurrence.”
Gortler, who has analyzed the data himself, showed that preliminary analysis to The Daily Signal. According to his analysis, AERS reports 70,000 adverse reactions to GnRH agonists, 2,510 of them involving children aged 14 or younger.
Adverse reactions include hallucinations, bone disorders, cardiac arrest, abdominal pain, migraine, mood alterations, a clot in the heart, pelvic pain, seizures, abnormal skin odor, blindness, and more. Among patients ages 4 to 13, a total of 21 had thoughts of suicide.
The AERS database includes 30 records noting the death of a patient between the ages of zero and 14 where a “puberty blocker” is the primary suspect drug.
These cases include a 10-year-old who died of a hemorrhagic stroke after taking Lupron, a brand of synthetic hormone, in March 2014; a 5-year-old who died of cancer reported in May 2022; an 8-year-old who died of liver failure after receiving leuprolide acetate, a synthetic drug, in March 2004; and a 14-year-old who “completed suicide” in April 2017.
“Even though this drug is objectively unsafe, they seem to be selectively turning a blind eye to it, seemingly in sync with White House messaging,” Gortler said, referring to FDA officials.
“At the same time,” he added, “the FDA selectively heavily involved itself in the off-label administration of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, both of which were relatively much safer than GnRH agonists, based on clinical studies, randomized controlled trials, AERS reports, plus other epidemiological findings.”
Where Do ‘Puberty Blockers’ Come From?
The former FDA adviser also told The Daily Signal that physicians developed GnRH agonists to help treat certain cancers that depend on estrogen or testosterone. Removing estrogen and testosterone from cancer patients to prolong their lives makes sense, Gortler said, because it prevents the progress of an invasive, malignant disease. But giving these drugs to physiologically and genetically healthy kids is a completely different story, he said.
“This drug was tested, designed, and FDA-approved for use in an older, cancer-afflicted population,” Gortler said.
“The human body has around 100 trillion cells,” Gortler noted. “High school biology taught us that in each of those nucleated cells, there are either XX or XY chromosomes denoting a female or male sex, respectively. No drug or medical procedure will ever be able to fight 100 or so trillion cells and trying to do so would be a fool’s errand.”
He compared “puberty blockers” to the outdated, dangerous custom of Chinese foot binding, in which a young girl’s feet would be tightly wrapped to keep them from growing naturally.
“Similarly, GnRH agonists block a normal, healthy development process from occurring,” Gortler said. “Just because it’s not something that isn’t directly and obviously visible doesn’t mean that it’s any less clinically, scientifically, or ethically dangerous.”
The FDA did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
On Saturday, the team will face off against Brazil in the gold medal match at the Olympics, after scoring wins over Zambia, Germany (twice), Australia, and Japan.
For years, the U.S. women’s soccer team has been seen as a bastion of wokeness, perhaps most famously when Megan Rapinoe feuded with then-President Donald Trump.
But one new player suggests the team finally might be getting some ideological diversity.
Korbin Albert, a 20-year-old picked to be a midfielder for the women’s team for the Paris Olympics, is no Rapinoe, who was infamous for publicizing her woke views.
She’s already proved herself in the Olympics, successfully scoring a goal during the Olympics match between the U.S. and Australian women’s soccer teams July 31. The final score was 2-1, the winning goal scored by Albert, who previously played for the University of Notre Dame and now plays for a Paris-based soccer team.
But Albert’s admission to the Olympics seemingly came at quite a high cost. To use the language of the woke, she wasn’t allowed to speak her truth.
When Albert scored her winning goal, NBC commentator Jon Champion highlighted the “controversy” surrounding her. “For the all the pre-tournament controversy that surrounded her, teammates rush to her to share a memorable moment,” Champion intoned. He’s not the only media figure to slap the “controversial” label on Albert.
The Associated Press reported in April about “a controversy over midfielder Korbin Albert’s social media posts,” while the New York Post headlined a June article, “Controversial USWNT star Korbin Albert named to Olympic team.” USA Today dutifully noted, “Albert became the center of controversy in March …”
So, what exactly did this young woman do? Well, the word “controversy” became glued to her when it emerged that Albert … held Christian beliefs. The athlete reportedly liked a politically incorrect social media post and shared another one.
Albert also posted a video during the 2023 Fourth of July weekend on TikTok “showing her family taking turns stating that ‘their pronouns are U.S.A.’” according to The Athletic, a sports news site owned by The New York Times.
The soccer star reportedly also shared a video on social media of a person, seemingly in a church and wearing a “Jesus wins” shirt, discussing with regret how he had pursued same-sex attractions and a transgender life.
Soccer player Korbin Albert is under fire for reposting the video below in which a teen discusses hardships he faced which led him to thinking he was trans. He started believing in God, found faith, and detransitioned.
An X user claimed that Albert had liked a meme taking aim at Rapinoe, who had been injured early in her final game before retirement. “I’m not a religious person or anything, and if there was a God, like, this is proof that there isn’t,” a disappointed Rapinoe said about her injury at a press conference last year, according to Fox News. “This is f—ed up.”
The meme Albert allegedly liked said, “God taking time off performing miracles to make sure Megan Rapinoe sprains her ankle in her final ever game.” (If you’re keeping score, note it was Rapinoe who first decided to make her injury a chance to share her religious views.)
Albert’s social media activity drew notice, and a social media post from Rapinoe ranting about “the people who want to hide behind ‘my beliefs.’” Subsequently, Albert deleted some content and posted an apology that read in part, “Liking and sharing posts that are offensive, insensitive, and hurtful was immature and disrespectful, which was never my intent.”
But the apology didn’t appear to satisfy her critics. Which says a lot about where we’re at in 2024.
For years, players in the U.S. women’s soccer team have been openly political. Just to recap: Rapinoe refused to stand for the playing of the national anthem, citing solidarity with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick; said she would never go to the White House and feuded with Trump; and argued for the inclusion of trans players in women’s sports—a curious stance, given that the U.S. women’s soccer team lost to high school boys in a 2017 scrimmage. She is gay and open about it, and when she was required to stand in later years for the national anthem, she refused to sing along or put her hand on her heart.
Nor was Rapinoe alone in her advocacy. In a 2022 game in Texas, about the time Republican Gov. Greg Abbott was taking action to protect kids from experimental medical treatment, “several USWNT players wore athletic tape around their wrists with the message ‘Protect Trans Kids,’” The Athletic reported.
Later in Florida, another state that has worked to protect kids, The Athletic reported that “[t]he players wore tape on their wrists again, this time with the words ‘Defend Trans Joy.’” In 2023, Becky Sauerbrunn, another player on the team, wrote a passionate opinion column for the Springfield News-Leader in Missouri advocating against a state bill that aimed to ensure only girls and women were playing in women’s sports. Yet it is Albert whose apology tour has never really ended.
Fresh off her winning goal, Albert dutifully praised coach Emma Hayes’ “tough love” in remarks. Hayes in turn told the media, “We all know that she’s been through a lot with her actions, and she’s someone who is truly sorry for what she’s done … She’s had to do a fair bit of growing up.”
— U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (@USWNT) August 1, 2024
The message is clear: There’s no room on the U.S. women’s national soccer team for anyone who espouses different views on LGBTQ+ matters.
So, just to be clear, aside from the alleged liking of a social media post making fun of Rapinoe (whose comments about God also had arguably been offensive), Albert has never been accused of targeting any teammate or saying something to any individual deemed offensive. There’s no suggestion she was ever less than professional and polite to her fellow soccer players.
But she dared to think for herself. And that can’t be allowed, apparently.
Korbin Albert warms up prior to the match between Australia and the United States during the Olympic Games Paris 2024 July 31, 2024, in Marseille, France. (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
More than half of Americans think it’s morally wrong to “change” your gender, according to a June Gallup poll. A third of Americans believe that gay and lesbian relationships are morally wrong, according to a May Gallup poll.
Albert’s views, if indeed the social media videos did reflect her views, might not be popular among female soccer players, but they’re well within the mainstream of American thought. Soccer is the third-most popular sport for female high school athletes, behind track and field and volleyball, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. In the 2022-2023 high school year, more than 375,000 high school girls played soccer. Do they all have to become leftists, or at least take a vow of silence on their politically incorrect beliefs, if they want to play in the Olympics some day?
That’s absurd.
How many Americans regularly work with colleagues, love family members, and cherish friends who don’t agree with us on every aspect of morality? Why should the U.S. women’s soccer team players not be asked to do the same?
I hope Albert scores the winning goal, again, on Saturday. And I hope that when she has proved herself to be invaluable to the team, she can finally be free to be honest about what she believes.
An Italian boxer’s decision to abandon her Olympic match against an Algerian fighter who was deemed to have male chromosomes has reinvigorated controversy around gender fairness.
A former Olympic boxing champion called out organizers for allowing the fight to even take place on “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday.
“It is very hard to qualify for the Olympics,” two-time Team USA Olympic gold medalist Claressa Shields said.
“You have to go through so many different international tournaments, country tournaments to even make it to the Olympics. So, for me, I can understand her devastation. But it shouldn’t be ruined due to a man. And I think that the Olympics definitely dropped the ball.”
Angela Carini of Team Italy reacts after abandoning the Women’s 66kg preliminary round match against Imane Khelif of Team Algeria in the first round on day six of the 2024 Summer Olympics at North Paris Arena in Paris on Thursday. (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif defeated Italy’s Angela Carini in Paris on Thursday after Carini abandoned the match 46 seconds after it began, saying afterward that one punch from Khelif “hurt too much” to continue.
“[At] my first Olympics, I was 17 years old, so I hadn’t even fully developed as a woman, so I couldn’t imagine getting inside the ring with a biological man,” Shields said.
“I don’t even see how the Olympics done something like this.”
Khelif fought under a firestorm of controversy regarding a failed gender eligibility test in 2023. DNA tests showed Khelif tested positive for having high levels of testosterone.
Algeria’s Imane Khelif, left, fights Italy’s Angela Carini in their women’s 66kg preliminary boxing match at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris on Thursday. (AP Photo/John Locher)
“Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women. According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition,” International Boxing Association president Umar Kremlev said.
Khelif and the Algerian Olympic Committee (COA) both denied the claims. The International Olympic Committee also cleared Khelif to compete in the Games.
Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting was also cleared to compete despite failing to meet gender eligibility standards alongside Khelif in 2023.
“It’s just unfair. I just can’t believe that it’s being done, and I just couldn’t imagine it happening to me,” Shields said.
Italy’s ANSA quoted Rosario Coco, the president of Gaynet Communications in Italy, as saying that he learned Khelif was intersex and not transgender.
“In contrast to the reports that have been circulating, the Algerian athlete Imane Khelif is not a trans woman,” Coco told the news agency.
“From the information we have about her, she is an intersex person, who has always socialized as a woman and has a sporting history in women’s competitions.”
Claressa Shields celebrates after defeating Savannah Marshall during their undisputed middleweight championship fight at The 02 Arena in London on Oct. 15, 2022. (Mark Robinson/Top Rank Inc via Getty Images)
Shields has vocalized her outrage against the decision to allow Khelif and Yu-Ting to compete in the Olympics, arguing athletes should compete against opponents of the same sex.
“I don’t have anything against transgender women or transgender men. All I’m saying is men should fight against men, women should fight against women and transgenders should fight against transgenders,” Shields stated.
Fox News’ Ryan Gaydos contributed to this report.
Madeline Coggins is a Digital Production Assistant on the Fox News flash team with Fox News Digital.
Barbara Butch, the LGBTQ activist who was the center figure in the controversial “Last Supper” Paris Olympic scene is threatening to sue those criticizing her. Butch played the role (wearing a Christ-like halo) viewed by many as a spoof on Christ in the Last Supper. The creators insist that they were going for a type of “pagan party” of Olympic gods and sent a message of tolerance. Art experts have supported the creators and pointed to paintings that inspired the pagan motif. That is not exactly what was seen by millions of Christians who were deeply insulted by the parody.
The question is not the intent of the creators, but the intent of critics in denouncing the display and its participants.
The threat of legal action would not be especially serious in the United States where opinion is given robust protection in both criminal and civil cases. In France, however, free speech is in a free fall with the left pushing for the censorship and criminalization of an ever-expanding range of political and religious speech.
The ceremony itself had some truly powerful and stunning elements. I enjoyed the mix of music and imagery as well as the effort to show the diversity of France. However, other elements were more divisive or excessive. For example, the producers decided to use the ceremony to feature such elements as three young people hooking up for a “ménage à trois.” With many families watching with kids, many of us thought the scene was inappropriate for such an event. However, it was the supper scene that led to protests from clerics and critics. While claiming a message of “tolerance,” the scene was taken as yet another slap at religious elements in society. That is a debate that has continued to rage, particularly on the Internet.
Audrey Msellati, Butch’s attorney, posted a statement on Butch’s Instagram account that the DJ and activist will seek legal action after being “the target of an extremely violent campaign of cyber-harassment and defamation.” She is promising to file “several complaints against these acts.”
Clearly, any direct and intentional threats of violence against Butch should be prosecuted, as they can be prosecuted in the United States. However, the French laws sweep far more broadly in criminalizing opinion and what I have called “rage rhetoric.”
Once the cradle of individual liberty, France long ago became a global leader in the crackdown on free speech.
These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar. At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism.
In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.”
That is why the homage in the Olympics to Liberté rang hollow for many of us in the free speech community. The French leaders have long been hypocritical in claiming to support free speech, such as marching in support of the Charles Hebdo magazine after the massacre after cracking down on its editors and writers.
Thomas Jolly, the artistic director for the opening ceremony of the Olympics, clearly wanted to be provocative in these scenes. He succeeded. Clearly, such provocative elements will spur debate and discussion, including heated opinions. Use of criminal sanctions for those expressing opinion would make a mockery of the display of fealty to French liberties that Jolly features in his ceremony.
Rep. Mary Miller’s proposed legislation would codify the definition of biological sex. (Jamie Grill/Getty Images)
A Republican congresswoman from Illinois has introduced a bill to clearly define sex based on biology, rather than ideology.
“As a mother and grandmother, I am deeply concerned by the Biden administration’s illegal rewrite of Title IX, endangering our daughters and granddaughters in sports and locker rooms,” Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., told The Daily Signal. “My bill simply recognizes the most distinct differences of our humanity—our maleness and femaleness.”
“The Defining Male and Female Act will enshrine these definitions in federal law, preventing future departments and administrations from redefining this fundamental characteristic,” she explained.
The Defining Male and Female Act of 2024—co-sponsored by Republican Reps. Debbie Lesko of Arizona, Lisa McClain of Michigan, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Claudia Tenney of New York, Barry Moore of Alabama, Greg Steube of Florida, Doug LaMalfa of California, Keith Self of Texas, Michael Guest of Mississippi, and Alex Mooney of West Virginia—is intended to combat the Biden administration’s attempted Title IX rule change.
President Joe Biden’s April revisions to Title IX—the 1972 federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs—include adding “gender identity” to the list of sex-based protections. That would allow males in female sports and private spaces.Biden’s proposed changes were supposed to take effect on Aug. 1, but they have been blocked by a number of federal court injunctions across the country. The Miller bill establishes that there are only two sexes—male and female.
“To prevent further efforts to undermine the long-standing meaning and understanding of sex—male, female, and related terms—it is necessary for Congress to reaffirm and codify the meaning of these terms,” the bill says.
Rare sexual development disorders are not exceptions to the binary nature of sex, the bill establishes. The legal equality of men and women does not mean that they are the same in every respect, so it’s not unequal treatment under the law to have separate male and female facilities, the bill’s text says.
A female is “an individual who naturally has, had, will have, or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident, the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes eggs for fertilization,” and a male is an “individual who naturally has, had, will have, or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident, the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes sperm for fertilization,” according the bill.
Miller’s legislation establishes “gender” as a synonym for sex, not a synonym for “gender identity,” “experienced gender,” “gender expression,” or “gender roles.”
Jamie Michell, founder of Gays Against Groomers, speaks with The Daily Signal’s Tyler O’Neil on July 18 at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. (The Daily Signal)
MILWAUKEE—Jamiee Michell, a lesbian who founded the organization Gays Against Groomers, finds it ironic and “hilarious” that the Southern Poverty Law Center brands her openly LGBTQ group an “anti-LGBTQ hate group.”
“It classifies us as an anti-LGBTQ hate group, which is the most ironic and hilarious thing ever because everybody in our organization is gay and we even have a few trans people,” Michell tells The Daily Signal in an interview at the Republican National Convention earlier this month.
She says the SPLC, Anti-Defamation League, and other liberal organizations “labeled us anti-ourselves just for speaking out, wanting to protect children.”
The SPLC—which brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups,” placing them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan—accuses Gays Against Groomers of amplifying “dehumanizing anti-trans rhetoric” and of perpetuating “anti-LGBTQ+ stereotypes by falsely claiming that LGBTQ+ supporters of trans rights are dangerous to society.”
The Anti-Defamation League, which critics fault for a left-wing bias, also brands Gays Against Groomers “anti-LGBTQ extremist.” ADL claims the group “peddles dangerous and misleading narratives about the LGBTQ+ community, focusing on false allegations of ‘grooming’ by drag performers, ‘indoctrination’ by LGBTQ+ educators and ‘child mutilation’ by gender-affirming care providers.”
These attacks on Gays Against Groomers echo the Southern Poverty Law Center’s suggestion that parents who complain about books with pornographic images in school libraries are “book banners” and reminiscent of the “uptown Klans” that opposed desegregation in the 1950s.
Many defenders of explicit books and children’s drag shows suggest there is nothing inherently sexual about images of naked teens or middle-aged men who are scantily clad and gyrate in front of young children.
“We fight the sexualization, indoctrination, and medicalization of children happening under the guise of LGBTQIA+, plus, plus, plus,” Michell tells The Daily Signal. “Nobody will ever say what the plus stands for. I think they’re trying to incorporate the ‘P’ for ‘pedophilia.’”
Michell also highlights the experimental nature of “gender-affirming care,” a euphemistic term for medical interventions aimed at forcing a male to appear female or vice versa. These interventions stunt natural development, may sterilize patients, and have been linked to cases of liver cancer in teens.
“Gender-affirming care” aims to address psychological distress—the feeling of identifying with a gender opposite one’s sex—through bodily alterations, rather than therapy.
Michell particularly notes the fact that some “gender-affirming care” involves “amputating the healthy body parts of young girls.”
“I can’t imagine having to be stuck with the decision I made as a 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-year-old [girl]—like, it’s absolutely insane,” she adds. “It’s been common sense and common knowledge for all of human history that no child can make permanent, lifelong decisions up until like 5 minutes ago.”
Michell describes herself as a former “tomboy” and says she would be quite susceptible to claims that she might be transgender were she growing up today.
“I would have absolutely been preyed upon by this cult, this cultish agenda,” she says. “If my parents bought into that, they would have medically transitioned me, without a doubt.”
Many gay or lesbian people might be convinced that they are “really” transgender because they don’t follow masculine or feminine stereotypes, Michell says. She calls gender ideology a form of “conversion therapy,” referring to efforts to induce a person with same-sex attraction to reject a homosexual lifestyle.
“It is a form of conversion therapy, except it’s way worse—it’s like a thousand times worse,” Michell says. “Regular, old-fashioned conversion therapy is just trying to change your mind, right? This conversion therapy leaves kids with missing body parts and sterilized, so it’s much worse.”
While the legacy media and most LGBTQ groups suggest that everyone who identifies as LGBTQ supports porn in schools, “gender-affirming care” for minors, and “Drag Queen Story Hours,” Michell says: “Every single gay person I know—and even trans people—we’ve all been staunchly against this.”
“It was very important to me to create a group to fight back against it from inside the community, to differentiate, draw a big red line between us and them, show that not all gay people, not all trans people want to hurt children,” she says.
She pushes back against the idea that pornographic materials in school are important to “normalize” LGBTQ individuals.
“I’d say that we already feel normalized,” she says. “We are so welcome in society, we’ve overdosed on tolerance. You see every major corporation panders to us, bends the knee to us, every major politician on the Left.”
“No, children don’t need to learn how to become inclusive by reading pornographic material,” Michell adds. “No, they don’t need to see a man dressed scantily, nearly nude, with fake breasts, to learn about tolerance and acceptance.”
“Our community has been hijacked, they’re using us to push this pornographic filth in our name,” she says.
Although many on the left end of the political spectrum suggest that conservative Christians pose the greatest threat to LGBTQ individuals, Michell says the Left itself poses a far worse threat.
“What the gay alphabet mob is doing is hurting us more than even the Westboro Baptist Church could hope to,” she says, referring to a church that is notorious for obnoxious protests of military funerals, LGBTQ events, and political gatherings.
Due to recent activism, “people are equating all gay people, all trans people, with child predators,” Michell laments. “Gay people fought for a very long time to rid themselves of that stigma. I truly believe that they’re hurting us more than even the most extreme bigots could ever dream to.”
She argues that the SPLC and ADL attacks have put a target on their backs.
“Our inbox is filled with death threats,” Michell says. “I’ve been doxxed, which worries me. … Is today the day I’ve got to use the Second Amendment?”
Athletes compete in the 5,000-meter final during the Oregon Relays at Hayward Field on April 23, 2021 in Eugene, Oregon. | Getty Images/Steph Chambers
A federal judge in Kansas temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Education’s Title IX rule change in several states that would’ve expanded the education civil rights law’s definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity and sexual orientation.
U.S. District Judge John Broomes issued a ruling Tuesday in response to a lawsuit brought by Southeastern Legal Foundation and Mountain States Legal Foundation on behalf of their clients, Moms for Liberty and Young America’s Foundation. The ruling applies to Alaska, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming and a middle school in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
The Trump-appointed judge reasoned that Title IX’s definition of the word “sex” clearly means the “traditional concept of biological sex in which there are only two sexes, male and female.”
Earlier this year, the Department of Education announced new Title IX regulations, slated to go into effect in August. The expansion of the definition of “sex” to include gender identity and sexual orientation prompted several states to sue, fearing the new rule could deprive women of equal opportunities in sports and privacy in bathrooms.
Broomes wrote that “legislative history” surrounding the 1972 civil rights law makes it clear that “sex” meant biological sex, not gender identity and sexual orientation. He added that Title IX prohibits discrimination that awards preferential treatment to one sex over the other but doesn’t prohibit differential treatment in the form of “sex separation” or “sex-specific benefits,” so long as one gender is not treated as inferior to the other.
“The Final Rule would, among other things, require schools to subordinate the fears, concerns, and privacy interests of biological women to the desires of transgender biological men to shower, dress, and share restroom facilities with their female peers,” Broomes wrote.“Moreover, to expand sex discrimination to encompass ‘self-professed and potentially ever-changing gender identity is inconsistent with Title IX’s sex-separation dictates.'”
Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, co-founders of the conservative parental rights group Moms for Liberty, celebrated the ruling, declaring, “Gender ideology does not belong in public schools, and we are glad the courts made the correct call to support parental rights.”
“We will always stand up for the rights of parents and the protection of children. All parents must have their voices heard and their right to raise their own children is part of the very fabric of a free America,” the co-founders added. “The federal government has no right to claim our children as their own or to push parents out of the classroom.”
Broomes is not the only federal judge who has blocked the Biden administration’s Title IX rule change. U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves in Kentucky, a George W. Bush appointee, temporarily halted the new regulation in a separate ruling last month.
Reeves’ ruling temporarily blocked the Title IX rule change in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The decision came about not long after another federal judge in Louisiana, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee, temporarily blocked the rule from taking effect in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana.
In his ruling, Reeves argued that Title IX’s purpose was to “level the playing field” between men and women in education. The federal judge asserted that the Department of Education’s rule change was an attempt to “derail deeply rooted law.”
“At bottom, the department would turn Title IX on its head by redefining ‘sex’ to include ‘gender identity,'” he said. “But ‘sex’ and ‘gender identity’ do not mean the same thing. The department’s interpretation conflicts with the plain language of Title IX and therefore exceeds its authority to promulgate regulations under that statute.”
The U.S. Naval War College hosted a lecture last week featuring a trans-identifying Space Force colonel to discuss LGBT “experiences.” Titled, “Learning from the developmental journeys of LGBTQ+,” the June 17 event was co-headlined by Col. Bree Fram, a male astronautical engineer with the U.S. Space Force who proclaims to be a woman and uses “she/her” pronouns. According to his website, Fram — who acquired a master’s degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College in 2021 — is “currently stationed at the Pentagon to lead space acquisition policy development for the Department of the Air Force” and leads the branch’s “LGBTQ+ Initiatives Team.”
As noted by Federalist Executive Editor Joy Pullmann in her book, False Flag: Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America, Fram has been promoted since coming out in 2016 and most of his military service took place when trans-identifying troops were supposed to be discharged from the armed forces.
“It’s fascinating to look at what LGBTQ folks have been subject to over their lives, and really, over the centuries, and how their experiences led them … to truly have those transformative moments that matter,” Fram said.
Much of the June 17 lecture focused on claims included in Fram’s new book, Forging Queer Leaders: How the LGBTQIA+ Community Creates Impact from Adversity, which, according to a book summary, “explores the unique and inspiring developmental experiences of LGBTQ+ leaders, the amazing capabilities they bring to teams, and what that means for everyone pursuing positive and inclusive organizational strategy.” Co-author and Naval War College Professor Elizabeth Cavallaro also partook in the lecture.
During his speech, Fram subtly dismissed the notion that the rising percentage of Americans identifying as LGBT is the result of social conditioning by left-wing activists, and instead claimed these high rates are “not a new phenomenon.”
“A lot of people say right now, ‘Where are all these people coming from? How all of a sudden do we have this explosion of LGBTQ people, and in many cases, LGBTQ leaders?’ Well, it’s not because they’re new,” Fram claimed. “We can go all the way back to the Greek and Roman Empires in the Western world and look at LGBTQ people flourishing and being very visible within society.”
The Space Force colonel went on to contend the Roman Empire’s adoption of Christianity and a “confluence of factors” led to “LGBTQ folks being pushed aside.”
Fram also seemingly attempted to normalize gender dysphoria by claiming that non-LGBT identifying individuals can relate to “transitioning” because everybody experiences change and goes through “transitory periods” at some point in their lives.
“Everybody transitions. As we look at our experiences in life of moving from one thing to another, we all go through similar things,” Fram said. “Everyone goes through these transitionary periods, and they may be really challenging … What we have to do by understanding everyone going through these transition moments is help them get through them.”
The woman-pretender further proclaimed it’s “incredibly important” for the military to support “inclusion” because “inclusion is not only a way to get the most out of person, [but] it is also a retention tool.”
“If someone does not receive that inclusion and say, ‘I belong,’ they’re gone. But when they do, it’s amazing,” Fram asserted.
The term “inclusion” is often synonymous with “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI),” an offshoot of Marxist ideology that dismisses merit and discriminates based on characteristics such as skin color and sexual orientation.
Last week’s pro-LGBT speech wasn’t the first Fram has given at U.S. military institutions. Earlier this year, the Space Force colonel spoke at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he reportedly engaged in left-wing activism while in uniform.
According to Breitbart News, Fram “waded into [a] partisan speech about the 2024 presidential election” during his lecture. In an apparent reference to former President Trump’s repeal of an Obama-era policy allowing trans-identifying individuals to serve in the military, Fram said, “While I don’t have a crystal ball, I can look out and say, ‘Well, either next year things will be great, or I will be fighting for my ability to continue serving.’”
Pentagon policy specifies that “active-duty personnel may not engage in partisan political activities and all military personnel should avoid the inference that their political activities imply or appear to imply” the Defense Department’s “endorsement of a political candidate, campaign, or cause.” An Air Force spokesman defended Fram’s speech when pressed on the matter by The Daily Wire.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
In a Denver suburb, the St. Vrain school district uses a “Gender Identity Guidance” form asking whether parents know their child thinks he or she is transgender. (Photo illustration: Ilkercelik/Getty Images)
A Colorado school district uses a form asking staff whether a student’s parents know their child identifies as transgender and support that decision.
St. Vrain Public Schools, in a Denver suburb, developed a so-called Gender Identity Guidance form for “counselors, interventionists, and administrators to support students dealing with issues related to gender identification.”
The document, found on the school district’s website and reviewed by The Daily Signal, includes questions about students’ preferred name, birth name, sex at birth, and gender identity. A section asks whether parents are aware of their child’s gender identity and if they support that, as well as who can advocate on behalf of the child if his or her parents won’t.
“Do I understand the parent/guardian support and am I able to identify other supports for the student?” the form asks.
Follow-up questions on the school district’s form include:
— “Do student’s parents/guardians know of the gender identity?”
— “Do parents/guardians support the gender identity?”
—”Who can advocate or support the student if not the parents/guardians?”
—”What are the communication methods/issues/challenges between school and home?”
—“Who are the adult contacts at school for support, concerns, etc.?”
Gender policies such as this one at St. Vrain Public Schools, which allows children to hide their gender identity from parents, undermine parental authority and rights, Lori Gimelshteyn, executive director of the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, told The Daily Signal.
“As parents, our priority is our children’s well-being and safety,” Gimelshteyn said. “No institution should intervene between us and our children, especially during critical times like mental health crises.”
St. Vrain Public Schools did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about whether the district conceals students’ gender transitions from parents.
Another section of the Gender Identity Guidance form inquiries about others’ awareness of a student’s gender identity. The school employee who fills out the form must indicate the status of the child, who currently knows about the child’s transition, whether the transition is public or private, and who else needs to know.
The form lays out how schools in the St. Vrain district should handle communication related to the child’s gender, including how to discuss the transition in an “age appropriate” manner with classmates.
The form also tracks a child’s preferred personal pronouns and how to refer to that student in school records.
A bill in the Colorado House of Representatives would require educators statewide to call students by their preferred name upon request. The Gender Identity Guidance form reviews a student’s use of facilities to determine whether the child is using restrooms and locker rooms in line with his or her gender identity.
The St. Vrain district also connects students with “outside resources,” such as Rocky Mountain Equality, the Human Rights Campaign, and other LGBTQ activist groups. Rocky Mountain Equality offers programs for LGBTQ youth ages 11 to 18. Only those under 12 need parental permission to participate. The group provides children with “gender-affirming clothes” such as chest binders. (“Binders are reserved for those ages 11 to 18,” the website says.)
The school district’s form considers “the social dynamics with other students/families/staff” and addresses potential challenges with extracurricular activities, such as sports and clubs. The Colorado High School Activities Association reviews students’ requests to play sports in accord with their “gender identity” if it “differs from their sex assigned at birth.”
A bill requiring student athletes to play sports in line with their biological sex failed to pass the Colorado House last year.
The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed on Monday that it is pursuing a four-count indictment against a Texas doctor who blew the whistle on a kids’ transing scheme at the largest children’s hospital in the United States.
Dallas-based Dr. Eithan Haim first discovered Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston — which originally claimed it no longer offered body-butchering services to pediatric patients — employed physicians who continued to castrate children during his residency rotations. The 34-year-old leakedevidence of this deceptive activity along with proof that the hospital administration promoted procedures to cut off the breasts and genitals of physically healthy people to City Journal’s Christopher Rufo in May 2023. Both Haim and Rufo maintain that the information Haim passed along contained redactions that kept minor patients’ information secret.
The four-count indictment, unsealed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Texas on Monday, however, alleges Haim obtained “protected individual health information for patients that were not under his care and without authorization” by requesting to “re-activate his login access at TCH to access pediatric patients not under his care” shortly before the article debuted.
Prosecutors led by U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari, who has already been accused of a long list of misconduct in the investigation, claim Haim acted “under false pretenses and with intent to cause malicious harm to TCH.”
The HIPPA Privacy Rule prosecutors will invoke in their case against Haim states that “covered entities” are allowed to disclose seemingly protected health information as long as “they believe [it] is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to a person or the public, when such disclosure is made to someone they believe can prevent or lessen the threat (including the target of the threat).”
According to Haim, the threat posed by medical professionals who swore to “do no harm” but continued to subject children to dangerous gender experiments was serious and imminent enough to risk his livelihood for it. He also believes the Biden administration’s sudden show of interest in an exposé from last year at the same time it continues to weaponize itself against its ideological enemies is no coincidence.
“I believe the reason they are doing this is clear. They want to send a message to any potential whistleblower — the punishment for telling the truth, for challenging the dominant political ideology, will be the heavy hand of the most powerful federal leviathan in human history,” Haim wrote on his Give Send Go page earlier this month.
If convicted, the expectant father could face up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
Students hold flags as they protest against Texas’ Katy Independent School District’s transgender policy outside the school district’s Educational Support Complex on Aug. 30, 2023, in Katy, Texas. (Photo: Brett Coomer/ Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images)
Jennifer Nuelle is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
A federal judge in Louisiana has temporarily blocked four more states from expanding the Biden administration’s new Title IX policy to protect LGBTQ+ students. The Biden administration’s new Title IX policy outlined federal protections for LGBTQ+ students and victims of sexual assault while expanding the definition of sexual harassment for schools and universities.
The new Title IX provisions collide with Louisiana’s Women’s Safety and Protection Act, which requires individuals to use the bathroom based on their sex, prohibiting transgender people from using bathrooms and other close-quartered facilities corresponding with their gender identity, according to the court documents.
Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty, the first judge to block the new Title IX rule, referred to it as an “abuse of power” and “a threat to democracy,” according to the court documents. The three supporting states are Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho, all of which joined in on the lawsuit, overstepping the Education Department’s authority.
Doughty sided with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s lawsuit, State of Louisiana et al v. U.S. Department of Education et al. The suit states that the original Title IX statute uses the language of “both sexes” or “one sex,” implying that it was referring to strictly biological men and women.
“This a victory for women and girls. When [President] Joe Biden forced his illegal and radical gender ideology on America, Louisiana said NO! Along with Idaho, Mississippi, and Montana, states are fighting back in defense of the law, the safety and prosperity of women and girls, and basic American values,” Murrill said in a statement.
🚨TITLE IX INJUNCTION: This a victory for women and girls. When @JoeBiden forced his illegal & radical gender ideology on America, Louisiana said NO! Along with Idaho, Mississippi, & Montana, states are fighting back in defense of the law, the safety and prosperity of women &… pic.twitter.com/65C8YGFkfx
— Attorney General Liz Murrill (@AGLizMurrill) June 13, 2024
The new rule wipes the changes former Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made, including undoing specific sexual assault policies at U.S. colleges and universities. DeVos shared her opinions on social media, stating the new rule is a “regulation no one needed and very few wanted.”
“This regulation is an assault on women and girls. It makes it a federal requirement that men be allowed to play women’s sports, putting their safety, privacy and competitive opportunity at risk. And it makes it a federal requirement that feelings, not facts, dictate how Title IX is enforced,” DeVos said in a thread on X.
In April, the Biden administrationplanned to implement a new policy preventing schools from creating a ban on transgender athletes. This rule has been delayed, and instead, the administration shifted its focus on undoing the sexual assault rules put in place by the Trump administration, according to multiple reports.
On Monday, Bush-appointed Texas Federal Judge Reed O’Connor blocked the administration’s attempt to change Title IX to include “gender identity.” Leaders in several other red states are taking a stand, claiming that the Education Department is illegally expanding the definition of the word “sex.” In 2022, the Eastern District of Tennessee blocked Biden’s initial push to rewrite Title IX and include gender identity and sexual orientation.
The Department of Education didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The American College of Pediatricians just put out a 🔥🔥🔥 statement calling out all the major medical associations by name for pushing the gender transition craze on kids.
They ask for these groups to "IMMEDIATELY stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers,… pic.twitter.com/Rba8HDLkoM
The American College of Pediatricians just put out a statement calling out all the major medical associations by name for pushing the gender transition craze on kids. They ask for these groups to “IMMEDIATELY stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex.” The full
“Therefore, given the recent research and the revelations of the harmful approach advocated by WPATH and its followers in the United States, we, the undersigned, call upon the medical professional organizations of the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to follow the science and their European professional colleagues and immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex. Instead, these organizations should recommend comprehensive evaluations and therapies aimed at identifying and addressing underlying psychological co-morbidities and neurodiversity that often predispose to and accompany gender dysphoria. We also encourage the physicians who are members of these professional organizations to contact their leadership and urge them to adhere to the evidence-based research now available.” They link to MANY studies on their site: https://doctorsprotectingchildren.org
A Missouri high school asks students in a health class whether they understand that “gender” is different than “sex assigned at birth.” (Photo illustration: Fat Camera/Getty Images)
A Missouri high school instructed students in a health class to complete a survey asking if they understood “the difference between sex assigned at birth and gender.”
Webster Groves High School hosted a workshop in late April called “Understanding Gender and Relationships” presented by a speaker with a program run by the St. Louis-based domestic abuse treatment center Safe Connections. Before and after the guest speaker’s lecture, the health teacher instructed students to take the survey.
Webster Groves High School is part of Webster Groves School District, which enrolls 4,407 students across 10 schools. The survey asked students in the high school health class to respond with “yes,” “not sure,” or “no” to four statements, including “I can explain the difference between sex assigned at birth and gender.”
Two other statements on the survey are “I can create relationships in which others can express themselves and I can be myself” and “I understand how some gender stereotypes contribute to violence and abuse.”
The guest speaker for the health class represented Project HART, which its website describes as a “relationship violence prevention program offered at St. Louis-area schools, community centers and other places teens gather.” (HART is an acronym for Healthy Alternatives for Relationships Among Teens.)
In a fourth statement, the survey asks students whether they “can show people respect regardless of gender and how it is expressed.”
The high school gave the survey to students after Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, ordered the Webster Groves School District to “cease and desist” teaching students about human sexuality, including gender ideology, without parental consent ahead of time, The Daily Signal reported in February.
Missouri state law requires every public school district and public charter school to notify each student’s parent or guardian before providing any human sexuality materials or instruction to students. When asked if the survey taken by students in the health class violated this mandate, Webster Groves School District’s communications director, Derek Duncan, told The Daily Signal that the school system notifies families before lessons about human growth and development.
“Families are given the choice to opt out of such lessons,” Duncan said.
Duncan did not respond directly to The Daily Signal’s question asking whether parents of the involved students got the opportunity to opt their children out of the health class lesson on gender ideology.
The Missouri Attorney General’s Office told The Daily Signal it would look into the matter.
The session on “Understanding Gender and Relationships” allows students to “explore harmful gender stereotypes and to understand the differences between biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and attraction/sexual orientation,” Cynthia Danley, chief executive officer for Safe Connections, told The Daily Signal in an email.
“Key learning objectives include helping youth recognize that everyone deserves respect regardless of their gender and expression, understanding the negative impact of failing to respect gender-expansive individuals, and equipping youth with the tools to build relationships where peers can safely express themselves and be authentic,” Danley said.
Webster Groves School District, in the suburbs of St. Louis, approved a memorandum of understanding with Safe Connections at an April 11 school board meeting. On Feb. 20, Webster Groves issued a $220 check to the organization, according to the website BoardDocs.
While so much of American culture gears up to celebrate LGBTQ “Pride” during June, The Ruth Institute is dedicating the first Sunday in June to those who rejected a homosexual lifestyle. “Ex-Gay Visibility Day” is unlikely to receive President Joe Biden’s endorsement, but arguably it’s more necessary than the Transgender Day of Visibility, which the White House commemorated on Easter. (Photo illustration: Getty Images)
Next month, companies will add rainbow flags to their icons and logos, the White House will hold events celebrating LGBTQ individuals, and Target and other stores will likely promote rainbow-themed merchandise. Amid all this “Pride,” the men and women who rejected a homosexual lifestyle will be forgotten.
Why should “Pride” have the entire month of June? That’s a question Jennifer Roback Morse, president of the Ruth Institute, asked herself. She came to the conclusion that if so, much of America’s culture is going to celebrate people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, she might as well highlight the Americans who rejected those identities.
Morse has christened the first Sunday in June (which is June 2 this year) “Ex-Gay Visibility Day,” in a fitting response to the White House’s commemoration of “Transgender Day of Visibility.”
“It’s not politically correct to talk about ex-LGBT people,” Morse says in a press release provided early to The Daily Signal. “To the gay lobby, they don’t exist, or they’re just lying to themselves or were never really gay in the first place. But I have met many people who have journeyed away from an LGBT identity and are living happy, fulfilled lives with opposite-sex partners.”
Morse mentions research from Father Paul Sullins, a Roman Catholic priest, senior research associate at The Ruth Institute, and former sociology professor at Catholic University, who found that sexual orientation is more malleable than LGBTQ activists claim. The “born this way” narrative doesn’t match up with the results of Sullins’ research.
Sullins previously told The Daily Signal that he doesn’t encourage lesbians, gays, or bisexuals to try to change their sexual orientation unless they feel uncomfortable about it. He emphasized that efforts to change sexual orientation don’t always work, but—contrary to the LGBTQ narrative—they do occasionally succeed.
“When people attempt to change sexual orientation, it is fully successful in my studies about 17 to 20% of the time,” Sullins said. “Most persons who undergo it, meaning about 60 to 65%, report that they are less caught up in homosexual attractions and behaviors and activity.”
Sullins noted that about 30% of the 1,500 lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in a 2020 study on sexual orientation said that they have tried to change their sexual orientation and about 10% said they agreed with this statement: “If I could be completely heterosexual, I would want to do that.”
“So there is a minority of the gay population who wants to change, is not happy with living the way that they’re living,” Sullins said.
As Roman Catholics, both Morse and Sullins consider homosexual activity to be a sin, but they’re not supporting Ex-Gay Visibility Day to shame those who identify as LGBTQ. They say they merely intend to highlight the fact that there are options for people who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent feeling of identifying with the gender opposite one’s biological sex), even if they are uncomfortable with their feelings.
The White House is so dedicated to the LGBTQ movement that it chose Good Friday (the day Western Christians commemorate Jesus’ Crucifixion) as the day to release a statement commemorating Transgender Day of Visibility, which coincided this year with Easter Sunday, the holiest day on the Western Christian calendar. The White House played off this timing as a coincidence, but it shocked many Americans, especially Roman Catholics. (The Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns the ideology behind the transgender movement.)
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) May 24, 2024
President Joe Biden is unlikely to celebrate Ex-Gay Visibility Day, however, even though it doesn’t coincide with a more popular holiday. Biden touted “transgender leaders” whom he appointed to serve in the federal government, but he is unlikely to mention any ex-gays or detransitioners.
These heretics give the lie to the LGBTQ movement’s claim that it offers the only solution for those who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. They are living proof that it is possible to reject the movement and they’re often dismissed as irrelevant, so a day of visibility arguably makes far more sense for them than it does for transgender individuals, who enjoy a chorus of support from companies, stores, and government bodies.
The Ruth Institute will release videos about ex-gays and detransitioners over the coming month, but especially June 2, to present hope for anyone who wants another answer. Sadly, it seems Biden, Target, and their allies would prefer that these people remain invisible.
In a growing environment of left-wing activism in schools, especially related to LGBT ideology, parents who have not been able to influence curriculum have had the option of opting their kids out of classes. Not any longer, at least according to a federal appeals court in a Maryland case of three families suing for the right to religious freedom for their elementary school-aged children in public schools.
In August of 2023, three families — one Muslim, one Christian, and one Jewish — brought a case against the Montgomery County Board of Education for a recent policy change removing the opt-out option for curriculum. Previously, parents received advanced notice of materials that would be read to their children and could opt out. The school board announced that parents would no longer receive advanced notice of materials, and they could no longer opt out of readings or lessons.
A year prior, according to the case, “In the spring of 2022, the School Board had determined that the books in its English language arts curriculum were not sufficiently representative because they did not include LGBTQ characters.” Maryland law requires schools to give parents the opportunity “to view instructional materials to be used in the teaching of family life and human sexuality objectives.” The school board also has an opt-out policy for religious exemptions in place.
However, there is a clause that states that “if such requests become too frequent or too burdensome, the school may refuse to accommodate the requests. Schools are not required to alter fundamentally the educational program or create a separate educational program or a separate course to accommodate a student’s religious practice or belief.” Deciding that LGBT inclusion in the curriculum was fundamental to the educational program and the requests were too burdensome, the school board simply declared parents could not opt out of LGBT content any longer.
Judge’s Ruling
Last week, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman dismissed the parents’ concerns and noted that every court that has reviewed similar mandatory public-school curricula has found that “mere exposure in public school to ideas that contradict religious beliefs does not burden the religious exercise of students or parents.”
She insisted, “The parents still may instruct their children on their religious beliefs regarding sexuality, marriage, and gender, and each family may place contrary views in its religious context.”
“No government action prevents the parents from freely discussing the topics raised in the storybooks with their children or teaching their children as they wish,” Boardman wrote in Thursday’s order.
The decision was upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Their reasoning was that the parents could not demonstrate how the LGBT-themed books would be used in the classroom and therefore could not determine if they would infringe on their beliefs.
Contrary to the First Amendment
Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, argued, “That runs contrary to the First Amendment, Maryland law, the School Board’s own policies, and basic human decency.”
“Parents should have the right to receive notice and opt their children out of classroom material that violates their faith,” he added.
In contrast to the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning, reviewing the Montgomery County Public Schools website makes it clear why these books are in the classroom. The website has a dedicated LGBT section stating, “We have welcoming, affirming schools, classrooms, teams, and clubs. We value all of our children, youth, teachers, staff, and parents.” The section provides an extensive list of LGBT content, resources, and “How to” guides for students, staff, and parents.
Students are provided a Coming Out as YOU! guide that instructs them on how to come out, including a “safety plan,” which tells the students to make sure they have a safe place outside their home to stay; someone, seemingly besides their parents, that they can trust; and to “Consider letting a friend know that you’re planning on coming out and if you don’t text them by a certain time you might need help because your safety might be in danger.” The guide tells students they should decide what they identify as daily, which can change day by day.
The school’s Culturally Responsive Supplemental Elementary ELA Collection is the biggest concern point for parents, as it details the content students will be provided. Students grades kindergarten to second grade are provided more than eight separate LGBT titles, half of which are trans-focused. One book, titled Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, states in its description, “Penelope knows that he’s a boy. (And a ninja.) The problem is getting everyone else to realize it.”
Three books focus on a character named Max, a transgender-identifying elementary school-aged student who dedicates time to educating friends, teachers, and parents about what being transgender means. Several books are focused on same-sex relationships: one about a prince and a knight who fall in love, one about a child’s gay uncle getting married, and a book for 4- to 8-year-olds titled Love, Violet, about an elementary-aged girl who falls in love with another girl.
Not being subtle, another title for this age group is IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All, a book on intersectional feminism that teaches kids how to be activists, and a book titled Let’s Eat Bugs! for fifth graders provides recipes on eating insects. The school also offers an LGBT club for elementary school students.
The Obvious Purpose
The school system’s agenda is pretty obvious.
Is it any wonder that religious parents would be concerned about their children — again, kindergarten to fifth grade — being exposed to extreme LGBT ideology? Critics pretend kids are just being told stories that include LGBT characters and that only bigots would oppose kids learning about different types of people. The first judge dismissed the parents saying they “failed to show that the lack of an opt-out policy would result in the ‘indoctrination of their children’ or ‘coerce their children to violate or change their religious beliefs.’”
However, these are books designed to teach kids about being LGBT themselves, not simply about LGBT experiences, history, or health education. This is an environment where kids are heavily encouraged to explore sexuality and gender ideology, with expansive resources, instruction guides, and clubs. Of course, religious parents would consider this to be an invasive level of activism and indoctrination.
It should be obvious to anyone that forcing parents to accept this instruction for their children violates their religious freedom, and the obnoxious dismissal from a judge that parents can simply undo whatever their kids learn in school further mocks these sacred rights. Left-wing, LGBT activists simply want full control over children’s education and have constructed a system that not only excludes parents but intentionally isolates their children from them in school.
LGBT activists believe they know best for all students, and that all students need to learn about LGBT ideology in an open, proactive, and affirming way, and if parents oppose this instruction, they don’t need to know about it, or worse, have no power to stop it. Unfortunately, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just strengthened this abuse of power by school systems, degrading parental rights and religious freedom even further.
Chad Felix Greene is a senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of “Surviving Gender: My Journey Through Gender Dysphoria,” and is a social writer focusing on truth in media, conservative ideas and goals, and true equality under the law. You can follow him on Twitter @chadfelixg.
A male athlete who identifies as female dominates a high school girls race in Oregon, sparking new debate over fairness in women’s sports. (Photo illustration: Tony Anderson/Getty Images)
A male athlete took first place in a race for high school girls over the weekend at an Oregon state championship. Sophomore Aayden Gallagher, who identifies as female, beat seven girls in the 200-meter dash at the Oregon School Activities Association 6A State Championships, held at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Gallagher also took second place in the 400-meter. He tallied 18 points for McDaniel High School in Portland, leading the girl’s team to win fourth place overall in the championship.
Gallagher has dominated his races all season. He qualified to compete at the state championship by beating females for first place in the 200-meter May 9. He also took first place in the event at meets May 1 and April 17.
The crowd booed as Gallagher crossed the finish line Saturday, a video shows.
Male athletes are participating in, and dominating, girls track and cross-country events across the country. Lizzy Cohen Bidwell, a Connecticut resident whose name at birth was Lucas, qualified in mid-March for the national meet by taking first in the girls high jump in a regional competition. In Maine, another male who identifies as female, Soren Stark-Chessa, went from the middle of the pack in boys events to win an award for Fastest Sophomore Girl in the state’s largest high school cross-country race.
“We’ve just watched another male take away a state championship from a hardworking girl,” Paula Scanlan, ambassador for the Independent Women’s Forum, told The Daily Signal.
Scanlan, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer, competed on a girls’ team that included Lia Thomas, a male who identifies as female. Scanlan now campaigns to save women’s sports. Supporters of women’s and girls’ sports can’t keep allowing male athletes to displace female athletes, she said.
“Him competing and winning shows the other girls that they are not worthy of fair competition,” Scanlan said, “and if we continue to allow this, it will discourage young girls from competing altogether.”
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Biden’s Title IX (9) is destroying women’s sports. Many women are at risk of bodily injury and loss of scholarships across the nation due to biological males pretending to be women invading their sports.
Oklahoma Challenges Joe Biden’s Title IX Revisions: “One of the Most Radical and Illegal Moves We’ve Ever Seen from the Federal Government”
By Jim Hoft – April 27, 2024
Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters condemned President Joe Biden’s recent rewrite of Title IX, labeling it as “radical and illegal” and a direct assault on the rights of states, families, and specifically young women and girls. The Biden regime proudly announced that women will be forced to allow men in their locker rooms and bathrooms with a new 1577-page Title IX ruling. Women will be forced to compete against men and women will be forced to accept men on their sports teams.
And, as May Mailman, Director of Independent Women’s Law Center, notes, Title IX is not a college law. This will impact girls as young as those in the Headstart program, geared to children from three to five-years old, those in daycare, and those in Kindergarten through 12th grade. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
A West Virginia school board “punished” a group of middle school girls who protested a biological male competing against them at a track meet earlier this month, according to a legal complaint.
Cellphone video showed girls from Lincoln Middle School staging a protest in the shot-put ring at the Harrison County Middle School Championships on April 18; one by one, they stepped into the ring and then quickly stepped out without making attempts.
🚨🚨FIVE middle school female athletes in West Virginia refuse to throw shot put against male, Becky Pepper-Jackson.
This comes just 2 days after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the WV law that says you must compete in the category that matches your sex.
While the video in the post from female athlete advocate Riley Gaines appears to show six separate protests by Lincoln girls in the shot put ring, AthleticNet indicated that five Lincoln girls posted “ND” (no distance) in the finals. Gaines also wrote that five girls refused to participate.
Blaze News reported that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just days prior to the meet ruled in a 2-1 decision that a West Virginia law requiring every student athlete to participate in accordance with their biological sex violates the Title IX rights of Becky Pepper-Jackson — the student against whom the girls protested.
Pepper-Jackson — a biological male — has been living as a female and taking puberty blockers for years. AthleticNet said Pepper-Jackson of Bridgeport won the shot put final at the meet with a toss of 32 feet, 9 inches, easily besting the second-place finisher by more than three feet.
What happened next?
Parents of four of the five protesting girls filed the legal complaint against the Harrison County Board of Education. The complaint states the girls attended an April 24 press conference addressing their protest. Attendees included Gaines and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Auditor J.B. McCuskey, along with several Republicans from the state Senate and House of Delegates, the complaint states.
The complaint also states that the next day — Thursday — the father of one of the girls “spoke with Lincoln Middle School principal Lori Scott,” who told him that the girls who protested “would not be permitted to compete in a scheduled track and field meet on April 27, 2024.”
The complaint also states that a father of another girl spoke with coach Dawn Riestenberg, who “informed him that his daughter would not be allowed to participate in the scheduled track and field meet on April 27.” The complaint adds that Riestenberg told the dad that the girls were barred from the meet because it was her job “to score points for the track team,” which the complaint says correlates to “the minor student athletes’ protest and subsequent appearance at a press conference to the decision to ban them from competition.”
The complaint states that the protesting girls “are being punished” by the school board “for exercising their rights to freedom of speech and expression under the Constitution of West Virginia.”
The complaint was filed Friday — the day before the April 27 meet from which the girls allegedly were barred — and seeks no monetary damages, only “injunctive relief.” State Attorney General Morrisey filed an amicus brief Friday in support of the parents’ complaint.
“The only thing this decision does is teach these children to keep their mouths shut and not disagree with what they saw as unfairness,” Morrisey said in a news release, according to WBOY-TV. “That is outrageous and it tramples these students’ rights to freedom of speech and expression.”
Apparently, the complaint and even support from the state attorney general were not enough.
AthleticNet records show that none of the Lincoln Middle School girls listed in the complaint took part in the shot put competition at the Mid Mountain 10 Championships on April 27.
In addition, while it’s been reported that the protesting girls were barred from competition for a longer period of time, all the girls in the complaint are listed on the shot put stat sheet from a Monday invitational meet.
The school board on Tuesday didn’t immediately reply to Blaze News’ request for comment on the complaint.
WATCH: Courageous Teen Shares Horrifying Account Following Friend's Violent Assault by Trans Student at Montgomery County Middle School
A 13-year-old boy who identifies as a girl named "Melanie" was recently transferred to Montgomery County Middle School and made a hit list to… pic.twitter.com/Mzjqyn1z8g
The Biden administration’s Department of Education unveiled a sweeping set of rules on Friday that effectively erase protections for sex-based spaces by expanding the Title IX prohibition against sex discrimination to include “gender identity” — a term that’s never mentioned in the original law.
A majority of Americans agree that males who claim to identify otherwise should not be allowed to infiltrate girls’ and women’s sports teams. As of now, some 25 states have laws or regulations aimed at keeping boys and men out of female-only spaces, on and off the field. Yet, come Aug. 1, the Democrat regime’s radial redefinition of “sex-based discrimination” poses a threat to sex-based protections and welcomes males into female spaces including athletic competitions, locker rooms, and sex-specific clubs such as sororities, despite state laws.
“The final regulations will help to ensure that all students receive appropriate support when they experience sex discrimination and that recipients’ procedures for investigating and resolving complaints of sex discrimination are fair to all involved,” the rules claim.
The regulations do even more damage, however, such as by undoing Trump-era due process safeguards for those accused of sexual misconduct, which could include merely using accurate pronouns. They also encroach on parents’ rights and threaten academic free speech by incentivizing schools to censor students and teachers with traditional views on sex and marriage, so they don’t lose federal funding.
In the regulations, the Biden administration openly admits it relied on the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision to inform its rulemaking. In that case, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch joined their Democrat-nominated colleagues to expand the prohibition against employment discrimination based on “sex” to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”
A draft of the rules released in June 2022 received a “record number” of comments from Americans warning that enacting such extensive provisions and redefining terms like “sexual harassment” would bully schools into mandating the spread of radical gender ideology.
In response to Biden’s Department of Education ignoring some 240,000 comments, “a coalition of organizations” including the Independent Women’s Forum andIndependent Women’s Law Center are suing the administration, according to an IWF press release. In 2022 and 2023, those groups sentlegal and policyobjections to the new rule.
“Title IX was designed to give women equal opportunities in academic settings. It forbids discrimination on the basis of ‘sex,’ which it affirms throughout the statute is binary and biological. The unlawful Omnibus Regulation re-imagines Title IX to permit the invasion of women’s spaces and the reduction of women’s rights in the name of elevating protections for ‘gender identity,’ which is contrary to the text and purpose of Title IX,” Director of Independent Women’s Law Center May Mailman said, noting the rules are illegal.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a West Virginia law that prohibited transgender girls from competing against biological girls in sports. The 2-1 ruling came from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling found the law violated Title IX – in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union, its West Virginia chapter and Lambda Legal.
A federal appeals court struck down West Virginia’s transgender sports ban. (ALLISON DINNER/AFP via Getty Images)
The court said the law cannot be applied to Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 13-year-old girl who had been taking puberty blockers and has identified as a girl since the third grade.
“This is a tremendous victory for our client, transgender West Virginians, and the freedom of all youth to play as who they are,” ACLU West Virginia attorney Joshua Block said.
West Virginia’s “Save Women’s Sports Act” was signed into law in 2021. The law ordered student-athletes to compete and play against those of their biological gender. Lawyers for the girl originally had sued the school board after Gov. Jim Justice signed the bill into law, claiming it violated the 14th Amendment and protections under Title IX.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice signed the bill in 2021. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, File)
U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin ruled against the transgender girl in January 2023 and also ruled the laws did not violate Title IX protections. However, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to reinstate a preliminary injunction.
The Supreme Court ruled last April that the transgender girl could compete with biological girls on the middle school’s girls’ sports teams. Supreme Court justices refused to disturb an appeals court order that made it possible for the girl to continue playing on her school’s track and cross-country teams. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision.
West Virginia was one of at least 24 states that had laws barring transgender women and girls from competing against the gender they identify as.
“I will keep fighting to safeguard Title IX. We must keep working to protect women’s sports so that women’s safety is secured and girls have a truly fair playing field,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said. “We know the law is correct and will use every available tool to defend it.”
An elementary school in the state of Washington denied an 11-year-old student’s request to start an interfaith prayer club. (Photo Illustration: Valerii Apetroaiei/Getty Images)
In 2015, religious freedom seemed compromised when a Washington high school football coach was fired for praying with his team after a game. Joe Kennedy waited roughly six years for the Supreme Court to hear the oral arguments for his case. He was represented by a Christian nonprofit legal organization, First Liberty Institute, which took the position that “no teacher or coach should lose their job for simply expressing their faith while in public.” This was a notable case in 2022, and recent events have caused the issue to resurface.
Earlier this year, Laura, an 11-year-old girl who attends Creekside Elementary in Washington state, requested to start an interfaith prayer club at her school. But her request was denied. When Laura and her mom approached the principal about the matter in February, they were informed that the school’s budget for clubs had been finalized in October. And according to a spokesperson for Issaquah School District, “[C]lubs offered are student-interest driven and meet outside of the school day. At the elementary level, participation in a club also requires parent permission. Once the school year begins, the building budget is set, and additional clubs are usually not added until the following school year.”
But the story doesn’t end here.
Laura’s group, which she hoped to start with her friend, was meant to include people of all different religious backgrounds. She shared with Fox News that she was feeling alone, and that she thought this would be a good idea to bring students together. “I think that this is something that I am very passionate about,” she added. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t really want to make this happen, if I didn’t think that it would be a great opportunity for everyone.”
It was later discovered that an LGBT club was approved only a week prior to Laura’s club request being denied, which has caused spectators to raise their eyebrows. As a result of this alleged hypocrisy, Laura filed a lawsuit on the grounds of religious discrimination with the help of First Liberty Institute.
Attorneys pointed out in a letter to the school, “The First Amendment ‘doubly protects religious speech.’ These First Amendment protections extend to elementary school students expressing their sincere religious beliefs through voluntary clubs. Yet the school district flouted its First Amendment obligations when they refused to allow a student-led interfaith prayer club. Its unlawful action violates both the Free Exercise Clause and the Free Speech Clause.”
Kayla Toney, associate counsel at First Liberty Institute, explained, “Denying the formation of a religious student club while allowing other clubs violates the Constitution,” drawing attention to the fact that the similar case with Coach Kennedy occurred “just a short drive away” from Laura’s elementary school.
And in comments to The Washington Stand, Arielle Del Turco, Family Research Council’s director of the Center for Religious Liberty, said, “The fact that Creekside Elementary denied a religious club the same month that it approved a pride club reveals a lot about American culture right now.”
She continued, “Sadly, the promotion of LGBT identities is held sacred while religion is sidelined and marginalized. It’s heartbreaking that Laura, a fifth-grade student, felt alone at school as a religious believer and that she knew other students who felt the same way. She reacted in exactly the right way by making an effort to build community with religious students.”
Del Turco went on to emphasize that, “Oftentimes, when people seek to prevent religious expression in government venues, they will use the excuse that they don’t want to imply that the government favors one religion over another.” However, when it comes to Laura’s case, she pointed out that “the school doesn’t even have that flimsy excuse because the students were seeking to start a … club that would be open to students of different faiths.”
Ultimately, “Any school that allows other clubs while specifically denying religious clubs is acting in a discriminatory manner and violating the First Amendment, which protects freedom of expression and the free exercise of religion.”
Del Turco concluded, “Christian fifth graders shouldn’t face viewpoint discrimination from their school leadership. It shouldn’t have had to come to this, but I fully expect this injustice to be rectified in the courts.”
The governor of Idaho has signed into law a measure explicitly declaring that there are only two genders, as the idea that there are multiple genders has permeated popular culture and global politics.
On Tuesday, Idaho’s Republican Gov. Brad Little signed House Bill 421 into law. The measure, approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in a 54-14 vote in February and passed by the Republican-controlled Senate in a 26-8 vote on April 10, amends Idaho state law to establish a definition of the term “sex,” clarifying that there are only two genders: male and female. All Democrats in both chambers voted against the bill, while one Senate Republican and three House Republicans broke with their party to oppose it.
The language included in the bill applies to “the compiled laws and rules and policies of the state of Idaho.” The measure defines “sex” as “an individual’s biological sex, either male or female.” It identifies a male as “an individual who has, had, will have, or, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident, would have the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes sperm for fertilization.”
Meanwhile, the legislation defines a female as someone who “has, had, will have, or, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident, would have the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes eggs for fertilization.” It clarifies that the term “boy” refers to “a minor human male,” while the word “father” is used for “a male parent.”
On the other hand, the measure states that “‘girl’ means a minor human female,” while “‘mother’ means a female parent.”
“‘Gender,’ when used to refer to males, females, or the natural differences between males and females, shall be considered a synonym for ‘sex’ and shall not be considered a synonym for gender identity, an internal sense of gender, experienced gender, gender expression, or gender role,” the bill adds.
The legislation also replaces the previous definition of sex as “the immutable biological and physiological characteristics, specifically the chromosomes and internal and external reproductive anatomy, genetically determined at conception and generally recognizable at birth, that define an individual as male or female” with the new definition in existing laws.
A declaration of legislative intent included at the beginning of the legislation states that “in human beings, there are two, and only two, sexes: male and female” and that “every individual is either male or female.” Stressing that “an individual’s sex can be observed or clinically verified at or before birth,” the measure asserts that “in no case is an individual’s sex determined by stipulation or self-identification.”
“There is increasing confusion about the definition of sex as a biological truth and its relationship to concepts and terms, including but not limited to gender, gender identity, gender role, gender expression, and experienced gender,” the legislation explains. “Confusion and ambiguities surrounding the definitions of sex, male, female, and related terms can hinder individual efforts to enjoy equal treatment under the law.”
Emphasizing that “legal equality of the two sexes does not imply that the sexes are identical to each other or are the same in every respect,” the bill maintains that “separate facilities, housing or sleeping arrangements, or sports teams, programs, or leagues established because of or organized according to physical differences between the sexes does not constitute unequal treatment under the law,” adding, “Physical differences between males and females are enduring, and the two sexes are not fungible.”
The passage of House Bill 421 comes at a time when adherence to the idea that sex is determined by biology is interpreted as hostile to the LGBT community, some of whom identify as a made-up gender other than their sex or identify as non-binary or identify as one of several fake gender identities. Last year, a professor at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas, was fired because he said sex is determined by an individual’s chromosomes.
That professor, who was ultimately reinstated earlier this year after filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, had been terminated due to allegations that he engaged in “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter” by stating a biological fact.
At the same time, gender identity is emerging as a protected class in American society.
In the 2020 case of Bostock v. Clayton County, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the protections against discrimination on the basis of sex in federal civil rights law also apply to sexual orientation and gender identity.
In some countries, “misgendering,” a term misused by trans activists to defame those who correctly identify a person’s sex, can have even more adverse consequences. A Mexican congressman and civil society leader have found themselves subject to prosecution for using male pronouns to refer to a trans-identified lawmaker in Mexico who self-identifies as female.
Pilgrims flock to St. Peter’s Square for the second night of a vigil for an ailing then-Pope John Paul II on April 2, 2005, in Vatican City. (Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
The Vatican on Monday issued a declaration, “Dignitas Infinita,” on human dignity, warning that the practice of surrogacy, transgender surgeries, and gender theory are contrary to human dignity.
“In the face of so many violations of human dignity that seriously threaten the future of the human family, the Church encourages the promotion of the dignity of every human person, regardless of their physical, mental, cultural, social, and religious characteristics,” the document says. “The Church does this with hope, confident of the power that flows from the Risen Christ, who has fully revealed the integral dignity of every man and woman.”
The name of the document translates to “Infinite Dignity,” and it’s a five-year-long product of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith that reaffirms Catholic Church teaching on the topics. It addresses a number of weighty topics that have entered the political sphere, including surrogacy.
“The Church also takes a stand against the practice of surrogacy, through which the immensely worthy child becomes a mere object,” the document states.
“First and foremost, the practice of surrogacy violates the dignity of the child,” it continues. “Indeed, every child possesses an intangible dignity that is clearly expressed—albeit in a unique and differentiated way—at every stage of his or her life: from the moment of conception, at birth, growing up as a boy or girl, and becoming an adult.
“Because of this unalienable dignity, the child has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver,” the document adds.
It also addresses “critical issues present in gender theory,” warning that “it intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”
“This foundational difference is not only the greatest imaginable difference, but is also the most beautiful and most powerful of them,” the Vatican document says. “In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities. It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world.”
As for attempted sex-change operations, “Dignitas Infinita” emphasizes that the “dignity of the body cannot be considered inferior to that of the person as such.” It quotes the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states that “the human body shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God.’”
“Any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,” the document states. “This is not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the assistance of health care professionals to resolve these abnormalities. However, in this case, such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here.”
Exchanging biology-based sex education in our schools for woke-appeasing LGBTQ+ pandering will only hurt kids. (Photo: Miguel Sotomayor/ Getty Images)
As suicide rates, sexual assaults, mass depression, and anxiety grip America’s youth, the Biden administration, state legislatures, and public school districts have begun usurping science education with “transgender and gender-nonconforming” curriculum.
Students in over a dozen states no longer have access to biologically based sex education; that’s been replaced by liberal laws and policies requiring classrooms to exchange biologically proven facts with pseudo-scientific advocacy of gender fluidity.
Despite the claims of the U.S. Department of Education, no quantitative studies show gender transition or “gender nonconformity” is a healthy or normal part of human development.
These child-targeted policy prescriptions are often sweetened artificially by using comfortable terminology, such as “comprehensive,” “inclusive,” and “gender affirming” to paint those who disagree with the unscientific, immoral content aimed at minors as bigoted and heartless. If parents respond negatively to the content of these postmodern sex-education revisions, news outlets (which may claim to be unbiased) use those gaslighting terms in their coverage of the outrage.
This effectively gatekeeps any debate about negative consequences by portraying dissidents as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. After all, what kind of monster wouldn’t be inclusive and affirming?
The most recent and flagrant example of this has been seen in Arizona’s Flagstaff Unified School District. Local parents obtained a video of school district staff discussing changes to the sex-ed curriculum that included removing the boy/girl binary.
When parents shared their concerns at the next school board meeting, board President Christine Fredericks responded: “I will never apologize for being inclusive.”
So far, liberals’ strategy of dismissing any commonsense concerns with moral scolding straight out of a 1990s anti-bullying commercial has been effective. Parents who expressed concern about teenage boys pretending to be girls to gain access to girls’ locker rooms were disregarded as backward, uninformed, and unfeeling. When tragedy struck, in part due to these policies and worldviews—as in the sexual assault by a “gender-nonconforming” boy in a girls’ restroom of Virginia’s Loudoun County Public Schools—parents were scolded again and charged with being bigoted opportunists.
Similarly, after the shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, in which a transgender assailant slaughtered three 9-year-old students and three staff members at the private Christian school, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded by suggesting that “transphobia” was the true danger.
An LGBTQ+ activist organization called The Trevor Project has intimated repeatedly that the near 40% suicide rate for transgender individuals isn’t due to mental illness and toxic prescriptions. Instead, it’s the result of “bullying,” which also has been redefined to mean “anyone who doesn’t passionately support the child’s transition.” The assertion has been echoed consistently without question by federally funded media outlets such as PBS.
This quantitatively unverified accusation is a key rationale from the Left in why updating sex education curriculum is essential for them. After all, the point of sex ed is to answer students’ questions concerning physiological and reproductive development. These answers in biology-based sex education clearly differentiate men and women, not just in external sexual organs but in development rate, hormone production and balance, and higher susceptibility to certain diseases and conditions.
A postmodern, “inclusive” approach as outlined by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, teachers unions, and massive grants from the Biden administration removes that differentiation altogether.
Separating sex and gender as physicality and mentality, therefore disconnecting behavior from sex by suggesting that your sex comprises your organs whereas your gender is all in your mind, is heinously distant from reality. Naturally produced hormones based on sex govern anatomical systems, behavior, immune response, and reproduction.
The additional foolishness of encouraging minors that changing external appendages somehow certifies a gender change only adds insult to the injury of what was historically a scientifically sound subject.
Although biological sex education warned boys and girls of their higher likelihood of developing cancerous tumors in certain sex-specific organs and advised them to watch for signs at different ages, the new “gender affirming” sex ed does nothing to warn students about the carcinogenic danger of “hormonal treatments” in gender transitions.
The human endocrine system is incredibly fragile; tampering with it can be perilous. Women who seek hormonal treatment for menopause are required to be warned that doing so quadruples their risk of developing cancer. Although the same hormones are injected in transgender treatments, no such carcinogen warning is required or offered in any current “gender affirming” sex-ed curriculum.
None of the biology, anatomy, and physiology, or developmental psychology texts from which I’ve taught have ever provided a shred of evidence justifying the omission or twisting of critical information when instructing students. At that point, you’re no longer a teacher, you’re a sleazy salesman for a pyramid scheme.
The misnamed “sex education” that the Department of Education describes as “safe and supported” is in reality temporal, shallow, and dangerous. As other nations ban transgender experiments on minors, President Joe Biden’s administration has put American children in danger via woke dictate, bastardizing health education into its antithesis.
Sex education in the U.S. is quickly becoming a sick joke, and permanent damage to American children is the punchline.
Joe Biden is the biggest April Fool that ever-set foot in the White House, choosing the day Christ rose from the dead to proclaim, “Transgender Visibility Day”.
White House Responds to Christian and GOP Backlash Over ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’ Proclamation — Does Not Apologize
By Cassandra MacDonald – March 31, 2024
THE WHITE HOUSE HAS RESPONDED TO THE BACKLASH FROM CHRISTIANS OVER THE “TRANSGENDER DAY OF VISIBILITY” PROCLAMATION ISSUED BY JOE BIDEN.
Biden declared March 31 to be a holiday honoring transgender people — but this March 31, of course, is Easter.
“NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility,” the White House proclamation declared. “I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.” READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The Mississippi state Capitol in downtown Jackson is seen here in April 2019. Reports from Jackson and elsewhere in Mississippi demonstrate why parents there are increasingly skeptical about K-12 education and why the state Legislature needs to enact a parental bill of rights. (Photo: C. Robertson/ iStock/Getty Images)
Some school officials in Mississippi seem determined to keep parents out of their child’s education. But state lawmakers have a chance to join about two dozen other states that have prevented that from happening.
Mississippi legislators are considering a proposal that would create a parental bill of rights, reinforcing parents’ authority even when a child is on school grounds. The proposal is simple, but powerful: Public employees, such as teachers and school administrators, cannot substantially burden a parent’s right to direct a child’s upbringing and health care.
What does this look like in practice?
When children start the school year, moms and dads typically have to sign forms stating a child’s allergies, directing the school to administer painkillers if a child is injured at recess, and consenting to basic medical treatment if a child is in need.
In today’s upside-down culture, however, school officials are allowing minor-age children to “change” their name and whether they want to be addressed as a boy or girl, regardless of his or her sex, while at school.
In some states, teachers do not have to tell parents that a child is making these choices during the school day.
What results is “social affirmation,” in which adults tell a child that yes, the child was born in the wrong body and should act as if they are someone they are not. That can foster a child’s desire to seek medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and hormone treatments and perhaps even surgeries that will damage their reproductive organs.
An exaggeration? Whistleblowers have exposed centers such as the St. Louis Children’s Hospital for prescribing children as young as 11 to take puberty-blocking drugs.
The results were horrific in some cases: Young women would return to the hospital bleeding through their clothes because testosterone treatments thin the vaginal wall, and the wall can then tear open. Some males experienced liver toxicity after taking drugs to make them appear more feminine.
In the U.K., England’s National Health Service has recommended that doctors not encourage young people to assume a different “gender” because autism and anxiety and depression were often found in children expressing confusion over their sex. And research finds that this confusion resolves on its own as children progress into adulthood in 80% to 95% of cases, which means watchful waiting is far healthier for children than social affirmation.
Yet some Mississippi educators are still pushing the dangerous “gender” agenda.
Parents Defending Education, an advocacy organization,
uncovered that a school in Jackson received a grant to promote gender ideology. Oxford School District officials surveyed students and asked children if they identified as queer or “trans.”
In Tupelo, teachers were trained to allow students to change their name and pronouns.
Educators were instructed to call the child by his or her given name and pronouns when talking to parents unless the child gave a teacher permission to tell parents that the child had assumed a different gender—a secretive technique that hides information from families.
When a child is confused about their sex, social affirmation can have lasting consequences. Some medical treatments are irreversible and can lead to sterility and other complications. For at least these reasons, school personnel should not be allowed to keep parents in the dark about what is happening to their young children in the classroom.
STERILIZING OUR CHILDREN
State legislators can help. For more than a decade, state lawmakers around the country have been adopting parental bills of rights similar to the proposal before Mississippi lawmakers. Legislators should state plainly that parents are a child’s primary caregivers and that public officials cannot burden, or obstruct, a parent’s role. Teachers have a responsibility to report abuse or neglect, but that does not mean educators should accept a child’s self-diagnosis that he or she needs drugs to alter their body chemistry.
The reports from Jackson, Tupelo, and elsewhere demonstrate why Americans are increasingly skeptical about K-12 education. Mississippi officials should increase academic transparency and strengthen parental rights, restoring a civic value in short supply today between local communities and their schools—specifically, public trust.
Planet Fitness has countless critics of its “no judgment” policy that permits gender-confused men to interlope into its women’s locker rooms. It’s costing the gym chain hundreds of millions of dollars. (Photo: Bernard Weil/Toronto Star/Getty Images)
At Planet Fitness, you can exercise everything but your right to privacy. That’s the message customers are taking to heart after an Alaskan woman had her membership revoked for complaining about a man in the women’s locker room.
“The gym is a “no judgment zone,” Patricia Silva was told. Well, it’s about to become a profit-free zone, too, thanks to angry Americans who are putting the company’s stock in a $400 million free-fall.
In a perfect snapshot of where corporate wokeness will lead these days, the media is reporting that within five days of Silva’s story hitting social media, Planet Fitness lost almost a half-billion dollars in value—crashing 7.8% in less than a week. “The company’s value dropped from $5.3 billion on March 14 to $4.9 billion on March 19,” reports show, “and its shares are down by 13.59% compared to a month ago.”
Despite the pushback, the business stubbornly stuck by the mixed-sex policy, insisting that it doesn’t matter if members felt uncomfortable. “This discomfort,” the company’s operational manual argues, “is not a reason to deny access to the transgender member.”
In a video she took from the Fairbanks location, Silva said, “I just came out of Planet Fitness. There is a man shaving in the women’s bathroom,” viewers find out later after she posts a picture.
“I love him in Christ,” she makes clear. “He is a spiritual being having a human experience. He doesn’t like his gender so he wants to be a woman, but I’m not comfortable with him shaving in my bathroom. I just thought I’d say it out loud.”
When Silva confronted the man in the restroom, he replied, “Well, I’m LGB … .” She interrupted, “But you’re a man invading my space!” She ultimately walked away and went to the front desk. “‘Are you aware that there is a MAN shaving in the women’s bathroom?’” she asked. “‘ … I’m not OK with that.’ The two men standing at the desk, put their heads down and their tails between their legs!” Silva recounted. “As I was walking out the door … at my back, a woman shouts, ‘It’s a girl!’ … I shouted back, ‘It’s a man!’”
Silva was especially irate that a young girl, who “could have been 12 years old,” was exposed to the same man. She stood in the same room in a towel and “kind of freaked out.”
The next day, she posted on Facebook that she got a call from Planet Fitness “announcing that they have chosen to cancel my membership rather than protect [young] girls and women … that enter the women’s locker room from men with a penis. … Despicable.”
And yet, even now, flooded with complaints and nationwide criticism, the company stands by its decision, telling Libs of TikTok that the staff will “work with members and employees to address this discomfort [sharing facilities with transgender members] and to foster a climate of understanding consistent with the ‘Judgment Free’ character of Planet Fitness.”
Then, doubling down, the business vowed to continue calling trans-identifying customers by their preferred pronouns and “other terms consistent with their self-reported gender identity, if reasonably known to the Planet Fitness staff.”
None of this should come as a surprise, since the company has a long and unflattering past of siding with trans activists over women who feel victimized by their male presence. In 2015, Yvette Cormier, a member of a Michigan branch, had the exact same experience—well before the movement had risen to the public prominence it has now.
“Freaked out,” she complained to the desk that there was a man in her restroom. She was shocked to find the on-duty staff taking his side. Stunned, she contacted Planet Fitness’s corporate office—where she heard more of the same. The gym, she was told, is a “no judgment zone”—but apparently not for everyone. When Cormier started warning women about the policy, Planet Fitness revoked her membership.
“This is very scary,” she told reporters at the time. “I feel like it’s kind of one-sided. I feel like I’m the one who is being punished.” She sued.
In Leesburg, Florida, six years ago, the same thing happened. “Mrs. H” confronted the man in her locker room and told him to leave. For more than an hour, he refused to go, watching every woman coming and going from his spot near the door. “Despite a male employee observing that [Jordan] Rice’s behavior was ‘over the top,’ staff did not intervene and ask him to finish his business, but permitted him to monopolize the women’s locker room.”
For Mrs. H, who’d survived an attempted rape, it was a traumatic experience to say the least. All she wanted was the privacy to change and shower—instead she got something else; namely, a notice that her membership had been canceled. She took the gym to court.
Conservatives remember the company’s one-sided trans advocacy well. The Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon thought back to those cases, pointing out, “Planet Fitness was an early adopter of insane policies that allow adult men in women’s locker rooms with women and children. And of course, the policies changed with little notice to customers.”
“When women complained,” she explained, “they were ignored or kicked out. Women need to stand up for ourselves, but we also need the men who love us to stand up for us as well. I am grateful that so many good men do. If it takes hurting them financially to make a difference, I’ll take that. But it’s cold comfort.”
For now, the wave of consumer activism that brought Bud Light, Target, RipCurl, and Doritos to their knees is in full force. And rightly so, the army of boycotters say. “The most offensive thing you can do to a woman is pretend she doesn’t exist,” Paul Szypula tweeted. “Because Planet Fitness has chosen this path their gym, will, ironically, soon not exist. The universe has a way of balancing things out.”
The most offensive thing you can do to a woman is pretend she doesn’t exist.
Because Planet Fitness has chosen this path their gym will, ironically, soon not exist.
Libs of TikTok, which helped break Silva’s story, is surprised CEOs need the warning at this point, but posted, “Turns out people don’t want to support companies who cave to gender pseudoscience and allow men in women’s private spaces! #BoycottPlanetFitness Do not let up! Keep it going!”
Whoa. Planet Fitness saw $400 Million wiped off its value since we broke the story of them allowing men in female lockers rooms and then banning the woman who exposed it.
Turns out people don’t want to support companies who cave to gender pseudoscience and allow men in womens’… pic.twitter.com/s55gBryFjD
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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