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.
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.
Only five days have passed since a 17-year-old shot up his school in Perry, Iowa, killing one and injuring five. Yet anyone looking for updates about the tragedy would be hard-pressed to find it on the front pages of any corporate outlet, unusual given the media’s typical amplification of such tragedies. The press is known for lengthy coverage glamorizing killers, inspiring copycat acts, and using shootings to push gun control. When covering tragedies that contradict leftist claims, however, Democrats and their cronies in the corrupt media quickly go radio silent.
Those media that did bother to keep coverage of the issue going, like NBC, sought to shift blame from the shooter to sexual sanity advocates such as Libs of TikTok Founder Chaya Raichik. She dares to report on the growing trend of violent transgender shooters, including details linking the Iowa school shooter to gender-fluid identity politics.
“Each time there is a mass shooting where the shooter’s identity is possibly LGBT, you and other conservative influencers appear to fixate on this and suggest to your millions of followers that people with LGBT identities are prone to violence,” NBC’s LGBT issues writer Matt Lavietes wrote in a comment request Raichik posted. “What would you say to your critics who say you’re stoking fear, hatred, and potential violence against a marginalized group of people?”
Democrats and the press followed a similar playbook in 2023 when a woman masquerading as a man shot and killed three children and three staff at a small Christian school in Nashville. They framed Christians as the perpetrators of the shooting rather than the victims and blamed Tennessee gun laws, gun lovers, and laws protecting children from drag shows and irreversible sexual disfigurement. Some outlets even complained that authorities “misgendered” the shooter.
When a man shot and killed five at Old National Bank in Lousiville, Kentucky in the name of furthering the left’s gun-control agenda, gun grabbers also used the shooter’s logic to fuel Democrats’ push for unconstitutional red-flag laws.
The corporate media’s double standards on shootings should not surprise Americans, 39 percent of whom say they do not trust media at all. These double standards should, however, enrage them.
For noticing patterns in violence among gender-indoctrinated kids and warning that taking away Second Amendment rights won’t solve the mental health crisis or the weakening family and community ties that exacerbate these tragedies, the media believes conservatives deserve more criticism. The press is perfectly content smearing their political enemies with the acts of those so evil they’d murder children, while refusing ever to look in the mirror.
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.
The U.S. Department of the Interior sent an internal bulletin to employees in September on “Supporting Gender Transition in the Federal Workplace.”
According to documents published on X by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, the department sent out guidelines establishing “gender identity” as a protected class under its federal policy. “Gender identity,”according to the Interior Department, is defined as “an individual’s internal sense of being male, female, another gender, no gender, of multiple genders, or fluid in gender.”
“The document states ‘it is not DOI’s intent to be overly protective,’” the Oversight Project reported, “but then goes on to establish policies governing confidentiality and privacy, dress and appearance, names and pronouns, inclusive language, restrooms and related facilities, workplace assignments and duties, recordkeeping, sick and medical leave, and hiring process.”
“An employee’s transition should be treated with as much sensitivity and confidentiality as any other private or highly personal life experiences,” the department memo reads. “Transitioning employees often want as little publicity about their transition as possible.”
The bulletin also outlines codes for “dress and appearance,” encouraging employees to “evaluate, and consider eliminating, where appropriate, gender-specific dress and appearance rules.”
“Once an employee has informed management that they are transitioning, consistent with the employee’s wishes, DOI dress codes should be applied to employees transitioning to a different gender in the same way that they are applied to other employees of that gender, as appropriate,” the policy reads.
Employees with the National Park Service (NPS) apparently violated the agency dress code during an LGBT “pride” celebration this summer when staff held a parade at Yosemite National Park featuring celebrity environmentalist drag queen Pattie Gonia. While the NPS uniform code expressly prohibits employee participation in demonstrations or public events “wherein the wearing of the uniform could be construed as agency support for a particular issue, position, or political party,” staff draped their uniforms in activist apparel anyway.
In October, the drag queen was featured by the department again with a bizarre clip promoting the false narrative that “queer rights are more under attack than ever” alongside Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
The transgender policy deployed by Interior leadership in September urges employees to “use gender-neutral language in broad communications to avoid assumptions about gender identity.” Examples of “pronouns,” according to the policy, are “they, them, theirs, ze/hir/hirs, ze/zir/zirs, xe/xem/xyrs.” Bathroom use is up to personal discretion, it says, and those who refuse to abide by departmental policies are warned of retribution for “unlawful discrimination.”
“Repeated, intentional refusal to use the employee’s affirming name/gender/pronouns, and/or repeated reference to the employee’s dead name/gender/pronouns by supervisors/managers, or coworkers is contrary to the goal of treating all employees with dignity and respect,” the policy states. “Such intentional conduct could constitute unlawful discrimination.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
A teammate of the Massachusetts high school field hockey player who was hospitalized last week after a male opponent fired a high-powered shot into her face said it’s time for changes to rules that allow males to play on female teams, WFTX-TV reported.
Dighton-Rehoboth team captain Kelsey Bain wrote in a letter to the state’s lnterscholastic Athletic Association that “boys do not belong in girls’ sports,” the station said.
During Thursday’s playoff game against Swampscott High School, the male Swampscott player fired a shot toward the goal, but the ball instead hit a Dighton-Rehoboth player hard in her face. The ball ricocheted far from the point of impact, and the injured player fell to her knees and cried out — as did her teammates. A number of them turned their faces away after coming to her aid, and play was halted while the injured female player was treated.
It's reported that male player (#2 for Swampscott) knocked the teeth out of female player. Males are allowed to play on female teams in MA because of the "equal play act"
“The shrieks and screams of fear and pain that projected from her after being hit filled the stadium,” Bain added in her letter, according to WFTX. “The looks of horror and shock on the faces of the girls surrounding her were also chilling.”
Massachusetts scholastic rules allow males to play sports with females if there’s no male team for that sport available — and vice versa.
But Bain said enough is enough.
“We all witnessed the substantial damage that a male has the ability to cause against a female during a game,” she added in her letter, according to the station. “How much longer does the MIAA plan on using girls as statistical data points before they realize that boys do not belong in girls’ sports?”
The MIAA told WFTX it stands by the Equal Rights Amendment: “We respect and understand the complexity and concerns that exist regarding student safety. However, student safety has not been a successful defense to excluding students of one gender from participating on teams of the opposite gender.”
When play resumed following the injury to the Dighton-Rehoboth player, the male Swampscott player quickly scored a goal. In fact, he scored both goals for Swampscott, giving his team a 2-0 victory and eliminating Dighton-Rehoboth from the tournament.
It won’t come as a shock that the male Swampscott player is reportedly a Northeastern Conference All-Star. He’s also a four-year varsity player and team co-captain, WCVB-TV reported, citing Swampscott Public Schools Athletic Director Kelly Wolff.
Dighton-Rehoboth Superintendent Bill Runey said the injured female player was released from the hospital Friday but suffered “significant facial and dental injuries,” the Sun Chronicle reported.
Up to a third of trans-identified teens put on puberty blockers suffered a significant decline in mental health, according to new analysis of a survey from the United Kingdom.
In August, researchers published an updated review of data from a 2021 study in the U.K. on medRxiv, a preprint service for medical research. The original study conducted by the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) examined 44 children aged 12 to 15 over three years who were prescribed puberty-blocking drugs to treat gender dysphoria. Participants took triptorelin, a prostate cancer medicine used to inhibit the synthesis of estrogen in women and testosterone in men.
According to researchers at the University of Essex, the mental health of between 20 and 34 percent of participants significantly deteriorated while on the puberty-inhibiting drug. Just between 9 and 20 percent reported a reliable improvement. Between 56 and 68 percent witnessed no change in distress.
In other words, less than a fifth of those prescribed puberty-blocking drugs, if that, experienced emotional improvement after taking triptorelin. The findings contradict broad claims that such medical interventions are necessary to save gender-confused children from the perils of suicidal ideation. While the updated analysis from the University of Essex has yet to be peer-reviewed, another long-term study from Sweden found those who underwent transgender surgery were 19 times more likely to die by suicide than the general public.
The national suicide hotline is 1-800-273-8255. More resources are here.
A U.S. study published in 2019 found nearly 60 percent of trans-identified patients in a more than 10,000-patient survey were diagnosed with at least one psychiatric disorder (besides gender dysphoria) to begin with.
In June, the U.K. NHS updated guidelines to prohibit prescriptions for puberty blockers outside of clinical research. The change in protocol follows other European nations similarly pulling back on dangerous premature medical interventions on minors who wish to manipulate their gender.
“In the past few years, European health authorities conducted systematic reviews of evidence for the benefits and risks of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones,” City Journal reported in February. “The findings from these reviews — that the certainty of benefits is very low — guided the hand of policymakers there to restrict access to hormones.”
On Friday, California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed radical legislation mandating that parents “affirm” a child’s newfound so-called “gender identity.” Parents with kids in California’s Chino Valley Unified School District, however, are still fighting state Democrats for the right to watch over their own children.
In August, California’s far-left Attorney General Rob Bonta launched a legal crusade to terminate the district’s new policy requiring schools to notify parents whenever a child tries to change pronouns or display other symptoms of gender dysphoria.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
There’s a bill sitting on Gavin Newsom’s desk right now that would not only render the First Amendment null and void but also strip parents of their most fundamental rights and responsibilities toward their children. It’s not a matter of if the far-left California governor will sign it, but when.
The bill, the Transgender, Gender-Diverse, and Intersex Youth Empowerment Act (AB 957) — which last week passed the Senate and then, on a party-line vote, the Assembly — dictates that courts must consider “gender affirmation” in child custody battles. The soon-to-be-law states that in seeking to determine the “health, safety, and welfare of the child,” courts must consider “a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity or gender expression.”
While some Democrat apologists in the media pretend it’s absurd to think this means conservative parents would ever lose custody of their children by nature of holding conservative values — It doesn’t say judges *have* to side with the loving, accepting parents, you hateful rubes! — we know how this will go. It’s California, for crying out loud.
But we don’t have to extrapolate much. Other media have dropped the facade and told us exactly where this bill will lead. Here’s CNBC:
Under the proposed law, parents, who fail to acknowledge and support their child’s gender transition, could face potential consequences, including the loss of custody rights to another parent or even the state itself. The bill’s supporters argue that it is in the best interest of children, aiming to create a more inclusive and affirming environment for gender-diverse youth.
There’s the quiet part out loud: A mom or dad who opts not to indulge their child in mental illness, who uses the child’s given name, prohibits the use of puberty blockers, or discourages sterilizing hormones or surgery could lose the child not only to the other parent, which is egregious enough — but to the state.
As Sarah Parshall Perry, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has pointed out, this law would stomp on the Constitution’s guarantee to free speech and the free exercise of religion. It would “muzzle” parents and prevent them from rearing their children in accordance with their deeply held beliefs — beliefs, by the way, that have been regarded by both Christians and non-Christians as basic laws of nature and fundamentals of civil society until about five minutes ago. This is more than a legal dilemma for Constitutional scholars and gender-studies midwits to bat around in mahogany rooms and shoddy amici, however. If it feels more nefarious and personal — that’s because it is. We’ve seen it before.
It’s classic Democrat emotional blackmail. It’s the left waging psychological warfare on its ideological opponents with barely veiled threats. Oh, you want to see your own child? Well, that’s interesting because xir needs some hormones xe says you won’t provide. You don’t seem too concerned with xir’s health and safety.
This brand of emotional blackmail has already been tested and perfected with the suicide card. That is, the aforementioned gender-studies “experts,” medical professionals, journalists, and other Very Smart People™ have decided, based on little to no evidence, that transgender medical interventions are the only acceptable course of action for confused kids. In fact, anything short of full “affirmation” is deadly, they say.
With this conclusion in mind — and at the expense of mountingevidenceshowingpro-trans policiescausethe most harm — they’ve devised “research” that Democrats then present as unassailable. The methodology of these biased studies is wildly problematic. Pro-trans ideologues habitually equate correlation with causation, fail to treat gender dysphoria as a mental illness and ignore underlying mental health issues such as depression, discount the potential role of wrong-sex hormones in unhealthy ideations, ignore hard facts about the ways puberty eventually resolves almost all dysphoria in minors, discounts rampant social factors, and turns a blind eye to the growing chorus of detransitioners who fell for leftist lies and are now filled with despair.
But never let bad science get in the way of an agenda. Would you rather have a live son or a dead daughter?, they manipulate. A lack of acceptance has driven trans suicide rates and self-harm through the roof.
A law this unconstitutional is bound to wind up in the courts. And I suppose we should be thankful there’s one remaining recourse. But if all conservatives have on their side is a waiting game until the courts eventually slap California lawmakers on the wrist, they have nothing. In fact, getting GOP-opposed laws tied up in the slow gears of the court system is exactly what Democrats are expecting. They’re counting on it. The more they can keep conservatives and jurists busy, the more radical laws and policies they can keep shoving out the door. We can’t stop them all. How many poor parents and children will be casualties in the meantime?
But don’t lose the human element in the legislative games. Rabid ideologues and iconoclasts who want to remake America and its children in their own image aren’t afraid to use the most vulnerable among us as pawns. Self-censorship will only be the start. It’s emotional blackmail, plain and simple. Do what we say, or else.
Kylee Griswold is the editorial director of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
The California attorney general is launching an all-out assault on parents and families with a new lawsuit asserting state control over schoolchildren.
On Monday, state Attorney General Rob Bonta sued to stop a new policy in a southern California school district that requires schools to notify parents whenever a child identifies as transgender and begins to pursue a so-called gender transition. The new guidelines adopted by the Chino Valley Unified School District in July would have required schools to tell parents if their child sought changes in pronoun use, sports participation, or bathroom assignments contrary to his or her sex. The state’s Democrat attorney general argues the district’s new disclosure rule violates students’ civil rights and risks “emotional, physical, and psychological harm.”
“Every student has the right to learn and thrive in a school environment that promotes safety, privacy, and inclusivity — regardless of their gender identity,” Bonta said in a statement. “We’re in court challenging Chino Valley Unified’s forced outing policy for wrongfully and unconstitutionally discriminating against and violating the privacy rights of LGBTQ+ students. The forced outing policy wrongfully endangers the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of non-conforming students who lack an accepting environment in the classroom and at home.”
The attorney general’s press release went on to disparage concerned parents and school board members as passing the measure with “animosity, discrimination, and prejudice” toward trans-identified students, “as evidenced by statements made during the Board’s hearing.”
“In discussing the policy before its passage, board members made a number of statements describing students who are transgender or gender-nonconforming as suffering from a ‘mental illness,’ or ‘perversion,’” the press release said. “The Board President went so far as to state that transgender and gender nonbinary individuals needed ‘non-affirming’ parental actions so that they could ‘get better.’”
The data, however, supports claims made by the proposal’s proponents and vindicates the board president’s alleged recommendation that parents adopt a cautious “non-affirming” approach to their trans-identified kids.
A 2019 study found nearly 60 percent of trans-identified patients in a more than 10,000-patient survey were diagnosed with at least one psychiatric disorder. Meanwhile, access to transgender medical interventions has been shown to increase the risk of suicide. A report last summer from the conservative Heritage Foundation found that “easing access to cross-sex treatments without parental consent significantly increases suicide rates.” Another major long-term study out of Sweden showed that people who underwent transgender surgery were 19 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population.
More and more detransitioners are now coming forward to share stories of how impulsive prepubescent medical treatment left them permanently “damaged.” In July, a 19-year-old detransitioner named Chloe Cole, who had a double mastectomy, testified on Capitol Hil about the “nightmare” she experienced as a victim of adolescent transgender ideology.
“It’s caused permanent changes to my body. My voice will forever be deeper, my jawline sharper, my nose longer,” she said. “My bone structure permanently masculinized. My Adam’s apple more prominent. My fertility unknown. I look in the mirror sometimes, and I feel like a monster.”
“I thought that in the end I could become a man but all I became was a mutilated and abused version of myself”
Detransitioner Katie Lennon who transitioned at 18, including hormones, a double mastectomy, and a full hysterectomy at 21 years old, testifies in Concord, NH in favor… pic.twitter.com/IwjW3ZpJOJ
Yet the United States remains an outlier with its approach to trans minor medical treatment. Physicians have been found to “rubber-stamp” diagnoses of gender dysphoria to approve devastating procedures.
In June, England passed new restrictions on irreversible transgender medical interventions for pediatric patients. Other European nations are following suit as more research emerges on the dangers of premature interventions such as cross-sex hormones and surgeries.
“In the past few years, European health authorities conducted systematic reviews of evidence for the benefits and risks of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones,” the City Journal reported in February. “The findings from these reviews — that the certainty of benefits is very low — guided the hand of policymakers there to restrict access to hormones.”
In California, however, leaders are on a crusade to establish the state as a “haven” for gender-confused children. Last fall, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to “offer refuge” for out-of-state minors seeking trans medical interventions in California without parental consent. The new law also mandates that doctors hide children’s medical information related to “gender identity” from their parents.
State animosity toward parents who oppose transgender ideology escalated this summer with legislation drafted in Sacramento that would charge parents with “child abuse” if they don’t “affirm” a child’s trans ideations.
Republican state Sen. Scott Wilk bluntly recommended that parents “flee” the state over Democrats’ transgender radicalism.
“In the past when we’ve had these discussions and I’ve seen parental rights atrophy, I’ve encouraged people to keep fighting,” Wilk said in June. “I’ve changed my mind on that,” Wilk added. “If you love your children, you need to flee California. You need to flee.”
Wilk declared he would leave the state himself when his legislative term expires.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
A Pride month event held at the White House this past weekend was the latest example of how the Biden administration is “trying to erase women,” former NCAA All-America swimmer Riley Gaines told Newsmax on Monday.
The rainbow flag was displayed Saturday as President Joe Biden welcomed hundreds to the White House for a Pride month celebration aimed at showing LGBTQ+ people that his administration has their back.
Gaines, an advocate defending women’s sports, appeared on “John Bachman Now.”
“No female athlete should feel celebrated by this administration,” Gaines told host Bianca de la Garza. “What this administration is actively trying to do is erase women, not just female athletes, they’re trying to erase women.
“Their proposed rewrite of Title IX is an abomination to what was beneficial for so many women, including my grandma’s generation. They’ve seen these benefits, and they see them being taken away. So make no mistake, the message that they’re really sending to women like myself, young girls is that we don’t matter.”
Gaines offered a message to parents and young girls.
“My advice to parents first and foremost is to defend your daughters and teach your sons masculinity,” Gaines said. “The conversation very quickly gets centered around girls and women, but we need men, too. We need strong men. Teach your sons masculinity.
“My message to young girls is it’s liberating to say the truth. You feel like a weight is off of your shoulders. Be bold, be empowered, stand firm in what you know is right and what you know is fair and know that the overwhelming majority of not just Republicans, not just female athletes but the overwhelming majority of the general public, even the overwhelming majority of the Democratic Party knows that men in womens’ sports is lunacy. So stand firm on that. We’re catering to a minority now and I wish people would be bold enough to acknowledge that.”
In early April, Gaines was attacked by trans activists at a Turning Point USA event at San Francisco State University. She said she pressed charges against the protesters but has gotten little cooperation from the San Francisco police.
“I was held for ransom for over 3½ hours where these protesters demanded that if I wanted to make it home to see my family safely, that I had to pay them money,” Gaines told de la Garza.
“But there have been no repercussions, there have been no expulsions, there has been no consequences for anyone involved, including the administration, which afterwards after this event, the vice president of student affairs released an email doubling down on what the students had done and saying she was so proud of her brave students for handling someone such as myself in the manner that they did.”
During Monday’s appearance on Newsmax, Gaines explained why she’s supporting Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for president.
“If it was Ron DeSantis in the White House that flag would not be flying,” Gaines said. “The only flag that would be flying is the flag that’s standing outside of his residence right here in Florida now which is the American flag.
“The way he has handled these cultural issues that affect everyday Americans, whether that be something like sports, the education system, the breakdown of faith and faith and our freedom, he has drawn a line and he has said, ‘Enough is enough,’ which we haven’t seen other candidates do in the way he has.”
Netflix subscriptions. Marriage. Terms of service agreements. Text messages. Social media posts. Pregnancy. Amazon purchases. Aging.
According to our consumerist social catechism, each of these actions is reversible. Click “cancel.” Get a divorce. Dig through your privacy settings and revoke permissions (even though you know you’re never going to). Unsend. Delete. Get an abortion. Return for free with a preprinted label. Get plastic surgery.
For young people raised in this “Ctrl-Z” world, unfamiliarity with the irreversible breeds suspicion, which translates to avoiding commitments. It’s no surprise few of my generational peers are getting married and having kids — although the culture tells us those commitments are still changeable, they’re actually messy to get out of and necessarily close other doors.
We are taught to believe limitations are inherently oppressive and therefore bad. Keeping your options open, on the other hand, is liberating and therefore desirable.
Some limitations, like those of becoming a parent, we choose to enter into and therefore can choose to avoid — which young people increasingly do. Other limitations are innate and unalterable. But to the restriction-averse, that inescapable nature makes those even more threatening. One of those fearsomely unchangeable limits is our biology: We are afraid to be limited by our natural sex.
Here’s how Amelia Blackney, a 13-year-old girl who decided to start going by the plural pronouns “they/them” and identifying as “non-binary,” explained her decision to CNN:
That way it’s like I’m not a part of any gender or I can be both genders at the same time. My pronouns now put me at a place where I can decide between different genders. That feels right.
If limitations are to be avoided — or overthrown — why would you tie yourself down to being either a girl or a boy? Why limit your prospects to growing up to be either a man or a woman? If you could be gender-fluid, all doors remain open to you. You don’t have to choose to be a she or a he, you can be they! Your options become unlimited. Subscription to being a woman, canceled.
Another child, 14-year-old Sylvia Chesak, described how she was “uncomfortable” thinking of herself as “just” a “she,” and chose to use “any pronouns” as a result.
These children, or the adults who egg them on, revolt against the sex they say was “assigned” in infancy. The nonsense language of “assigned at birth” doesn’t only make the wrong assumption that sex is nonexistent until it’s decreed by a doctor. It also makes the subtle implication that by doing the “assigning,” a doctor is imposing a category — a limit — on an infant that is inherently restrictive and must be abolished. Physical limitations like a man’s inability to get pregnant don’t matter, just like the physical limitations of a kid with Coke-bottle glasses who wants to become a pilot don’t matter to the adults telling him he can “be whatever he wants to be.”
One mother wrote in Time magazine about choosing not to call her child, named Zoomer, either a boy or a girl because she didn’t want to impose the “chains” and “restrictions of the gender binary.” Even after her child expressed a desire to be treated as a particular sex, the woman insisted on calling her child “they” in the article.
Elsewhere, she says, “The aim isn’t to create a genderless world; it’s to contribute to a genderfull one.” In other words, rejecting the sex binary isn’t about erasing sexuality, but removing all of its categorical limits.
A Swedish mother similarly explained that she refused to acknowledge her child’s sex “just as I don’t want to decide what they grow up to do…”
Telling children they can be and do “anything” helped create a generation petrified of narrowing their own options. They date around indefinitely to keep options open in case something better comes along. In the same way, kids learn to keep open the “option” of being a boy or a girl or a xe. Your natural sex is bad because it limits your possibilities.
Of course, your possibilities become far more limited when a doctor chops off your breasts or genitals or pumps you with hormones that may permanently alter your voice and body and keep you from ever having children. But just examine the messaging those hormones are marketed by: They’re reversible. You can just stop taking them. Here’s what Google would tell a curious teen, though the fine print is far more complicated than the highlighted answer suggests:
The messaging for puberty blockers is even more overt. Delay puberty, St. Louis Children’s Hospital tells kids, if you want “more time to explore [your] options.” What teen wouldn’t want that?
The reality is, of course, that some limits are outside our control. As for the limits we choose by the commitments we make, it’s far more paralyzing to artificially keep every option open than to choose wisely and live within the natural limitations of an ordered life. For kids getting transed into oblivion, that paralysis may be literal. But for all of us, refusing to commit to decisions worthy of our commitment will leave us lonely, exhausted, and bitter. Eventually, people who don’t want to limit their “options” by getting married usually realize one day that they don’t like any of the options left. Those who never put down roots typically end up adrift.
Thankfully, accepting our finitude is liberating. By recognizing the divine order that confines us, we are freed from struggling against it, and freed to do well in the things that are within our power.
In that latter realm, we have the gift of making choices and commitments, not so that we will avoid ever making them, but so that we may choose what is good. From choosing to work hard, to be loyal friends, to profess our faith, to raise children, to be faithful to our spouses, good choices place obligations on us, many of which are permanent. The fulfillment of those obligations enriches our lives, offering a depth of meaning and satisfaction that “keeping our options open” can never provide.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
After naming Richard/Rachel Levine, a man who parades around in ladyface, as one of its 2022 “Women of the Year,” USA Today is back to remind us that it doesn’t know — or doesn’t care — what a woman is.
Earlier this week, the outlet released its list of 2023 honorees, and the name getting the most attention is that of Minnesota state Rep. Leigh Finke, a pink-haired man who dresses like a woman and has been in office for less than 12 weeks.
Nothing says “we respect women” like elbowing them out of their own awards to laud a man who makes a mockery of womanhood. Finke isn’t the only man coopting the “woman of the year” pedestal. Here are eight other men who have displaced women at their own game.
Rachel Levine
Finke’s predecessor as USA Today’s token male Woman of the Year, Rachel (formerly known as Richard) Levine, failed upward into a cushy Biden administration gig after condemning thousands of nursing home residents to die of Covid in Pennsylvania.
The Federalist Senior Editor John Daniel Davidson is still locked out of Twitter for clearly acknowledging that Levine is a man.
Caitlyn Jenner
Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce, was a recipient of one of Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year awards in 2015. Jenner, a 6’2” former Olympian who began going by “Caitlyn” in 2015, came away with the title of the magazine’s “Transgender Champion.” (One of Jenner’s co-recipients that year was the now-disgraced girlboss fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, whatever that says about the awards committee’s wisdom.)
After Glamour’s decision to name Jenner, a man, among its “women of the year,” James Smith, whose police officer wife was posthumously recognized by the magazine after she died rescuing people from the World Trade Center on 9/11, returned his wife’s award, calling Jenner’s recognition an “insult.”
“Was there no woman in America, or the rest of the world, more deserving than this man?” he asked in an open letter to the magazine.
Laverne Cox
The year before Jenner scored Glamour’s “Woman of the Year” title, the magazine handed it to another man: Roderick Laverne Cox, who now goes by “Laverne.”
Cox’s award from Glamour followed his June 2014 Time Magazine cover, a glowing profile that openly discussed the trans lobby’s attempt to coopt the gay rights movement and boasted about “Fixing Nature’s Mistake.”
MJ Rodriguez
Among Time Magazine’s “Women of the Year” in 2022 was MJ Rodriguez (born Michael Anthony Rodriguez Jr.), a male stage performer who “identifies as an AfroLatina trans woman,” according to Time.
Over the course of the same year, Rodriguez was lauded as the first transgender entertainer to receive a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination for lead acting.
Laurel Hubbard
Before he began taking experimental hormones, Hubbard competed in men’s weightlifting. After he competed against women at the 2020 Olympics as part of New Zealand’s team, finishing dead last in the super-heavyweight category, Hubbard was nonetheless named “sportswoman of the year” by New Zealand’s University of Otago. The accolade has been around since 1908.
Ebony Harper
California’s Assembly District 7 named Ebony Harper, a man, as its 2021 Woman of the Year. This year, Harper also received a “California Woman Making History” recognition from Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis. He’s the executive director of a group called “California TRANScends.”
Cecilia Chung
Several years earlier, in 2014, another California district honored a man who goes by the name Cecilia Chung as its “Woman of the Year.” Phil Ting, San Francisco’s assemblyman, bestowed the award on him a year after Chung successfully pressured San Francisco officials to make their city the first in the country to pay for uninsured residents’ mutilative sex surgeries.
Bonus: Lia Thomas
Lia Thomas, a man who competed under his given name, William, through his sophomore year of college, was nominated by the University of Pennsylvania for the NCAA’s 2022 Woman of the Year award. While Thomas wasn’t ultimately selected for the national recognition, his nomination kept female Penn students from being tapped — just like his national championship in the women’s 500-yard freestyle a few months earlier displaced his female competitors from the top of the winners’ podium.
After the controversial championship, NBC News was caught doctoring Thomas’s face to look less masculine.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
Republican Georgia and Iowa lawmakers sent bills banning sex-change procedures for minors to their governors’ desks this week. Iowa has passed its bill into law, while Georgia’s bill awaits Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature. Kemp has not said whether he’ll sign it.
Georgia Senate Bill 140, which passed along party lines, prohibits injecting children with hormones and surgically mutilating their bodies “for the treatment of gender dysphoria.” Doctors may still be able to prescribe puberty-blocking drugs, however, as the bill only blocks “irreversible procedures or therapies.” Puberty blockers do inflict irreversible physical damage, but their proponents claim otherwise.
Parental rights advocates still welcome the bill as a step in the right direction.
“This new measure will give Georgia children the legal protections they desperately need,” Kimberly Fletcher, founder and president of Moms For America, said in a press release. “Too many states continue to defend sexual mutilation of children by refusing to implement laws that would properly protect them. This must change.”
On Wednesday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed SF538 into law, which states that Iowa medical professionals “shall not knowingly engage in or cause any” treatments “for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance of, or affirm the minor’s perception of, the minor’s gender or sex, if that appearance or perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex.” The law also prevents doctors from removing a healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue, as well as banning the prescription of hormone blockers to complicate puberty.
“Children should not be pushed to receive experimental medical treatments that can leave them permanently sterile and physically marred for life,” Jeff Edler, a Republican state senator, told The Des Moines Register. “Iowa has a duty to protect its citizens, especially our children.”
In addition to banning body mutilation surgeries for children, Reynolds also signed SF482, a law that would prevent transgender-identifying students from using the opposite sex’s public-school bathrooms.
“Denying the truth that we are either male or female hurts real people, especially vulnerable children,” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Matt Sharp said in a press release. “By enacting this legislation, Iowa has taken critical steps to protect children from radical activists that peddle gender ideology and pressure children into life-altering, experimental procedures and drugs. Young people deserve to live in a society that doesn’t subject them to risky experiments to which they cannot effectively consent.”
Georgia and Iowa join eight other states that have passed protections for children from sex-change surgeries, including Mississippi, Florida, Utah, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, South Dakota, and Tennessee. Missouri and Kentucky’s legislatures have passed similar bills that are awaiting their governors’ signatures.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
As the debate over transgender medicalization erupts nationwide and more states pass laws banning the mutilation of adolescents’
bodies, one largely unanswered question remains: Why are so many mothers trans-ing their children?
Sometimes called “Munchausen syndrome by proxy,” the term refers to a disorder in which a parent draws attention to themselves by projecting a disease or psychological condition onto their child even though the child is not unwell.
According to psychiatrists interviewed by The Christian Post, these are indeed complex phenomena. The family dynamics and factors at play, particularly when a parent is psychologically unstable and might be trans-ing their child to gain attention, even if such cases are believed to be rare, are worthy of discussion.
Dr. Miriam Grossman, author of the forthcoming book Lost in TransNation: A Child Psychiatrist’s Guide Out of the Madness, told The Christian Post that the terms Munchausen’s syndrome and “Munchausen’s by proxy” are no longer cited in professional journals. In today’s psychiatric literature, these syndromes are referred to as “factitious disorders.” The by-proxy cases are factitious disorders that are imposed on another person, including the imposition of gender confusion onto children, Grossman added.
According to the medical history journal Versailus, the term Munchausen, which was used to define this mental disorder, was coined in 1951 by Richard Asher after a German man named Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, also known as Baron Münchhausen, and was based on a fictional character whose name had become proverbial as the narrator of false and hyperbolic tall tales. Such tall tales were a feature in the German writer Rudolf Erich Rapse’s 1785 novel Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia.
“When it’s a plain factitious disorder, it’s a person who either makes up or exaggerates medical symptoms, and that may sometimes involve falsifying medical tests,” Grossman told CP.
A factitious disorder by proxy includes the falsification of physical or psychological signs or symptoms or induction of injury or distress in another person where the individual presents the victim to others as being ill or injured, she continued, adding that an example of this is putting sugar in a urine sample to present oneself as a diabetic.
Such tampering with urine has been known to happen. In 1977, British pediatrician Dr. Roy Meadow published one such account in the Lancet of a mother who had done so with her 6-year-old daughter Kay’s urine to make her appear to be ill. This mother had also fed her 14-month-old son high doses of salt for the same reason. Between bouts of these attacks of sickness, the very young boy was, the doctor noted, otherwise “healthy and developing normally.”
Meadow’s cautiously written landmark article, “Munchausen Syndrome, The Hinterland of Child Abuse,” documents that the 14-month-old ultimately died of salt poisoning and that an autopsy showed gastric erosions “as if a chemical had been ingested.”
Since that time, a body of literature has emerged on this subject and the mental disorder has been analyzed in other journals and news articles. Examples include a 2004 feature story in the New Yorker titled, “The Bad Mother,” and a book published in 2000 titled, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy Abuse: A Practical Approach. It has even been referred to in pop culture. Rapper Eminem’s 2002 single “Cleaning Out My Closet” mentions being a victim of this syndrome. In 2003, the first known memoir written by a victim of this abuse, titled Sickened by Julie Gregory, was published.
This deceptive behavior that accompanies factitious disorders is evident even in the absence of external rewards. Such an external reward might be a large outpouring of sympathy and attention following a diagnosis, perhaps even generous financial assistance to help with the costs of fighting the disease.
In October 2017, the journal Child Abuse & Neglect published an article titled “The perpetrators of medical child abuse (Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy) — A systematic review of 796 cases” that detailed the findings of researchers Gregory Yates and Christopher Bass who examined hundreds of cases involving this psychiatric condition.
Yates and Bass found that nearly all of the abusers were female (97.6%) and about that same percentage were the victims’ own mothers (95.6%). Approximately three-fourths of the abusers were married and the mean caretaker age when the child presented with some sort of illness was 27.6 years. In nearly half of all cases reviewed, the perpetrators of the abuse were reported to be in a healthcare-related profession (45.6%). And nearly a quarter of those who had medically abused children had obstetric complications (23.5%) or had histories of childhood maltreatment (30%).
Of the hundreds of cases reviewed, the most common psychiatric diagnoses documented were self-imposed factitious disorders (30.9%), personality disorders (18.6%), and depression (14.2%).
Factitious disorders are indeed admittedly strange.
“Most of us don’t want to be ill and we don’t want the people we care for to be ill. It is very odd,” explained Grossman. “But the mind does some really odd things and in the case of a parent who would do this to a child, they have significant emotional problems. What is it that they’re seeking here? They’re seeking attention and validation. And they’re doing it by victimizing their child.”
“To try and understand that you’d have to try and understand the history of the parent, who the parent is, what sort of emotional disorders they’re struggling with, what sort of inner emotional issues. Were they neglected as a child?”
While there has been growing awareness of how trans identities are spreading rapidly among youth, especially among women in their 20s, teens, and younger via a peer contagion — which was thoroughly explored in Lisa Littman’s study, titled “Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria,” published in Plos One in 2018 — what has gone unexamined is if a concurrent social contagion is happening among parents of trans-identifying children. And is this spreading among a subset of parents who crave attention and claim to have a gender-dysphoric child?
At this point, Grossman believes it’s merely speculation, but that it is nevertheless a reasonable question to consider.
“It’s fair to ask if perhaps [this is happening] among parents who are trying very hard to be what’s now being called ‘woke’ or whether a parent who is well-intentioned and who wants the best for their child but notices certain behaviors. And these days we’re being led to believe that almost anything could be related to being transgender: if a child doesn’t fit in, a child who is unhappy with their body, a child that has trouble making friends or is withdrawn,” Grossman offered. “Even the most well-intentioned parent who simply wants to help their child, it certainly may cross their mind. Maybe this (transgenderism) is the issue.”
Dr. Roger Hiatt, a child and adolescent psychiatrist based in Tennessee who is also licensed to practice in Arkansas and has an office in the town of West Memphis, is convinced there are parents who indisputably push gender ideology and experimental medicalization on their children: puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones, and body mutilating surgeries. Yet, from his experience, for every parent who is clearly driving this agenda with their child, there are probably 10 more who’ve been misled by groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics or the Pediatric Endocrine Society, which have both rubber-stamped the “affirmation-only” model and publicly opposed state legislative efforts to curtail the experimental medical practices.
Hiatt has treated over 200 gender dysphoric patients. In the first 15 years of his career, he encountered only two such patients, both of whom were males who identified as females. In the last seven years, however, the vast majority of these patients have been adolescent girls identifying as boys.
“It is definitely true that for every case that I’ve dealt with where I felt like the parent was actively, aggressively pushing the transgender identity there are more than 10 [parents] who are either neutral or very ambivalent about the whole process,” Hiatt recounted in an interview with CP.
“The impression is being portrayed that there is an absolute consensus in the medical community that ‘gender-affirming’ care is the only option that would be appropriate in dealing with a kid who, from the moment they identify themselves as gender-questioning or even transgender then immediately the process unfolds to socially transition them followed by puberty blockers, followed by cross-sex hormones, followed by surgery.”
But despite corporate media repetition, this supposed consensus is “absolutely not” a shared view among most doctors, he insists.
“It’s difficult to attribute motive to a parent in terms of why they do what they do. In terms of a child who is questioning or being actively encouraged to pursue a transgender lifestyle and identity, in my experience those situations, the typical scenario is a mother who encouraged it,” Hiatt said.
The psychiatrist told CP he once saw a case where the parents were divorced, the mother was aggressively pushing the child’s trans identity, and the father was adamantly against it. Although they had joint custody, social institutions such as the hospital and the public school system were actively siding with the mother’s stance that the child must identify as the opposite sex.
Hiatt has seen several patients who have what he described as “medicalized presentation” where a parent — often the mother but it could be either — has been actively inducing or doing things that result in the child needing medical care. The parents who present with this get a “secondary gain,” the benefit of being a parent of a child in medical distress.
These dynamics can also present as gender confusion.
“Once the child has been identified as gender dysphoric or transgender, there is a huge push in much of the medical community to medicalize that child, to address the issue with medical interventions,” he said. “It basically locks in both child and parent to a patient role or the parent of a patient role. And not only for the parent but also for the child there is a secondary gain from that: feeling important or different, unique or special. That absolutely is a factor, not in every case, but in many cases.”
When asked how factitious disorders develop in people and why a parent would want to impose a medical condition on their child, Hiatt stressed that there is an unmistakable delusional component that cannot be ignored.
“The notion that any intervention or group of interventions can actually change a boy to a girl or a girl to a boy is an absolute lie. It’s not even possible. All that can be done is that society can be compelled to treat the patient a certain way. Interventions can take place that can cause physical changes to the body to make the individual appear a certain way. But in the end, it does nothing to the individual chromosomally and they continue to require medical interventions for the rest of their lives if they choose to continue to portray themselves this way,” Hiatt said.
“In terms of where [factitious disorders] come from, it’s multi-factorial. There is almost universally psychological trauma or abuse, depression, anxiety, other mental health issues and concerns that are in the child and typically in the parent as well that in some regards where they feel like ‘Wow, I’ve found a solution to all my problems.’”
Some prominent institutions pushing medicalized gender transition assert that a child will be better off after experimental drugs are prescribed or a patient undergoes sex change operations. Yet because of the distinctly delusional component of the parents’ minds, they genuinely don’t feel like they are doing anything wrong. Indeed, they actually do believe they are helping their child.
Prior to finishing his psychiatry training, Hiatt gave a grand rounds presentation on a condition called Folie à deux, a French phrase meaning “folly of two,” and it is what is known as a shared delusional disorder.
The disorder, first conceptualized in 19th century French psychiatry by Charles Lasègue and Jules Falret, is also known as Lasègue–Falret syndrome. The condition is similar to and equally as unusual as those who believe that their child was born in the wrong body. This rare disorder produces similar social dynamics seen in families with children mired in gender confusion. In this shared delusion disorder, the inducer who has a psychotic disorder operates as the primary actor influencing another person or possibly more, the secondary actors, with delusions based on that delusional belief.
In 2021, Hiatt provided expert testimony in support of Arkansas’ Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, which prohibited prescribing puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones, and performing body mutilating sex-change surgeries on youth who are 18 years old or younger. The bill passed overwhelmingly through both chambers of the state Legislature only to be vetoed by then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson. The Legislature subsequently overrode his veto.
Mere weeks later, as was expected, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit against the state on behalf of three trans-identifying youth, asserting that the law was unconstitutional. The law is currently being litigated in the courts. Breaking with Hutchinson, then-Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who is now the state’s lieutenant governor, stated that she would defend the law in court.
At the state level, Hiatt firmly believes that laws such as the SAFE Act are necessary and vitally important. Nationally, however, he thinks medical malpractice lawsuits in coming years will probably be required and more effective as many of those who steer children down this destructive path will be reluctant to do so if they know that it will likely result in serious personal financial losses.
The medical establishment in the U.S. has, by and large, adopted and advanced what has become known as the “Dutch protocol.”
As CP reported in 2018, the first thorough study of the drug Triptorelin used as a puberty blocker on a child who was suffering from gender confusion was published out of the Netherlands in 1998 when a pediatric endocrinologist, together with a psychologist, decided to use the medication on a 13-year-old patient.
The rationale was that the 13-year-old should have the drug because the effects of going through puberty would be too traumatic to endure and “pausing” those signals in the brain would give the child time to adjust and then later decide whether to have a series of sex-change surgeries. This approach migrated across the Atlantic in the following years and guidelines favoring the “gender-affirmative” approach became widely accepted within prominent U.S. hospitals and in professional societies such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society. The first pediatric gender clinic in the U.S. opened in 2007 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Yet even pioneers of the Dutch protocol, such as Dr. Thomas Steensma, have in recent years criticized the approach of the American medical establishment, noting that the group of young people who doctors in the Netherlands treated in its earlier years was much smaller.
“Where does the large flow of children who have suddenly registered for transgender care since 2013? And what is the quality of life like for this group long after sex change? There is no answer to those questions,” Steensma said in 2021.
“The research on the small group of people from before 2013 may not apply to the large group that there is now. We conduct structural research in the Netherlands. But the rest of the world is blindly adopting our research. Every doctor or psychologist who engages in transgender care should feel the obligation to do a good before-and-after measurement.”
Likewise, Dr. Annelou de Vries, who was part of the same Dutch Protocol collaborative, stressed in an October 2020 commentary for the AAP Pediatrics journal, adolescents with recent-onset gender dysphoria who had no previous no childhood history of gender distress, were not part of their study protocol.
Grossman, who was also interviewed by Matt Walsh in The Daily Wire film “What is a Woman?” notes that her greatest distress is seeing the victims of this mass experiment. In that film, she explains that she received a phone call from a mother whose 14-year-old daughter had been prescribed puberty blockers and, as a result, was dealing with osteoporosis, an ailment that causes brittle bones and is common in senior citizens, not adolescents.
“And we know about the kids being victims but I feel like we don’t talk about the parents being victims,” she said soberly.
Something else is at work, she believes, and that’s a pervasive and sinister anti-male sentiment that indelibly contributes to young boys suffering confusion over their sex.
“Now, I’m not minimizing women who have been treated badly, abused or worse, by men,” Grossman was quick to add, “but overall, there has been a war on men and on boys.”
“We sometimes find that there is a mother who really has a hatred or deep resentment of men because of things that she has gone through earlier in her life. And that without even realizing it she can influence her son to have that same negativity about being male. Children want to please their parents. And more than anything else, children want their parents’ love. And it’s not impossible that a boy might pick up on his mother’s animosity toward men and feel like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be like that.’”
“The boys might be overhearing conversations with the mom, with friends or relatives or what have you. Anti-male kind of stuff and that does not help the boy’s identity of himself as being a male,” she continued.
Two Dutchstudies touting the great success of “gender-affirming” medical intervention on youth have been deemed bad research by experts at the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. In the report “The Myth of ‘Reliable Research’ in Pediatric Gender Medicine” published earlier this month, researchers describe how the 2011 and 2014 studies that formed the foundation of the transgender industry in the U.S. should never have been accepted by the professional community, falling “unacceptably” short of modern research standards. The studies led to a global movement of wrongly named “gender-affirming care,” resulting in hormone experimentation on youth and, in some cases, irreversible mutilation.
The Dutch studies had several major flaws, according to the report. Study authors only recorded the cases with the best outcomes, concluded without evidence that gender dysphoria disappeared solely as a result of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and failed to properly examine the risks of the interventions, with disastrous effects.
The American College of Pediatricians responded to the report in a press release on Jan. 25 calling on organizations to “reconsider current protocols for gender dysphoric children.”
“The entire pediatric transgender industry is based on these two Dutch studies,” Michelle Cretella, immediate past executive director of ACPeds and advisory board spokeswoman for Advocates Protecting Children, told me. “This open access report is critical because it exposes the fraudulent foundation of pediatric transgender medicine in the United States.”
The Dutch studies were so foundational to the U.S. movement that the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States was opened by Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric endocrinologist who was convinced of the necessity of “gender-affirming” interventions after visiting the Dutch physicians who published them, Cretella said.
But if these studies had been published today, the authors conclude, the research would have been recognized as very low quality and would not have encouraged the use of puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones, and surgery in confused children and young adults in general medical settings.
‘No Evidence’ of Genetic Cause
The report criticizing these studies was published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, and authors E. Abbruzzese, Stephen B. Levine, and Julia W. Mason have years of experience studying so-called gender identity. Levine has worked in the field as a psychiatrist since 1974.
“We had no bias, we are just responding to and trying to articulate the limitations of the studies,” Levine told me. “We are doing harm to an unknown percentage of kids, and the data that is supportive of this work does not really address the issue. The real issue here is what happens to these children when they get into their 20s and 30s.”
Youth who have been hormonally and surgically “transitioned” have major obstacles to their happiness and productivity later in life, Levine said.
“After people have sex reassignment surgeries … they want more surgeries,” according to Levine. “It’s very clear they have continued gender dysphoria. The idea that they are being ‘cured’ by affirmative care is an artifact, it’s a myth.”
Hormone and surgical treatment, and subsequent medical intervention, leads many people to assume this must be a “medical problem” but “we don’t have any evidence that this is genetically determined,” Levine said.
“Just because we have hormone treatment doesn’t mean there is a hormonal defect in the person,” he said. “People believe, erroneously, that there is some genetic, pre-determined factor here, but we have not been able to find a genetic cause.”
Cultural, interpersonal, psychological, and developmental factors all contribute to the development of a person’s behavior, Levine said. Gender dysphoria can be a resulting psycho-social problem.
Biased, Uncontrolled Studies
Though the Dutch studies were found to have selection bias and multiple, uncontrolled variables, they were broadly applied in the U.S.
“The Dutch study researchers only took healthy kids from supportive and reasonably healthy families,” Levine said. “They carefully screened kids, so if they had major developmental problems they were not included in the studies. But in the U.S. … the vast majority of these kids have a history of psychiatric issues before they developed gender dysphoria. The Dutch rejected these kids from their research.”
The Dutch study had 196 participants initially and only put 70 in the protocol. Only 55 then completed the protocol. As well as having selection bias, the study was uncontrolled.
“Wisely, the Dutch people gave these kids and their families continued psychotherapy during this protocol,” Levine said. “Is the positive results they found due to the psychotherapy, improvement as they got older, or affirmative care? This is an uncontrolled study. They cannot make conclusions about what caused what. But the world took this as scientific evidence.”
In the U.S., youth who had rapid-onset gender dysphoria and didn’t even meet the baseline criteria for the Dutch study began receiving interventions in pediatric clinics, with doctors utilizing the studies as justification. Furthermore, when the Dutch began this project there was also much less awareness of autism, Levine said. A very large percentage of these kids that have come to American facilities are on the autism spectrum, according to Levine.
Courageous Pediatricians Have Resisted
ACPeds physicians have spoken out against sexual disfigurement and medical intervention in youth with gender dysphoria for years.
“There are a handful of us physicians within ACPeds and across the country who have the courage and expertise to speak out on this issue,” Cretella said. “When we are able to do so in an environment open to dialogue, we are met with significant appreciation and affirmation by fellow physicians and laypersons alike.”
Most colleagues, Cretella said, appreciated ACPeds’ stance, acknowledging that the studies affirming medical intervention in gender dysphoric youth were likely flawed or fake; but too many feared losing their jobs to speak out against transgender interventions.
“Trans interventions are big money,” Cretella said. “Billionaire elites promote trans ideology over truth across all public institutions and media platforms, and [in America] a severe cancel culture results in everything from severe harassment and doxing to ending one’s career.”
Fortunately, signs of sound medical ethics triumphing over junk science are breaking through, Cretella said.
In the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland, cultures that embraced transgender interventions for youth early on have reversed course. France has urged greater caution in these cases.
In the United States, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., has rooted his administration in medical ethics and utilized the best science to establish pro-child treatment of gender confusion with psychotherapy, Cretella said.
Currently, about 13 other states are attempting similar legislative efforts.
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.e who lives in Virginia.
After the 14-year-old was found being sexually assaulted in another state, a judge kept her from loving parents because they questioned her transgender identity. Then she was trafficked again.
In August 2021, by concealing a teen’s newly asserted transgender identity from her parents, Virginia’s Appomattox County High School participated in a chain of events that led to that girl falling into the hands of sexual predators not once, but twice.
When the FBI found Sage (last name of the family withheld for privacy) in Maryland, where she was victimized by a sexual predator, a judge refused to return her to her parents on the grounds they were abusing her in not affirming her as male. Housed in the boys’ quarters of a children’s home away from her parents, she told her mother, she was assaulted again. The girl soon fled, then was brutally sex-trafficked again until her rescue in Texas by law enforcement.
Sage’s Law, or the Child Protection Act, is being introduced this week in the Virginia House of Delegates by Delegate Dave LaRock in honor of this young teen from Appomattox County, Virginia. Sage hopes sharing her story will help protect others from the abuse she suffered at the hands of predators, precipitated in part by the very institutions that should have protected her.
School policies and state laws that encourage concealing information from parents’ purport to protect vulnerable minors. In practice, as tragically demonstrated by Sage’s case, such policies open the door to predators by removing children’s greatest protection from their lives.
Sage’s Law aims to shut that door in three ways. It would require schools to notify parents if their child asserts a gender different from his or her sex; it prevents school counselors from withholding or encouraging minors to withhold information about a child’s gender identity; and it clarifies that raising a child according to his or her biological sex, including decisions about a child’s mental and physical health, may not be construed as abuse.
Sage’s story, compiled from months of interviews, reports, and records, has been lived by countless other families torn apart in the name of gender ideology by activist schools, judges, anddoctors. This is a story of the unbearable cost of parent-exclusion policies, but also of a mother’s love and relentless determination to save her child.
Institutions that Should Protect Endanger Instead
Sage is a slight, pretty, 15-year-old girl with elfin features and an edgy style. Recently, reflecting back on her transgender identification, she told her mom: “I don’t know who I was. I’m a totally different person now. I never was a boy. Everybody was doing it, I just wanted to have friends.”
That self-reflection is consistent with the research showing that upwards of 80 percent of gender dysphoric childrenembrace their sex as they emerge from puberty. Children who are “affirmed” as the opposite sex, however, particularly if puberty blockers are used, consistently go on to further medicalization. Sage’s comment also reflects the reality of social contagion, fueled by social media and increasingly recognized internationally as a factor in the exponential rise in the number of children identifying as transgender.
Yet states such as California allow children as young as 12 to make their own health-care decisions, without their parents but under the authority of the state. In January, Virginia delegates Candi Mundon King, Nadarius Clark, Michelle Maldonado, Sam Rasoul, and Marcus Simon filed a similar bill authorizing courts, social workers, and medical professionals to withhold information from parents and consent to medical procedures for “mature” minors.
The consequences for children and families in states such as California that construe not “affirming” as abuse are particularly dire. In October, progressive Virginia Delegate Elizabeth Guzman announced she would reintroduce her 2020 bill to criminalize parents who do not affirm their child’s transgender identity as guilty of abuse, potentially resulting in the loss of custody.
School Policies Endangering Students
Michele adopted Sage, her biological granddaughter, after the death of her son. Like many gender-dysphoric children, Sage has a history of trauma from that early childhood loss. Related health problems became severe at times, requiring therapy and medical treatment. Her daughter’s previous schools notified Michele when concerns arose, she said, enabling her to have Sage’s treatment adjusted. But when her daughter entered Appomattox County High School in early August 2021, Michele says she was cut out of the loop.
Unbeknownst to Michele, her then-14-year-old’s taste at the time for boys’ clothing, which she described to her mother as simply “dressing emo,” was accompanied by her assertion at school that she was a transgender boy. School records, shared by the family, indicate school staff were calling Sage by her chosen male name and pronouns and at her request concealing this from her parents. Sage recalls her school counselor telling her during the first week of school that since she identified as male she could use the boys’ bathroom.
School records also indicate bullying, although they do not capture the severity of what Sage eventually told her mom: boys were following behind her in a group, touching her, threatening her with knife violence and rape, and even shoving her up against the hallway wall. On Aug. 23, according to school notes, reports were received from students and teachers that Sage had used a boys’ bathroom and encountered hostile boys there. The school counselor met with Sage the next day to direct her to use the nurses’ bathroom for safety reasons.
Sage’s statement that “all the boys at this school are rapists” prompted the school to review hallway footage outside the bathroom, showing that several boys had entered while she was inside. On Wednesday, Aug. 25, the counselor and school resource officer called Sage into a meeting, where she became so emotional that the counselor recorded concern Sage might be “a risk to herself due to being so upset when leaving school.”
Only at this point — after meeting alone with her daughter, after two days had passed and knowledge of the incident had reached all the way to the superintendent, according to the school records — did the school finally contact Michele, she said, still without revealing the male identity her daughter was asserting.
Michele recalls finding a school hall pass labeled with a new name that August evening and Sage telling her for the first time that she was identifying as a boy at school. As Michele sat with her on the floor, Sage tried to stop the tears as she told her mother a group of male students had “jacked” her up against the wall of the boys’ bathroom and threatened her with violence, and that she was terrified of what they would do. Michele tried to comfort her, assuring her she could stay home while they figured out how to handle the bullying.
That night, Sage disappeared. She was found nine days later in Maryland, a victim of sexual assault. That was just the beginning of her family’s ordeal.
Excluding Parents Invites Predators
As Michele’s case illustrates, school policies that exclude parents from critical knowledge of their child’s mental health remove a child’s greatest safeguard from his or her life. While this author could find no such policy posted on the Appomattox High School or school board websites, the school’s actions to “affirm” Sage’s stated gender, name, and pronouns and to permit access to bathrooms of the opposite sex are all consistent with the directives of former Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s 2021 model policies. So is the choice to deceive parents.
In fact, the Northam policies direct that an entire gender transition team and plan be set up for such a child, all in secret from the parents if the child so wishes. This guidance was revoked in 2022 by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, but Virginia Democrats and LGBT groups are fiercely contesting the transparency and parental consent required by the new proposed guidance.
Yet school counselors, unlike parents, have at best an extremely limited knowledge of a child’s mental, emotional, and physical needs. They also have neither the constitutional authority nor the expertise to determine a child’s best interests.
Children who identify as transgender have well-documented mental health co-morbidities and rates of adverse psychiatric events. Even Dr. Erica Anderson, former head of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), has raised alarm at the “pitched battle” engendered by professionals who “triangulate” or set children in opposition to their parents.
In Sage’s case, by withholding information about her daughter’s gender identity and related issues, including the severe bullying related to Sage’s transgender exploration, the school destroyed vital opportunities for Michele to discern warning signs in time to assess and respond before tragedy struck.
Predators know transgender kids are vulnerable prey. Sage told Michele months later that some of the transgender websites to which a school counselor referred her linked to “creepy” older men and pornography.
One mother told this author that as soon as her daughter identified online as “female to male,” multiple suspicious “sugar daddy” accounts reached out to her on social media. Roblox, the wildly popular children’s gaming site, has transgender chat rooms with a panic button to “hide your screen from your parents.” Sage, her mother says, was lured to meet sex traffickers by online predators posing as friends.
A Court-Enabled Tragedy
The first call from the FBI came late at night on Sept. 2, her mother recounts: Sage had been found. Michele says investigators told her Sage had been trafficked into Washington, D.C. and then Maryland for nine days of horrific, brutal sexual abuse.
Driving through the night, their backseat full of stuffed animals and cozy blankets, Michele and her husband Roger arrived early the next morning at the Baltimore Courthouse. They were stunned to hear that their child, who had just survived unspeakable trauma, was being held in a juvenile detention cell and that they were being summoned to a hearing late that afternoon before Judge Robert Kershaw. When they entered the courtroom, Sage appeared from the penitentiary remotely, on screen, with only court-appointed attorney Aneesa Khan, an assistant public defender, present in person. “I love you, baby!” Michele cried to her daughter, who responded “I love you too, Nana.” To their shock, Khan spoke up and alleged on Sage’s behalf that she did not wish to return home and had been “both emotionally and physically abused by his parents in connection with [his] expressed male gender identity and desire to live as a trans male.”
Michele had only found out about this claimed male identity the night her daughter disappeared. Yet Michele was willing to use any name or pronoun to bring her home. Sage later told her, Michele says, that Khan “told me to tell the judge my parents hit me, starved me.” Sage also told Michele that Khan “didn’t care how much [Sage] had to lie…but they were going to win this case” to remove Sage from her parents’ custody and place her in a Maryland foster home that would affirm her as male.
Michele is a Virginia Court-Appointed Child Advocate (CASA) with years of experience supporting troubled teens, and she and Roger were quickly cleared of abuse charges. But the allegations were used to take custody of their daughter and bar them from seeing her.
The Cruelty of Ideology
Rather than treat Sage as a victim of horrific sex trafficking and return her to her family, the court dealt with her as a runaway, providing grounds for temporary custody in Maryland. Significantly, under the Interstate Juvenile Compact, even if allegations of abuse are made, juveniles are to be returned to their home state, which is presumed to better be able to assess the child’s needs. Judge Kershaw delayed this return for two months, which led to Sage’s next trafficking episode.
Instead of receiving treatment for her profound physical and emotional trauma, Sage was kept for days in solitary detention as a runaway, then transferred to the Catonsville Children’s Home. Per Judge Kershaw’s order, she was housed according to her “expressed male gender.” Michele says she eventually learned from Sage that she was the only girl in male quarters and that she had been repeatedly assaulted there.
Kershaw held multiple hearings focusing on Sage’s claimed male identity and Khan’s efforts to demonstrate gender identity abuse, including calling two Appomattox school counselors to testify against Sage’s parents. While his final ruling on Nov. 10, 2021, reluctantly conceded lawful custody to the parents, Kershaw opined at length that “more likely than not” Sage had “endured emotional abuse and neglect by his parents,” including “misgendering” and “misnaming.” Astonishingly, Kershaw cited as evidence of parental abuse “running away from Virginia to Maryland,” when in fact Sage was abducted, raped, and trafficked across state lines.
While Sage was in The Children’s Home, Michele says she sent letters and cards multiple times a week and tried countless times to reach her by phone, especially on Sage’s 15th birthday. Months later, Sage commented: “I missed you so much, but I tried not to because you didn’t want me back.” Horrified, her mother asked what she meant. She learned from Sage that Khan had told her that, because she was transgender, Michele didn’t want her anymore — and that not one of her cards or messages had ever reached her daughter.
Sage also eventually told her mother that, while living at the foster home, she skipped classes every day and would “smoke weed and do drugs” with kids she had met. Sage also relayed later that Khan had told her “I don’t give a sh-t if you do drugs, I just want to win this case.” Sage also said Khan had visited the home of one of Sage’s Maryland school friends to enlist her support in contacting Sage, claiming Khan had won the case and resulting in knowledge of Sage’s case spreading around the school.
In a text to a friend at the time, Sage referenced Khan’s intent: “going to the court of appeals, and the supreme court.” It is difficult to avoid Michele’s conclusion that “[t]he only best interest [Sage’s] attorney had was for herself. To put my traumatized child on center stage to push her political or gender agenda!”
Michele begged the court to provide treatment for the trauma Sage had endured and had found placement for her by mid-October, approved by Virginia social services, in Youth for Tomorrow’s program for young victims of sexual exploitation. The judge rejected it because they would treat Sage as a girl.
Not until Nov. 10 did Judge Kershaw approve placement in North Spring, a residential treatment facility that would affirm her claimed male identity. Frightened of being locked in the facility and believing her mother no longer wanted her, Sage texted a friend, “im gonna dip” (leave). On Nov. 12, 2021, Sage says, she cut off her court-required GPS monitor and ran away to meet an online “friend” in Texas she thought was 16.
Once more, the unspeakable happened. Sage fell into the hands of a predator who, police told Michele, raped, starved, drugged, and brutalized her. This time she disappeared for months. For the second time in less than four months, Michele had no way of knowing if her daughter was even alive. But Michele never stopped searching. Finally, a tip she discovered on social media led Texas marshals to her daughter’s rescue in Dallas on Jan. 24, 2022.
For the first time since that conversation on the floor of Sage’s bedroom on Aug. 25 the year before, mother and daughter were able to talk. On the plane ride home, Michele listened as Sage began to unburden her heart, grieving over what she learned but overcome with gratitude that her daughter was alive and restored to her.
Affirmation by Intimidation
Upon her return to Virginia, Sage entered North Spring, the lock-down facility negotiated by the court, with Michele driving four hours each way for her weekly allotted visit. Sage was heavily medicated, suffering from constant nightmares, and fearful of both residents and doctors. Sage told her mother that her counselor also pressured Sage to tell Michele she wanted a “gender-affirming” mastectomy.
Yet, during one of Michele’s visits, Sage asked if her mother could secretly take her to buy girls’ clothes, stating she didn’t want to be a boy anymore, but she was scared to tell the doctors. Pressured by North Spring to let them treat her daughter, Michele reached out to Josh Hetzler, an attorney with Richmond-based Founding Freedoms Law Center, who secured her daughter’s return. After nearly a year of horror, she was finally home safely.
The road ahead is a long one of healing both physically and emotionally. There are confusing lapses in concentration and persistent, terrifying nightmares. In a safe, loving home, surrounded by her pets and easing into at-home learning and therapy sessions, the painful recollections emerge unpredictably, as do the panic attacks. Michele doesn’t press, letting Sage open up at her pace, whether to her or to her beloved uncle Cory, who has moved home to support her.
As she begins to process her ordeal, Sage now desires to protect others from the horrors she experienced. Michele’s heroic, unrelenting determination to save her daughter has turned not only to helping her heal but to preserving other families from what hers endured. Advocates have rallied to help fund legal action through The Gavel Project, and to craft policies that will help protect others.
Sage’s Law
Many children never escape the clutches of sex traffickers. Had it not been for her mother’s relentless love and determination, Sage might never have been found. Michele calls it a miracle. In the starkest of contrasts, the actions of ideologues played a part — twice — in her daughter falling into the traffickers’ hands.
Sage’s public school could have been transparent to Michele about her daughter’s struggles. The court could have returned her to Virginia without furthering a quest to make legal history. The children’s home could have protected her from assault and access to drugs. And doctors could have treated trauma, not pressed living as the opposite sex and mutilative surgery on a victim of sexual abuse. All along, it was her mother who truly had Sage’s best interest at heart.
Sage was failed by adults who thought they were helping but were blinded to their own cruelty by their ideology. Michele tells of countless parents who have reached out to her with their own stories of families and bodies destroyed by school counselors, courts, and doctors who may spend minutes with a child, but assert they have the expertise and authority to usurp decisions from parents who have poured a lifetime into their care.
Sage has shown great courage in sharing her story, and it is time for lawmakers to take a stand for her and many other children by passing Sage’s Law. There is only one acceptable response to her story: never again.
Laura Bryant Hanford is a mother of five and is actively involved in school policy and religious freedom issues in Virginia, where she lives with her family. She served from 2015 to 2018 on Fairfax County Public Schools’ Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee. She was the lead congressional staff drafter of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. She also served at the U.S. Embassy in Romania as the officer in charge of human rights, focusing on ethnic minorities, women, and refugees. She is a graduate of Princeton University.
For seven decades, Miss Universe has been owned by men — and it will continue to be owned by one. The new male owner, however, attended the latest contest in a sparkly, floor-length gown showcasing after-market cleavage.
The new transgender-identifying owner of the worldwide beauty pageant made a backward speech about empowering women during the televised contest over the weekend (where Miss USA R’Bonney Gabriel was crowned). Anne Jakkaphong Jakrajutatip, a man who purports to be a woman and the CEO of Thailand-based media distribution company JKN Global Group, which bought the Miss Universe Organization for $20 million last year, dolled himself up as a woman on stage and framed his new ownership of the organization as a win for feminism.
“It has been 70 years that Miss Universe Organization run by men. But now, time is up, is the moment really, for women to take the lead,” Jakrajutatip said. “Welcome to the new era of the global women’s empowerment platform. Welcome to the Miss Universe Organization. From now on is going to be ran by women, owned by a trans woman, for all women, for all women really around the world to celebrate the power of feminism.”
Anne Jakrajutatip, the new owner of Miss Universe, delivered an empowering speech yesterday: “Welcome to the new era. From now on it’s gonna be run by women, owned by a trans woman, for all women around the world.” pic.twitter.com/TJXV8EPkAv
Jakrajutatip’s new ownership of Miss Universe is no win for feminism. Rather, it’s completely the opposite. A man parading around as a female and telling women they should feel empowered because their femininity can be worn as a costume or replicated based on a man’s whims is a slap in the face to women everywhere.
Beauty pageants exist to showcase the unique embodiment of women, which naturally excludes men. When organizations such as Miss Universe allow for those biological differences to be reduced to theater or “womanface,” then traditionally women-only spaces and contests are eradicated — as even the concept of womanhood is chipped away.
Whether it’s a local YMCA pool, a high school bathroom, a state prison, or college athletics, female safety, privacy, and competition are being sacrificed to appease males, many of whom are mentally ill. Pretty soon, beauty pageants will crown men instead of women — as already happened in New England. And “Miss” Universe herself might soon be a “Mr.”
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
Last week, conservative journalist Andy Ngo published screenshots of the singer’s Instagram page. On the left, Smith is seen handsomely seated with his prestigious Oscar. The ensuing photos highlight his attempt to transition into someone who is “non-binary,” or a person who believes he was born a third sex or above the sexes altogether. The logic defies everything we know about human biology down to the binary nature of our chromosomes.
British pop star Sam Smith has been documenting their powerful transition from being a gay man to becoming a #trans nonbinary person. pic.twitter.com/TckztWIT4H
No one seems to know what a woman is these days, but does anyone even remember what a man is? Smith’s progression in Ngo’s photos underscores the erasure of cultural masculinity declared “toxic” by millennials. When you lose sight of what it means to be a man — what it means to look like a man, act like a man, and live like a man — you de facto lose the values that form the foundation of healthy masculinity. But our culture doesn’t even know what a man is.
Around this time last year, my Federalist colleague John Daniel Davidson provided a definition.
“If we’re going to defend manliness as good and virtuous and necessary for a healthy republic, then we need to be clear about what it is and what it is not,” he wrote, continuing:
Yes, men should be physically strong. They should also exemplify traditional masculine virtues like courage, independence, and assertiveness. But why? Not so they can sh-tpost about how ripped or good-looking they are compared to libs, but so they can protect and defend those who are weak.
That is the organizing principle behind the entire concept of manliness: it is not a style or a pose or an adornment. It is a way of being, of living according to the principle that you are responsible for the welfare of others, and should sacrifice yourself for their sake.
What does that mean in practice? It means stepping in to help those in need, whether it’s a woman being harassed or a stranger whose car has broken down. It means risking your own safety to protect someone being attacked, instead of just filming the attack on your phone and posting it online like a beta.
It also means marrying and remaining faithful to the same woman your entire life, and raising a family with her. It means working whatever hours and at whatever job in order to provide for that family. It means going to church every Sunday, whether you feel like it or not, to pass your faith on to your kids. It means getting up in the middle of the night to feed a colicky baby. It means taking your two-year-old daughter to swim class and singing all the songs — your own sense of dignity be damned.
I’m not sure I could write a better definition, amplifying the stoic virtues of physical strength, mental fortitude, and sacrificial living driven by a desire to strengthen the weak and protect the vulnerable.
Where we break is sexuality, and writing as a gay man, I know we don’t see eye to eye on certain fundamental differences. I may never live up to the picture of masculinity Davidson’s worldview prescribes, and I may never have children, but we can agree to disagree like adults. And that’s where the left has gone mad.
Gay men are often allergic to any kind of conversation surrounding masculinity because they’ve been mocked by a class of macho men as “queer,” a slur-turned-term-of-endearment that now qualifies one for the left’s privilege points. True masculinity, however, extends safety for the victims. Those who vilified it never truly understood the concept.
Before Davidson’s column, I’m not sure I remember even thinking critically about manhood — perhaps during a conversation with my father in high school. But beyond that, these discussions seem to have been choked out by a culture eager to dismiss masculinity as universally toxic.
If you question Smith’s regression — the legitimacy of it, the integrity of it, and even the consequences of it — you’re a heretic to the woketopian ruling class that’s hellbent on dictating acceptable speech.
But it isn’t just Smith. There’s a deeper mentally disturbed current pulsing beneath the decline of healthy masculinity and femininity. Consider that nearly 60 percent of people who call themselves “non-binary” report having a mental health issue. And that’s despite both difficulties in diagnosing mental illnesses and the fact that gender dysphoria itself is a mental sickness included in the latest psychiatric manual of mental disorders, meaning the real percentage is far higher.
See for yourself. How is this not a mental illness? Why are we not allowed to call it that? And why on Earth is it unacceptable to ask questions about the twisted state of the sexes?
These people are obviously struggling with a pain that’s very real. Their so-called gender identities might be made up, but their pain undeniably exists. Contrary to parental blackmail by family therapists, data shows gender-confused people are even more likely to commit suicide if they move forward with some kind of transgender transition.
The intolerance of questions surrounding gender dysphoria is baked into the elimination of masculine virtues, which promises peace and coexistence — or the allure of a projected $5 billion surgical industry by the end of the decade. But we need to understand what in the world is going on with men, and we need to be able to ask these questions.
Men today are not working. Their suicide rates are rising as high as their testosterone levels are falling low: While men make up nearly half the population, they represent 80 percent of suicides, and testosterone levels have dropped by double digits since the 1980s.
Men’s low testosterone levels reflect a population that’s not eating right, not exercising right, and not acting on their underlying ambitions. They’re becoming apathetic pot smokers stuck in the pursuit of cheap dopamine hits through Netflix and porn. And these low “T” levels are threatening fertility, which is already on the decline, in the long term, while guaranteeing a generation of fat, lazy men with no hormonal motivation in the short term.
The death of masculinity — its public execution brought about by its supposed toxicity — is the existential crisis nobody’s talking about.
Note: this is the first post in the author’s new conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness.If you liked this post and the topics addressed, consider subscribinghere.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
The Washington Post admitted Monday that “Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters” — years after the Post and other corporate media water-carriers pushed the false story that former President Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate, due in part to Russian interference via bots on Twitter targeting U.S. social media users. The admission cites a New York University study that found “there was no relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”
Media treatment of the non-story followed a predictable, three-step process that’s become the propaganda press’s MO: Spread a false claim, control the narrative while crushing dissent with bogus “fact checks,” and then admit the truth only after the news cycle has achieved its intended purpose.
How the Russian Bots Story Followed the Playbook
In 2016, then-Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook launched the conspiracy theory that then-candidate Trump was in cahoots with Russia and colluding together to steal the 2016 election. One dossier full of bunk allegations commissioned by the Clinton campaign later, the entire media establishment, in tandem with a politicized intelligence community, was running with the Russia collusion hoax.
One of the many conspiracy theories thrown at the wall was that Russia was influencing U.S. voters via social media, including through armies of “bot” accounts. As my colleague Joy Pullmann has noted, U.S. intelligence agencies propelled that claim with an “intelligence community assessment” on Jan. 6, 2017, “signed off publicly by the FBI, National Security Agency, and CIA concluding that Trump’s election was boosted by Russian social media content farms.”
Regime media ran with it the same narrative before and after that assessment that turned out to be false:
The Washington Post: “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” November 2016.
Politico Magazine: “How Russia Wins an Election” (spoiler: “the Kremlin’s troll army swarmed the web to spread disinformation and undermine trust in the electoral system,” the piece says), December 2016.
NPR: “How Russian Twitter Bots Pumped Out Fake News During The 2016 Election,” April 2017.
New York Times: “The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election,” September 2017.
Mother Jones: “Twitter Bots Distorted the 2016 Election — Including Many Likely From Russia,” October 2017.
The “Twitter Files” revealed just weeks ago that media pressure on this story, combined with threats from elected Democrats, were successful in getting Twitter to obey U.S. intelligence agency requests for information suppression, even though Twitter executives couldn’t find any evidence of coordinated Russian disinformation campaigns on their platform.
31.Twitter soon settled on its future posture.
In public, it removed content “at our sole discretion.”
Privately, they would “off-board” anything “identified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.” pic.twitter.com/Jc94kEg2KR
Hilariously, Tim Starks, the same writer who wrote WaPo’s admission this week that Russian bots had “little influence” on the election, had written a 2019 piece for Politico titled “Russia’s manipulation of Twitter was far vaster than believed.”
While media outlets were running cover for the story, they slapped “fact” “checks” on those who challenged the narrative, including the U.S. president. And (you guessed it) they cited the intel community’s Jan. 6, 2017 report as evidence — the same one now called into question by The Washington Post’s latest admission.
Those allegations, along with several other now-debunked claims about Trump-Russia collusion, were the basis for a special counsel investigation and a presidential impeachment, all part of a narrative aimed at kneecapping Trump’s time in office. The Mueller investigation even indicted a Russian bot farm for election interference.
Only now — after Trump has been successfully hounded out of the White House, now that almost half of likely voters have been convinced that Russia probably “changed the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” and everyone else has forgotten about the story — does The Washington Post come around to admitting that those troublesome Russian bots didn’t really do much after all.
5 Other Times Corporate Media Followed the Same Strategy
The Twitter bots story was just one of many instances of regime media running with the same strategy. They do it almost daily, but here are just five of the most egregious examples in recent memory.
Covid: From masks to lockdowns to vaccines, we were hounded by media bullhorns for years about the untouchable efficacy of every recommendation the “experts” tossed our way. Those who resisted, in person or on social media, were vilified and censored. Workers lost jobs, kids fell behind in school, non-Covid medical patients were denied potentially life-saving treatments and surgeries, neighbors shunned each other, and people were forced to get experimental injections they didn’t want.
Only after the reigning narrative had been used to quash its intended targets for two years did its messengers admit the truths the rest of us had been saying from the beginning.
Inflation: Despite the obvious pitfalls of Covid-era decisions to shut down the entire nation’s economy and then hand out free money to everyone screwed over by government lockdowns, regime media insisted that inflation wasn’t happening under the newly minted Biden administration. CNBC told us to “Ignore ‘hysterical people’ — inflation is not here to stay, economist says.”
“Inflation isn’t a real danger,” insisted WaPo. “The Inflation Scare Doesn’t Match Reality,” said Forbes. The New York Times offered “179 Reasons You Probably Don’t Need to Panic About Inflation.”
Now that we’re undoubtedly experiencing the worst inflation in four decades, the talking point has changed to “actually, inflation is good.”
The Steele dossier: After British agent Christopher Steele was hired by the Clinton campaign’s opposition research firm to write now-debunked rumors about Trump in what became known as the Steele dossier, Steele shopped the story out to media outlets, which ran with the hoax. The New York Times even got a Pulitzer for it. The information in the dossier, which corporate media coverage helped legitimize, was used by the Obama FBI to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Journalists who questioned the concocted narrative were called conspiracy theorists.
After the damage to the Trump campaign (and eventually, the Trump administration) was done, corporate media admitted, in a laughable understatement, that the “Arrest of Steele dossier source forces some news outlets to reexamine their coverage.”
Irreversible surgeries for gender dysphoria: Corporate media helped fuel the epidemic of sexual confusion giving rise to disfiguring surgeries and hormone “treatments” for people, including children, with gender dysphoria. Outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post pounced on anyone who challenged the dogma that pumping teenagers with off-label hormones and dicing up their genitalia was a totally safe and normal thing to be celebrated. People like The Federalist’s own John Daniel Davidson are still locked out of their social media accounts for telling the truth about the transgender craze.
Sandwiched between op-eds decrying critics of transgenderism, The Times allows no one but itself to wonder, belatedly: “Is There a Cost?“
Hunter Biden laptop: When the New York Post published damning revelations about the Biden family’s overseas business dealings shortly before the 2020 presidential election, legacy outlets smeared the story as “disinformation” and a Russian info op.
“Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” parroted Politico. CBS’s Lesley Stahl called the laptop “discredited.” NPR told readers, “we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.” The Post and others who shared the story had their social media accounts frozen or their posts taken down.
A year and a half later, The New York Times quietly admitted — in the 24th paragraph of an article about Hunter Biden’s taxes — that “a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop … [was] authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” By then, the 2020 election was safely in Joe Biden’s hands.
Don’t think those six instances are the only times regime media have run the same playbook. By now, it’s their standard practice.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
The transgender movement has a science problem. Trans activists and their allies are trying to silence their critics by accusing them of “science denialism,” but they are inadvertently illustrating the anti-science nature of transgender dogmas. For example, a recent opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) — titled “Protecting Transgender Health and Challenging Science Denialism in Policy” actually demonstrates that rejecting transgender ideology is the best way to protect health and defend scientific integrity.
Of course, the authors, a couple of Yale professors plus a student, set out to prove the opposite. They open by asserting:
A virulent brand of science denialism is emerging in the U.S. legal system, as states enact bans on gender-affirming health care. Misused clinical research and disinformation have provided legal cover for bans on essential treatments for transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) people. Many of these bans restrict Medicaid reimbursement of gender-affirming care for people of all ages or prohibit gender-affirming care for minors. The recent end of federal protection for abortion and the lifting of Covid-19 protections such as mask mandates may signal an expansion of this dangerous force in health policy.
Yes, the complaints about the Dobbs decision and the ending of mask mandates are real and not a parody of upscale liberal white women. The rest is just loudly repeating transgender orthodoxies, with imprecations for doubters. And despite its apologists’ accusations of misused research and disinformation on the part of critics, transgenderism is indeed a dogmatic form of mysticism. Science has nothing to do with it.
Transgenderism denigrates the reality of bodily sex in order to exalt a non-corporeal sense of gender identity. It does not make a scientific claim, but a spiritual or metaphysical claim — that we have something like a gendered soul in a sexed body and that mismatches are possible and are best resolved by modifying the body into a facsimile of the other sex.
This extraordinary claim cannot be proven and must be taken on faith. Consequently, transgender advocates and allies, such as those writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, do not even attempt to provide a scientific explanation for transgenderism. Rather, because there is no physical need for medical transition, transgenderism has to be self-authenticating, proving itself by whatever mental health benefits can be attributed to it. This is why trans advocates are constantly (and falsely) telling parents that the alternative to transition is suicide — it’s the only argument they have; the only physical harm that can result from not transitioning is self-harm.
TRANSGENDERISM
As this demonstrates, so-called gender-affirming care is abnormal medicine. It hugely disrupts healthy bodily functions for dubious mental benefits. It is like using intense chemotherapy to treat anxiety. Thus, the case for transition, especially for children, needs to meet an extremely high standard of evidence.
Predictably, the authors of the NEJM article fail to do this. They argue that the case for transition is robust and accuse their opponents of disinformation and cherry-picking data but tracing their citations back through their own previouswork provides more assertion than evidence. The studies they cite cannot escape the usual weaknessesplaguing this area of study: poor response rates, bad sampling methods, small sample sizes, short time-frames, and a reliance on patient self-evaluation.
Even less convincing are their attempts to dismiss the side effects of medical transition, which undermine the claims of any benefits. For example, the NEJM writers suggest that the use of puberty blockers in cases of precocious puberty means they are also safe to use in transition — but the former use simply delays a natural, healthy puberty until the appropriate age, while the latter prevents it from ever happening. Even the New York Times has noticed that using puberty blockers for gender-confused children may have major downsides.
TRANSGNDERING ISSUES.
Of course, the elephant in the room is that studies on transition, and especially transitioning children, are overwhelmingly conducted by those whose careers depend upon proving the benefits of transition. The doctors who are chemically castrating teenage boys, or amputating the healthy breasts of adolescent girls, are all-in. To admit that these procedures are a mistake would be a confession of horrific, possibly even criminal, medical malpractice that would end their careers.
Likewise, many of the formerly respectable gatekeepers of medicine and scientific research have been deeply compromised by transgender ideology. From medical associations to hospitals, there is a multitude of people who are in too deep to admit error, even as transgender ideology collapses.
The fact-free nature of transgender ideology is apparent in the latest standards of care issued by WPATH (World Professional Association of Transgender Health), a pro-trans group that is treated as the leading authority on transgender medicine. The organization eliminated many of its recommended age restrictions for medical transition in order to protect from malpractice claims physicians who were transitioning children younger than the previous standards — after all, doctors can’t violate a standard of care that doesn’t exist. And bizarrely, WPATH declared “eunuch” to be a valid gender identity, a decision reached, in part, by relying on online forums filled with violent fantasies of child sexual abuse.
These cranks and creeps have captured the establishment, from medicine to academia to the Democratic Party. And they intend to use their power to intimidate and silence critics. They do not care that their attempts are dishonest and incoherent. For instance, the NEJM writers admit that the scientific “consensus is ever evolving,” yet they posit this as a reason to shut down debate and deregulate transitioning children.
They are not perturbed by the inconsistency, for they are engaged in the exercise of power, not reason. They do not care about winning the argument but about intimidating people into compliance. And so, they rely on credentialism and cries of “science denialism” and “misinformation” — following the same approach used to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, the lab-leak theory of Covid-19’s origins, and skepticism about extended school closures and masking toddlers — to protect their faith in gender identity and the pediatric transitions it demands.
But try though they might, they cannot alter biological reality. They may live by the lie of gender ideology, but they cannot make it true.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Michigan voters will decide Tuesday whether children in that state can obtain puberty blockers at Planned Parenthood facilities without parental consent. Proposal 3 would also give Michigan children a constitutional right to be castrated or surgically sterilized — again, without the consent of a parent.
Parental rights have become a fiercely contested battleground. Historically, your right to determine what’s in the best interest of your child has gone without question. It’s the oldest, most fundamental liberty we know, enshrined in legal doctrine since 1690.
But too often today, ideology determines whether your parental rights will actually stand in court. If a parent opposes her child’s desire to pretend to be the opposite sex, courts increasingly treat that parent’s rights as expendable.The sexual confusion of children overshadows parents’ rights to remain in their children’s lives as a potent force.
In a courtroom down the hall, however, the rights of neglectful or drug-abusing parents are treated with kid gloves, under the theme of family preservation. Activist courts stand ready to protect your parental rights, but only when your narrative matches their own.
‘I’m God in this Case’
Less than a year ago, Abigail Shrier shocked readers with her story of a California judge who stripped a father of his parental rights because he showed insufficient support for performing irreversible medical procedures on his sex-confused son. These cases are popping up all around the country. Sexual ideology is becoming the governing factor in a child’s placement, trumping the will and the voice of a parent.In a state whose governor was elected on a parental rights platform, Virginia Del. Elizabeth Guzman brazenly introduced a bill that would charge a parent who fails to affirm a child’s “sexual orientation or gender identity” with a felony. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation that makes his state a “refuge” for trans-identifying minors who seek irreversible medical procedures. Just make it to the Golden State … and there is nothing your objecting parents can do.
One case in the sleepy university town of Charlottesville, Virginia, provides some insight into how a parent can suddenly get framed as “the bad parent” in a custody battle, merely for questioning a child’s sexual confusion.
Sarah Schultz told me she spent more than a half-million dollars trying to retain joint custody of her 15-year-old daughter who first claimed she was bisexual and then began to question her sex. Schultz pled for a “wait and see” approach and for the right to have an influence in her daughter’s maturing adolescence. Despite Sarah’s ex-husband’s earlier fentanyl overdose, she says, a judge gave primary custody of the daughter to her dad, who permitted both bisexual and heterosexual sleepovers. In the past four years, Schultz has seen her daughter fewer than five times.
Schultz said the appointed guardian ad litem viewed her faith as a threat to her daughter’s emerging sexuality.“I’m God in this case,” Schultz recalled her daughter’s guardian ad litem saying. The court saw her daughter as a girl in an “authentic process to discover her identity,” Schultz explained, while the father was commendable because he was “allowing her sexuality to blossom.”
Courts often use the “safety of the child” as a guise to award custody to a parent who mirrors the left’s narrative. Note the irony here. How can you be a good parent unless you are willing to oppose something harmful your child thinks she wants at the time? A teenager sees hormones and irreversible surgeries as a mirage of liberation. A concerned parent sees what a disfigured body and the inability to have children will mean 10 years from now.
A Pernicious Double Standard
Treatment of parental rights in the world of foster care and adoption, meanwhile, is a vastly different story.
A mother can give birth to a baby who spends two months in the NICU, crying for endless hours as he detoxes from the heroin his mother ingested during pregnancy, and she or her mother can still take the baby home. Parental rights are treated as sacrosanct, even though most of the maltreatment of children actually occurs at the hands of parents or their paramours.
“Family preservation” is the holy grail courts and welfare agencies pursue, often at the expense of the actual safety of children. As Naomi Schaefer Riley explains in her book, “No Way To Treat A Child,” “child welfare workers and family-court judges … believe that foster care, to the extent that it should be used at all, is an endless holding pattern for a child while parents get their affairs in order.” Sadly, many never do.
In an effort to preserve parental rights, children languish in care for years. The common complaint in foster care is “the clock.” Though a child is legally eligible for adoption after roughly two years in care, drug-abusing parents can play out the clock, attend a few recovery meetings, fulfill a requirement or two on the reunification plan — and the clock starts over. Many children age out of the possibility of adoption because the court favors parental rights over children’s attachment needs.
The Use and Abuse of Parental Rights
Given the current capricious approach of many courts, the question to ask is: Just how safe are your parental rights? If the issues at hand are related to your child’s confusion about his sex, then your parental rights can be bargained away in court far too easily. But if the court frames those rights as a matter of “family preservation,” they are nearly carved in stone.
The contrast between how parental rights are viewed, depending on the left-wing bias of courts and state agencies, should disturb everyone. The right of conscientious parents to shape their child’s life is among the most cherished of all human freedoms. That right is increasingly threatened, as the militancy of transgender ideology invades the private realm of parent and child.
How safe are your parental rights then? Only as safe as the left wants them to be.
Paula Rinehart, LCSW, is a therapist in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the author of the book “Sex and the Soul of a Woman.” She writes about family and culture.
Several brave members of a girls’ high school volleyball team in Vermont have taken a stand against a trans teammate sharing their locker room. And now, they may be under investigation by the school for possible harassment.
According to WCAX-TV, several girls on the Randolph Union High School girls’ volleyball team raised concerns about a trans teammate using the girls’ locker room. They allege that the trans teammate made an inappropriate comment in the locker room while they were changing, and now they feel uncomfortable. And at least one of those girls has spoken out publicly in the hopes of effecting “change.”
“My mom wants me to do this interview to try to make a change,” said team member Blake Allen, who spoke on camera wearing her team uniform.
Allen told a local reporter that she and her fellow female teammates did not object to having a trans teammate, but that they did want to have a space where they can change with only other biological females.
Some of girls and their parents then contacted the school about their concerns but were met with resistance. The school defended the status quo, explaining that state law permits a trans student to use the bathroom and locker room that corresponds with their perceived gender identity.
In an email sent to families, school officials also claimed that the girls’ locker room offers “plenty of space where students who feel uncomfortable with the laws may change in privacy.” However, Allen countered that the “plenty of space” is actually a “single stall bathroom” and that forcing all the girls to use one stall rather than the main girls’ locker room itself would be an impractical waste of time.
WCAX reports that Randolph has since banned the entire team from using the locker room while it conducts an investigation into claims that the girls on the team harassed their trans teammate. Allen alleged that volleyball team members are not even allowed to use the locker room during gym class.
And she believes that the negative image that has been cast on her just for raising concerns is unfair.
“I feel like for stating my opinion — that I don’t want a biological man changing with me — that I should not have harassment charges or bullying charges. They should all be dropped,” Allen asserted.
School co-principal Lisa Floyd reportedly said in an email that student safety remains the school’s highest priority and that any violation of school policies will be met with disciplinary action. The school also added that its decision to close the locker room should not be seen as taking sides in the dispute, but rather an as attempt to find a solution that suits the needs of all involved.
The city of Randolph is located near central Vermont, approximately 30 minutes south of the state capital of Montpelier.
“The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters” is a cautionary tale that exposes not only how influential the spread of trans ideology is on social media and in doctors’ offices, schools, and therapy sessions, but also how that same ideology weaponizes vulnerable young women’s identity struggle against them.
The film from the Center for Bioethics and Culture documents the testimonies of three women — Helena, Cat, and Grace — who went through various forms of so-called “gender-affirming” prescriptions and procedures only to discover that the wrongly named “treatments” marketed to make them feel better about their bodies did more harm than good.
The featured women do not shy away from mentioning the irreversible procedures and damage this mutilative movement had on their bodies and souls, but they also don’t leave viewers feeling hopelessly doomed in a world that works overtime to normalize the destruction of healthy bodies.
Social Contagion
The documentary starts with the women explaining not just how they learned about transgender ideology but why it appealed to them.
“I don’t think anybody would have described me as gender nonconforming, or a tomboy or anything like that,” Helena admitted.
Though Helena said she never would have been considered “gender nonconforming” or even a tomboy, after hours of scrolling Tumblr, the social contagion of transgender ideology took root in her mind and began fueling her mental health problems.
“By the time I was about 13, I started to feel really depressed. I started self-harming. I started developing an eating disorder. That kind of isolation led me to go on Tumblr because I was spending a lot of time online generally,” Helena said. “I was introduced to a belief system that it had a lot to do with gender, but it was more like, ‘If you don’t fit in, that’s a sign that you’re trans. If you don’t like your body, that’s a sign that you’re trans. And if you transition, all these problems will be fixed.’”
Similar to Helena, Cat’s interest in “transitioning” was piqued when she was 13 after she visited a website boasting all things trans, prompting her to determine she had gender dysphoria.
Grace testified that she had “a lifelong like preoccupation and discomfort with my body” that turned out to be a “very normal sort of young adult female issues.” It’s not uncommon for children and young adults like Grace to feel uncomfortable in their growing bodies, but the vast majority outgrow their sex-related woes if left alone. For instance, in one Canadian study of boys with gender-identity disorder released last year, over time, nearly 88 percent of the subjects “desisted,” or abandoned their desire to identify as the opposite sex.
Grace, however, wasn’t left alone. After years of feeling “lost,” suicidal, and depressed, she jumped at the opportunity to alter her body. Grace also attributed her eventual decision to take testosterone and go through with a double mastectomy at 23, something she said she regrets, to “trans influencers” online.
“I was looking at trans influencers who had the body that I wanted and reading all of that stuff like the happy testimonials, also feeling the hysteria of the online trans community which was really freaking out because Donald Trump was president and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be illegal to transition.’ It felt like it was a little bit of time pressure,” Grace said.
How could vulnerable young women not entertain the idea of “transitioning” when it is marketed as the end-all to their mental distress? Especially since it is plastered all over social media, and “doctors” advertising castration and mutilation get endless positive press coverage.
There’s plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that kids, especially girls, are heavily influenced by this shameless online trans peddling and the ideology’s popularity among their friends. That’s why “transition” procedures on U.S female adolescents alone quadrupled between 2016 and 2017.
The online world of trans ideology is so pervasive that when Grace began to question whether amputating her breasts was a wise decision, she admitted that she believed she was experiencing “internalized transphobia.”
As Helena explained, it was easy to get swept up into the world of “social justice ideology” with just a few taps on a screen:
In this social justice ideology, there’s kind of a hierarchy of who is the most oppressed versus who is the most privileged. The further along you are on the oppressed scale, that means you know that your opinion is listened to more. I found myself in this place where I had found the only community of other girls who are more like me in terms of personality. I could relate to them, but it was so enmeshed in this kind of belief system that made me feel really guilty about being a cis, straight, white girl. You begin to feel a kind of pressure to constantly apologize for yourself. “OK, well, how do I not be this privileged person anymore?” And one thing that’s really easy to do is just change your pronouns.
Changing pronouns, of course, was just the beginning. Eventually, Helena, Cat, and Grace all began taking testosterone.
Beyond the Screen
When Helena didn’t get the affirmation she wanted from her parents over her gender confusion, she sought help from her school’s guidance counselor and psychologist, both of whom were more than willing to push the teen to “transition” behind her parents’ backs.
“Ironically, one of the things that really kind of supported my idea of being trans was that before I was trans, none of the adults in my life at school or anything really cared that much. They didn’t really see that I was struggling. But when I said I was trans, then they all wanted to like bend over backwards to help me be trans,” she said.
Helena eventually found an in with a medical office that, after she requested it, prescribed her the maximum dosage of testosterone on her first visit.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for public school officials to urge and aid kids who want to reject their sex. This is documented well on the Libs of TikTok Twitter account. But schools aren’t the only trans-crazed accomplices.
“After just a 30-minute conversation, the doctor prescribed testosterone over the phone,” Cat said. “It was pretty clear she did not look at my chart, because she would have seen some things that would at least be cause for concern, because like I had a history of suicide attempts, I had been institutionalized before, I had been to inpatient eating-disorder treatment. The outcome of that conversation was, ‘Here’s your drugs.’”
At first, the young women saw what they believed was an improvement in their sex-related confusion and other problems.
“It did kind of feel like, you know, one of the better antidepressants that I’d ever taken in my life,” Cat recalled.
Eventually, however, Helena, Cat, and Grace all learned that taking drugs designed to inhibit their bodies’ natural functions was not the cure they’d hoped it would be. It ultimately left them feeling physically ill, angry, and even more depressed than before.
But in the case of Helena, who was on testosterone for 17 months, her health professionals never considered her symptoms to be a result of the male hormone. Instead, she was prescribed more medications to combat what her hospital’s psych unit deemed borderline personality disorder and psychosis.
“My life just became like a total disaster,” Helena said. “I wasn’t functioning at all. I wasn’t holding down a job. I wasn’t going to school. I just felt like a monster. Once I stopped the testosterone, the symptoms all went away and I started feeling like myself again.”
It was then that Helena gave up on the idea of doing surgeries, saying, “I just became so dysfunctional that I wasn’t really able to have the mental wherewithal to go through the process of calling surgeons, dealing with insurance.”
Cat, a singer, had plans to dive deeper into the trans world with a double mastectomy and legal name change but paused those when she realized “how detrimental the changes to my voice had been and how devastated I was that I had made irreversible changes to myself.”
Grace, who went through with her double mastectomy, experienced regret and the unnerving feeling that no matter how much she altered her body, “this will never be over for me.”
“I just was realizing that there might not be a light at the end of the tunnel like I thought there was. I also don’t really feel like a man, I just feel like a woman who has had her breasts cut off,” Grace admitted.
It was then that she began thinking about all of the irreversible damage her body was subjected to because she was told it was necessary to combat her gender confusion.
“I’m concerned that the testosterone may have affected my fertility and potentially will cause me some like infertility issues, but I really don’t know,” Grace said. “…I feel, I think more than anything else, regret over that. I just hadn’t been thinking about having children at that time. I didn’t think I really wanted them, and that’s something that I began to really want in my mid-20s.”
All Hope Is Not Lost
There were plenty of people, organizations, and resources available to Helena, Cat, and Grace when they first considered “transitioning,” but support for their “detransition” was severely lacking — so they started doing their own research.
“I started looking into a lot of studies, and what I found is that there actually isn’t much quality evidence supporting medical transition as the best treatment,” Cat said. “I started to grow concerned with scientific and medical misinformation being tried by the trans community.”
These young women found a way around the smokescreen with help from truthtellers such as Posie Parker, who ignored the threat of censorship from Big Tech to state hard and fast truths about sex.
“I went on YouTube, and I just searched ‘trans women aren’t women’ because I had never ever listened to gender-critical people or TERFs because I was just told they were hateful people,” Cat explained.
Helena found solace in talking to others like her who had started taking hormones and considering surgeries before waking up to the deception.
“I realized that like, oh, OK, there’s a lot of people going through this. It’s not just a handful of people. It’s like hundreds and thousands of people going through this. And so once I started meeting these people, I just started having conversations,” she said.
Those conversations are why it’s so important for young women like Helena, Cat, and Grace to share their stories.
“I’m really worried about other people who are getting sucked into thinking that gender transition is the answer to problems that would be better solved elsewhere,” Grace said. “I am hopeful, but I think it’s going to be a really ugly time. … The fallout is going to be really severe from all of the detransitioners. … But our voices can no longer be denied.”
Helena, Cat, and Grace will be labeled transphobic and hateful for speaking up, but their transparency offers a message of warning and of hope for real care that parents, policymakers, and people all around the world need to hear: Mangling healthy bodies is a sickness, not a cure.
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 and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Journalist Matt Walsh uncovered videos showing that Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been mutilating sex-confused kids and bragging about the profit margins of doing so since 2018, and some left-wingers came away with the impression that Vanderbilt, not the children it manipulated and maimed, was the victim. Accusing Walsh of “terrorism,” “harassment,” and “behaving dangerously,” they’re claiming Walsh is inciting violence against the medical center and are trying to shut down his reporting as a result.
But while a journalist publishing what the corporate media refuses to gets accused of stirring up hypothetical violence, an 18-year-old kid was just killed when he was run down by a man who said he thought the “teen was part of a Republican extremist group” — just weeks after the president of the United States ominously smeared “MAGA Republicans” as a “threat to the very soul of this country.”
Leftists weren’t wailing about “incitement to violence” then, and the national press almost universally ignored the slaying of 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson. They saved their outrage for Walsh, who merely published information, screenshots, and videos he’d obtained from Vanderbilt to reveal the medical center’s mutilation of minors’ healthy organs, the calloused financial incentives of which the center boasted, and the steps the center had taken to silence internal dissent.
Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups" pic.twitter.com/zedM7HBCBe
A sane person would be horrified at Vanderbilt chopping up children’s genitals for profit, but instead, some leftists decided Walsh was actually the dangerous and even criminal one.
Noah Berlatsky, a writer with bylines in The Washington Post and The Atlantic, flagged Walsh’s reporting for Twitter Support and accused the tech platform of being “complicit in terrorism” and potentially “murder” if it didn’t shut Walsh’s reporting down.
Leah Torres, an abortion center director who had her medical license suspended two years ago, said Walsh was “behaving dangerously” and “is going to get people hurt and/or killed.” She also claims to have reported the post, saying “that hardly feels like enough,” and tagging the FBI.
Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Law School, claimed without evidence that “Vanderbilt medical center has had to shift medical appointments for its trans clinic to virtual telehealth appointments as a result of threats being made.”
“Matt Walsh is inciting a terror campaign against a hospital and disrupting care,” she added. “He will get people hurt or killed.”
She also cited an equally slanted NBC News article that framed the topic this way: “Several children’s hospitals, most notably Boston Children’s, have been the targets of a far-right harassment campaign for months, led by anti-trans influencers with millions of collective followers who have spread misinformation about the hospitals’ gender-affirming treatment for minors.” NBC failed to say what part of the reporting on hospitals’ abuse of minors was “misinformation.”
Self-described “woke social justice warrior” Zack Hunt, another Twitter user to flag Walsh for the FBI, accused Walsh of being a “terrorist” and running a “terrorist campaign,” and called for a stop to his supposed “efforts to terrorize our city before he incite[s] more threats of violence.”
It’s worth noting that the legal standard set by the Supreme Court in its “Brandenburg test” allows the government to police speech advocating for criminal behavior only if the speech is both “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely to incite or produce such action.” Walsh’s reporting on Vanderbilt does nothing of the sort, of course. He’s not advocating for any crimes at all, so his speech isn’t “directed to inciting or producing” lawlessness of any kind — much less “imminent” and “likely” criminal acts.
Biden’s inflammatory rhetoric isn’t reasonably prosecutable under the Brandenberg test either, but it gets a lot closer than a journalist’s factual exposé.
In a prime-time speech earlier this month backlit by an ominous, blood-red backdrop, President Joe Biden fanned flames with proclamations like “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
“MAGA forces … fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country,” Biden declared, before urging: “We are not bystanders in this ongoing attack on democracy.”
“It’s in our hands — yours and mine — to stop the assault on American democracy,” he continued. “We’re all called, by duty and conscience, to confront extremists…”
Confronting so-called “extremism” sounds a lot like the reason Shannon Brandt, 41, gave for using his car to fatally run down Ellingson in McHenry, North Dakota, when he told police he thought “the teen was part of a Republican extremist group” after “a political argument.”
If leftists think Walsh’s publication of videos showing Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s own employees admitting to abuse of kids for financial gain is “incitement,” then what the heck do they think Biden’s inflammatory — and deadly — rhetoric is?
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Robin Rayne
Remember the twitching girls in upstate New York?
About a decade ago, more than a dozen teen girls, crazed with puberty and hormones, developed a weird medical condition. Despite the utter scientific implausibility of their alleged illness, the mania soon spread to other girls at their school. And then it all just disappeared, giving us a road map for dealing with teenaged girls today, who demand the right to mutilate their sexual organs and inject themselves with infertility-inducing drugs.
We’ll get back to the twitching girls. First a political point.
At brunch this weekend, a couple remarked, with some irritation, that in any gathering of Republicans, everybody always starts talking about transgenders. Evidently, it’s not just Republicans. The same topic was vexing Democrats at brunch the next day. The couple’s point was: STOP TALKING ABOUT TEENAGE TRANSGENDERS!
On the other hand, any politician with three functioning brain cells will hear the same story and think, The electorate is inflamed! I better start talking about transgenders! It’s nothing big, just the greatest medical malpractice in history currently being perpetrated on America’s youth.
All I needed to know about the transgender craze was that, in a massive survey of parents of transitioning teens, 92% were women, 71% had a bachelor’s or graduate degree, 86% favored gay marriage and 91% were white.
I’m dying to hear about the biological pathway of a medical condition that afflicts almost exclusively the offspring of liberal white women. (Silver lining: On breaks from talking about their transitioning daughters, the mothers can compare “long-haul COVID” symptoms.)
The adolescent transgenders themselves were 83% girls (by which I mean “female,” that mysterious life-form unidentifiable by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson).
These delicate creatures — hormones flooding their bodies, social acceptance more important than life itself — have launched any number of interesting societal phenomena through the years:
— anorexia nervosa (females are three times more likely to have anorexia than males);
— cutting (girls are three times more likely to engage in cutting than boys);
— cavalcades of prescription drugs that shouldn’t be given to any human being, least of all a teenager (teen girls are about twice as likely to be on antidepressants as teen boys); and now …
— transgenderism. (In the past decade, the number of girls seeking to transition has gone up by about 5,500%, compared to 1,500% for boys, according to the Tavistock Centre, the U.K.’s only gender identity clinic for teens.)
A Nexis search reveals that the word “transgender” was practically nonexistent in The New York Times until fairly recently. In the past 18 months, the Times has mentioned transgenders 2,784 times. You have to wonder how the Salem witch trials got rolling without the Times’ active encouragement.
But let’s get back to the twitching girls.
In 2012, the Times published a long magazine article about a rash of teenage girls in Le Roy, New York, having nonepileptic seizures — twitching, arms flailing, head jerking, uncontrollable humming, guttural noises, fainting, tics and so on.
The Tourette’s-like seizures first occurred in a cheerleader, spread to several members of the team, then leapt to a dozen other female classmates. But, oddly, this absolutely genuine medical condition barely affected the boys, staff or teachers at the school. (Only one boy and one teacher acquired the symptoms.)
This raised no suspicions among the mothers, who carried on at town meetings, screaming at school officials, “I’m done listening to you. You need to do something!”
Experts tested the water, the playing fields, the air, the abandoned manufacturing plants. The girls underwent extensive neurological testing. Erin Brockovich even sent a team to test the dirt at the school (despite the fact that she’d turned out to be completely wrong about the purported “cancer cluster” that made her famous).
The girls and their mothers appeared on “The Today Show” and the “Dr. Phil” show. CNN sent a team of experts to investigate.
In the end, there was nothing wrong with the girls. Everyone moved on. The tics went away.
Which, it turns out, is the only way these estrogen-fueled panics ever end. The Times cited famed epidemiologists, local neurologists and feminist writers all making the exact same point: The worst thing to do when facing a psychogenic outbreak is give it attention and support. Feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter, for example, listed three prerequisites to a mass hysteria: “physician-enthusiasts and theorists; unhappy and vulnerable patients; and supportive cultural environments.”
Luckily for the girls of Le Roy, they were ordinary kids in an ordinary town, not the new victim on the block, much less the little darlings of the upper crust. If they’d been students at The Brearley School in New York City, they’d be thrashing about in wheelchairs to this day.
The same party that wants to raise the legal age for rifle purchases to 21 is also pushing to let minors kill preborn babies and mutilate their own genitals. American adults aged 18-20 already aren’t allowed to purchase handguns (and many states don’t allow them to obtain a concealed carry permit), more or less blocking them from practicing the basic self-defense precaution of stowing a defensive weapon to stop a bad guy with a gun. Now, Second Amendment deniers also want to bar these Americans from owning a rifle, a popular choice for home defense.
But while Democrats want to punish millions of law-abiding, prospective young gun owners for the evil, disturbed actions of a few of their peers, they’re also demanding that kids far younger be allowed to commit infanticide and mutilate their own bodies.
Letting Teens Commit Baby Murder
The radical abortion bill that Democrats renewed after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade sought to virtually eliminate any restrictions on abortion up to the point of birth. Minors are already allowed to obtain abortions, but the legislation would also nuke state laws mandating parental notification for such young girls. Lest you think this is an incidental inclusion, Democrats have specifically attacked state parental notification laws.
Planned Parenthood’s website doesn’t even try not to sound like a pervert offering kids candy: “If you’re under 18, you may or may not have to tell a parent in order to get an abortion,” it teases.
The ACLU estimates that 350,000 girls younger than 18 get pregnant in America every year, and that 31 percent (or roughly 108,500) of them choose to terminate their babies’ lives. There were 652,639 abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control in 2014; in the same year, the Guttmacher Institute found that 0.2 percent of abortions — or roughly 1,300 — were executed on girls 14 years old or younger.
Fighting for these young, impressionable girls to get abortions doesn’t just push them into the commission of murder, with the likely accompaniment of lifelong guilt, it also subjects them to trauma themselves. Sarah Eubanks, a former abortion facility employee, described one 12-year-old girl whose grandmother brought her in for an abortion:
I remember that look on her face that she just didn’t understand what was going on. She didn’t want to be there. She started moving around and the doctor said, ‘You need to hold her down.’ I did put my hands on her and said ‘You have to settle down, you gotta be still, you’re gonna hurt yourself. You have to be still.’ And within an instant, she pushed her feet out of the stirrups and started running down the hall with the speculum in her vagina with blood running down her legs. The doctor said, ‘I’m not touching this.’ She was that upset. She just didn’t want to be there. She was screaming.
The hundreds of thousands of preborn babies’ lives lost to the abortionist’s scalpel every year haven’t dampened Democrats’ desires to let adolescent girls (or any women) make the decision to take a human life. But at the same time, the left will throw gun death numbers in your face to push their anti-gun agenda, even when firearm-related homicides are a fraction of abortion numbers, and are far outpaced by defensive gun use. Pew reported 19,384 murders involving a firearm in 2020, compared to up to 3 million “defensive gun uses by victims” per year, according to a CDC study.
Not only do Democrats want to let children kill their babies, they want to let children make damaging and irreversible changes to their own bodies.
Letting Children Sterilize Themselves
A report from Florida Medicaid found that “Available medical literature provides insufficient evidence that sex reassignment through medical intervention is a safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria,” and “the available evidence demonstrates that these treatments cause irreversible physical changes and side effects that can affect long-term health.” As a result, Florida Medicaid found that experimental procedures like cross-sex hormones or surgeries were insufficiently safe for coverage.
The report also listed the irreversible or potentially irreversible effects of cross-sex hormones, including facial and body hair growth, male pattern baldness, a deepening voice, and an enlarged clitoris for females taking male hormones, and breast growth, infertility, and sexual dysfunction for males taking female hormones. The irreversible effects of surgical interventions, such as elective mastectomies or genital amputations, are obviously far higher.
But those concerning effects didn’t stop the Biden administration’s Justice Department from sending an ominous memo to state attorneys general, threatening legal violations for states that don’t offer various damaging interventions to children.
“A ban on gender-affirming procedures, therapy, or medication may be a form of discrimination against transgender persons,” the memo stated. It also had the arrogance to claim that “it is well established within the medical community that gender-affirming care for transgender youth is not only appropriate but often necessary for their physical and mental health.”
The Biden Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs further spelled out just what is meant by “gender-affirming care,”including social treatment of a child as the opposite sex, puberty blockers, artificial pumps of hormones like testosterone or estrogen, or surgeries like elective mastectomies and amputation of reproductive body parts. OPA recommends“social affirmation” for“any age,” puberty blockers at any time during puberty, hormones beginning in early adolescence, and surgeries for adults or “case-by-case in adolescence.” Some parents try to claim their children “came out as trans” as toddlers.
But No Guns for Law-Abiding Young Adults!
These procedures threaten lifelong damage to children who undergo them, yet the Biden administration and other Democrats want unfettered access to them and punishments for health professionals and parents who question them. They also celebrate the idea of teenage girls taking the lives of their preborn babies, with no parental consent and with no consideration of whether a child has the mental maturity to make such a decision — never mind the fact that it’s an act of murder.
But Democrats are all too happy to further erode Americans’ Second Amendment rights by arbitrarily raising the minimum purchase age for a rifle from one adult age to another. Unlike committing an abortion or pumping your child full of hormones, the legal purchase or ownership of a gun does not cause anyone harm. On the contrary, it often protects against it.
Yet Democrats support letting pubescent children abuse themselves and adolescents kill their children, while insisting that an 18-year-old who passes a federal background check can be denied the constitutional right to self-defense. Are 18-year-olds too immature for constitutional rights? Are children and teenagers old enough for a concocted right to harm themselves and others? I would argue it’s neither — but it can’t be both.
Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox became the latest GOP governor to veto legislation Tuesday aimed at protecting women’s sports with a prohibition on male participation.
“I am not an expert in transgenderism. I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting,” Cox wrote to explain the veto. “When in doubt, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.”
The female swimmers who lost in a competition dominated by Lia Thomas last weekend, a transgender athlete who competed in the men’s league for years under the University of Pennsylvania, may take a different view of what constitutes “kindness, mercy and compassion.” The 22-year-old fifth-year senior took home the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championship in the 500-yard freestyle Thursday over a slate of female competitors.
Reka Gyorgy, a swimmer at Virginia Tech who came up short in the qualifier for the event, criticized the NCAA’s policy allowing biological males with years of testosterone-enhanced capability to compete in women’s leagues if they merely identify as women.
“It doesn’t promote our sport in a good way, and I think it is disrespectful against the biologically female swimmers who are competing in the NCAA,” Gyorgy wrote in an open letter to the collegiate athletic association post on Instagram. “It feels like the final spot was taken from me.”
Cox’s decision to allow men to compete in women’s sports came a day after Indiana Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb vetoed similar legislation. In his veto letter to lawmakers, Holcomb explained the bill left “too many unanswered questions,” a justification similar to one South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem gave last year when she refused to sign a bill protecting women’s sports.
Noem eventually capitulated on the issue nearly a year later, signing a bill to bar male athletes in women’s competition without a mea culpa for her intervening crusade against right-leaning outlets that exposed her dubious reasons for the initial veto. Holcomb is known for favoring big business interests over the interests of Indiana’s majority-Republican voters.
Hours before Cox vetoed the proposal to bar male competition in female leagues, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis officially recognized Thomas’ runner-up in the 500-yard freestyle race, Emma Weyant, as the true champion.
By allowing men to compete in women's sports, the NCAA is destroying opportunities for women, making a mockery of its championships, and perpetuating a fraud.
In Florida, we reject these lies and recognize Sarasota's Emma Weyant as the best women's swimmer in the 500y freestyle. pic.twitter.com/tBmFxFE3q6
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
The transgender misinformation machine is at it again. The New York Times recently published an extensive essay arguing against screening before medical transition — if someone says she wants hormones or surgery, doctors should immediately break out the syringes and prep the operating room.
The article, by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich of Bowdoin College, exemplifies how the transgender movement uses misinformation to advance its agenda. Marzano-Lesnevich asserts, “That gender-affirming health care saves lives is clear: A 2018 literature review by Cornell University concluded that 93 percent of studies found that transition improved transgender people’s heath [sic] outcomes, while the remaining 7 percent found mixed or null results. Not a single study in the review concluded negative impact.”
That seems dispositive — unless you look at the studies. The cited literature review was titled the “What We Know Project” and was directed by the LGBT scholar and activist Nathaniel Frank, who cited it in his own New York Times piece on transgenderism a few years ago, writing that “Our findings make it indisputable that gender transition has a positive effect on transgender well-being.”
Poorly Conducted Studies
These proclamations that the science is settled are a bold facade on rickety scaffolding. When this New York Times article invokes the authority of science, it seeks to evoke the image of careful statisticians sifting through data collected by diligent doctors.
But it is actually appealing to self-selected online surveys with cash prizes, studies with tiny samples, and studies that are missing more than half of their subjects. Stacking a bunch of weak studies on top of each other doesn’t provide a strong result, but The New York Times presumes readers won’t bother to check the details — the editors certainly didn’t.
Back in 2019, I took a closer look at the studies the What We Know Project cites, and found a methodological mess. Many of the studies had serious flaws, beginning with small sample sizes. As I noted, “Of the fifty relevant papers identified by the project, only five studies (10 percent) had more than 300 subjects, while twenty-six studies (52 percent) had fewer than 100. Seventeen studies (34 percent) had fifty or fewer subjects, and five of those had a sample size of twenty-five or less.”
The flaws extended far beyond small sample size, and the largest studies tended to be the weakest, often consisting of little more than online surveys with a self-selecting sample. Nor should we put much faith in a study that recruited subjects for an online survey by advertising “on online groups and discussion forums that were dedicated to FTM [female-to-male] members. . . . Upon survey completion, participants were entered into a lottery drawing for cash prizes.”
Even the better-designed long-term studies were often plagued by poor response rates. A European study had 201 out of 546 respond — just 37 percent. And though missing data is, by definition, missing, it is reasonable to suspect that those with poor outcomes are overrepresented among those who could not or would not respond.
Regret Rates
Nor did The New York Times check Marzano-Lesnevich’s claim that “gender-affirming health care has some of the lowest rates of regret in medicine. A 2021 systemic review of the medical literature, covering 27 studies and 7,928 transgender patients, found a regret rate of 1 percent or less.” But read the paper and it is quickly apparent both that the review has significant weaknesses and that The New York Times allowed its conclusions to be misrepresented.
Of the 27 studies used in their analysis, the review authors ranked only five as “good” and only four as having a low risk of bias. Many of the studies had the same flaws as those examined in the What We Know Project (indeed, some studies were used in both).
Another problem is that the majority of the data in the 2021 review came from a single study conducted by a Dutch group retrospectively examining the records of their own gender clinic. But a retrospective review of medical files will only identify regrets from patients who shared them with the gender clinic that performed their surgeries. Furthermore, the study only identified regrets following gonadectomy, and not those who regretted other surgeries, or who never had surgery but did regret taking cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers.
In addition to the problem of allowing a flawed data set to dominate the 2021 review, this illustrates another persistent difficulty with studies of transgender regret, which is that they are often conducted by those who provide medical transition, rather than independent researchers. People whose livelihoods and reputations depend on facilitating medical transition might be less than diligent and rigorous in looking for regret.
To their credit, the authors of the 2021 review do discuss some of the limits and difficulties of their work, writing that various problems:
represent a big barrier for generalization of the results of this study. The lack of validated questionnaires to evaluate regret in this population is a significant limiting factor. In addition, bias can occur because patients might restrain from expressing regrets due to fear of being judged by the interviewer. Moreover, the temporarity of the feeling of regret in some patients and the variable definition of regret may underestimate the real prevalence of ‘true’ regret.
None of these qualifications regarding regret were even hinted at in the published column. Despite The New York Times’ citing it, the 2021 review does not prove that “gender-affirming health care has some of the lowest rates of regret in medicine.”
As the authors note, regret is not only an imperfect measure, but it is often difficult to measure, with no set criteria defining it. In one Swedish review cited by the What We Know Project, it was defined “as application for reversal of the legal gender status among those who were sex reassigned,” which excludes those who succumbed to depression or addiction, or who lived unhappily after transition without seeking to legally detransition.
Gatekeeping before Transition
Furthermore, even if we uncritically accept the results of the 2021 review, it does not support the argument that gatekeeping before medical transition is unnecessary and harmful. Rather, the authors claim that the low regret rate they found “reflects and corroborates the increased [sic] in accuracy of patient selection criteria for GAS [gender affirmation surgery].”
In short, the review argues that medical gatekeeping keeps regret rates low. That The New York Times allowed this review to be used as evidence against medical screening, and in favor of self-ID for medical transition, exemplifies the persistent practice of American transgender activists using studies of (mostly) carefully screened European adults to argue against screening before medical transition, even for children.
Unfortunately, the aggregation of (often questionable) studies, and the exaggeration of their conclusions by activists, is only part of the problem. These efforts to spread misinformation are augmented by the intimidation of dissenting scientists and the suppression of results that trans activists dislike.
Suppressing Dissent
Researchers have learned to fear the wrath of LGBT activists, and take pains to avoid it. Results that undermine the narrative have to be carefully presented lest the public draw the wrong conclusions. Thus, when scientists concluded that there is no “gay gene” they “worked with LGBTQ advocacy groups and science-communication specialists on the best way to convey their findings in the research paper and to the public.”
With regard to transgender ideology, the intimidation is even more overt. For example, Lisa Littman’s qualitative study describing the phenomenon of rapid-onset gender dysphoria met a ferocious response from transgender activists. Similarly, activists smeared Canadian psychologist Kenneth Zucker and forced him out of his position as the leader of a gender identity clinic, even though he sometimes supported transitioning children. He was just more cautious about it than activists wanted. He was eventually vindicated, but targeting him still sent a warning to any researchers who are seen as insufficiently pro-trans.
As these cases demonstrate, the science is being manipulated to fit transgender ideology. Shoddy studies — often conducted by activists and doctors with a stake in medical transition — are boosted if they support the trans narrative, while results and researchers who challenge it are suppressed. This skewed data is then used by trans activists and their allies to shape the discourse.
Uncomfortable facts and stories are kept out of the official narrative. Insightful and moving first-person accounts of transition and detransition are confined to non-traditional outlets such as Substack, as are the warnings of leading trans doctors about the reckless rushing of children into transition. The information bubble is the point.
Going forward, disagreement will be labeled “misinformation” and banned from social media, and dissidents will be labeled as bigots who should be fired from their jobs. Doctors will be required to practice only according to the approved narrative, and educators will encourage children to transition without parental knowledge and consent. Worse still, the government will take children from parents who do not support transition.
The purpose of the transgender misinformation machine is not so much to persuade, but to provide justification for coercion. The point of the lies and distortions is to impose transgender ideology on all of us, especially children.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Madison, Wis. — Parents are “not entitled” to know their kids’ gender identity, according to a recent training session in Wisconsin’s Eau Claire Area School District.
Empower Wisconsin obtained a copy of a training slide from a late February staff development session. The 2021-22 Equity session on Safe Spaces reminds teachers that “parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned.”
“Teachers are often straddling this complex situation. In ECASD, our priority is supporting the student,” the professional development facilitator guide states. Teachers were encouraged to “Talk amongst yourselves!”
The lesson — that teachers know better than parents about what is best for their kids — is not sitting well with some community members.
“We are appalled that ECASD would display such blatant disregard for the parents and guardians of our community’s children. We are equally dismayed that current school district leadership would pressure teachers into breaking a social contract that we all know and understand—that parents and guardians hold primary responsibility and decision making for the welfare and care of their children,” said parents and school board candidates Nicole Everson, Corey Cronrath, and Melissa Winter in a joint statement.
The district’s training session is also legally suspect. A district court in 2020 issued a partial injunction against Madison Metropolitan School District’s policy allowing children of any age to transition to a different gender identity at school — without parental consent. The full case is now before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed the lawsuit on behalf of a group of parents challenging the gender identity policy “that violates the rights of parents to make important healthcare decisions on their children’s behalf.” The policy includes the following provisions:
Children of any age can transition to a different gender identity at school, by changing their name and pronouns, without parental notice or consent.
District employees are prohibited from notifying parents, without the child’s consent, that their child has or wants to change gender identity at school, or that their child may be dealing with gender dysphoria.
District employees are even instructed to deceive parents by using the child’s legal name and pronouns with family, while using the different name and pronouns adopted by the child in the school setting.
It’s not clear whether the Eau Claire Area School District has a similar policy.
The school board candidates are demanding district administrators issue an apology to teachers for “placing them at odds with families and also to parents and guardians for breaking the trust and partnership that is critical for thriving students and a stellar school district.”
An apology doesn’t appear to be forthcoming. ECASD Superintendent Michael Johnson issued a statement to Empower Wisconsin asserting the district is upholding its responsibility to maintain an educational environment that is “equitable, safe and inclusive for all students.”
“Our staff often find themselves in positions of trust with our students. The staff development presentation shared extensive data and information to assist our staff members in our ongoing efforts to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all students,” Johnson said in the statement. “The ECASD prides itself on being a school district that makes all students feel welcome and safe in our schools.”
The superintendent said the staff training focused on data showing students who identify as non-heterosexual have a higher incidence rate of mental health issues than heterosexual students. But critics say a school’s commitment to “equity and inclusiveness” does not give license to educators to hide important information from parents and guardians.
Cronrath, Everson, and Winter are among seven candidates, including two incumbents, running for three open seats on the school board next month. The three jumped into the race because they were concerned about the eroding of parental rights in the district. They say Eau Claire schools’ “blatant disregard for parental rights and responsibilities” has been creeping into the district’s classrooms. The latest training session sends three very dangerous messages to parents and the wider community, the candidates assert.
1. Schools are in control of children, not parents and families—When you entrust your child into the walls of ECASD, you no longer have the right as a parent to be informed of major developments in your child’s school life. In fact, you must ‘earn it.’
2. Current Leadership is willing to pit teachers against parents—Open communication between the classroom and home has always been critical to healthy school communities and student development. ECASD is putting teachers in a difficult and dishonest position by instructing them to actively withhold information from parents.
3. What goes on in the walls of ECASD is privileged information—By indicating that information about your child is ‘knowledge that must be earned,’ ECASD is setting a dangerous precedent. If identity questions for your child can be hidden from you, is diet, curriculum, healthcare, inappropriate relationships, mental health concerns, etc. also no longer the business of parents? Just what are parents and guardians allowed to know and when?
The Republican-led state legislature passed a Parental Bill of Rights that would prohibit school policies that infringe on a parent’s or guardian’s role as the primary caregiver of their child. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat and the former state superintendent, is likely to veto the bill.
Eau Claire Area School District has a history of overreach. Last fall, school officials worked with the local health czar in removing a 14-year-old girl from school after someone in her class tested positive for Covid-19. The girl and her mom resisted, accusing authorities of abusing their powers. The county health director then sought a court order to have the girl forcibly removed from school.
The last several years can be viewed as a testament to the remarkable strategic power the woke left wields. The speed at which absurd ideas have been thrust into the limelight by vested media and a wide array of well-financed academics and non-profits is both startling and impressive. Not long ago, it would’ve been unimaginable that a seven-year-old boy’s innocent preference for Polly Pockets over Power Rangers would find its tragic end in puberty blockers, chemical castration, and 15 minutes of fame on Snapchat’s explore page. Calling this abuse doesn’t encapsulate the full extent of the damage. It is a culturally bolstered, politically incentivized mass grooming campaign with a disturbing history. Even worse, this all may be eclipsed by a much darker future should it continue unabated.
The push for childhood transgenderism is predicated on a perverse and extreme individualistic sentiment, specifically that children’s rights as individuals imply an autonomous ability to make irreversible decisions regarding their health, rather than require protection from parents and a culture that fend off all that endangers the most vulnerable. The dangerous claim that children can meaningfully consent to puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, or genital mutilation is, besides itself being deeply harmful, also leading our society down a sinister path towards accepting pedophilia. Here’s how.
A Legacy Of Abuse
Unfortunately, this isn’t speculative fear-mongering. Pedophilic child abuse has deep roots in the transgender movement. John Money, a sex researcher who paved the way for acceptance of childhood transgenderism, sexually abused his young patients and defended pedophilia. Money is infamous for the series of experiments he ran on David Reimer, the first child who was born developmentally normal yet underwent a sex-change operation. After Reimer’s botched circumcision, Money saw an opportunity to test his leftwing gender theories. He convinced Reimer’s parents to raise their son as a daughter and subject him to a sex change operation. Reimer and his twin went on to be studied and abused by Money, who according to a peer-reviewed biology encyclopedia from Arizona State University forced them to “engage in behavior resembling sexual intercourse” while he watched and took pictures. Despite this, Money failed to get Reimer to adopt a feminine identity. Reimer, who didn’t know he had been born male until the age of 14, frequently behaved in a masculine manner and resisted Money’s attempts to feminize him.
According to Reason Magazine’s Books Editor Jesse Walker, Money “touted himself as a defender of sexual liberation: for the rights of gays and other sexual minorities, for legalized pornography, for breaking down social taboos.” When his abuse of the twins was exposed, he insulted his critics as “anti-feminist” bigots beholden to traditional gender roles.
Reimer’s life eventually ended in the same tragic way that still disproportionately claims the lives of so many transgender people when he committed suicide at the age of 38. As if it wasn’t sinister enough, Reimer’s case was used to justify thousands more sex reassignment surgeries on children born with genital abnormalities.
Transsexual Pioneer Also Supports Pedophilia
Money also used his stature as a prominent academic to defend pedophilia. The pedophilic organization North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) even references a quote from an interview with Money that explicitly endorses pedophilia in an attempt to normalize their pathology. None of these revelations have prevented academics from lauding this moral monster as a founding father of the transgender movement. Terry Goldie, the author of a biography on Money, explained that Money “didn’t search for biological evidence of transgender identity, but accepted a patient’s conviction as fact.”
Anke A. Ehrhardt, a research partner and disciple of Money, similarily noted his role in the transgender movement, calling him a “pioneer,” crediting him with the introduction of terms like “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” and pointing out his role in our culture’s departure from a biological understanding of sex.
Erhrardt, who was directly involved in the Reimer case, still has a foothold in academia and is now the director of the Division of Gender, Sexuality, and Heath, and The Program for the Study of LGBT Health, a project of Columbia University. The abuser is also honored with the John Money Fellowship for Scholars of Sexology at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, which specifically seeks out those “whose research interests concern the history, politics, and methodology of sexology and sexuality studies.” The institute is named after Alfred Kinsey, another leftwing sex researcher venerated by NAMBLA. Kinsey, who worked alongside transgender activists to normalize gender dsyphoria, also mainstreamed the concept of gender fluidity through experiments that featured the systematic sexual abuse of children and even babies as young as two months old, according to his own books. Kinsey heavily influenced both Money and Harry Benjamin, the latter of whom has been called the “father of transexualism.”
Make no mistake, the transgender movement is predicated on a psuedo-academic legacy that’s replete with the most egregious crimes against children.
The Threat Of A Legacy Fulfilled
It isn’t hard to identify the same trend in the modern incarnations of transgenderism and adjacent movements. Here I highlighted numerous attempts to normalize pedophilia by various entities, the most pertinent being a New York Times article that referred to the serial rape of a 13-year-old homeless victim of transgender groomers as selling sex.
As children are lured into the world of transgenderism, they become open to a number of abuses beyond cross-sexual treatments. One study found that children with a recent onset of gender dysphoria (62.5 percent of whom had previously been diagnosed with “at least one mental health disorder or neurodevelopmental disability”, began to isolate themselves from their families and distrust those who weren’t trans, both of which lead to further isolation.
To make matters worse, transgender figures have told children that “it’s okay to walk away from unsupportive … parents” and to exchange them for a “glitter family, your queer family,” before inviting these children to call or Skype him. And what do “supportive” families look like anyways? How many “supportive” families have encouraged their children to become trans in exchange for social media’s fleeting dopamine hits?
The grooming has been institutionalized in American schools, with campus organizations like the Gay-Straight Alliance that seek to “train youth leaders” finding financial favor from Soro’s Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Weingart Foundation, Vans, The California Endowment, and various other elite organizations. The Federalist broke news that America’s second-largest school district, which is associated with GSA, has been holding LGBT club meetings for 4-year-olds and hosted a nurse who discussed “medical transition.” The district refused to answer whether parents were required to accompany children to such meetings.
These moneyed efforts are capitalized on by teachers who’ve used the club to groom children to become transgender under the nose of unsuspecting parents who are subsequently lambasted for not being “supportive.”
These People Aren’t Kidding. You Shouldn’t, Either
Yes, they are coming for your children. It’s a feature, not a bug. The history of transgenderism proves this. You shouldn’t expect them to stop unless you make them through protecting your kids, coordinated activism, and community involvement. If you don’t, it likely won’t be long before it’s argued that children who can allegedly consent to sexual surgeries should also be able to consent to sexual relationships. If such a hellish future seems unimaginable, consider that any number of the outgrowths of sexual progressivism would’ve been beyond the pale only a decade ago.
Alternatively, turn your attention to a 1977 open letter in France from 69 people that defended three pedophiles and argued for the age of consent to be lowered below 15. It also contended that 13-year-old girls, by virtue of receiving birth control pills, should have the legal right to consent to sex. One of the signers was critical theorist Michel Foucault, who would later have a sizeable impact on the field of queer theory that now dominates American society.
Child grooming is already commonplace within the transgender movement as it has been since its inception and attempts to normalize pedophilia have already hit the mainstream.
We Can’t Accept Half Measures In The Defense Of Children
If there was ever an instance in which the right needed moral courage and a healthy dose of stubbornness, this is one of them. You can defeat this, but not alone.
This movement is backed by an array of NGOs, elite interests, and pallets of cash. It’s pivotal that you find like-minded people in your church and community and that you employ all legal and ethical means to collectively reject the dangerous insanity that’s being foisted on your children. For all the risks this comes with, you can be certain that cowardice bears a heavier cost, both on your children and on your psyche. But here’s cause for celebration: this moment is begging to be met by those who have the courage to do so.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
Davis Joint Unified School District in Davis, California, pushed leftwing distortions of gender and critical race theory through its Office of School Climate, which taught staff that “gender is a scam” and advertises the White Privilege Conference on March 9-12, 2022. The office is “responsible for supporting district staff and recommending and piloting ways to address structural oppression and to enhance school climate, equity, diversity, and inclusion,” according to their website.
The district, which includes approximately 8,500 TK-12 students throughout 16 different schools, also recently voted to adopt an Ethnic Studies requirement, which a press release notes will “explore issues of identity, analyze systems of power” and “examine social movements.”
Distortions Of Gender
The district’s site features a number of different resources that pushed radical leftwing distortions of gender. One presentation called “Supporting LGBTQ+ Students and Staff” was given to staff members at Harper Junior High School in May 2021 by two of the school’s teachers, both of whom use “they/them” pronouns. One also uses the abbreviation “Mx.” in lieu of Mr., Ms., or Mrs.
One slide bore a pride flag with transgender colors and black and brown stripes, both of which “sought to further represent the queer and trans identities of black and brown people.” Another one linked to a video titled “Gender is a Scam,” which compels audiences to “decolonize their language,” while a linked article called “15 Things LGBTQ people of colour want you to know” tells you “Why you might be guilty of white fragility.”
The slideshow instructed staff to use the pronouns they/them until someone says his pronouns and told them that “Posters/flags that support LGBTQ+ people are just the beginning” before going on to ask, “does your curriculum center primarily white/cis/straight voices?” The same slide warns against using medical and scientifically accurate terminology in regard to gender.
Meanwhile on the office’s LGBTQIA+ Supports page, a link to the activist group Human Rights Campaign promoted “LGBTQ+ Inclusive Picture and Middle School Books,” some of which are even aimed at children in pre-k. A link to the USC Rossier School of Education’s site “Students and Gender Identity Guide for Schools” also features a “Gender Identity Glossary for Schools” with woke vocabulary terms like “deadnaming,” “gender expansive,” “polygender,” “third-gender,” and “two spirit.”
Critical Race Theory and the White Privilege Conference
The office also promotes a trove of critical race theory resources intended for students, families, staff, teachers, and administrators under the subheading “Anti-Bias and Racial Justice.” The site opens by promoting free webinars from Embrace Race, a left-wing organization aimed at young children. Their webinars bear titles like “Addressing Racial Injustice with Young Children” and “RaceTalk among White Families Post-Floyd. Now What?”
The White Privilege Conference, a project of The Privilege Institute, is also promoted to staff members. The annual conference, not to be confused with the institute’s similarly named White Privilege Symposium, intends to provide “an opportunity for participants to discuss how white privilege, white supremacy, and oppression affects daily life while giving strategies for addressing issues of privilege and oppression and advancing social and economic justice.”
Last year’s conference hosted Robin DiAngelo, who discussed the subject of her latest book “nice racism,” which condemned all white people, including the far-left white people who comprise her audience, as definitionally racist.
The conference featured myriad workshops each day, which boasted titles like “Critical Race Theory/Critical Race Feminism: Creating a Plan of Action during the Biden-Harris era,” “A Good Womyn is Hard to Find,” and “The Making & Remaking of Whiteness.” The institute also hosts the Youth Action Project, with one-day institutes geared towards middle schoolers and high school students.
The district’s office also advertises the 1619 Project curriculum alongside a site called Learning for Justice, which they note “offers excellent, teacher-developed classroom curriculum.”
‘Dismantle White Supremacy’
Included under the heading “For Teachers, Staff, and Administrators” are K-12 frameworks for anti-bias and social justice education from Learning for Justice, a project of the extremist Southern Poverty Law Center whose mission is to “dismantle white supremacy” and “strengthen intersectional movements” by pushing critical race theory into schools.
One such video from The New York Times titled “A Conversation with White People on Race” features white people expressing guilt over their alleged privilege, with one person remarking “We’re all implicated in a racist system, and I play my part in it as a white person.”
The office adds that they have a library of books and videos for staff, including one titled “Cracking the Codes and Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible.”
Meanwhile, students and families are also directed to a number of critical race theory-inspired resources, including one link to a site titled “100 Race-Conscious Things You Can Say To Your Child To Advance Racial Justice,” which includes quotes of things parents have told their children when discussing race. Particularly striking is number 53, which makes the claim that “if you are White and you commit a crime … police might say ‘that was wrong, don’t do that again,’ and that’s all…but if you are Black and commit the same crime, they might arrest you and you might go to prison.” One quote under the subtitle “police violence” discusses black victims of police brutality, writing“The man who killed them didn’t like brown skin. He had white skin like us.”
The list isn’t exclusively focused on race, however, also promoting left-wing distortions of sex with quotes like“You know, some people are born with penises but feel like girls on the inside and some people are born with vaginas but feel like boys on the inside. We can’t always tell if someone is a boy or a girl just by looking at them and that’s okay.”
“Guidelines for Strong White Allies” is also included on the district’s list. Among the guidelines were requests for “resources,” “money,” and even “your body on the line.” Author Paul Kivel also told “white allies” to “understand and learn from the history of whiteness and racism” and to “assume racism is everywhere, every day.”
An anti-racist book list for children promoted by the district explains how parents can ease children into CRT by first starting “very gently” with entirely unobjectionable books that “just show kids that racial diversity exists.” The goal, however, is to eventually employ books that discuss “racial privilege, colorism, and the subtle tools that uphold white supremacy, such as white fragility and respectability politics.”
The district’s previous superintendent John Bowes signaled his belief in the leftist claim that America is fundamentally racist when, after the conviction of Derek Chauvin, he sent out a message explaining that he was reminded of the need to “rid our country of the systemic bias and institutional racism that exists in all parts of our society.” He went on to explain that “public education, including DJUSD schools, are part of the solution.”
Davis Joint Unified School District’s promotion of both critical race theory and leftist distortions of sex are part of a broader leftwing push in K-12 institutions throughout the country. In California alone, other districts have lied about teaching CRT, hosted LGBT clubs for four-year-olds, paid extremist organizations to “disrupt whiteness,” and promoted material that tells students to use witchcraft against those who say “all lives matter.”
The politicized nature of California’s government schools, along with general concerns regarding quality of education, may lead some to support a recently launched bipartisan campaign to pass a school choice initiative in the golden state.
Neither Superintendent Matt Best nor Climate Coordinator Kate Snow responded to The Federalist’s request for comment.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
Last week, the world glimpsed a future in which vaccine passports are implanted under the skin. A viral video from South China Morning Post profiled a Swedish start-up hub, Epicenter, that injects its employees with microchips.
“Right now it is very convenient to have a COVID passport always accessible on your implant,” its chief disruption officer, Hannes Sjöblad, told the interviewer. Oddly enough, he repeatedly spoke of chipping “arms” when we clearly see a woman opening doors with her hand.
Two years earlier, Sjöblad told ITV, “I want us humans to open up and improve our sensory universe, our cognitive functions. … I want to merge humans with technology and I think it will be awesome.”
Naturally, some Christians see the Mark of the Beast. In a sane world, the idea of having your hand chipped to access public goods or private property—to receive a mark in order to “buy, sell, or trade”—should alarm anyone, regardless of religious persuasion. The same goes for using an implanted brain-computer interface to access the digital realm, as Elon Musk plans to do with Neuralink.
Yet for a growing fringe, this invasive tech isn’t just desirable. It’s already normal. Presently, some 5,000 Swedes use implanted radio frequency identification (RFID) chips to open doors, pay cashless, present medical records, access concert venues, and ride public transportation. According to Ars Technica, as of 2018 an estimated 50,000-100,000 people worldwide have microchip implants, primarily in their hands.
A 2019 analysis in Nature reported about 160,000 people have deep brain stimulation devices implanted in their heads. Currently, this is only done out of necessity to treat disorders like epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease, or even addiction and depression. Of these devices, only 34 are true brain-computer interfaces. However, with current advances in technology, enormous injections of capital, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) recent approval, that number will rapidly climb.
Since the first human-grade RFID implant was patented in 1997, followed by FDA approval in 2004, subdermal microchips have become just another device in a growing cyborg toolkit. Drawing on that cache, the Internet of Bodies paradigm has gained enormous traction among the medical establishment. At the extreme end, the concept of natural-born humanity is to be abolished.
For more than six decades, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded Human 2.0 projects, with particular interest in brain-computer interfaces. Citing these and many other human-machine hybrids, the World Economic Forum’s chairman Klaus Schwab recently spelled out his vision of civilizational transformation. His widely read books—“The Fourth Industrial Revolution” (2016) and “The Great Reset” (2020)—both describe inexorable progress toward total technocracy. The same idea emerges in a 2019 government analysis by Policy Horizons Canada, entitled “Exploring Biodigital Convergence.” According to the authors, “Digital technology can be embedded in organisms [and today] biotechnology may be at the cusp of a period of rapid expansion—possibly analogous to digital computing circa 1985.” Its success will hinge on sweeping surveillance. The document goes on to describe tracking chips, wearable bio-sensors, internal organ sensors, Web-connected neurotech, swallowable digital pills—merging body and brain with the digital beehive.
Last spring, the UK’s Ministry of Defense published the jarring study, “Human Augmentation: The Dawn of a New Paradigm.” The authors promise this “will become increasingly relevant, partly because it can directly enhance human capability and behaviour, and partly because it is the binding agent between people and machines.” Surveying today’s cyborgs, they write, “Once inserted, these ‘chips’ can…replace many of our keys and passwords, allowing us to unlock doors, start vehicles, and even log onto computers and smartphones.”
All the above authors fret over ethics in a perfunctory fashion, but most accept the “inevitable” fusion of man with machine. If military strategists, corporate elites, and government officials are taking this prospect seriously, so should we.
The New Normal Is Total Digitalization
For people with any sense at all, the notion of having a microchip jabbed into your hand (or your head) triggers animal revulsion. Disturbing as it may be, a more immediate concern is the widespread use of non-invasive biometric systems.
Wherever the New Normal takes hold, access to society is granted or denied on the basis of arbitrary “health and safety” concerns. Today, it’s masks or vaccine status. Tomorrow, it could be ideology. Authorities don’t have to chip you if they can simply scan your smartphone and tell you to get lost, or lock you in your dwelling pod whenever “the numbers” rise.
To cite one common example among many, the biometric company Clear rode the Patriot Act to prominence. Today, Clear is contracting to provide biometric and QR code-based vaxxports to fully jabbed citizens on the go. It won’t stop there. Not without a fight. As Clear’s CEO Caryn Seidman-Becker told CNBC last year, “Just like screening was forever changed post-9/11, in a post-Covid environment you’re going to see screening and public safety significantly shift. But this time it’s beyond airports. It’s sports stadiums, it’s retail, its office buildings, its restaurants.”
Taking a more cerebral angle, tech mogul Bryan Johnson founded Kernel to develop non-invasive brain-scanning helmets to enhance your health and happiness. The devices can also gather users’ neurological data. Last summer, Johnson told Bloomberg Businessweek that by 2030 he’d like to put his BCI helmets in every American household. These people want to completely transform our mental and physical spaces. It isn’t even a secret. They want some form of transhumanism, whether they use the term or not. It’s past time to smash their devices.
America Cannot Let This Happen
One by one across the globe, canaries are falling dead in the digital coal mine. We see implanted vaxxports in Sweden, lockdowns for the unvaccinated in Austria and Germany, and yes, quarantine camps in Australia. The Untact program in South Korea is specifically designed to replace human interaction with social robots and the Metaverse. At the pandemic’s outset, American writers at The Atlantic and CNN urged U.S. leaders to adopt Chinese authoritarianism. Their wish is beginning to come true.
While I doubt any population will be forcibly chipped like wayward housecats—at least not in the near future—no nightmarish policy is truly off the table. In the past 21 months, the United States has seen mandated mRNA gene therapies, QR code-based vaccine passports, mass deletion of supposed “misinformation,” and even drone surveillance to monitor social distancing. Meanwhile, more young adults died from fentanyl overdoses than from any transmissible disease.
If the biosecurity state can force you to wear an obedience mask to buy groceries, what can’t they do? Resist their measures at every turn. Drag these people down from the seats of power. Dismantle the structures they’ve already put in place.
I’m no absolutist. Tools are tools, and every naked ape needs one. For the most part, I couldn’t care less if techno-fetishists chip themselves or refashion their appendages. Had their subculture remained on the fringe, I’d still find such people fascinating. But that’s not what’s happening. Riding waves of germaphobia—the ultimate organic disruption—tech titans and their think tank ministers are establishing a secular religion. The world’s wealthiest men, wielding the most powerful tools on earth, are erecting inescapable systems of control. We can’t combat them if we don’t acknowledge what they are.
Scientism is their faith. Technology is their sacrament. Their cult is a cyborg theocracy. Even if they rain fire from the sky with the press of a button, never bend the knee to their silicon gods.
Joe Allen is a fellow primate who wonders why we ever came down from the trees. For years, he worked as a rigger on various concert tours. Between gigs, he studied religion and science at UTK and Boston University. Find him at www.joebot.xyz or @JOEBOTxyz.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the United States is in crisis about the meanings of the words sex and gender. We are all victims of this crisis, but the primary victims are women and girls. Throughout U.S. law, the word sex is being completely redefined to mean “gender identity” or “transgender.” Congress is doing it. The Biden administration is doing it. The federal courts are doing it.
Most Americans have no comprehension of the implications of this, due to no fault of their own. Very few media outlets will permit us to talk about it. Yet feminists have been talking about it for a long time. The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) has been talking about it since its founding in 2013 (I served on the board of WoLF from 2016-2020).
Jennifer Bilek talked about it in this publication in her 2018 essay, “Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology?” She continues to talk about it in her outstanding 11th Hour Blog. The Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC) has been talking about it globally since 2019 and in the United States since 2020 by advancing the aims of the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, which has been signed by more than 20,000 people and hundreds of organizations (I currently serve as the president of the U.S. chapter).
The mainstream media steadfastly ignores all of this and is engaged in a concerted effort to hide it from Americans. But Americans are waking up, due in large part to the steadfast work of radical feminists or, as some people might say, “TERFs.” The acronym “TERF,” said to mean “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist,” was created by misogynists to demean those of us who fight for the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls. Many feminists have chosen to reclaim the acronym, arguing that it stands for “Tired of Explaining Reality to Fools” or “Totally Excellent Radical Feminist.”
In October of this year, comedian Dave Chappelle made headlines when he proclaimed that he is “Team TERF” during his Netflix show “The Closer.” The hashtag #TeamTERF immediately started trending on Twitter. Chappelle did this in the context of defending British author J.K. Rowling, who has faced relentless abuse for her defense of women and girls and abuse survivors. If fighting for the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls makes me a TERF, then so be it.
Many people will be angry with me for publishing in The Federalist because The Federalist is a conservative-leaning publication. I am not a conservative and never have been. I registered to vote as a Democrat in 1990. Since then, the only time I was not a registered Democrat was during a brief period in 2007 when I was registered Green (I re-registered as a Democrat so I could vote in the 2008 Democratic primary and have remained so ever since).
Still, I am grateful to The Federalist for publishing this because no one else will. That’s because U.S. media has been completely corrupted by an industry that is hell-bent on persuading ordinary Americans that there is such a thing as “gender identity” and that some people “are transgender.”
The truth is that “gender identity” does not exist in any real, material sense, and “transgender” is simply a made-up concept that is used to justify all kinds of atrocities, such as convicted male rapists and murderers being housed in women’s prisons with vulnerable women, men being permitted to parade around with erect penises in women’s sections of spas, and men participating in women’s sports. They are being permitted to do all of this on the basis that they have a so-called “female gender identity.”
All of “gender identity” and “transgender” politics is a men’s rights movement intended to objectify women’s bodies and erase us as a class. The entire edifice is a lie. It is left-wing misogyny on steroids.
Democratic Party leadership will not permit discussion about this, anywhere. But I assure readers that there are countless rank and file Democrats who are furious about it. I hear from them every day. Democrats are disgusted that party leadership is promoting the teaching of “gender identity” in schools down to the kindergarten level, celebrating the mutilation of healthy children’s bodies, and cheering on performances of “drag queen story hour” in public libraries.
The Democratic Party of today looks nothing like the Democratic Party that I was proud to be a part of just about all my life. Many Democrats share my despair. If the Republican Party manages to nominate just about anyone who is a decent human being for the presidency in 2024 (hint: “Grab ‘em by the p-ssy” guy is not included in this category), many Democrats will vote Republican.
Gender ideology is one of the reasons Democrats lost House seats in 2020 and one of the reasons Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race in Virginia this month. I was proud to stand with parents in Loudoun County, and grateful to The Federalist for covering it (that coverage eventually got picked up in the U.K. via The Daily Mail). Gender will be one of the reasons that Democrats will lose more congressional seats in 2022 as well as the presidency in 2024.
I know people who have left the Democratic Party because of gender and become Independents. I know one woman who left the Democratic Party because of gender and registered Republican. I choose to remain a Democrat because I continue to hope the party will reverse course, as unlikely as that appears to be at this time, and have done my best to warn party leadership about what is coming here and here and here.
I am a second-wave feminist and a Democrat. I stand for the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls. These cannot be protected if sex is redefined incomprehensibly to include so-called “gender identity.”
Feminists have a saying: we cannot protect women and girls on the basis of sex if we cannot say what sex is. My hope is that lawmakers across the political aisle will get a grip and right the wrongs that have been perpetrated in the name of “gender identity.”
Every single human being is either female or male. No one “is transgender.” It’s long past time that lawmakers across the political aisle and members of corporate media said so.
After witnessing Twix’s latest ad or hearing about Sex Offender Story Time, you might have mistakenly assumed that the left’s push to sexualize children and normalize pedophilia couldn’t be any more blatant. But alas, the word “restraint” isn’t in the vocabulary of those whose insatiable hunger for the most potent forms of moral rot have driven them to take bites out of the few remaining taboos that we haven’t “progressed” past quite yet.
The latest attempt to normalize pedophilia comes from Allyn Walker, an assistant professor at Old Dominion University who uses the nonsensical pronouns “they/them” and has advocated for pedophilia to be “destigmatized,” calling for pedophiles to instead be referred to with the insultingly euphemistic term “minor attracted persons.”
Walker is the author of the book “A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit Of Dignity,” which challenges “widespread assumptions that persons who are preferentially attracted to minors—often referred to as ‘pedophiles’—are necessarily also predators and sex offenders, this book takes readers into the lives of non-offending minor-attracted persons (MAPs).”
Walker’s attempt to legitimize non-offending pedophiles isn’t the first of its kind. Vice also looked into allegedly “non-offending” pedophiles, including a foster parent pseudonymously called Gary who, to no one’s surprise but everyone’s horror, was accused by one of his foster children’s biological mothers of sexually abusing her daughter.
There was also a man dubbed Ian who was so non-offending that he felt comfortable testing himself by working at a job that “involved children directly.” You might be a tad skeptical if your friend who was recovering from alcoholism took a job managing the local liquor store. That skepticism is all the more warranted when we’re running the risk of children being groomed and abused instead of overindulgence in a few too many handles of Old No. 7.
The Intellectualization Of Pedophilic Pathology
Take a look at this viral video where Walker promotes the book and explains why Walker uses the term MAP, saying that the phrase is “less stigmatizing than other terms like pedophile.”
That’s the point. Pedophiles are stigmatized because pedophilia is and deserves to be accurately seen as unspeakably reprehensible. Stigmas are a way we socially communicate this reprehensibility. Any word, framing, or action that chips away at this stigma inevitably breaks down the guardrails against such evil actions.
Yet again we witness an instance of the left siding with the oppressor while pretending to advocate for the victim, this time under the guise of academic inquiry. One has to wonder if Walker has ever considered that our sympathies should lie not with pedophiles who don’t appreciate being called what they are but instead with their victims. Walker’s book intends to help pedophiles pursue dignity. How does a child robbed of his or her innocence pursue his or her sense of dignity?
After hiding comments on Twitter concerning the controversy, Old Dominion released a thoroughly insulting statement in support of Walker opening with the line, “An academic community plays a valuable role in the quest for knowledge.” It also included a statement from Walker, who wrote, “I want to be clear: child sexual abuse is an inexcusable crime. As an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, the goal of my research is to prevent crime.”
Framing this conversation as if it is a legitimate field of research that one delves into out of altruism doesn’t fool anybody when you come out and openly say that you’re trying to make pedophilia “less stigmatizing.” It becomes even more transparent when we discover who’s behind this movement and when all social and political indicators point towards a coordinated attempt to sacrifice children’s safety and innocence at the altar of limitless tolerance, the promotion of which has framed the unrelenting degradation of all moral standards as one of our society’s defining moral imperatives.
Meet the Groups Trying to Normalize Pedophilia
Walker is unfortunately not alone in the desire to normalize pedophilia. In defense of the term MAP, Walker cites an organization called B4U-ACT, a pedophile advocacy group. It was founded by a man named Michael Melsheimer, who was convicted of a heinous crime. Wondering what it is? Don’t think too hard. Bank robbery? Nope. Gambling? No. Jaywalking? Not quite. Melsheimer was a convicted pedophile who had served a sentence in federal prison.
In case there is somehow any confusion regarding the group’s character, note that their “About Us” page lists their values and mission without even once articulating a desire to mitigate sexual assault. Its FAQ section includes lines like, “We see minor-attracted people as whole human beings … not as criminals or ‘deviants’ who need to be controlled” as well as “We are not advocating treatment to change sexual feelings.” Allow me to ask, what exactly occurs when the sexual desires of someone who is attracted to children aren’t changed and then subsequently aren’t controlled?
B4U-ACT is not the only organization running cover for pedophiles. In fact, the video of Walker detailing Walker’s reasons for wanting to rebrand pedophilia comes from a conversation hosted by the Prostasia Foundation, which advocates for the same evil as B4U-ACT.
Here’s a section of Prostasia’s website called “Our campaign against doll bans.” What type of dolls exactly? Sex dolls that “governments define as ‘childlike.” The organization also works alongside the “MAP Support Club,” a “peer support chat” for pedophiles. It just so happens that the minimum age to join the chat is 13.
If you point out that taking children and sticking them in group chats with pedophiles sounds more like a recipe for child grooming than it does abuse prevention, Prostasia might just accuse you of being far right.
The organization’s talk with Walker was also conducted by their communications director Noah Berlatsky, who has a history of publicly advocating for pedophiles, whom he complains are part of a “stigmatized group.”
4W’s article “Prostasia Goal Is To Normalize Pedophilia” points out that the organization has also been home to other unsavory characters, including sex offenders Jeff White and Guy Hamilton-Smith.
‘Progress’ Doesn’t Have An Off Switch
If it feels like there is no limit to the degeneracy, and in this case genuine evil, that the left will attempt to mainstream, it’s because there isn’t one. “Tolerance” is a key staple of leftwing rhetoric, but no parameters have ever been set. Tolerance is not a virtue in and of itself. It is entirely dependent on what your society is tolerant of. For a wide swath of the left, their answer seems to be all sexual behaviors, with no limits.
There is no off switch to progress, no regulating mechanism within progressive ideology that can ever account for this degree of moral decline. Our rapidly decaying social standards and taboos used to be capable of slowing our descent, but now the brake lines have been cut.
You might get fired if you refuse to play into a transgender co-worker’s delusions and use biologically accurate pronouns. You might suffer the same fate if you come out too vocally against critical race theory in your child’s classroom or if you refuse a COVID-19 vaccine.
The unending march of “progress” has resulted in a society where any of these offenses against neo-liberal totalitarianism and woke ideology might leave you without a job, but you’ll be granted support from your university for being a pedophilia sympathizer, which is now entirely system-approved.
Progressivism evidently can’t be trusted to regulate itself. Any hope to stop and eventually reverse our decline lies solely within the prospect of a right that eschews the left’s bankrupt moral framework and the language used to justify it. Now that we know where it leads, we have no other option.
Neither Old Dominion University nor Walker responded to requests for comment.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President and the Chief of Staff of the California College Republicans. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
The country’s most powerful business interests are openly collaborating with a radical advocacy group to push sweeping legislation that would set women back decades at the expense of an extreme, elite agenda. The left’s historic skepticism of corporate power has morphed into a demand for more of it.
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT activist group with far-left interests, has assembled a coalition of the world’s most powerful corporations to support the Equality Act. Scroll through the incredible list and you’ll find massive corporations from Amazon to Bain to Best Buy aligned with HRC’s radical mission.
The Equality Act, passed by the House on Thursday, is a deeply radical bill that would put women in danger, erode free speech and religious rights, and destroy Title IX gains for girls’ sports. These claims about its potential consequences are not a cartoonish right-wing intimidation campaign — they are agreed upon by conservatives and honest progressive, feminist experts alike.
Republicans and Democrats should not be intimidated by the far-left’s false advertising of the bill as a commonsense measure to protect oppressed and vulnerable members of the public. There are ways to protect transgender Americans that do not involve putting women in danger while quashing free speech, girls’ sports, and religious freedom.
Corporate America, along with the media, is now run by extremists who’ve brought radical cultural leftism from academia into the corridors of power. They now share the very same cultural priorities as far-left groups like HRC. The effect of this shared cultural consensus is that businesses use their corporate power to push radical cultural leftism on the rest of the country because the media demands and cheerleads such efforts, eliminating the risk of bad press.
The strain of elite leftism that dominates our corporate institutions operates on a firm progressive-or-bigot binary, meaning even a pro-trans leftist like J.K. Rowling faces intense charges of bigotry because she’s skeptical of extreme aspects of the trans agenda. That means baby boomer bosses are intimidated into signing onto efforts like HRC’s Equality Act push and millennial executives and journalists demand it.
Because this progressive-or-bigot binary has such a chilling effect on free expression, extreme elements of the trans agenda like undermining Title IX, hormone treatments for children, and men in women’s shelters are enforced without robust debate. The cost of speaking up far outweighs the benefit for most people.
As a consequence, corporate elites are rendering everyday Americans powerless, colluding to enforce new, radical cultural norms by disempowering the working class to speak up, earn scholarships, or sleep soundly in a shelter for victims of domestic violence. It’s the very reason Abigail Shrier had to write “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” — the normalization of radical new standards for sex and gender are having dangerous real-world consequences, especially for young women.
HRC and its “Business Coalition” are proud of immense corporate power. Here’s how the group describes the campaign on its website: “Launched in March 2016, the 364 member companies of HRC’s Business Coalition for the Equality Act have operations in all 50 states, headquarters spanning 33 states and a combined $6 trillion in revenue, and employ over 13.1 million people in the United States.”
This is a leftist group bragging that it represents Big Business to the tune of a combined $6 trillion in revenue and control over the livelihoods of 13 million people. This is Big Business bragging that it supports the agenda of cultural extremists.
Certainly, HRC’s effort is more evidence of the dissolving marriage between economic leftists and cultural ones. Capitalists are now cultural leftists.
More importantly, however, it’s evidence of an elite effort to wield corporate power over working people in the interest of an extreme cultural agenda. The Equality Act is a plaything of the elites that will disempower working people, and lawmakers should not be intimidated into believing the legislation is anything else.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Emily Jashinsky is culture editor at The Federalist. You can follow her on Twitter @emilyjashinsky .
Medical, legal experts warn of Equality Act’s impact on parents, kids and religious freedom
LGBT activists and their supporters rally in support of transgender people on the steps of New York City Hall, in New York City, October 24, 2018. | Getty Images/Drew Angerer
Legal and medical experts and concerned parents have warned that the Equality Act, which passed in the House Thursday, will have lasting implications on children, parental rights, and religious freedom if it becomes law. The 500-plus page bill, which passed by a vote of 224-206 adds sex, gender identity and sexual orientation to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The measure was reintroduced in the House where it was first passed in 2019 before it stalled in the Senate. It adds sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories in nondiscrimination law. The measure also strips away key religious liberty provisions and conscience protections in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Its effects would be far-reaching because it redefines “public accommodation” to include “any establishment” that provides a service, including churches, shelters operated by religious groups, faith-based adoption agencies, and educational institutions associated with religious denominations and associations.
The three Republicans who joined Democrats in voting for the measure included Reps. Tom Reed and John Katko, both of New York, and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
During a virtual event hosted by the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, Rep. Vicki Hartzler, R-Mo., and Autumn Leva of the Family Policy Alliance, detailed various concerns they have about the Equality Act and its implications for Americans if it’s passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden.
Other speakers at the Heritage event were Maria Keffler of Partners for Ethical Care, Dr. Michelle Cretella of the American College of Pediatricians, and Greg Baylor of Alliance Defending Freedom.
Hartzler, a former teacher and track coach, explained that the bill, if enacted, would erase all the gains that women have made in athletics by allowing trans-identified males to compete in girls’ sports. Thus far, 20 states have introduced legislation intended to keep sports sex-segregated.
If the bill becomes law “we won’t have women’s sports that are fair,” added Hartzler, who derided it as the “Inequality Act.”
Parental rights are also in serious jeopardy with this potential law, she continued. If the Act passes in the Senate it will filter down to what is taught in public school classrooms and parents won’t be able to object to content because it will be seen as a discrimination issue.
Similarly, parents’ rights to make healthcare decisions for their children would erode with the Act, according to Hartzler, referencing a 2018 case where a judge removed custody from the parents because they objected to their 17-year-old child being prescribed experimental cross-sex hormones.
“If this passes nationwide we could see parents facing a similar situation all over the country,” she said.
Hartzler is supporting the Heritage Foundation’s Promise To America’s Children, a national movement the think-tank has put forward to oppose the Equality Act and, more broadly, the imposition of gender ideology on children in the public sphere. The Promise, as Heritage states, aims to “create and support laws that will protect children’s health, safety, and families — especially their relationships with their parents, who have the primary responsibility to love, protect, and educate them.”
During the 90-minute House debate over the bill on Thursday, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., claimed the Equality Act posed no threat to religious freedom and that such concerns being raised by Republicans were “ridiculous.” Maloney then accused the bill’s opponents of using religious freedom as a ruse to conceal their “pro-discrimination against gay people.”
In response to Maloney’s accusations, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, declared: “Here it is, on page 25. It says specifically, ‘The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 shall not provide a legal basis for a claim’ [against a religious discrimination charge].
“The founders said in the first right, in the First Amendment to the Constitution, you can practice your religion as you see fit. But right here in their bill today, the Democrats say ‘No you can’t,’”Jordan asserted.
Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., also derided Republicans’ religious freedom arguments as nothing more than “transphobia,” “homophobia,” and “hate,”The Epoch Times reported.
During the Heritage Foundation’s panel Tuesday, Cretella of the American College of Pediatricians noted how the issue of gender dysphoria in children has become politicized. It’s this politicization that she says has corrupted the entire profession of medicine. The vast majority of medical professionals, therapists, and counselors believe that the best course of treatment for the condition is to first take a very thorough psychological assessment of the child in pursuit of underlying factors, she explained.
“Those in authority over the medical education system and directives to practicing physicians now recommend that all children, regardless of their age, be affirmed in their gender confusion. We are essentially gaslighting children into the lie that they could be born in the wrong body,” Cretella said in her remarks.
This, then, will put them on a medical pathway in which their normal puberty will be chemically arrested and will be followed up by opposite-sex hormones, she added. The combination of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones yields potentially lifelong sterility.
“We already have physically healthy girls as young as 13 being referred for double mastectomies. This is institutionalized child abuse,”she asserted. “We are taking emotionally troubled youth, psychologically abusing them by reinforcing their gender-sexual confusion, and then experimenting on them with toxic drugs and mutilating surgeries.”
Cretella has been contacted by doctors both domestically and internationally who say that it is now “career-ending” for them to suggest to a family or to their colleagues in a professional setting that these dysphoric children need a psychological assessment.
“Cancel culture has arrived in medicine and psychology and it’s very frightening,” she said.
Asked what she thinks could happen in 10 years should the Equality Act become law, Cretella said medical professionals who object to gender-transitioning of children and believe in the principle of “first do no harm”will be eliminated from practice. The ones you’ll be left with are the ones who believe in“experiment first, ask questions later.”
Maria Keffler noted that among the most concerning aspects of radical gender ideology that is all the rage in culture is how young schoolchildren are being instructed by teachers using curricula that is not factual or rooted in science.
“And we’re teaching this to our children en masse. It’s shocking when you see what’s being done in the schools … and where it’s coming from. … It’s about making money. It’s about furthering an agenda.
“Children are being taught from kindergarten upward that some boys have a vagina, some girls have a penis, and that kids can be any gender they want to be, she continued.
Keffler recounted that she has heard stories of elementary school children being asked to stand up in class to tell everyone about their “gender identity.” She added that she can no longer, in good conscience, say that public schools are safe places for children. Many people still don’t realize how dire the situation has become, she asserted, especially as some school officials advise teachers to deceive parents by allowing students to lead double lives by portraying an opposite-gender identity while at school.
The Equality Act will exacerbate this highly politicized approach within medicine, psychology, education, and other professional fields, according to Greg Baylor of Alliance Defending Freedom. Because of the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in nondiscrimination provisions, any entity that receives federal taxpayer dollars is subject to such policies. Among the largest recipients of taxpayer funds are public schools.
When asked whether religious freedom protections outlined in federal law would be preserved if the Equality Act becomes law, the ADF attorney noted the lack of religious exemptions in the bill. At the state and local level where similar statutes have been adopted, such carve-outs are present.
“But with the Equality Act you have none of that, there is no exemption for religious employers, there is no exemption for religious foster care providers, there is no exemption for religious schools.”
It is debated whether existing legal provisions can protect certain religious entities from discrimination claims, such as Title VII in the Civil Rights Act, the section pertaining to employment and section in the Fair Housing Act, the provisions of which would likely apply to religious colleges that have sex-segregated dormitories.
But the most destructive feature is how the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is impacted, he said, a law that was passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis and signed into law by former President Bill Clinton. The Equality Act expressly forbids invoking RFRA from the portions of the civil rights laws that it amends.
This previous approach to religious liberty is “gone, I’m afraid,”he said, “and it’s even to the point of essentially repealing large chunks of RFRA.”
When a federal law conflicts with state law, federal law wins, he said. Thus, if a state statute establishes that males who identify as female cannot participate in girls’ scholastic sports, the Equality Act’s revisions to Title XI would trump the state law.
Democrats Attempt To Erase The Words ‘He,’ ‘She,’ ‘Mother,’ And ‘Father’ From The House
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is attempting to excise all references to either sex in House business to “honor all gender identities” and “promote inclusion and diversity.” On Monday, the House of Representatives is set to vote on a Rules Package for the 117th Congress, which Pelosi and Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern promise will be “the most inclusive in history.”
Congress is following in the illustrious example of companies like Twitter and educational institutions such as the University of Michigan in removing language that recognizes the two sexes from their work product and interpersonal communications.
This would mean replacing any instance of “he or she” with the grammatically incorrect colloquialism of “they” as a singular, or the unnecessarily long “such Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner.” Further, “himself” or “herself” becomes “themself,” a word not recognized by several dictionaries, and acknowledged by the New OxfordDictionary as “not widely accepted in standard English.”
Words such as “mother” and “father” would be replaced with “parent,” “aunt” and “uncle” with the awkward “parent’s sibling,” and “grandmother” and “grandfather” becomes “grandparent.” I wonder if Pelosi will bring her commitment to language policing to Twitterand remove “mother, grandmother” from her bio.
The insanity spread to the opening prayer, whereMissouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver ended the opening prayer with “Amen and A-women.” Amen does not refer to males at all. It is a word from biblical Hebrew meaning “so be it.” It appears Cleaver, in the middle of praying to a pantheistic or syncretistic god, didn’t have the cultural literacy to have ever understood the meaning of this basic word from context.
Democrats haven’t said whether references to “congressmen” and “congresswomen” will similarly be removed, nor if Pelosi will continue to be referred to as “Madam Speaker.”
The resolution deserves at least some credit for following its own ridiculous proposed rules, as any instance of singular personal pronoun use was replaced with “they” or “their,” shown under whistleblower protections.
The same bill promises to “give priority consideration to including in the plan a discussion of how the committee’s work will address issues of inequities on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, or national origin.” How can Congress be expected to legislate “sex, sexual orientation, gender identity,” as the new rules require, when they are not permitted to write in terms of sex?
These rules are not helping anyone, but are harming the specificity of language and the unique experiences and basic reality of the sexes in the name of inclusion.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Paulina Enck is an intern at the Federalist and current student at Georgetown University in the School of Foreign Service. Follow her on Twitter at @itspaulinaenck
Selina Soule at a press conference in February 2020. | Picture from the Alliance Defending Freedom
District Court judge Robert Chatigny has ordered attorneys representing three high school girls that they must refer to the trans athletes on the other side of the case as “female,” an action which has alarmed many as demonstrative of partiality.
The case in question is a suit filed in February 2020 by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on behalf of three female high school athletes: Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, and Chelsea Mitchell; against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC). The CIAC policy allows individuals to compete in sports on the basis of their gender identity, meaning male-to-female transgender athletes compete against biological women. Connecticut is one of 17 states which adheres so extremely to the transgender ideology.
Before the suit, the ADF also filed a complaint with the Department of Education in June 2019. The situation also led to a petition in support of the students sponsored by LifeSiteNews which currently has almost 190,000 signatures.
National Review has summarized the situation that led to the suit as follows:
“The case centers on the participation of two transgender sprinters, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, who have combined to win 15 girls indoor and outdoor championship events since 2017. The year prior to Miller and Yearwood’s participation, those titles were held by ten different girls. The three plaintiffs have competed directly against Miller and Yearwood and have lost to them in nearly every case.”
All three girls have spoken out emotionally about the personal impact the situation has had on them and others, saying that they “feel defeated before a race begins,” and are just asking for “a fair chance” for “every young woman who dreams of competing, of having her chance, of being rewarded for doing her very best.”
Selina Soule described her situation at a press conference, saying:
“Like the other track athletes standing here today, I face an impossible situation… Now, when we line up in front of our blockers and the starter calls us to get into position, we all know how the race will end. We can’t win. We’ve lived it. We’ve watched it happen… We’ve missed out on medals, on opportunities to compete. But when we’ve asked questions, we’ve been told we’re allowed to compete, but we shouldn’t expect to win.”
In a later interview, she added that “it’s just really frustrating and heartbreaking, because we all train extremely hard to shave off just fractions of a second off of our time. And these athletes can do half the amount of work that we do, and it doesn’t matter. We have no chance of winning.”
The basis of the legal case is the allegation by the plaintiffs that the CIAC’s policy is in violation of Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, because it disadvantages the biologically female athletes. However, according to a conference call transcript obtained by National Review, judge Robert Chatignyrecently forbade the ADF’s attorneys from referring to Miller and Yearwood as “male,” and ordered the ADF to call them “female,” even though that question lies at the heart of the case. Chatigny’s statement as per the transcript:
“What I’m saying is you must refer to them as “transgender females” rather than as “males.” Again, that’s the more accurate terminology, and I think that it fully protects your client’s legitimate interests. Referring to these individuals as “transgender females” is consistent with science, common practice and perhaps human decency. To refer to them as “males,” period, is not accurate, certainly not as accurate, and I think it’s needlessly provocative. I don’t think that you surrender any legitimate interest or position if you refer to them as transgender females. That is what the case is about. This isn’t a case involving males who have decided that they want to run in girls’ events. This is a case about girls who say that transgender girls should not be allowed to run in girls’ events. So going forward, we will not refer to the proposed intervenors as “males”; understood?”
The ADF’s lead attorney, Robert Brooks, responded to this by calling out the absurdity of the order in the context of the case:
“The entire focus of the case is the fact that the CIAC policy allows individuals who are physiologically, genetically male to compete in girls’ athletics. But if I use the term “females” to describe those individuals — and we’ve said in our opening brief, we’re happy to use their preferred names, because names are not the point to the case. Gender identity is not the point of this case. The point of this case is physiology of bodies driven by chromosomes and the documented athletic advantage that comes from a male body, male hormones, and male puberty in particular. So, Your Honor, I do have a concern that I am not adequately representing my client and I’m not accurately representing their position in this case as it has to be argued before Your Honor and all the way up if I refer to these individuals as “female,” because that’s simply, when we’re talking about physiology, that’s not accurate, at least in the belief of my clients.”
Later on in the conversation, Chatigny responded:
“So if you feel strongly that you and your clients have a right to refer to these individuals as “males” and that you therefore do not want to comply with my order, then that’s unfortunate. But I’ll give you some time to think about it and you can let me know if it’s a problem. If it is, gosh, maybe we’ll need to do something. I don’t want to bully you, but at the same time, I don’t want you to be bullying anybody else. Maybe you might need to take an application to the Court of Appeals. I don’t know. But I certainly don’t want to put civility at risk in this case.”
In response, on Saturday the ADF’s legal team filed a motion for Chatigny to recuse himself, calling his order “legally unprecedented” and stating that “a disinterested observer would reasonably believe that the Court’s order and comments have destroyed the appearance of impartiality.”
Under AG Bill Bar, the Trump Justice Department has taken an interest in the case, filing a statement of interest this March and stating that the CIAC is in violation of Title IX, as well as referring to the transgender athletes as “biologically male.”
Stories like this will only become increasingly common if conservatives do not effectively push back. Perhaps between the ADF’s able legal team and the Trump administration’s support, this will be one case that stems the tide.
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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 (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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