The Mississippi state Capitol in downtown Jackson is seen here in April 2019. Reports from Jackson and elsewhere in Mississippi demonstrate why parents there are increasingly skeptical about K-12 education and why the state Legislature needs to enact a parental bill of rights. (Photo: C. Robertson/ iStock/Getty Images)
Some school officials in Mississippi seem determined to keep parents out of their child’s education. But state lawmakers have a chance to join about two dozen other states that have prevented that from happening.
Mississippi legislators are considering a proposal that would create a parental bill of rights, reinforcing parents’ authority even when a child is on school grounds. The proposal is simple, but powerful: Public employees, such as teachers and school administrators, cannot substantially burden a parent’s right to direct a child’s upbringing and health care.
What does this look like in practice?
When children start the school year, moms and dads typically have to sign forms stating a child’s allergies, directing the school to administer painkillers if a child is injured at recess, and consenting to basic medical treatment if a child is in need.
In today’s upside-down culture, however, school officials are allowing minor-age children to “change” their name and whether they want to be addressed as a boy or girl, regardless of his or her sex, while at school.
In some states, teachers do not have to tell parents that a child is making these choices during the school day.
What results is “social affirmation,” in which adults tell a child that yes, the child was born in the wrong body and should act as if they are someone they are not. That can foster a child’s desire to seek medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and hormone treatments and perhaps even surgeries that will damage their reproductive organs.
An exaggeration? Whistleblowers have exposed centers such as the St. Louis Children’s Hospital for prescribing children as young as 11 to take puberty-blocking drugs.
The results were horrific in some cases: Young women would return to the hospital bleeding through their clothes because testosterone treatments thin the vaginal wall, and the wall can then tear open. Some males experienced liver toxicity after taking drugs to make them appear more feminine.
In the U.K., England’s National Health Service has recommended that doctors not encourage young people to assume a different “gender” because autism and anxiety and depression were often found in children expressing confusion over their sex. And research finds that this confusion resolves on its own as children progress into adulthood in 80% to 95% of cases, which means watchful waiting is far healthier for children than social affirmation.
Yet some Mississippi educators are still pushing the dangerous “gender” agenda.
Parents Defending Education, an advocacy organization,
uncovered that a school in Jackson received a grant to promote gender ideology. Oxford School District officials surveyed students and asked children if they identified as queer or “trans.”
In Tupelo, teachers were trained to allow students to change their name and pronouns.
Educators were instructed to call the child by his or her given name and pronouns when talking to parents unless the child gave a teacher permission to tell parents that the child had assumed a different gender—a secretive technique that hides information from families.
When a child is confused about their sex, social affirmation can have lasting consequences. Some medical treatments are irreversible and can lead to sterility and other complications. For at least these reasons, school personnel should not be allowed to keep parents in the dark about what is happening to their young children in the classroom.
STERILIZING OUR CHILDREN
State legislators can help. For more than a decade, state lawmakers around the country have been adopting parental bills of rights similar to the proposal before Mississippi lawmakers. Legislators should state plainly that parents are a child’s primary caregivers and that public officials cannot burden, or obstruct, a parent’s role. Teachers have a responsibility to report abuse or neglect, but that does not mean educators should accept a child’s self-diagnosis that he or she needs drugs to alter their body chemistry.
The reports from Jackson, Tupelo, and elsewhere demonstrate why Americans are increasingly skeptical about K-12 education. Mississippi officials should increase academic transparency and strengthen parental rights, restoring a civic value in short supply today between local communities and their schools—specifically, public trust.
Members of the transgender community hold a flag while blocking Avenida de los Insurgentes and Avenida Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City to demand justice for hate crimes and transphobia against transgender women in the Mexican capital. (Photo: Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Over the past decade, the United States has seen a rise in power of the transgender movement. Once a fringe, left-wing movement premised on the idea that gender is a social construct and that it can be changed at a whim, it has now become mainstream. Today, the question “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” is now a political question.
The transgender movement can be traced back as far as 1952, when trans woman Virginia Prince launched a publication titled Transvestia: The Journal of the American Society for Equality in Dress.
Following that, the movement experienced rapid expansion, culminating in a riot in Los Angeles within seven years. The unrest originated as a retaliatory response to the Los Angeles Police Department, which was perceived to have engaged in harassment of the LGBTQ community. Then, in 1966, there was another riot. In 1969, another riot. inally, as a result of the 1996 publication Transgender Warriors by American lesbian activist Leslie Feinberg, the term “transgender” gained widespread usage.
Today, 1.6% of Americans, or 4,800,000 adults aged 18 or over, say their gender is different from their sex assigned at birth. However, that number is on the rise, as 5.1%, or nearly 15,000,000 young adults aged 18-29, fall into that category. This can be attributed to a litany of factors, including changing education environments in classrooms, social media, and more.
The “marked incongruence between (a person’s) experienced or expressed gender and the one they were assigned at birth” defines gender dysphoria. As of now, gender dysphoria’s causes remain unknown, and it does not have an established treatment. The term “gender dysphoria,” which is frequently used in the medical field, has itself become a subject of political controversy.
Today, despite the small numbers of transgender people in the United States, the movement has permeated nearly all facets of life.
Educators raise LGBTQ flags in classrooms nationwide and educate students in the elementary school age range that their designated gender at birth may not always reflect their true identity. Such a serious injustice necessitates rectification.
Students in elementary school have limited knowledge regarding sexuality; therefore, being informed that they could be of a different gender can be confusing to them—it can change them even if they never wanted to be changed.
It is worth noting that around 80% of children who experience gender dysphoria as children eventually overcome it and opt not to identify as transgender as adults.
In addition, depression among children who overcome gender dysphoria is extremely uncommon. However, according to The Trevor Project, a national organization dedicated to preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth, around 60% of transgender youth experience symptoms of depression, and 70% experience anxiety.
Depression affects approximately 5%-6% of the general population. In addition, around 0.5% of the general population has attempted suicide, while nearly half of transgender youth have considered suicide, and nearly 20% have attempted it.
But what causes this depression? Could it be bullying? Could it be that transgender rights are persistently violated? Of course not. On the contrary, transgender people are thriving. Their rights are enshrined in state constitutions, they are protected by numerous state laws, they are given more protections by schools than any other class of students; transgender people may have more rights than the average person.
Of course, we can’t forget drag story hour, where numerous elementary schools throughout the country have males dressed in scant attire read books about transgenderism to children.
It is unnecessary to expose children to males in little clothing in order for them to hear stories. The mind of a child is sacred and must not be exposed to these sorts of things. It can corrupt the mind and, as we’ve seen, may lead them down the road of gender dysphoria and ultimately depression.
Tragically, transgenderism has compromised the rights of biological women. Undoubtedly, women continue to advocate equality in the United States. Women continue to face significant disparities in the workforce and in public life. However, before the complete realization of gender equality for women, transgenderism emerged and complicated the situation.
At this time, males beat women in all aspects of life. Do you recall 2015, when Caitlyn Jenner was named “Woman of the Year” by Glamour magazine? The recipient of that award was not a woman who had struggled her entire life to be a woman in a world dominated by men. It was taken from a biological woman by a man.
Likewise, transgenderism has entered the realm of athletics. Transgender males have emerged victorious in athletic competitions against biological women on a multitude of occasions. Men have won significant accolades in swimming, wrestling, golf, snooker, and even weightlifting, the sport that exemplifies strength disparities. Men who underwent the transition from male to female are often found to have been mediocre at best among their male counterparts.
And how about sex changes for minors? It is plausible that the notion that a child could undertake surgical gender transition from their biological to an alternative gender would be utterly absurd and repugnant to the average person. However, 54% of Americans oppose legislation that criminalizes providing medical care for gender transition to minors.
Science and common sense support the notion that by our mid-to-late 20s, the brain has reached complete maturity and development. This is why children often engage in foolish behavior without contemplating the repercussions, why a contract formed by a child is deemed void in legal terms, and why alcohol consumption hinders the development of children’s minds. Yet, when it comes to transgenderism, all that goes out the window.
Men are not women, and women are not men. This is the reality everyone on this Earth must face until their death.
America has been divided along lines of common sense by the transgender movement: those who support it and those who do not. The rise of transgenderism will persist as long as rational individuals remain reluctant to express their opinion on the matter.
The truth about transgenderism is coming out. On Monday, Michael Shellenberger released a multitude of internal files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) that “prove that the practice of transgender medicine is neither scientific nor medical.” WPATH has been accepted by the political, cultural, and medical establishments as the authority on transgenderism, but what its members say in private is not the narrative they sell to the public.
Instead of the rigorous, careful, evidence-based medicine that champions of “gender-affirming care” claim to practice, the WPATH files show doctors who are making it up as they go along, smashing through guardrails even though they know that the children they are chemically and surgically altering cannot really give informed consent. And people are noticing.
No wonder the transgender ideologues are worried. The public has proven more resistant than they expected, especially regarding radical policies such as putting men in women’s prisons and girls’ locker rooms, let alone sexually mutilating and sterilizing children. And transgender activists and their allies have no response except to repeat their same failed arguments, just louder.
Consider a recent opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine by Michael R. Ulrich, a Boston University professor of law and public health who is also affiliated with Ibram X. Kendi’s scandal-plagued Center for Antiracist Research. Ulrich argues that restrictions on transitioning children are part of a broader right-wing culture war restricting and regulating medicine. There is a lot wrong with this assertion, but the fundamental problem is that so-called gender-affirming care is not medicine.
From puberty blockers to hormones to surgeries, transition is never medically necessary. Transitioning does not cure any disease or correct any physical ailment or injury. Rather, the point of medicalized transition is to disrupt and destroy the normal functioning of healthy bodies.
Ulrich tries to assuage concerns over these procedures by comparing them to “Pediatric chemotherapy and radiation,” which also “have lasting effects on growth development and reproductive capabilities.” Well, yes, but cancer kills people, which is why we are willing to accept serious side effects to treat it — and even then, doctors and patients have to balance the risks of the disease against the risks of treatment. In contrast, there is no physical risk from not receiving “gender-affirming care,” whereas, as the WPATH files show, there is significant, potentially lethal, risks from puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transition surgeries.
This is why the argument for transition always comes down to encouraging people, especially children, to take themselves hostage by threatening suicide. The only harm that can come from not transitioning is self-harm. And so, Ulrich deploys the suicide threats early and often, writing that “it is not hyperbole to say that lives are at risk in states pursuing these bans on needed care.” Ulrich offers no real evidence to back this claim up. He simply presumes that the “high rates of suicide, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation among transgender young people” would be reduced with affirmation and medical transition.
Ulrich cites just one study as “evidence showing the effectiveness of gender-affirming care in reducing depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts.” But, despite hype to the contrary, that study showed no such thing. Rather, as Jesse Singal explained after it was published in 2022, “the kids who took puberty blockers or hormones experienced no statistically significant mental health improvement during the study. The claim that they did improve, which was presented to the public in the study itself, in publicity materials, and on social media (repeatedly) by one of the authors, is false” (emphasis in original).
No Evidence Regarding Suicide
There is no good evidence that transition prevents suicide, especially for children. Those who identify as trans do have an elevated risk of suicide (though this tends to be exaggerated by activists), but this is best explained by trans-identified individuals also having a much higher rate of mental health problems and trauma — and it doesn’t help to add to these underlying issues the lie that they were somehow born in the wrong body.
This extraordinary claim — that some children are born into the wrong bodies, and therefore must be chemically and surgically reshaped into a facsimile of the opposite sex — is medically unsupported. It is ideological and sexual fantasy masquerading as medicine. There is no good evidence to support transitioning children because gender ideology is just that, an ideology masquerading as medicine. The reality of human nature does not change, even though much of the medical establishment, such as the NEJM, was shamefully eager to capitulate to a small number of aggressive activists.
Rein in the Industry
Therefore, it is not only reasonable, but imperative, for legislators to rein in the transgender industry, and especially to stop the “transitioning” of children. Ulrich and other activists can fulminate about right-wing conspiracies, but it is right and just to ban the surgical and chemical mutilation of children. Many states have done so, thereby proving that gender ideology will not inevitably triumph and claim our children for its own.
This does not mean the fight is over. Indeed, we should expect gender ideologues to become more aggressive as their losses pile up. They thought time would be on their side, and that new research would vindicate them. But their time is running out, and the continued lack of evidence for “gender-affirming care” is pushing them to increasingly brazen lies and distortions as they attempt to justify their collapsing position. And they are also becoming more authoritarian in the places and institutions they do control, as they attempt to impose transgender dogma on the rest of us.
Thus, those opposed to gender ideology must not get cocky. Trans activists and their allies will keep fighting to the bitter end, especially those who have staked their reputations, livelihoods, and self-respect on radical gender ideology. Nonetheless, the end can now be envisioned, even if much work remains to achieve it.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, on Friday issued an executive order prohibiting gender-transition surgeries on minors in his state and issued draft administrative rules on so-called gender-affirming care for minors and adults. DeWine’s directives came a week after his Dec. 29 veto of House Bill 68, the Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, which would restrict any gender-affirming care for minors in Ohio and bar biological males who “identify” as females from participating in girls’ and women’s interscholastic athletics.
Heritage Foundation legal scholar Sarah Parshall Perry herewith takes issue with DeWine’s decision. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine just vetoed a bill that would have protected women and children in the Buckeye State.
HB 68 is a commonsense bill with broad support designed to do two things: Protect minor children from irreversible damage by banning experimental surgeries and cross-sex hormones for those under 18 and prevent males from competing in female scholastic athletics.
70% of Americans agree that both minor children shouldn’t be rammed through gender-transition procedures and that boys don’t belong in women’s sports, which makes sense considering that those aren’t controversial positions. But Gov. DeWine would rather capitulate to a vocal minority screaming “settled science” or “trans women are women.”
"Women's sports is not a space nor a retirement plan for failed male athletes".
Without evidence, he also claims that his own executive action on the issue would have a better chance of surviving judicial review. He’s wrong, and the lawmakers of Ohio should show him by exercising a veto override before women and children have to pay the price for his political correctness.
Gender dysphoria is a disability that requires accommodation, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services says, based on one court ruling. (Photo illustration: SB Arts Media/Getty Images)
The Biden administration has been known to stretch the law beyond a plain reading to support a desired policy outcome. Take the longstanding federal law that criminalizes the shipment of abortion drugs, for example. The Justice Department argues that the law doesn’t mean what it says. Wrong.
Or how about Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—crafted to guarantee sex equality in education—which the Department of Education argues permits biological boys to compete on female athletic teams? Wrong again.
Now, the Department of Health and Human Services is arguing that gender dysphoria is a disability under federal law. And that disability, HHS argues, requires accommodation. How does HHS reach that conclusion? By relying on one decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, a decision not followed by any other federal appellate court. It’s also a decision about which certain justices of the U.S. Supreme Court expressed significant concern.
On Sept. 14, the Department of Health and Human Services published a proposed rule to amend section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which is the federal law that prohibits disability discrimination in any program conducted by federal agencies or receiving federal funding.
There is much good in the proposed rule to be sure, including updates on obligations concerning web and mobile accessibility, service animals, facilities, and medical care. But the proposed rule also adopts the rationale of the 4th Circuit in Williams v. Kincaid to justify extending the definition of disability to include gender dysphoria.
The Department agrees that restrictions that prevent, limit, or interfere with otherwise qualified individuals’ access to care due to their gender dysphoria, gender dysphoria diagnosis, or perception of gender dysphoria may violate section 504.
There’s just one problem: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act excludes the exact disorder HHS is trying to shoehorn into its interpretation. That law reads:
For the purposes of sections 791, 793, and 794 of this title, the term ‘individual with a disability’ does not include an individual on the basis of—(i) transvestism, transsexualism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders.
Happily for the Biden administration, the appeals court in Williams held (inexplicably) that “gender dysphoria” and “gender identity disorder” were two different things.
In the case, inmate Kesha Williams, who was born a male but “identifies” as a transgender woman, sued Sheriff Stacey Kincaid of Fairfax County, Virginia, based on alleged mistreatment at the county jail.
Williams sued under both the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act (or ADA), a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including employment, education, transportation, and places open to the general public. The Rehabilitation Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act contain identical, exclusionary language on “gender identity disorders.” The two laws often appear together when a claimant alleges discrimination based on disability.
Williams’ contention was that as Fairfax County sheriff, Kincaid violated both laws by refusing to accommodate Williams’ “gender dysphoria.” Williams argued that the sheriff did so by assigning the inmate to men’s housing, failing to offer hormone therapy, and permitting “persistent and intentional misgendering and harassment.”
Because the ADA clearly doesn’t provide disability protections for “gender identity disorder,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, writing for the 2-1 majority, engaged in a contorted legal analysis before concluding that gender dysphoria wasn’t actually a gender identity disorder. To reach that conclusion, Motz didn’t look to the statute’s plain language at the time of its enactment. Instead, she focused on a much more recent change by the American Psychiatric Association on gender-related psychiatric diagnoses—one not envisioned, anticipated, or incorporated by the original drafters of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.
This change first appeared in 2013 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). This manual is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States. At that time, the American Psychiatric Association replaced the term “gender identity disorder” with “gender dysphoria.” The change focused the diagnosis on the distress that some people who consider themselves transgender experience (and for which they may seek psychiatric, medical, and surgical treatments) instead of on an individual’s desire to be a gender other than the one he or she was born as. Motz determined that this change was good enough to stretch the Americans With Disabilities Act well beyond the limits of what Congress determined the law ought to bear originally.
In sum, the APA’s removal of the ‘gender identity disorder’ diagnosis and the addition of the ‘gender dysphoria’ diagnosis to the DSM-5 reflected a significant shift in medical understanding. The obsolete diagnosis focused solely on cross-gender identification; the modern one on clinically significant distress … Put simply, while the older DSM pathologized the very existence of transgender people, the recent DSM-5’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria takes as a given that being transgender is not a disability and affirms that a transgender person’s medical needs are just as deserving of treatment and protection as anyone else’s.
Motz and the other judge in the majority argued that the concept of “gender identity disorder” as used in the statute encompassed all “cross-gender identification,” but the current American Psychiatric Association-defined concept of “gender dysphoria” is defined by stress that goes beyond “being trans alone.” So, Motz concluded in her opinion, “gender identity disorder” as a category “no longer exists,” thereby rendering the statutory exclusion without any effect.
In his dissent, Judge Marvin Quattlebaum argued that the majority’s focus on this linguistic change ignored the plain text of the Americans With Disabilities Act at the time of its enactment in 1990. And that plain text explicitly excluded “gender identity disorders.” In Quattlebaum’s view, Motz was incorrect to focus on an apparent shift in medical understanding, something she argued had rendered the exclusion of “gender identity disorder” as obsolete.
The Supreme Court denied review in Williams on June 30, but Justice Samuel Alito was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in strenuously dissenting from this denial. Alito wrote that the case presented a question of “great national importance” that required prompt review. He added:
The Fourth Circuit’s decision makes an important provision of a federal law inoperative and, given the broad reach of the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act, will have far-reaching and important effects across much of civil society in that Circuit. Voters in the affected States and the legislators they elect will lose the authority to decide how best to address the needs of transgender persons in single-sex facilities, dormitory housing, college sports, and the like.
As seems typical for the Biden administration, the Department of Health and Human Services relied on a single, problematic ruling—one based on faulty reasoning and subject to withering criticism—for the purpose of advancing its preferred social policy interests. HHS intends that all entities covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act now must make accommodations for any feelings of stress or discomfort that result from a person’s “assigned” (i.e., birth) sex.
If the proposed HHS rule is finalized, it would open the door for those who consider themselves transgender and feel clinically distressed to receive requested accommodations in bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, prisons, same-sex housing, preferred pronouns, and more.
The public comment period on the proposed HHS rule closed Nov. 13, and the Biden administration now must wade through over 5,200 comments received before drafting and issuing a final rule.
The administration shouldn’t rely on another faulty interpretation of federal law. Instead, it should rescind the proposed HHS rule immediately.
Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority leadership has revoked the membership of two prominent alumnae this week, after more than 50 years of sisterhood and service. Their crime? Standing up for women — specifically the young women in KKG’s University of Wyoming chapter who are suing to keep biological males out of their sorority.
Patsy Levang and Cheryl Tuck-Smith got kicked out of KKG for advocating that the sorority hold to its own bylaws, which limit membership to “women.” Sadly, KKG is suffering from the broader cultural confusion around sex and gender — confusion that will harm women and rob the next generation of the benefits of single-sex organizations and environments.
Personally, I never planned to become a “sorority girl,” and didn’t initially see the value of Greek Life. But in my case, I started to open my mind when, after my freshman year, I still felt lost in a proverbial “big pond” after growing up in a small town.
I suspected that joining a sorority — and particularly living in a sorority house — would help me find a close-knit community. My university offered precious few single-sex housing options, meaning that when I lived on campus I was surrounded by both women and men.
A Facebook picture of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority at the University of Wyoming includes a biological male, which is why some in the sorority sued. (Fox News)
The guys in my dorm buildings were respectful enough, but I could tell that 18-year-old men and women living in close quarters was a recipe for disaster. Although this went unspoken, the students in coed housing felt pressure to act a certain way to impress members of the opposite sex. We kept our doors closed a lot of the time, for privacy, which didn’t foster a friendly vibe.
Incredibly, I lucked into the re-launch of a new chapter of Phi Mu sorority on my campus. Our charter chapter attracted a lot of girls like me: Greek-skeptical but desiring to “make campus smaller.”
As I got to know more sorority women from my chapter and across campus, I learned that many of them shared my motivation for membership: community with other women. I also learned that sorority membership was more diverse than stereotypes depict.
Sororities include women of various races, sizes and socioeconomic backgrounds. The only things that all sorority members had in common were that we were all students at the same university, and we were all women.
I moved into the Phi Mu house as quickly as I could, and spent two years living there. We had our own dining room and meal plan, and various common spaces in the house both downstairs (where visitors were always welcome) and upstairs (sisters only).
We could only bring a male guest upstairs on moving day. Even then we had to shout “Man on the floor!” — which was kind of comical for us, but also practical… it was a warning to cover up if you happened to be “indecent.”
Of course, the prohibition on men upstairs was not followed 100% of the time, but it was truly taboo for a man to be upstairs in the bedroom/bathroom areas.
This female-only environment was very freeing. I could be myself at our sorority house, without any pretense. My sisters and I bonded during chapter meetings, study hours, social events and charitable fundraising events.
As I got to know more sorority women from my chapter and across campus, I learned that many of them shared my motivation for membership: community with other women. I also learned that sorority membership was more diverse than stereotypes depict.
Four of my bridesmaids were Phi Mu sisters. To this day, they are some of my best friends.
I can’t imagine what my sorority experience would have been like if my chapter had been open to men, even those who identify as women. There’s no question about it: Including men inevitably and fundamentally changes the mission and experience of sorority life.
Sororities were founded during a time — the 1800s — when women were excluded from many opportunities. Our founders understood that our shared biological sex and experiences as women serve as a starting point for sorority sisterhood. Although much has changed for women in our society, the reality of biological sex differences has not.
Sorority women, and all women, deserve the basic right to safety and privacy, and the presence of males can threaten that right. But female-only environments are about more. They’re about the communities and bonds that women form when it’s “just us girls.” Similarly, men and boys should be free to join all-male organizations if they choose, and can reap similar benefits.
The Kappa plaintiffs deserve the same opportunities I had — the opportunities they were promised — to participate in a women-only community. Patsy Levang and Cheryl Tuck-Smith rightly stood up for them. In ousting these alumnae, KKG leadership has broken faith with more than the word “woman,” but with sisterhood itself.
Hadley Heath Manning is the vice president for policy at Independent Women’s Forum.
A female Massachusetts high school field hockey player was sent to the hospital Thursday for “significant facial and dental injuries” during a state tournament game after a male on the opposing team hit her in the face with a field hockey ball. In the video circulating social media, viewers can see the male player (No. 2) hit the ball, which launches up and hits his unnamed female opponent in the mouth. After the hit, the girl is heard screaming while her teammates look on with their hands laced over their mouths in shock.
The game was between the number No. 12 Swampscott Big Blue and the No. 21 Dighton-Rehoboth Falcons.
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"
According to the Media Research Center, the male player in question is Sawyer Groothuis, who plays for Swampscott and is a “Northeastern Conference All-Star in the women’s league.” The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association handbook effectively allows for men to compete in women’s sports and vice versa.
While speaking with the media, Dighton-Rehoboth Superintendent Bill Runey called for the MIAA to take a “renewed approach” to protecting student athletes, but stopped short of saying men should be prohibited from competing in women’s sports.
Rather than highlight the unnamed female players’ injury, at least one local news outlet completely ignored the egregious nature of a man dominating Thursday’s game. In its brief “roundup” of local sporting events, for example, ItemLive ran with the headline, “Big Blue, big-time performance from Groothuis,” and didn’t even mention Groothuis sending the opposing female player to the hospital.
“Swampscott led at the break thanks to a goal from Northeastern Conference All-Star Sawyer Groothuis,” the article reads. “The Big Blue had a corner and the ball was loose in front of the goal. Groothuis was quickest to react, and poked it home for the early cushion. In the second half, it was Groothuis again finding the back of the net and sealing the game.”
You’d like to believe that a girl screaming out in agony and being sent to the hospital after getting a ball to the face would warrant at least brief mention, if not a paragraph. Especially when considering that the ItemLive write-up of the game is about Groothuis and his performance.
But at the end of the day, many local media outlets are just as bad at their jobs as their national counterparts. It doesn’t matter that the aforementioned female athlete got knocked out of a state tournament game because a male decided he wanted to impose his will on women’s athletics. All that matters is advancing the leftist agenda — no matter what.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Mark Campbell is a registered sex offender convicted of first-degree sexual assault for raping his 10-year-old daughter, but thanks to the state of Wisconsin, he is now housed in a women’s prison in Fond du Lac. Despite his biology and the heightened threat he poses to women based on the nature of his crime, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections allowed him to be categorized as “FEMALE,” and subsequently to be incarcerated with female inmates at Taycheedah Correctional Institution since August of 2022.
Campbell began serving his 34-year sentence in 2007 and has since been receiving wrong-sex hormones and claiming to be a woman named Nicole. In 2013, he requested a surgical operation to mutilate his male sexual organs to appear more female and was initially declined for not meeting prerequisites.
In 2016, Campbell sued the Department of Corrections for not allowing him to undergo the procedure, claiming it was an Eighth Amendment violation. In 2019, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that “clearly established law did not require Wisconsin prison officials to provide Campbell with gender-dysphoria treatment beyond hormone therapy.”
But as of December 2020, “a federal judge ruled that Wisconsin must offer Campbell taxpayer-funded transition surgery and move him to a women’s prison while awaiting that surgery,” according to reporting from The Daily Signal.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge James Peterson referred to Campbell by inaccurate female pronouns and argued the disfiguring genital surgery was necessary because Campbell was still “in anguish” thanks to his “gender dysphoria,” even after receiving experimental female hormones on Wisconsin taxpayers’ dime. While he awaits the procedure, the convicted rapist continues to be housed with female inmates.
Campbell’s status as a sex offender isn’t unusual for male inmates with whom female prisoners are forced to live. According to The Daily Signal’s reporting on Wisconsin data, 81 of the 161 male inmates who claim to be transgender have been convicted of “sexual assault or sexual abuse.”
Nor is the trend of leftist localities housing dangerous men with female inmates to appease the pro-transgender agenda of the Democrat Party limited to Wisconsin. A California law passed in 2019 “requires men who say they are women to be housed in women’s prisons.” In both the 116th and 117th Congress, House Democrats overwhelmingly voted for H.R. 5, which sought to bar so-called “discrimination” based on “gender identity” in federal institutions — effectively demanding that men like Campbell be treated as women under the guise of “equality.”
The California legislature passed a bill Friday requiring parents to “affirm” a child’s newfound gender or risk loss of custody.
Assembly Bill 957 was initially proposed to require courts to consider whether parents were “affirming” a child’s identification as transgender in custody cases. The legislation was later amended in June to declare non-affirming parents liable for child abuse.
Republican state Sen. Scott Wilk bluntly recommended parents “flee” the state over the amendment.
“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 said he would leave the state himself at the end of his term.
Washington Free Beacon California Correspondent Susannah Luthi Taylor highlighted the law’s ambiguous language, opening the door to broad interpretation.
“The California bill does not define ‘affirmation,’ leaving it unclear if a parent would be required to support a child’s desire to socially transition or receive medical sex-change treatments,” Taylor wrote. “Nor does the bill make distinctions based on a child’s age or mental health record.”
The legislation is now headed for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, who is expected to sign it.
California’s latest law on transgenderism follows a cascade of state interference in parental rights to challenge a child’s desire to attempt a changing his-or-her gender. In August, California Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Chino Valley Unified School District over new rules compelling teachers and administrators to notify parents of changes in pronoun use, sports participation, or bathroom assignments. A local judge in San Bernadino temporarily suspended the district’s new policy last week while litigation remains underway. The next hearing is scheduled for Oct. 13.
“San Bernardino Superior Court’s decision to issue a temporary restraining order rightfully upholds the state rights of our LGBTQ+ student community and protects kids from harm by immediately halting the board’s forced outing policy,”said the attorney general. “While this fight is far from over, today’s ruling takes a significant step towards ensuring the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of transgender and gender-nonconforming students.”
Last fall, Governor Newsom also signed a bill to “offer refuge” for out-of-state minors seeking trans medical interventions in the state without parental consent. In another assault on parental rights, the new law mandates that doctors hide children’s medical information related to “gender identity” from parents.
Contrary to Democrat claims of protecting children, multiple studies show easing access to adolescent medical interventions in pursuit of transgenderism increases the risk of suicide.
The national suicide hotline is 1-800-273-8255. More resources are here.
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 former high school snowboarding coach filed a federal lawsuit last week alleging his First Amendment rights were violated when he was fired for expressing his views on transgender-identifying athletes. The 31-page complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — a faith-based legal advocacy group — on behalf of David Bloch, along with a motion for preliminary injunction seeking Bloch’s immediate reinstatement.
“On February 8, 2023, Coach Bloch and his team were waiting in the lodge for a competition to start. That day, his team was to compete against a team that had a male snowboarder who identifies as a female and competes against females,” the lawsuit states. While in the lodge, Bloch says he overheard a conversation between two of his student-athletes and briefly joined in.
Bloch “affirmed that as a matter of biology, males and females have different DNA, which causes males to develop differently from females and have different physical characteristics.” He added that “biological differences generally give males competitive advantages in athletic events” — something you must pretend is deeply controversial, despite the fact that a large majority of Americans agree.
According to a new Gallup survey released in June, nearly 70 percent of U.S. adults believe transgender-identifying athletes “should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender” as opposed to their “current gender identity.” Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center study from last year found that 6 in 10 Americans “say a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth.”
“The conversation was respectful among all parties and lasted no more than three minutes. It took place entirely outside the presence of the transgender-identifying snowboarder,” the lawsuit states. “Coach Bloch’s team and the team with the male who identifies as a female competed without incident. After the competition, the two teams and their coaches, including Coach Bloch, shared a bus home.”
But it didn’t matter. Bloch had committed wrong-think.
The coach was allegedly handed a notice of termination the very next day by Windsor Central Supervisory Union Superintendent Sherry Sousa. He was accused of violating the school district’s harassment, hazing, and bullying (HHB) policy as well as a related policy of the Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA), which oversees high school sports in the state. Bloch was also “barred from future employment” with the district.
“No one should lose their job for speaking the truth. The First Amendment protects the rights of all Americans to peacefully share their beliefs without fear of government punishment. This means that government officials cannot terminate an employee simply because he expresses a belief that they do not like,” ADF said in a statement.
Specifically, the lawsuit argues that the HBB and VPA policies, as well as a Vermont statute requiring school boards to adopt such policies, “contain content and viewpoint discriminatory, overbroad, and unconstitutionally vague definitions of harassment that … censor protected speech.”
The complaint notes that Bloch is “a practicing Roman Catholic who believes that God creates males and females with immutable sex. His understanding of science complements his religious beliefs. Coach Bloch believes, based on scientific evidence, that there are only two sexes, which are male and female, and that sex is determined by a person’s chromosomes.”
Views like these terrify elites and the corporate press. In a May article, The Washington Post bemoaned that “Most Americans don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth” and worried that (God forbid) some in the country “have become more conservative on these questions.”
It’s worth highlighting the irony that those requiring you to deny the reality of sex today are often the very same people who spent the past three years demanding you “follow the science!”
Suffice to say, these are not good-faith actors; they’re liars and propagandists interested only in advancing a political agenda. Regard them as such.
Kiyan Kassam is a conservative writer. Follow him on Twitter at @kiyankassam.
The U.S. military issued a series of social media posts commemorating LGBT-themed “diversity” on the same weekend millions of Americans came together to celebrate the nation’s founding.
The first of such incidents occurred on Sunday when the Defense Department’s official Twitter account posted a June 22 article detailing the “coming out journey” of U.S. Army Maj. Rachel Jones, a man who identifies as a “transgender female.” In a tweet accompanying the first post, the agency claimed that Jones “faced deep-rooted challenges on her path to self-acceptance” and that his “resilience shines as a hope for others facing similar struggles.”
Jones faced deep-rooted challenges on her path to self-acceptance. In a world where LGBTQ+ voices were often marginalized, she battled depression and contemplated suicide. Today, her resilience shines as a hope for others facing similar struggles.
— Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) July 2, 2023
You do not become a Major overnight. This confused individual has been in Army leadership for some time. Think that through. How many more of these “confused” people do we haev in our military?
You know our enemies are laughing themselves silly with this knowledge that America has sexually confused, obsessed, leaders in its forces. Does that sound prepared for war to you?
In the attached article — which was published on the Army’s official website — Jones described his process of “accept[ing] and lov[ing]” himself and further claimed it “was very risky to [his] career to be seen in public as a transwoman” during the Trump administration when transgender-identifying individuals were not permitted to openly serve in the military. Upon taking office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order reversing the policy, which allowed Jones to “come out publicly as transgender” to his colleagues.
“People here have been amazing. I know how lucky I am to work in an organization with such acceptance and everyone here has been really supportive,” Jones said. “I was initially a bit fearful of coming out as my true self and how I would be perceived, but I had nothing to worry about.”
To commemorate “pride month,” Jones also recorded a video claiming that for him, “pride” is about “celebrating that diversity is our strength, as a nation and as an Army.”
US Army Major “Rachel” Jones on diversity in the military 🤡 🌎
— Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.today (@JordanSchachtel) July 1, 2023
A similar incident exemplifying the military’s increased focus on so-called “diversity” occurred on Friday and Sunday, when the U.S. Navy posted two separate Instagram clips highlighting the importance of removing alleged “barriers” for LGBT service members’ “total inclusion” in the fleet.
“It’s a necessary effort to make sure that the chief of naval operation and our operational commanders are getting the very best from the 6 to 8 to 10 percent of our force that identifies as LGBTQ+,” said Rear Admiral Mike Brown in the Friday clip.
I am a Combat Marine Veteran. There is no possible way for me to trust anyone like this into combat. As adults they are confused about the way they “feel”, makes every other aspect of their lives questionable.
When asked in the second video what it means to have a “diverse force,” Brown further claimed it’s important for the Navy to be “inclusive of all parts of the American population.”
“Inclusion means recognizing that we have a diverse force and getting the most of every part of our force, every individual sailor,” Brown said. ”We will not be able to compete and win if we don’t continue to pull from the amazing talent that resides in every corner of the United States, harness that talent, respect it, and use it.”
It’s worth mentioning that both the Army and Navy are expected to miss their recruiting goals for the 2023 fiscal year.
Since Biden’s inauguration, the Defense Department has seemingly ramped up its push for military leadership to adopt discriminatory “DEI” ideology. DEI — which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion — is a divisive and poisonous ideology that dismisses merit to discriminate based on characteristics such as skin color and sexual preferences. Individuals who qualify for a certain position due to their merits but don’t meet the discriminating entity’s goal of being more “diverse” are passed over in favor of those who meet the preferred identitarian standards.
Last month, for instance, the Air Force went all out to celebrate “pride month” by authorizing the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to cover the travel costs for service members seeking to attend the branch’s June “pride” events. Several Air Force bases also held LGBT-related events on their respective grounds last month.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
As naked men parade in front of kids and pride marchers chant “we’re coming for your children,” a few LGBT activists are beginning to worry that things have gone too far. For example, Andrew Sullivan, an early and ardent advocate for same-sex marriage, is unhappy about reaping what he has sown. And he should be — from sterilizing and mutilating children via “gender-affirming care” to flashing children at pride festivities, the LGBT movement is proving social conservatives right.
Sullivan is repulsed and worried about a backlash, but he still denies any responsibility for the fruits of his labor. He argues his ideas needn’t lead to the illiberalism and radicalism his side is indulging. He is adamant that we could have, however uneasily, agreed to live and let live if the LGBT movement had taken his advice and closed up shop after its legal victories. He insists, “There is no slope in the case I made. There is a clear line: formal legal equality alongside cultural and social freedom on all sides.”
He is wrong. Same-sex marriage was always a radical project with implications for all of society, which is why there is a direct line from Sullivan’s case for it to the extremism he now deplores. Same-sex marriage reduces the differences between men and women to a matter of personal sexual preference, rather than a fundamental ontological one upon which civilization is based. If the sex binary doesn’t matter in marriage, it doesn’t matter anywhere.
Instead of a lifelong covenant that unites the two halves of the human race in a relationship that provides for the future of the human race, marriage was redefined as the mere legal recognition of an indefinite and androgynous pairing. The collapse of the older understanding of marriage began before the LGBT movement, but the triumph of same-sex marriage sealed it.
As Pastor Hans Fiene has put it, expecting that same-sex marriage would have no significant social effects is like blowing up the Hoover Dam and expecting Lake Mead to move only a few inches. And so, less than a decade after the Supreme Court invented a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, men think they can be women, women think they can be men, doctors are amputating the healthy breasts from increasing numbers of troubled adolescent girls — and our leaders from President Joe Biden on down are cheering them on.
The Lie of Being ‘Born This Way’
Evils such as this were baked into the arguments used to establish same-sex marriage. In particular, the claim that people are “born this way” — that LGBT identities are intrinsic and immutable — ensured that dissenters would be persecuted and children would be groomed into rainbow identities. However, though the mantra of “born this way” was a public relations triumph, it was false. The search for a “gay gene” quietly ended in failure a few years ago. The experiences of same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria are often fluid and felt with varying intensity. The causes are diverse and complex; that these feelings and desires may be unchosen does not mean they are determined at birth, or that environmental and psychological factors play no role.
Nonetheless, the lie of “born this way” enabled the hijacking of civil rights law to serve the LGBT agenda, which ensured that opponents of the LGBT movement were not only defamed as the equivalent of racists but that the enormous state power used to break segregation would be deployed against them. And so every wedding cake artist and photographer must bow before the state-enforced metaphysical doctrine that sex is irrelevant to the meaning of marriage. And the dogmas of gender identity demand that women and even little girls must get comfortable with males ogling and flashing them in what used to be female-only spaces.
Worse still, the false doctrine of “born this way” demands the grooming of other people’s children into rainbow identities. After all, if we are born with our sexual orientation and gender identity already fixed for life, then some children are necessarily born into the rainbow elect. Affirming these identities is seen as essential to their flourishing, for the sexual self is seen as the authentic self. Therefore, in order for the children born into the LGBT elect to live as their true selves, they must learn who they really are. And because we do not know which children are born with a rainbow identity until they tell us, then all children must be taught about sexual orientation and gender identity as young as possible, and encouraged to explore any hints of rainbow identity.
Of course, because “born this way” is a lie, the result has been a surge in children and young adults claiming to be LGBT. Consequently, we are now debating whether public schools should encourage children to transition and then hide it from their parents, and whether the government should take children away from parents who don’t affirm a child’s transgender identity. Somehow, “love wins” has become a mandate to seize children from their parents and mutilate them.
Social Conservatives Vindicated
These evils show that though social conservatives have been defeated, we have been vindicated. And there is more than the logic of social and legal revolution at work here. What religious conservatives understood — and what almost everyone else overlooked — is that sin stays hungry. Indulging and endorsing falsehoods about the nature of marriage, sex, and what it means to be embodied as a man or a woman only leads to more lies and more injuries.
If the cause of same-sex marriage had been righteous, we might have seen a result like that Sullivan imagines. That matters have instead gone so wrong, so quickly, should prompt us to look for where we went astray.
This reevaluation will often be uncomfortable, for the premises of the LGBT movement are derived from the sexual revolution as a whole, and that implicates almost all of us. Same-sex marriage was not the top of the slippery slope, it was just a point where it got steeper. The slide began with the effort to separate sex and its pleasures from obligation and commitment — the lie that we could and should separate sex from marriage, and marriage from the natural family of mother, father, and children. This is, of course, a perennial temptation, but the wealth and technological prowess of our age made it seem less harmful than it did in less prosperous times that lacked the pill and penicillin. But money and technology are poor substitutes for virtue and justice, so we have kept sliding down the slope.
Same-sex marriage accelerated this, building on past lies and adding new ones. And it also prevents recovery, insofar as it institutionalizes lies about sex, marriage, and family. Truth must be the foundation of any effort to rebuild a healthy sexual and family culture. And that will require rejecting government dogmas declaring that men and women are sexually and relationally interchangeable, subject only to the sovereign whim of adult preference.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Education (ED) are silent after dozens of teachers used an ED-funded online workshop last week to “trade tips” on how to break state laws protecting children from radical gender ideology and help transgender-identifying students transition at school without their parents knowing.
According to the Daily Mail, event host Angel Nathan started the session by telling the teachers they would study new state laws in order to “remedy the marginalizing effects and disrupt problematic policies.”
“Some teachers said they followed the rules, but others discussed being ‘subversive,’” wrote the Daily Mail. One unnamed teacher reportedly stated that his or her own “code of ethics” was above the law and discussed “how to ‘hide’ a trans student’s new name and gender from their parents.”
“The stakes are very high for trans youth,” said Shea Martin, an Ohio-based trans-identifying educator who writes a socialist, feminist, and anti-racist blog called “Radical Teacher.” Martin said, “I think that requires working subversively and quietly sometimes to make sure that trans kids have what they need.”
Kimberly Martin, the DEI coordinator of a Michigan school district, said, “We’re working with our record-keeping system so that certain screens can’t be seen by the parents … if there’s a nickname in there we’re trying to hide.”
The online session was organized by the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP), an organization funded by the Department of Education under Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Last November, MAP was given $8.5 million in federal funding.
The Federalist reached out to the education department and asked if there would be an investigation launched into both MAP and the teachers who are using federal funds to spread information on how to break state laws. The department was also asked if, given that MAP is encouraging illegal activity, there are plans to defund MAP and revoke the more than $8 million in grant money already awarded to the organization. At the time of publication, a response has not been given.
The Federalist also reached out to the DOJ and asked whether, given that the criminal organizing and activity spans across state lines, it will be launching an investigation into MAP. The DOJ did not respond.
Lastly, The Federalist asked both agencies if, as a policy, they support efforts to give minors medical treatments without the knowledge or consent of their parents or legal guardians. Neither department has returned a request for comment.
To recap, a number of public school teachers have admitted to breaking state laws and are using federal funds to teach their colleagues how to violate laws protecting children. The Department of Education appears content in funding criminal activity, and the DOJ is too busy prosecuting Trump, covering up the Biden bribery scandal, targeting peaceful pro-lifers, and investigating “terrorist” parents at school board meetings to care.
The Daily Mail also exposed the radical views held by educators regarding sex and gender ideology, which, while not illegal, greatly impacts the worldview of the students they teach for eight hours a day. Martin discussed how to present “sexuality” to elementary students between the ages of five and 10, arguing that teachers should be careful about treating ‘reinforced heterosexuality as the norm’ when discussing romantic relationships with their students.
“At no point in the session did any teacher say parents might know what’s best for their own kids,” reported the Daily Mail, “nor question whether affirmation-on-demand was the only way to help a trans-identified student.”
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
Oh, look, it’s another one of those books that Democrats absolutely demand be made available to children. All it does is push little kids to “defy” the “ridiculous rules” of gender norms— because they cause “depression”!
A friend of mine took her two young children — a boy, 6, and a girl, 4 — to the Indianapolis Public Library, Glendale branch, this week and let them pick out some books from the kids’ section. It wasn’t until she got home that among the ones chosen by her daughter, who hasn’t yet learned to read, was Tabitha and Magoo Dress Up Too, a colorful picture book by Michelle Tea, the creator of “drag queen story hour.”
Tabitha and Magoo Dress Up Too promotes transgenderism to children. IMAGE CREDITUSED WITH PERMISSION
The story involves two young kids who like to play dress up, but when they’re told to take the costumes off before leaving the house, a garish drag queen named Morgana arrives and tells them all about the splendor of being a transvestite.
“Like Mama Ru said, we all are born nude,” the book says. “All our clothing is drag—every dress, tie, and snood. Now, I know that some people make ridiculous rules, but you’ll learn to defy them, and I’ll give you some tools!”
‘I know that some people make ridiculous rules, but you’ll learn to defy them,’ the book says. IMAGE CREDITUSED WITH PERMISSION
Mama Ru is a nickname for RuPaul, the famous drag queen. He and depictions of several other drag performers are featured on another page. This is a book listed on Amazon for children ages 4 to 8. Isn’t your 6-year-old a “Drag Race” fan?! The pages are filled with illustrations of little boys wearing dresses, girls wearing male sports attire, other boys in wigs, wearing heels and make-up and on and on. Also jarring are drawings of swords, snakes, and one creature with the head of a cat but the body of a cow. (All that’s missing are seven heads, 10 horns, and 10 crowns.)
My friend noted the passage on one page in particular that she said concerned her the most: “You see, my dear children, when gender expression / is hampered with rules, it just leads to depression!”
The book continues: ‘when gender expression is hampered with rules, it just leads to depression!’ IMAGE CREDITUSED WITH PERMISSION
“You see, my dear children, when gender expression / is hampered with rules, it just leads to depression!”
Just what every parent wants — to explain the concept of depression to their 4-year-old daughter.
“I’m a moderate who previously thought the book bans were outrageous,” my friend told me, referring to the attempt by some local governments to restrict sex-themed kids’ books in public libraries and schools. “I support the gays and the queens but not the idea of teaching a child they should be depressed over the gender they were born into.”
It’s worth repeating that she had no idea her child had chosen this book until after she and her family had gotten home. She had assumed that when her daughter came back to her with a vibrant picture book plucked from the kids’ section that it was harmless literature for children. But as we’ve seen, the kids are no longer off limits. The militant transgender activist lobby is out to get them and this is how they’re doing it.
Bud Light enlists a trans ladyface minstrel to sell beer. Target hires a trans Satanist to design LGBT clothes for kids and starts selling “binding” and “tucking” swimwear. North Face launches a marketing campaign featuring a creepy drag performer hocking LGBT gear to children ages 2 to 7. The Los Angeles Dodgers gives an award to a demonic hate group whose sole purpose is to blaspheme and profane the Catholic faith.
All this, and June “pride month” hasn’t even begun.
What’s happening? Why did so many major corporate brands decide to go all-in on promoting an aggressive, radical LGBT agenda that just a few years ago would have been considered totally unacceptable in civil society? Is this a psy-op? Is it real? What happens next?
The short answer to these questions is that we’ve entered a new phase of the culture war, and in some ways have transcended “the culture war” completely. What we’re in now is better described as a religious war — one that’s been launched by corporate America against all of us, and therefore demands we all choose sides.
Choosing sides in a religious war means you have to choose your religion. And in this particular religious war, there are only two sides. On one side is what C.S. Lewis called the Tao, which was his ecumenical shorthand for objective moral truth. “The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value,” Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man. “It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained.”
In America and in the West generally, the side of the Tao is the side of faithful Christians and Jews, as well as those atheists who, for practical reasons, cling to Judeo-Christian morality as the survivors of a shipwreck might cling to a lifeboat. It is the side that sees Target’s transing of kids as an intolerable moral evil, affirms the givenness of our nature and the created order, and recognizes not only that man isn’t God, but that man’s destiny is communion with God in a redeemed creation.
On the other side is what the writer Paul Kingsnorth, among others, has called the Machine, which at its root is a Nietzschean rebellion against God that turns out also to be “a rebellion against everything: roots, culture, community, families, biology itself.” Like the Tao, the religion of the Machine, of progress and technology and will to power, has a very long pedigree. It goes back to the Garden of Eden, where the serpent assured Eve, “You will not surely die,” that if she ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she would become like God.
That was the first rebellion; we have been reenacting it ever since. It is perhaps easier to see in our own time how every rebellion against God, from the Garden to now, is also an attempt to overthrow Him, to become like God. Indeed, the desire to play God is the dark heart of both transgenderism and its close cousin, transhumanism. Like other evils of our age — abortion and euthanasia, to name the obvious ones — these are, at their roots, extremely candid manifestations of pride, the source of all sin.
The Machine is a religion that makes a claim over and against reality and the created order, which are denied and disfigured in man’s attempt to arrogate the power to recreate himself according to his own desires. In our day, he seeks to do so using new technologies, but that he would desire to do so is merely the latest iteration of the rebellion that began in the Garden. This is what J.R.R. Tolkien meant when he said, “all stories are ultimately about the fall.” Tolkien also referred to the Machine at times when discussing his legendarium, often describing it as the urge to amass power and dominate, “bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills” — a tyranny exercised over creation with the object of overcoming mortality.
This is just what we see in the twin trans movements: a desire to overcome sex and a desire to overcome death. The transhumanists are as explicit about their desire to cheat death and attain godlike immortality as transgenders are about their desire to become the opposite sex. The latter appear to believe, like rebellious pagans of past ages, that children have an important role to play in the achievement of this desire. The Machine devoured children by fire on the altars of Moloch and Baal; it devours them now in the black mirrors of the internet and social media.
The temptation here is to dismiss this reading of our situation as hyperbole. Surely it isn’t as bad as all that, we want to say. But it really is. What’s happening now isn’t about corporate brands embracing “pride month,” as The New York Times recently framed it, or even about promoting tolerance in a diverse society. If Target were just selling T-shirts that said “fabulous” in rainbow letters no one would care. This is about transing kids. Everyone knows it, but no one wants to say so out loud. Corporations are the tip of the spear, pushing this stuff out and then letting the media turn around and accuse the right of being violent bigots for objecting.
We err, too, in thinking of all this as just a really bad case of “the culture war” that breaks along the familiar lines of left and right, blue and red. It’s partly that, but at its deepest level it’s a religious war, a spiritual struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, the Tao and the Machine.
All of which is to say that as this war develops, we should try not to get too caught up in how much Target stocks plummet or how low the price of Bud Light gets ($0, as of this writing). “Go woke, go broke” is — pardon the rhyme — a cope. That’s not to say we shouldn’t boycott these companies, even if it means financial hardship or inconvenience. Boycotting them is part of what we have to do in this religious war, but it’s not sufficient.
Corporate America is not going to stop, even if some corporations do go broke. What will be required of those who resist them is a deep religious commitment, a radical new way of living in the modern, digital age. If you’re a Jew, be deeply serious about your Judaism. If you’re a Christian, make the practice of your faith the central organizing fact of your life, not just something you do on Sundays. If you’re an atheist, pray that God gives you faith.
For adherents of the Tao, fighting this religious war is going to mean not just boycotting corporate brands but reorganizing your personal and professional life. It might mean quitting your job, or moving, or giving up certain things. It will require sacrifice. Perhaps great sacrifice.
And rest assured that every person in America is going to have to pick a side. If you don’t pick a side then your side will by default be that of the Machine, which dominates the heights of our post-Christian culture and economy. Whatever your opinion of transgenderism or identity politics, the Machine will suck you in and ensnare you unless you make a conscious choice to stand against it. So choose, and choose wisely. Your country — and, more importantly, your soul — depends on it.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Michael Jameson, who changed his name to Lauren Jeska, attempted to murder Ralph Knibbs at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium in March 2016.
According to the Guardian, at the time of the attack, Jeska’s status as a female athlete was under review, as there were concerns he had a significant advantage over the real women with whom he was competing. The murderous transvestite had, after all, bested women in the 2010, 2011, and 2012 English Fell Running Champion and as well as in the British Championship in 2012.
Jeska, who did not “transition” or have his testicles removed until he was 26 years old, reportedly refused to provide relevant samples of his testosterone levels and other documentation to the governing body, prompting officials to void his race results in September 2015.
After questions were raised about his eligibility, Jeska packed up two large kitchen knives and traveled nearly two hours from his house in Wales to the offices of UK Athletics in Birmingham. In Birmingham, he savagely stabbed Knibbs in the head and neck, leaving a hole about an inch wide. A witness said it looked as though the transvestic eunuch was “trying to skewer meat.”
The premeditated murder attempt, which the judge presiding over Jeska’s case indicated was executed with “chilling precision,” left Knibbs with limited vision in both eyes. The BBC reported that in the “cool, calculated attack,” Jeska also grievously injured two other UK Athletics employees, Kevan Taylor and Tim Begley, who had tried to intervene during the attack.
Police indicated that “Jeska carried out a violent and unprovoked attack on a man whose sole objective was to enable [him] to compete. [He] will now have plenty of time behind bars to contemplate the devastating consequences of [his] actions.”
Jeska was ultimately given an 18-year sentence.
Mara Yamauchi, former Olympian and British elite marathon runner, was among the first to highlight the abuse of the Parkrun’s gender self-identification policy by opportunistic men, reported the Daily Mail. Yamauchi indicated earlier this week that a Parkrun female group course record had been “smashed to smithereens by a trans-identifying male” and possible put “out of female hands forever.”
The Olympian and other feminists noted that Jeska still holds the top two women’s records for the Aberystwyth Parkrun, a weekly competition held in Wales. According to the Parkrun’s official records, Jeska has a time of 17:38 in the Aberystwyth run and is also ranked first in the Bryn Bach Parkrun and third in the Heaton Parkrun, both in the women’s category.
Heather Binning, founder of the Women’s Rights Network, told the Telegraph, “I am lost for words that a male is stealing what should be women’s records first of all, and setting these records that will not be broken — these records are frozen, women won’t beat them.”
Binning added that it was “gobsmacking,” not just that the violent eunuch in jail for stabbing innocents over the question of his eligibility would still hold the title, but that he was “in a women’s prison despite politicians’ mealy-mouthed words that violent male offenders should not be in the female estate.”
“Politicians are turning their backs and sports associations are frightened and are being hung out to dry,” continued Binning. “More people take part in Parkrun than the Olympics — it does matter. The grassroots is where the elite athletes come from — girls and women will not in these circumstances want to participate.”
It appears that the actual top female in the Aberystwyth parkrun is Charlotte Morgan, who had a time of 17:55 on June 24, 2017. Jeska is eligible for parole in 2029. It is unclear whether Parkrun will permit him to resume competing against women.
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A school district in Fargo, North Dakota, will conceal the gender identities of students from parents in spite of a state law prohibiting the policy.
“We will not openly out any student because of one law if we know that that’s going to cause harm to that child,”said Fargo Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Rupak Gandhi, who is backed in the decision by the school board.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican, signed the bill earlier in May that banned schools from withholding or concealing “information about a student’s transgender status from the student’s parent or legal guardian.”
Some parents expressed outrage at a school board meeting about the decision.
“The way I see it, the way I heard it is that you want to protect kids from their parents,” said one father. “Instead of encouraging everyone to talk more, you are suppressing talk.”
Another parent accused them of trying to take away authority from parents.
“I really urge you all to pay attention to what we’re setting as a precedent,” said the mother. “Whose kids are these? Do they belong to you as a school board? Do they belong to Fargo Public Schools? Or is each child’s parent ultimately the decision-maker in their family over what is allowed and what is safe for that child?”
Critics of the law said that revealing a student’s gender identity to the parents might lead to dangerous confrontations. Gandhi cited suicide statistics put out by an LGBTQ advocacy group to argue that hiding the gender identities from parents was protecting the students.
“You teach your kids that nobody who asks you to keep a secret is safe,” said another mother at the meeting. “Now, this is going the other way. This is an adult saying that they’ll keep a child’s secret.”
Here’s more about gender laws in North Dakota:
Governor of North Dakota Bans Transgender Pronouns in Government & Schools | EWTN News Nightly www.youtube.com
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Remember when we all went around saying “it takes a village to raise a child”? I do.
I remember hearing Whitney Houston belt it out—
I believe the children are our are future Teach them well and let them lead the way Show them all the beauty they possess inside Give them a sense of pride to make it easier Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be Everybody searching for a hero People need someone to look up to….
I grew up on that message. And you can bet your bottom dollar I tried to raise my kids as part of a village that loves and supports them. But instead of learning basic human goodness, leftists have decided to use education to destroy our children.
CRT, unicorns, and other works of fiction.
It’s bad enough that CRT infiltrates public schools with its revisionist history and racist undertones. But leftists just had to add unicorns and gender benders. It’s a terrible web that traps the masses.
Critical race theory is an idea that originated in universities and law schools under the name “critical theory”. Its supporters added “race” in the 1970s, clever scoundrels that they were.
The addition of RACE bastardized a 1930s European theory birthed by communist academics. They knew that RACE would SELL this nonsensical concept. Further, they knew that Blacks in America would readily buy the concept.
The communists of the time targeted Blacks due to our LEGITIMATE grievances. Because Blacks during this time were treated as second-class citizens. That treatment led to angst in the Black community. Thus, many Blacks succumbed to the communist ideology. They believed we would all be treated equally; that’s the lie communism proposes.
The objective of Critical Race Theory was to tear down, even erase the history of ideas that created Western culture. Particularly American Western culture.
America was too good for its own good, the communists believed. Too good to be true. So they put her to the test. For decades, America proved that capitalism and free markets work; moreover, Marxism and Communism fail.
Tenets of CRT reject ideas such as a “color-blindness” and even advancement based on meritocracy. Black people aren’t successful in America because they work hard and dismiss the noise of the Left. They succeed by pure luck.
In other words, CRT doesn’t value people by the content of their character, nor does CRT value hard work. Ibram X. Kendi wrote: “The language of color blindness … is a mask to hide racism.”
Unbelievably, CRT openly criticizes the Civil Rights movement; a movement that created millions of successful Blacks in America.
While CRT acknowledges the success of individual Blacks in America, ironically, it criticizes successful Blacks for joining the system. The theory puts Blacks in a no-win situation. CRT supporter Derrick Bell alludes that successful Blacks “are passing” as whites. Because being successful according to Bell, is succumbing to the white man’s orthodoxy.
We could try to ignore the inconsistencies and idiocy of the flawed concepts of CRT. However, we do so at our peril. Because CRT impacts all areas of society. CRT demoralizes K-12 students. And if it hasn’t sunk in by the end of K-12, CRT attacks in college, polarizing higher ed students.
Post-college, CRT guilts working Americans and condones “cancel culture”. In the end, CRT stokes grievances with the purpose of creating victims.
A proponent of Critical Theory, Herbert Marcuse, famously wrote, “All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude”. And like a cult, the CRT revolution enslaves the minds of the people who adopt it. And the concept is blatantly and unapologetically racist.
When racism wasn’t enough to divide America, leftists brought in the unicorn.
Parents are no longer the ultimate authority when teaching their children about race, sexual preference, or even gender. Instead, our kids are taught to ditch their God given pronouns and choose their gender.
If a kid feels saddled with a penis they don’t really like, the school is willing to step-in and help the child obtain hormone therapy in preparation for a sex change. No parental consultation necessary. Yet, you need to sign a permission slip for your kid to go the zoo or a museum. Seriously folks! How are these asinine hypocrisies not glaringly evident to those who put these leftists in charge of our schools? I’m not even going to dive into the boys playing girls’ sports– we’ll just save that for another day. Because today, I stumbled across a headline that literally made me want to throw up.
This morning, the Fox News website had this to say:
West Virginia teacher who raped freshman kept ‘Top 10’ list of most attractive students: lawsuit
Lawyers said Ronald Paul Harris may have sexually abused other victims, and the school district allegedly “turned a blind eye”.
A now-convicted pedophile raped a freshman while he was a teacher in a West Virginia school district. That district and the school’s former principal are now facing a lawsuit for allegedly “turned a blind eye” to the ongoing abuse.
Ronald Paul Harris, who is now 63, admitted in criminal court to molesting a 14-year-old student while he was a history teacher and basketball coach at Oak Glen Middle School in Hancock County, West Virginia.
…
“This case is a parent’s worst nightmare,” said Mary Pat Statler, who’s representing E.H. (the victim) and her parents, along with P. Zachary Stewart.
“To learn that your child was groomed and sexually abused by a teacher is beyond awful. It’s made even more terrible knowing that the administrator at the time of the abuse was in a position to stop the abuse or prevent future instances of abuse and instead turned a blind eye.”
Harris pleaded guilty last September in criminal court to sexual abuse by a person in a position of trust and is serving a 10- to-20-year prison sentence and must register as a sex offender. As part of the deal, five other felony charges were dropped.
The details are so disturbing, I feel the need to warn you.
We all know what perverts like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein think of young people. But did you know Bill Gates in among the sickest of the perverts in the land of leftists?
Several stories link Gates with Epstein, as do several mutual “friends,” or as I would call them, victims. Gates’ efforts in preserving eugenics is racist, infantile, and disturbing to say the least. Truly, I wasn’t sure Gates could do much worse than work towards “breeding the black” out of people. But I was wrong. This is definitely worse.
The evil on the left is so grotesque that those of us who have been smeared, defamed, libeled because of our opposition wear our ruin as a badge of honor. When the history books are written, we fought for the good against insurmountable evil.
Washington and California have both moved to allow state-sanctioned kidnapping to help confused kids transition
The UN says that minors can now consent to sex
Big Medicine advocates for genital mutilation of underage youth
Planned Parenthood ripped after approving ‘woke’ sex education
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donates millions annually to a nongovernmental organization which claims that children are born sexual and should learn about “commercial sex work” under 10 years of age.
The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) – a separate entity from the U.S. nonprofit – wields significant influence on global sex education. The NGO comprises 120 independent organizations in over 146 countries and has received – including its European network – over $80M from Gates. Other significant donors included the World Health Organization.
A toolkit released in 2017 showed an insight into how the NGO teaches sex education to children around the globe.
“Sexual activity may be part of different types of relationships, including dating, marriage or commercial sex work, among others,” IPPF said about children under 10 should be taught, which was first flagged by Nicole Solas of the Independent Women’s Forum.
Children under 10 should also be told “As you grow up, you might start to be interested in people with diverse gender identities,” the toolkit said. Bill Gates funded an organization which claimed children are born sexual.
The IPPF suggested in multiple instances that children are born sexual.
Children under 10 should be taught that “Sexuality is a part of you from the moment you are born. Your sexuality develops and changes throughout your life.”
“[S]ex positivity acknowledges that human beings, including adolescents and young people, are autonomous sexual beings.”
Sex educators, according to the NGO, should have an “Understanding of young people as sexual beings.”
A House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Wednesday will feature the testimony from a whistleblower who will warn lawmakers that the U.S. has become the “middleman” in a multi-billion dollar migrant child trafficking operation at the border.
The hearing, “The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children,” will be held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement and will examine the surge in unaccompanied children (UACs) at the southern border.
According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics, the number of UACs who came to the border shot up from 33,239 in FY2020 to over 146,000 in FY 2021 and 152,000 in FY 2022. So far in FY 2023 there have been over 70,000 encounters of unaccompanied children.
When child migrants are encountered at the border, they are transferred into the custody of Health and Human Services (HHS) and then united with a sponsor — typically a parent or family member already in the U.S.
But the Biden administration has been rocked by a number of reports that officials have been unable to make contact with over 85,000 child migrants, and more recently that administration officials ignored signs of “explosive” growth in child labor. A number have been forced into indentured servitude to pay back smugglers and have worked in dire conditions.
Thank God for the Whistleblowers!
Otherwise, we might never know what our administration is willing to ignore.
The Wednesday hearing will hear from three witnesses: Tara Lee Rodas, a whistleblower and former employee at HHS; Sheena Rodriguez, founder and president of Alliance for a Safe Texas; and Jessica Vaughn, director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Rodas will warn of a problem that predates the administration, but that has increased significantly during the recent migrant crisis, according to a copy of her written testimony obtained by Fox News Digital.
“Today, children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex,” she will say. “Today, children will call a hotline to report they are being abused, neglected, and trafficked. For nearly a decade, unaccompanied children have been suffering in the shadows.”
She will talk about her volunteering at an emergency intake site in California to help HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) identify sponsors for minors who have come across the border.
“I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to a sponsor – some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income – this is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking,” she will say.
“Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the U.S. Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.”
These are real-life, modern day stories, happening right here, right now, under OUR watch.
This is not okay. Yet, this is what the Biden Administration is busy allowing, while pretending we have a worthy president deserving of a second term.
This right here should be the only thing we need to prove Biden doesn’t belong in public service. Of course, why would we expect more from a man that drove his daughter to addiction after their uncomfortable shower sessions together?
Rodriguez, of the Alliance for a Safe Texas, will share her experiences at the border encountering unaccompanied children, including teenage boys who she said told her that cartel cooperatives transported children through Mexico and held them at warehouses with armed guards. She will also call for the investigation of federal agencies responsible and for the ending of releasing migrants to sponsors.
“We can no longer turn a blind eye and pretend this isn’t happening. Congress has the power to stop this, which is why I am calling on you to do what is right,” her testimony says.
Vaughn will call too for congressional action, including the ending of legal loopholes that she says force the government to “to operate a massive catch and release program for illegally-arriving alien children.”
“They have been carelessly funneled through the custody of U.S. government agencies and contractors, and handed off to very lightly vetted sponsors (who are usually also here illegally) in our communities without regard to their safety and well-being,” she will say. “There is no question that the system for processing minors who cross illegally is dysfunctional, and has been for some time, and needs to be fixed.”
Wow. It’s only April, but I think we just got the understatement of the year.
Conservative commentator Liz Wheeler was met by dozens of protesters Wednesday evening when she arrived to a Virginia college to deliver remarks about “transgenderism” and its impact in America.
The protest kicked off ahead of Wheeler’s arrival on the campus of James Madison University, where she delievered a speech, “The Ideology of Transgenderism,” and was challenged by a number of her detractors in attendance.
Wheeler, a podcast host who often sounds off on topics critical to the conservative agenda, was invited to speak at the event by the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter.
The demonstrators, all of whom appeared to protest peacefully against Wheeler’s appearance on campus, were captured on video gathering outside and inside the venue as they displayed signs and chanted ahead of the event.
Liz Wheeler, a podcast host who often sounds off on topics critical to the conservative agenda, was invited to speak by the JMU Young Americans for Freedom chapter. (Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images, Liz Wheeler)
Wheeler responded to footage of the protesters prior to taking the stage, writing in a tweet: “Queer Theorists are lying to you. They don’t care about you. They’re using you to push their Marxist political agenda, and when they’re done abusing you, they’ll throw you away. You deserve more.”
Queer Theorists are lying to you. They don’t care about you. They’re using you to push their Marxist political agenda, and when they’re done abusing you, they’ll throw you away. You deserve more. https://t.co/S1wSSt3GDu
While several protesters gathered outside the venue, others gathered inside, just outside the room where Wheeler was slated to speak. Those demonstrators also displayed signs that featured messages protesting Wheeler’s appearance on campus and in defense of transgender people.
“Love and kindness are my family values! Moms for Trans rights,” one handcrafted poster stated. “Dukes against bigotry,” another sign said, making reference to the school’s nickname.
Wheeler took aim at “queer theory” during her speech, concluding it allows people to “choose your identity” and forgo your “evil identity” of being a certain race because it’s a “marginalized identity.”
“You can choose a marginalized LGBTQIA identity that will become your primary identity over the color of your skin,” Wheeler said. “The only thing that the queer theorists demand in return is that you surrender to them your identity, your body, your mind, your spirit, your soul, your family, your religion and your country. If this gives you the chills, it should. Because this is what’s happening across our country.”
Wheeler was also challenged by those who had opposing views about transgenderism at the event after she finished speaking. (Young Americans for Freedom)
Inside the event, Wheeler was also challenged by those who had opposing views about transgenderism after she finished speaking.
“Because you said the left is basically trying to fearmonger a lot of people, couldn’t people argue that you’re doing the same by claiming that people are trying to destroy the family and like mutilate people’s genitals and stuff,” one individual in attendance for the event asked.
“Well, is it or is it not true that children’s genitals are being mutilated in the name of transgender ideology,” Wheeler said in response.
“Do you have proof of that,” the individual responded.
“Oh, I’ve Googled plenty, yes,” the attendee said.
Responding to the initial question, Wheeler said “there’s a difference between warning people about the reality of what’s happening” and “pretending that someone’s words” are hurtful.
Wheeler went on to describe to the individual how sex change surgeries are performed on young males in America and how some sex change surgeries have resulted in death because they are “so dangerous.”
A Fox News Poll released this week found that 48% of respondents believe overly accommodating transgender policies are a major problem for public schools.
Colorado Democrat Gov. Jared Polis signed a new law last week to circumvent red-state bans on abortion and transgender treatments.
While Republican lawmakers ramp up protections for vulnerable teens caught in America’s contemporary transgender craze, Polis aims to make Colorado a destination for impressionable minors to seek permanent procedures from puberty blockers to surgery.
“Here in Colorado, we value individual freedoms, and we stand up to protect them,” Polis said at the bill’s signing ceremony. “I’m excited by the work of advocates and legislators to further Colorado’s reputation as a beacon of freedom, a beacon of choice, a beacon of individuality where we live on our own terms.”
Senate Bill 23-188, signed into law Friday, opens the door for “trans tourism” in the state, allowing minors to seek abortions or “gender-affirming health care services.” In other words, teens seduced by transgender ideology in Kansas, where lawmakers are preparing to ban interventions for minors, may travel to Colorado for sterilizing procedures under Polis’s protection with parental consent. Similar legislation is under consideration in Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill to bar underage transgender surgeries earlier this year but included provisions in the legislation to make the new law toothless.
The Colorado Senate bill signed last week, titled “Protections For Accessing Reproductive Health Care,” also allows minors to abort pregnancies without parental consent.
The new law protects people seeking abortions and transgender interventions who travel to Colorado by prohibiting state or local agencies from penalizing complicit medical providers. The legislation also nullifies extradition requests in other states where such procedures are banned and refuses to recognize out-of-state criminal or civil proceedings relating to these procedures. Previously, Colorado already established itself as a go-to destination for women seeking abortions from Texas and Oklahoma, where it is banned.
While policymakers in other blue states already passed laws to establish their states as abortion “safe havens,” Colorado’s protections for transgender minors seeking life-altering surgeries is a first-of-its-kind. The new law comes as transgender surgeries are expected to become a $5 billion-dollar industry by the end of the decade, according to a report last year from Grand View Research.
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.
Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, is the largest individual creator on YouTube. His main channel has 144 million subscribers. His most popular video, a recreation of the Netflix hit “Squid Game,” has amassed an astonishing 401 million views. He is admired for his generous charity work and trusted by millions of parents worldwide, who allow their children to watch his kid-focused videos that consist of pranks, over-the-top challenges, and reaction videos.
However, an emerging controversy involving one of his closest friends and longtime co-creator Chris Tyson — who has recently come out as being on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) — is threatening his brand. Millions of young children are being groomed into uncritically accepting transgenderism and trans activism at an impressionable age, unbeknown to many parents who allow them to watch MrBeast videos unsupervised.
My two older kids — aged 7 and 9 — have been fans of MrBeast for some time. The content was wholesome and we’ve had some wonderful conversations about giving back while watching some of his charity videos. I try to make sure that they watch educational videos where possible, but to be honest, most videos on MrBeast’s main channel are just big, loud, dumb, vacuous stunts that have zero educational value and are just fun. Kids need that too.
But the fun stopped six months ago. Chris started wearing nail polish in a video. He grew more and more effeminate, wore ladies’ sweaters, grew out his hair, and manicured his nails. My children started noticing. My daughter commented on Chris’ over pronounced hand gestures to show off his nails. Both she and my son began talking about it. My son said, “He’s acting weird.” My daughter said, “He wants everyone to see his nails and hair. He keeps showing them off. He drops things on purpose just so he can pick them up with his nails.”
After Chris’ shocking transformation in this video, it was no longer possible to ignore the issue. This, of course, is what he wanted. He projected his transformation into our home and demanded that we “have more conversations” about his new lifestyle choices “in the future.” So we did. We spoke about why he thinks he’s a woman, what will happen to his wife and child, and if we still want to watch MrBeast. The result was that my children just wanted silly videos. They found his transformation weird and they felt overwhelmingly sad for his wife and kid. They didn’t want to watch it anymore. MrBeast was always just mindless fun, after all.
All Fun and Games
It has always been the eclectic cast of supporting characters that have made the videos so engaging. There is Chandler (who first appeared in 2018), who is childish — he is afraid of pickles and counts goldfish crackers with sliced cheese melted over the top as a meal. He often appears in videos with his fun and relatable family. Then there is Nolan, a newer member of the group (he first appeared in 2020) who is impish and cheeky and often elevates videos with his all-in, high-energy persona.
At the center of the MrBeast universe are Jimmy and Chris. The pair are childhood friends, and in a 2020 interview, Jimmy revealed that Chris was the very first subscriber to his channel. Chris is integral to the MrBeast brand and he has recently taken over as the host of the highly popular MrBeast Reacts channel. My kids enjoyed watching Chris from the start. He was the most masculine and outdoors-orientated of the group.
In one popular video from 2020, the group goes camping and the humor is largely derived from how soft and incompetent the rest of the team is compared to Chris, who acts like a tour guide, scout leader, and parent to the whole group. While the group flounders, Chris, who grew up enjoying an outdoors lifestyle in North Carolina, states “I’m a mountain man, I’m enjoying myself, we’re going to make it to the top.” Needless to say, when the group hunkers down for the night, tent-raising duty falls to Chris.
This parental instinct came naturally to Chris, who welcomed his first child in June 2020 with his wife Katie, whom he married in 2018. Because of this practical masculinity and sense of humor combined with his general southern-man sensibilities, it came as a massive shock to fans of the show when five months after the birth of his child, Chris announced he was bisexual.
Sexuality Becomes a Theme
Chris’ announcement dovetailed with a broader introduction of mature themes into the MrBeast universe. Also in 2020, core member Karl Jacobs was added to the group. In several interviews, Jimmy has stated that he added Karl after pressure from Chris, who had formed a close bond with him. Karl often presents a childlike and camp persona in MrBeast videos. In 2020, he stated that he believed he was asexual, then in 2021 he awkwardly claimed to be heterosexual. Regardless of his sexuality, what mattered was that the dynamic of the MrBeast crew and content had changed. Sexuality was to the fore and became increasingly visible onscreen.
The close relationship between Karl and Chris fueled rumors that the two were in a relationship. This is something Chris has denied. Still, many fans have blamed Karl for Chris’ evolution, giving rise to the term “the Karl effect.” Speculation surrounding their relationship has increased after Chris finally confirmed in March 2023 that he and his wife Katie had separated. Immediately after the announcement, he reaffirmed that he is bisexual but that he is not involved with Karl. On April 6, Chris announced that he is gender non-conforming and on HRT.
Public Transition
As expected, the backlash online has been intense. There has been abuse directed at Chris by former fans who feel betrayed by his actions. Chris, for his part, has leaned into the typical culture war talking points, mentioning how proud he is “seeing conversations started” because of his actions. His conversion has aligned with a new political awakening and his Twitter account is now littered with the usual talking points one would expect to find from a recent convert — he supports defunding the police and gun control, advocates for trans rights, calls conservative news outlets “grifters,” and thinks orange man bad.
The issue is neatly summed up in a viral tweet by influential drama news channel host Keemstar, who, after chastising critics who left negative comments, stated “This decision is a decision only Chris can make. Do better!” Of course, Keemstar is correct that mindless abuse is unacceptable, but he pushes the completely false idea that Chris’ decision is a private matter. It isn’t. His transition has been playing out in millions of family sitting rooms worldwide.
And make no mistake, despite his good charity work and overall pleasant demeanor, Jimmy is complicit in projecting this adult content into millions of homes. Jimmy is MrBeast and all editorial decisions start and end with him. He has taken a political stance on a massively divisive topic and quietly slipped it into his programming under the radar of many trusting parents. Further, both Jimmy and Nolan have made their support public. Karl has been even more vocal, saying of fans who have questions about the transition: “F-ck the goofy mother f-ckers keep runnin your own stuff.” YouTube has expressed support as well, so it appears unlikely that Chris will leave the show.
What MrBeast is doing is sinister and will have far-reaching consequences. He is grooming an unsuspecting generation of children into uncritically accepting transgender and trans activism at a vulnerable age. Due to the unrivaled reach of MrBeast and the unparalleled and often unmonitored access he has to millions of kids across the globe, he is now, without a shadow of a doubt, the leading source of child-focused, transgender content in the world.
It is imperative that all parents are made aware of this and given the choice of whether they consent to this content. After all, Chris said he wants to have a conversation. Parents need to know that this time, it isn’t an invitation, it’s an ultimatum.
Dr. Eoin Lenihan is an independent educator and extremism researcher. His work has been featured on AlJazeera and Fox News. He has also written for Arutz Sheeva, Quillette, The Post Millennial, and The Daily Caller. His peer-reviewed paper “A classification of Antifa Twitter accounts based on social network mapping and linguistic analysis” was published in Social Network Analysis and Mining, and it is the largest academic quantitative analysis of Antifa to date. You can find more from Eoin on Twitter: @EoinLenihan and on his website: http://www.eoinlenihan.weebly.com.
It’s no secret many on the left love to politicize tragedies, but the reaction from some to Monday’s deadly shooting at a Christian school in Nashville has reached a whole new level of malevolent. Local authorities have identified the shooter as Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old woman who pretended to be male and had reportedly attended the school years prior. After entering the Covenant School shortly after 10 a.m., the shooter killed six people before being gunned down and killed by police. Among the victims are three 9-year-old children and three school staff members.
Nashville Police Chief John Drake characterized the shooting as a “targeted attack” and said authorities discovered “a manifesto” and detailed maps of the school showing points of entry. Drake also confirmed “there is some theory” to the idea that Hale’s transgender identity contributed to her decision to target the school but that authorities are still investigating the motive. Police said Hale was considering “another location” to target, but after “a threat assessment by the suspect [and] too much security, [she] decided not to.”
Immediately following the attack, leftists began using the horrific tragedy as an opportunity to promote their radical agenda and spew insensitive remarks.
Joe Biden
During moments of crisis, Americans should be able to count on their president to put aside politics and bring the country together. But not when that president is Joe Biden. After talking about how much he loves chocolate chip ice cream on Monday, Biden used the Nashville shooting to push for more gun control.
“The shooter … reportedly had two assault weapons and a pistol. … So, I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapons ban,” Biden said.
Biden on Nashville shooting: "It's heartbreaking, a family's worst nightmare…we have to do more to stop gun violence…I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapons ban."pic.twitter.com/10sArjE8mC
During her remarks in Monday’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre not only used the shooting to call for increased gun control, but appeared to blame the tragedy on Republicans.
“How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault-weapons ban?” she asked.
Jean-Pierre weighs in on school shooting in Nashville:
"How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban?pic.twitter.com/bQp6S3Q4nu
ABC News Senior National Correspondent Terry Moran wasted no time in seemingly tying the shooting to Tennessee Republicans, who recently passed legislation protecting minors from experimental transgender surgeries, wrong-sex hormones, and drag shows. After providing viewers with details on the shooting, Moran immediately segued into discussing the legislation Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee approved earlier this month.
IT BEGINS: ABC's Terry Moran ties the Nashville school shooting to Tennessee's recently-passed legislation banning the hormonization and mutilation of minors. The shooter was 28. pic.twitter.com/MfKdOpQZIf
Washington Post contributor and former New York Times columnist Mike Wise went out of his way to thank a Twitter user, who referred to Tennessee as “an intolerant state that brainwashes children through religious indoctrination.”
“This is as deep and real as it gets. Thank you,” Wise wrote.
A Washington Post contributor just thanked someone who posted that the Christian school in Nashville that was shot up today was a religious indoctrination center pic.twitter.com/U6hW9AP6C4
The Virginia Democrat blasted Republicans with an unserious and bad-faith attack, saying the GOP thinks drag shows pose a greater physical danger to children than guns do.
Benjamin Ryan
In a now-deleted tweet, independent reporter and NBC News contributor Benjamin Ryan attempted to correlate the shooting with the fact that The Daily Wire, a conservative news outlet, is based in Nashville.
“Nashville is home to the Daily Wire, a hub of anti-trans activity by @MattWalshBlog, @BenShapiro, and @MichaelJKnowles,” Ryan wrote.
Anna Skinner
Newsweek Senior Writer Anna Skinner spent her Monday afternoon writing an article titled, “Tennessee Republicans’ Ban on Drag Shows Mocked After Mass Shooting,” in which she spun the news to be about bashing Tennessee Republicans and lamented that so-called “assault weapons” are still legal in the state.
“Tennessee Republican legislators are getting slammed after at least three children and three adults were killed in a mass shooting at a Nashville private school on Monday,” Skinner wrote. “Twitter users assailed state GOP officials in the wake of the bloodshed.”
Kyle Griffin
MSNBC Executive Producer Kyle Griffin published a tweet evoking similar absurdity.
Hayes Brown
MSNBC Opinion Writer Hayes Brown took a page from Griffin’s playbook and politicize the tragedy. In his column, Hayes bizarrely argued that “much of [America’s] gun policy is presaged on the idea that guns are cool,” and “[t]hat was the unspoken understanding behind the rapid spread of the AR-15.”
Republicans “think that their toys, their totems of masculinity, their props for playing the hero, are more important than the lives lost,” he wrote.
While now titled, “The gap between GOP gun rights fantasy and Nashville’s reality,” the article originally displayed the headline, “6 are dead in Nashville. Let’s revisit how much the Tennessee GOP loves guns.”
— James Lindsay, ultra-low social credit (@ConceptualJames) March 27, 2023
Josephine Harvey
In a so-called “news” article titled, “Gun-Loving GOP Congressman From Nashville Torched For Response To School Shooting,” Huffington Post Senior Reporter Josephine Harvey attempted to create a controversy surrounding GOP Rep. Andy Ogles — who represents the district that includes the Covenant School — by bringing up a 2021 Christmas photo of Ogles’ family holding firearms.
In her article, Harvey claimed the picture is a “gun-glorifying Christmas photo” and went on to cite tweets from leftists attacking Ogles for posting it on Facebook well over a year ago.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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.
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Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine told a crowd of pediatric health care providers last month that he is “optimistic” that genital mutilation and chemical transmogrification of children — euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care” — will soon be fully embraced. The Biden nominee spoke at a “Pediatric Grand Rounds” session hosted in February by Connecticut Children’s, an expansive health system catering to kids. Levine, the highest-ranking transsexual official in U.S. history, discussed “gender-affirming care,” the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and mental health problems suffered by American youths.
“By proactively engaging with the social and environmental world that defines our patients’ lives, we can help them in terms of preventative care, acute care, chronic care, and other very impactful issues that affect our children and their families,” said Levine.
Levine intimated that the failure by “the social and environmental world” to fully embrace the transsexual agenda has resulted in mentally ill youths attempting suicide.
A Pew Research Center national survey published in June found that 46% of U.S. adults polled favored making it illegal for health care professionals to “help” someone under the age of 18 with medical care for gender transition. 72% of Republican or Republican-leaning respondents supported the statement. 58% of all respondents agreed that transsexual athletes should have to compete on sports teams that match their biological sex.
“Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex Americans, especially our youth, are very challenged at this time and are attempting suicide at an alarming rate,” claimed the health secretary.
“Gender-affirming care is medical care. Gender-affirming care is mental health care. And literally, gender-affirming care is suicide prevention care,” said the health secretary.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb of the anti-woke medical group Do No Harm told Fox News Digital that contrary to Levine’s claims, there is “no good evidence that children treated with gender-altering hormones or puberty blockers improved mental health assessments.”
“Levine’s appearance at Connecticut Children’s Hospital praising ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors and claiming it will be fully embraced is wrong and must be countered,” added Goldfarb. “A recent study from the University of Washington showed that there was absolutely no change in the psychological well-being of children with gender dysphoria treated with these medications. …There can be irrevocable harm being done to children by those pushing for these radical, ideologically driven treatments.”
TheBlaze previously reported on a study published September 19 in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy that explained how the puberty blockers foisted on children as part of the “gender-affirming care” regimen are also known as luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone agonists or GnRHa drugs. These drugs, used also to “chemically castrate men,” are not just creating sexless adults, but depleting victims’ bone density, hampering their cognitive development, and producing a myriad of harmful emotional effects.
The American College of Pediatricians reportedly indicated that GnRHa drugs “arrest bone growth, decrease bone accretion, prevent the sex-steroid dependent organization and maturation of the adolescent brain, and inhibit fertility by preventing the development of gonadal tissue and mature gametes for the duration of treatment.”
Per Goldfarb’s suggestion that irrevocable damage is being done to minors, a host of so-called de-transitioners such as Chloe Cole and Michelle Zacchigna have recently begun speaking out about how “gender-affirming care” inevitably amounts to irreversible damage.
Levine told Connecticut Children’s that the Biden administration will “try everything we can legally” to circumnavigate the democratic will of Americans in states that have enacted prohibitions on the mutilation of children.
After all, said Levine, transsexual medical procedures on minors have the Biden administration’s “highest support.”
In an interview Monday with “The Daily Show,” President Joe Biden singled out Florida’s laws barring chemical and surgical transsexual “treatment” for kids, suggesting they are “cruel.” Biden’s comments, further evidence of the “highest support” Levine mentioned in Connecticut, took on a quasi-religious dimension: “What’s going on in Florida, as my mother would say, is close to sinful. It’s just terrible what they’re doing,” said Biden.
Levine suggested that the Biden’s administration’s support will soon become the norm.
“I think that it’s not going to be politically advantageous. It wasn’t particularly in 2022. And so I think that as we look to all the different elections in 2024, I think the next two years are going to be challenging,”said the health secretary. “But I’m a positive and optimistic person, and I choose to be positive, optimistic. And I think that the wheels will turn on this.”
Levine claimed that criticism of the “gender-affirming care” he intends to help normalize tends to be “ideologically and politically motivated” and is “unconscionable,”reported the New York Post.
In April 2022, Levine told NPR that for some critics, “these issues of gender identity are beyond their experience. They don’t understand it, and so they fear it, and that fear can lead to negative feelings and emotions.”
Levine had also claimed that “there is no argument among medical professionals – pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. – about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”
Rep. Andy Harris, a member of the House Doctors Caucus and co-chair of the Pro-Life Caucus, told Fox News Digital that it was “reprehensible for a government official — let alone the Assistant U.S. Secretary of HHS — to promote the genital mutilation of minors as becoming a standard practice.”
“Many pediatricians, particularly pediatric endocrinologists, have expressed serious concerns about the use of puberty blockers, hormone blockers, and sex transition surgeries in minors,” said Harris. “These doctors know that these medications and procedures can impact children’s bone growth, fertility, and risk of breast and prostate cancer. Meanwhile, HHS has pressured providers to provide this care or else face discrimination lawsuits. We must protect our children.”
From time to time, my readers email me asking for my take on issues of the day. (This has happened twice.)
I feel more obliged than usual to respond, now that we know that the rest of the media cannot state an opinion on anything until they figure out which side Trump is on.
MSNBC: Trump is against men in women’s sports? … Children will DIE if men cannot compete in women’s sports!
Fox News: Trump says he built the wall? … Go Trump! He’s built 0.2% of the wall! ONLY 1,305 MILES TO GO!
I may be cruel, brusque or impatient, but I don’t lie. When I say something, it’s because I think it’s true, not because I’m angling to get a show on MSNBC or a call from President Trump.
So here are my answers to readers’ fictional questions.
QUESTION: Are books like David Cole’s “Republican Party Animal,” Ryan Anderson’s “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” and Jared Taylor’s “A Race Against Time,” “White Identity,” “Face to Face With Race” and “If We Do Nothing” still banned from Amazon?
Why yes they are! But please tell me more about how Gov. Ron DeSantis is Hitler for removing pornography from Florida schools.
Liberal brainteaser: What’s the difference between a book in a public school and a book that is simply available for purchase on Amazon? Think hard. You only have three hours.
BREAKING NEWS! Jean Raspail’s “Camp of the Saints” is now available from Amazon on Kindle!!!
Other News In Book Banning: Barnes & Noble — unlike Amazon — sells “When Harry Became Sally,” “Camp of the Saints” — albeit in French only — and all of Taylor’s books,
Takeaways:
1) Maybe Jeff Bezos should spend less time on his rockets and more time overseeing Amazon’s censorship department.
2) “Republican Party Animal” is the hottest book on Earth.
QUESTION:What was the best use of “In Other Words” this week?
Thank you for asking. For the uninformed, the “In Other Words” technique is how liberals insert crackpot words in a conservative’s mouth, by saying or implying, in other words …
This week’s winner is MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid for describing Republicans’ response to Donald Trump in 2016 as: “Shit, I wanna grab ’em by the pussy, too.”
It’s like she can read our minds!
QUESTION: What did you think of Scott Adams’ Dilbert cartoon being dropped from newspapers for his “racist rant”?
To refresh your recollection, Adams misread a meaningless, click-bait poll, claiming it showed that a majority of black people disagreed with the statement “It’s okay to be white.” (In fact, the poll showed the opposite.) He then concluded that blacks hate whites, so whites should — here’s the part that got played on a loop — “get the hell away from black people.”
At that point, everyone on TV expressed utter shock at his advice. (For a day or two, Adams’s remarks even pushed aside Jan. 6 coverage!)
I happened to notice something about the indignant.
— MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “It’s just flat-out racism. … This would have been racist in 1955! If somebody had gone on ‘The Steve Allen Show’ and said, ‘My best advice would be to stay away from black people,’ that person in 1955 would have been in trouble.”
Scarborough lives in New Canaan, Connecticut, which is 0.7% black.
— CNN’s Alisyn Camerota: “Scott Adams went on a racist rant in which he said — and I’m quoting — ‘the advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people.’”
Camerota lives in Westport, Connecticut, 1% black.
— CNN’s Jake Tapper: “Blatant racist remarks. A fairly racist statement, as blatant as it gets.”
Tapper lives in a $3.7 million dollar home in Northwest Washington, D.C., an overwhelmingly white area of a city that is majority black.
Shall I go on? I think not.
I don’t begrudge anyone for living in a “low crime” neighborhood with “good schools,” but it’s striking how the very people loudest in their condemnation of Adams seem to have arranged their own lives in strict accordance with his “racist” advice.
Maybe sit this one out.
QUESTION: I like Gov. Ron DeSantis for keeping Florida open, opposing pointless wars, sending illegals to Martha’s Vineyard and a million other things. But isn’t he going to be another Scott Walker, a widely admired governor who fizzled the moment he announced for president?
Highly unlikely. I couldn’t remember why I dumped Walker mere seconds after watching his presidential announcement speech, so I looked it up.
Walker began, “As kids, my brother David and I enjoyed going over to the home of a neighbor by the name of Claire Congdon.”
We then heard a lot about the Congdons: Mr. Congdon’s manning the concession stand at baseball games, his work with the Boy Scouts, his help in getting Walker into “Badger Boys State” as well as “a program called Boys Nation.” It was, Walker told the surely rivetted audience, “my honor to be chosen to represent Wisconsin” at Boys Nation.
At one point, Walker spent a solid minute describing how he buys shirts at Kohl’s department store. (Interested? He goes to the sale rack, uses coupons from the Sunday paper as well as the flyer giving him 15 or 20% off — “or even 30% if we are really lucky” — and presents the cashier with “Kohl’s cash.”)
Apparently, this was supposed to be a metaphor for supply side economics, but it seemed more like an ad for Kohl’s, using ordinary people instead of actors.
Anyway, Walker went on to win the student council election that year, and the rest is history.
Every time Brandon Showalter checks his inbox or listens to his voicemails, he’s dismayed by what he sees and hears. Since he began covering the battle over transgender ideology in 2016, he’s received countless messages from parents grieving over the mutilation of their daughters and the castration of their sons, photos from detransitioners regretting their irreversible surgeries, and firsthand accounts from families shattered by the medical scandal of transgenderism.
Get tickets to CP’s event ‘Unmasking Gender Ideology: Protecting Children, Confronting Transgenderism’ here. Download ‘Exposing the Gender Lie’ here.
“Over the years, I’ve lost count of how many moms and dads have called me absolutely devastated, at the end of their rope, because … within 30 minutes of a telehealth consultation, their daughters and sons are given drugs that could render them sterile” or they’re encouraged to have surgeries that will leave their bodies disfigured. “They’re living in a world of confusion,” said Showalter, a writer and social commentator for The Christian Post.
“They sent them off to a university and they became indoctrinated. I’ve had some of them in my home for dinner to try and console them as they’re just grieving. This has just devoured and shattered their families, and that’s not being hyperbolic.”
As a journalist and Bible-believing Christian, Showalter knew he couldn’t just look away when faced with the horrors of the transgender movement. Over the years, he’s written countless articles and even launched a podcast raising awareness about the topic, and this month, releasedExposing the Gender Lie: How to Protect Children and Teens from the Transgender Industry. Showalter penned the free e-book with Jeff Myers, president of Summit Ministries.
“We wanted to be able to equip pastors and lay leaders, youth and youth ministers to be able to have the philosophical tools to understand this ideology. And most importantly, protect children and teenagers and young adults from its destruction,” Showalter shared.
“The book will show you the various ways in which this ideology has molded our understanding of what sex and gender is, how language is warped, and it’ll clue you in as to how pervasive this is.”
According to Showalter, most people are unaware of just how insidious the transgender movement truly is — or how much it is fueled by the greed of pharmaceutical companies. Terms like “gender-affirming” care and politically-correct euphemisms popularized by many in the media, he said, are both dangerous and misleading. He slammed the idea that children experiencing gender dysphoria frequently die by suicide as “manipulative,” adding: “Suicide is a very complicated phenomenon. You cannot reduce it down to just one cause.”
Showalter detailed how, after a prepubescent child is diagnosed with gender dysphoria, they are prescribed puberty blockers such as Lupron, a drug that has been used to treat prostate cancer in men and endometriosis and women and has been used to chemically castrate sex offenders.
“There’s never been an FDA stamp of approval for that use,” he said. “Even the FDA just last year slapped a warning label that this drug causes vision loss and brain swelling. There are disastrous side effects. It impedes brain development. It basically freezes your endocrine system from allowing the pubertal signaling in the brain to happen.”
Children are given cross-sex hormones, such as testosterone for girls and estrogen for boys, and then undergo surgery to change their bodies to appear as the opposite sex. Showalter described this process as “grotesque,” involving the removal of healthy breasts and creating flaccid penises out of skin from another part of the body, such as the forearm or leg.
“These are highly complex, body-disfiguring surgeries with extremely high complication rates, and it’s in service to a material falsehood. You can’t change sex. Your sex is stamped in the nucleus of every single cell. All you’re doing is altering the body in a way that it was not designed to function,” he said. “Biomedical ethics seems to have just completely died with the incursion of this movement.”
Since speaking out about the horrors of the transgender movement, Showalter has experienced a good amount of pushback. He’s been called a “bigot” and a “hater” — but the insults and attacks seem insignificant when he grapples with what he sees as a “demonic” attack on God’s creation of male and female and, thus, on children.
“I don’t know exactly what might cause this ideology to end,” he said. “But I do hope and pray that God, in His infinite mercy, will bring it down. There are days when I just think the solution has to be supernatural because it’s just so wicked. It’s evil. And you don’t have to be a Christian to perceive that.”
Trans ideology has seen increasing visibility in the media, even in children’s programming. For example, an animated pride parade from the Nick Jr. show “Blue’s Clues and You!” featured a cartoon beaver wearing a pink and blue transgender armband and bearing chest scars from a mastectomy. The target demographic for “Blue’s Clues” is preschoolers, children ages 3 to 5.
“PRESCHOOLERS. CHILDREN 3 TO 5 YEARS OLD”
“They are marketing this by way of all media: TikTok, media programming, social media, YouTube, Tumblr, you name it, to get children to believe that somehow their bodies are not fine the way they are,” he said, challenging parents to pray tirelessly over their children and monitor their media consumption.
But despite the narrative pushed by many media outlets, it’s not just conservatives or people of faith opposed to the trans movement, he said. Working at CP, Showalter has heard from countless atheists, those who identify as gay and lesbian and even political leftists who share his and other Christians’ concerns for the next generation.
“The media continues to frame this as a right versus left kind of dynamic, when in fact, the polling indicates that many people across the political spectrum, left and right alike, do not want this done to children,” he said.
“The vast majority of doctors, I’m convinced, do not [support this], but far too few of them are actually being brave and speaking up about it. Many of them are keeping their head down because of this culture of fear we live in,” he added.
Showalter challenged other believers to stand up and declare a biblical worldview regarding sex and gender and urged churches to reach out to families hurt by the transgender movement and de-transitioners in need of recovery care.
“We need to understand the wickedness, the depravity that this is. And we need to be bold,” he stressed. “Now’s the time to show great courage and to be relentlessly honest about what’s happening. We can’t cover our eyes or cover our ears anymore. We have to ask God to give us His heart for hurting families and for children, and to stand up and be counted.”
He added, “I hope and pray that the day is coming soon when this great evil that has overtaken so much of our society will be brought to an end. But until then, and not one moment sooner, we have to keep pushing and keep declaring the truth with as much enthusiasm and boldness as we can possibly muster.”
Get tickets to CP’s event ‘Unmasking Gender Ideology: Protecting Children, Confronting Transgenderism’ here. Download ‘Exposing the Gender Lie’ here.
The nation is worried about serious national security threats, including Chinese spy aircraft, but the U.S. Department of Defense seems pre-occupied with misplaced priorities. “Woke” policies are taking leftist ideologies to extremes with enforced compliance, even if it hurts the institution.
As in the Obama years, the Biden/Austin policy fully embraces the idea that individuals can change their “sex assigned at birth to a different gender role.” Department of Defense Instruction 1300.28, updated on Dec. 20, 2022, has changed the official vocabulary of this pseudo-science, using the phrase “self-identified gender” instead of “preferred gender” throughout.
WHY? Why is this SO important to the wacky Left? “Gender Dysphoria” is a condition of someone who is CONFUSED about their gender. Do we really need more CONFUSED people in our military? As a Vietnam Vet, I can testify that such people cannot be trusted in the trenches of war. Your confused about your gender? You have NO business in any aspect of military service.
The DOD Instruction stipulates that if a person “self-identifies” as a person of the opposite sex, and if the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) changes a person’s bureaucratic “gender marker,” a man claiming to be a woman must be treated as a woman, and vice versa.
Military commanders, doctors and nurses, chaplains, and military men and women at all levels must endorse and act on this ideological belief or suffer career penalties if they don’t. Alleged “biases against transgender individuals,” which are prohibited, could include anything from “misgendering” people with the wrong pronouns to expressions of concern about medically questionable hormone treatments or surgeries for adults or military-dependent children.
Individuals who are confused about gender identity deserve compassionate counseling, competent medical care, and complete information about the serious risks and irreversible consequences of “gender-affirming” treatments that do not change biological sex. Instead, a self-diagnosis of gender dysphoria permits only one course of treatment, pushing the service member toward life-changing, often-irreversible transgender “transition,” without an independent “second opinion.”
Commanders are directed to consult with designated “experts,” called Service Central Coordination Cells. The SCCCs have no responsibility for military operations or any obligation to put the needs of the patient first.
Biden’s regulations do not protect or even mention rights of religious liberty for chaplains and people of faith. Nor do they provide options for doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel who object to transgender ideology on moral or ethical grounds.
Once a military doctor approves, transgender transition can be deemed “complete” with or without surgical alteration of healthy body parts. At that point, as the DOD Instruction states several times: “[S]ervice members will use those berthing, bathroom, and shower facilities associated with their gender marker in DEERS.”
This policy denies human biological realities and violates minimal expectations of personal privacy and modesty between men and women. Human dilemmas are discussed in PowerPoint training slide “vignettes,” such as a “female to male” soldier announcing a pregnancy.
Vignette 8 portrays a soldier who transitioned from male to female, without “sex-reassignment surgery,” who wants to use female-designated showers. Another scenario describes a female soldier who is experiencing tension with a “transgender female” roommate.
This is a trick question, since both the discomforted female soldier and a commander who tries to find a solution likely would be accused of “biases against transgender individuals.” Why should a tank commander at Fort Hood have to deal with pronoun etiquette and sticky scenarios instead of training his troops to fight an enemy force?
The latest DOD Instruction admits that some service members who have “completed a gender transition” may not have “resolved the gender dysphoria.” Without any estimate of costs or consequences, additional medical procedures are authorized “If a return to their previous gender is medically required.”
Biden/Austin directives specifically involve the military service academies and Reserve Officer Training Corps (contract) programs, inviting controversies like those affecting civilian female athletes who have lost competitions against biological men.
Revised rules also permit cross-dressing and other “transitioning” behaviors while in “on-duty status.” Previously, time off for “real life experience” (RLE) living as a person of the opposite sex could only occur off-base and off-duty, often for weeks or months. Whether intended or not, the revised policy’s approval of on-base cross-dressing likely will increase “LGBT Pride” celebrations featuring drag queen performances and “family-friendly” story hours for children at military bases worldwide.
When problems ensue, how will we know? In 2018, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis testified that problems with transgender policies were not being reported up the chain of command because they were considered “personal and private.” Doubling down in December 2022, the DOD released a new instruction, DODI 6400.11, which restricts (without high-level permission) the release of information about “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” “transgender-related information,” and “incidents of harmful behaviors.”
Every year, the Pentagon releases non-personal statistics on sexual assaults, in excruciating detail. Why are officials restricting access to data on “incidents of harmful behaviors” and “transgender-related information”? Congress needs to find out.
A recent independent, high-tech survey on the politicization of the military done by the Heritage Foundation found that among active-duty respondents, 80 percent said the “changing of policy to allow unrestricted service by transgender individuals” has decreased their trust in the military. Sixty-eight percent of active-duty responses reported seeing a “growing politicization,” which is affecting their decision to encourage their children to join the military.
In view of current recruiting problems, the 118th Congress should renewprevious demands for information on woke policies. Congress also should consider mandating that all Defense Department agencies and educational institutions return to recognizing scientific realities of biological sex, not “self-identified gender.” That idea and more are incorporated in legislation just proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. James Banks, R-Ind., called the Ensuring Military Readiness Act of 2023.
Servicemen and women deserve reality-based health care programs, with protection for the rights of doctors and nurses whose medical ethics or religious convictions differ from transgender ideology. Women also deserve separate-sex athletic teams and reasonable privacy in female-only living facilities.
White House and Pentagon leaders who try to deny, dissemble, or withhold information on the existence or results of woke policies in the military are undermining their own credibility. Americans are awake and aware, and they will hold lawmakers accountable for woke-ism that weakens our military in an increasingly dangerous world.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense.
Elaine Donnelly is President of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy organization that reports on and analyzes military and social issues.
Jessica Tapia (Image Source: Fox News Digital video screenshot)
A California school recently fired a Christian teacher after she refused to comply with the district’s policies that required her to conceal students’ gender transitions from parents, Fox News Digital reported.
Jessica Tapia, a former physical education teacher who worked at the Jurupa Unified School District in Jurupa Valley, California, informed the district that because of her religious beliefs, she would not be able to lie or withhold information regarding the wellbeing of children from their parents.
“Am I going to obey the district in the directive that are not lining up with … my own beliefs, convictions and faith? Or am I going to stay true …, choose my faith, choose to be obedient to … the way the Lord has called me to live. And so it was crazy to be in the position where I realized that I couldn’t be a Christian and a teacher,” Tapia told Fox News Digital.
The teacher explained that the school required her to refer to students by their preferred pronouns and withhold that information from their parents. She was also told to allow transgender students into the locker room that coincides with their chosen gender identity.
Tapia said the district told her that it would be discriminatory against transgender students not to allow biological boys into the female locker room.
“I was very clear with them. If the student has male genitals, I’m not letting them in the female locker room,” she said.
Tapia stated that, according to the school district, students have a right to privacy, even from their parents.
“If a student shares information regarding a pronoun preference or thinking they’re maybe the opposite gender of what they biologically are, if they share that information with a teacher, we are supposed to keep that info from parents in case the parent doesn’t know,” she explained.
Tapia noted that there were several issues with the gender policy.
“We’re talking [about] 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds,” Tapai added. “I don’t believe [kids] should have this ‘privacy’ to where their parents are being left in the dark about very pertinent information about their wellbeing.”
Tapia received a letter signed by the assistant superintendent of human resources, Daniel Brooks, informing her that the district would be unable to accommodate her religious exception request and that she would be dismissed from her position on January 31.
“Based on your religious beliefs, you cannot be dishonest with parents … If asked about a student’s gender identity by a parent, you cannot refer the parent to a counselor, defer the inquiry and suggest they speak with a student …, or otherwise deflect the parent’s inquiry,” the letter stated.
“The district cannot accommodate your religious beliefs that … prohibit you from maintaining a student’s gender identity and refraining from disclosing a student’s gender identity from his/her/their parent(s)/guardians,” the letter continued.
Tapia stated that she got into teaching to “make an impact” and to be “a light to [kids] possibly coming from very rough homes like I did when I was a child.”
“I don’t believe … that that’s how God’s calling us to love, by affirming those lies and confusion,” Tapia said. “I believe firmly that God created man and woman, and you are who he made you to be. And when someone has confusion about that, I believe that’s lies and confusion from the devil.”
The district denied Tapia’s claim that it discriminated against her based on religious beliefs.
Jurupa Unified School District told Fox News Digital, “The District denies the allegations raised by Ms. Tapia. The District takes seriously its obligation to accommodate its employee’s religious beliefs. Simultaneously, the District is obligated to comply with all local, state, and federal laws, including anti-discrimination laws and laws that protect students’ rights to privacy, which are in place to protect the nearly 2,500 employees and 18,000 students we serve. We cannot comment further on personnel matters.”
FIRED BECAUSE SHE REFUSED TO LIE!
Tapia told the news outlet that she plans to take legal action against the district.
Sam Smith performs onstage during the 65th GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 05, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. | Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
This past Monday morning, I was teaching hundreds of ministry school students at Christ for the Nations in Dallas on the topic of demons and deliverance. During the class, I stated that in the days ahead, I believed that satanic manifestations would become much more open and overt in our society. Rather than hiding himself in the culture, the devil will reveal himself more clearly.
After teaching, I got back to my room and began to read headlines and receive emails that confirmed the very thing I was saying. (More on that in a moment.)
Of course, we’ve been seeing this trend for years now.
One prominent example would be the rise of Drag Queens in our culture, some of them in overtly satanic attire, reading to toddlers in libraries, and performing at churches.
Another prominent example would be the “Shout Your Abortion” movement and the celebration of radical, pro-abortion legislation. This is in stark contrast to the old Bill Clinton adage that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.”
Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a radical feminist group with the acronym WITCH, standing for the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell. (I kid you not.) They certainly got their message across!
But most groups are not that overt (even if tongue in cheek), and gay activists learned decades ago that the in-your-face, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” approach was not working. Instead, gay strategists adopted a policy of presenting themselves to be exactly the same as the couple next door, just like you in every way, except gay. (This was laid out in the watershed 1989 book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer It’s Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90’s.)
So, from a strategic viewpoint, most groups wanting to bring about radical change to society do so in more covert, incremental ways rather than announcing, “We’re a terrorist conspiracy from Hell!”
In the same way, Satan doesn’t march around as a huge, horned dragon carrying a pitchfork.
As a senior demon counseled a younger demon in C. S. Lewis’s classic book The Screwtape Letters, “The fact that ‘devils’ are predominately comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.”
These days, however, it’s as if Satan is coming out in full force, red tights and all — if not literally, then metaphorically. What else can be said of the performance of “Unholy” at the Grammy Awards this past Sunday night? As the Breitbart headline announced, “Non-Binary Pop Star Sam Smith Performs BDSM, Devil-Themed ‘Unholy’ at the Grammys.” How lovely!
But even that only told part of the story.
As explained in more detail by the American Family Association, “During the annual Grammy Awards ceremony on Feb. 5, originally designed to recognize outstanding artists in the music industry, Pfizer pharmaceutical company felt it fitting to sponsor performers Sam Smith, who claims to be non-binary, and Kim Petras, who claims to be transgender. These two gave the nation a Satan-themed performance of their song ‘Unholy,’ in which Petras performed inside a cage with drag queens dressed in devil costumes, while Smith gyrated in a costume with devil horns sticking out from a top hat.
“The entire ‘performance’ depicted a hellish scene with lots of darkness, blood red colors and flames.”
So, you have: 1. the name of the song, “Unholy”; 2. both lead performers denying their biological realities, one of them wearing devil’s horns; 3. drag queens in devil costumes; 4. BDSM-related themes; 5. and the fires of Hell. I would say that is pretty clear!
No wonder podcaster Liz Wheeler tweeted, “Don’t fight the culture wars, they say. Meanwhile demons are teaching your kids to worship Satan. I could throw up.”
Compared to some other past hits (whose lyrics are virtually unrepeatable in moral circles), the lyrics to “Unholy” are relatively tame. It is the overall message of the Grammy performance that shouts out its depravity loudly and clearly.
Similar to this is the announcement from The Satanic Temple that it is raising funds to provide “free religious [meaning Satanic] telehealth medication abortion care in New Mexico.”
But this could be good news for us as followers of Jesus. The greater the darkness, the clearer our light is seen. May it shine brightly in front of the whole world! And may we shine as lights without shame, without compromise, and without hypocrisy.
And don’t be surprised if, in the days ahead, in front of your very eyes, you witness scenes as if taken straight out of the Bible where, in broad daylight, visibly demonized people get set free in Jesus’ name — dramatically, gloriously, and in full public view.
Things are heating up.
(For a great “holy” version of “Unholy” by a contemporary Gospel artist, go here. It’s titled, “If Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ ‘Unholy’ were a Christian song by Beckah Shae.”)
My daughter ‘was terribly bullied, but no one told me. … Please don’t let ideology harm another child,’ pleaded the mother of a 14-year-old girl who was isolated from her parents by school and court authorities and sex-trafficked twice.
A subcommittee in the Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill on Monday that mandates public educators notify parents if their child “self-identifies” as something other than his or her natural sex. Introduced by Republican Dels. Dave LaRock, Tara Durant, and John McGuire, the measure (HB 2432) would provide parents with greater oversight into their children’s lives at school and increase transparency in public education. According to a summary of the legislation, if a school official “has reason to believe” that a student “is self-identifying as a gender different from the student’s biological sex,” said official is required “to contact as soon as practicable at least one of such student’s parents to ask whether such parent is aware of the student’s mental state and whether the parent wishes to obtain or has already obtained counseling for such student.”
Under the bill, school officials, such as counselors and clinical social workers, are barred from “encouraging or coercing a minor to withhold from the minor’s parent the fact that the minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex” or “withholding from a minor’s parent information relating to the minor’s perception that his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex.”
Monday’s subcommittee vote came along party lines, with five Republicans voting in favor and three Democrats opposing.
Known as Sage’s Law, HB 2432 was introduced after it was revealed that a then-14-year-old Virginia girl ended up in the hands of sexual predators after her school failed to disclose her gender dysphoria to her mother. As The Federalist previously reported, the chain of events began in August 2021 when Sage began identifying as a boy and suffered intense bullying and harassment at school. Eventually, Sage ran away and was “found nine days later in Maryland, a victim of sexual assault.”
Appomattox County High School, which affirmed Sage’s new “identity” without notifying her mother, was following model guidelines issued by then-Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration on so-called gender affirmation. Such guidance has since been terminated by current GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Throughout Monday’s hearing on Sage’s Law, witnesses supporting the bill discussed its importance in keeping parents involved in their children’s livelihoods, especially in the school classroom. During her testimony, Sage’s mother Michele called on the subcommittee to put commonsense before ideology.
“If I had known [what was going on], this would be a much different story. [Sage] was terribly bullied, but no one told me,” Michele said. “Please don’t let ideology harm another child. Let parents do our jobs. We know our children best and we love them a million times more.”
Also called to testify at the hearing was Dr. Erin Brewer, a former “trans kid” who spoke about the importance of schools helping children through their gender dysphoria without affirming such confusion or concealing it from parents.
“I was insistent that I was a boy when I started first grade after a brutal sexual assault. If I had been affirmed by my teachers, it would have allowed me to completely dissociate from myself as a girl and create a new persona who could pretend that the horrible trauma that triggered my gender dysphoria hadn’t happened to me,” she said. “Instead of encouraging my confusion and hiding it from my mother, the school contacted my mother, got permission for me to be assessed by the school psychologist, and they came up with a comprehensive program to help me resolve my gender dysphoria. … I [one] hundred percent support this legislation.”
Erin Friday, a lifelong Democrat and co-founder of Our Duty, a national and international parent and child advocacy group, also spoke in support of Sage’s Law. Throughout her remarks, Friday noted her personal experiences with a gender-dysphoric daughter and stated that “schools should never keep secrets from parents.”
Opponents to Sage’s Law also spoke at the hearing, with one man claiming to be a “trans woman” arguing that such legislation is “ridiculous” and that schools should be able to conceal a child’s gender dysphoria from that child’s parents.
“It should be that child’s own choice,” he said. “If we wanna tell who we wanna tell, like, that’s on us.”
Despite leftists’ support for deceptively-termed “gender affirmation” and the “transitioning” of children, research has shown that “upwards of 80 percent of gender dysphoric childrenembrace their sex as they emerge from puberty” and that “children who are ‘affirmed’ as the opposite sex … particularly if puberty blockers are used, consistently go on to further medicalization.” Children who undergo such protocols are subjected to lifelong damage to their bodies. The practices are so horrific that nations around the world, such as England, have ended the disfiguring practices that are falsely labeled as “gender-affirming care” for minors.
“Parents should never be the last to know [about what’s going on in their children’s lives],” said Durant during the subcommittee meeting. “It’s a very strange, strange place to me that we’re in now where parents are being told to step aside, to sit down, that ‘we as educators, as counselors know better [for] your own child’ — and that’s just simply not true.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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.
Minnesota’s teaching licensure board will soon require all teachers to be card-carrying Marxists. The card will literally say “licensed teacher,” but recently approved revisions redefine state licensure in expressly Marxist terms: Academic knowledge is out, and power struggle among the classes is in. To be licensed in Minnesota starting in 2025, every teacher must not merely teach about, but personally advocate, the core tenets of critical race theory and transgender ideology.
The state’s insistence that every teacher positively affirm homosexual behaviors and transgendered identities understandably aggravates consciences among moral traditionalists, but the issues run deeper than the “culture war.” What is at stake is the nature of knowledge, the future of liberty, and the prospects for a sustainable social order. In a word: civilization.
A perfunctory hearing on Aug. 24, 2022, and the resulting order for implementation with slight revisions by a solitary administrative judge in December cemented the new regime. The revised Standards of Effective Practice require radical changes to teachers’ curriculum selection, classroom management style, and self-understanding of the teaching vocation. The education departments at colleges and universities also must document their fulfillment of the new standards or else have their program certifications rescinded by Minnesota’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB).
The new requirements require teachers to positively affirm extremist leftist positions about human nature and sexual practices in order to be allowed to teach in government schools.
Teachers will be required to choose “anti-racist” — i.e. critical race theory — instructional strategies for students. An administrative judge told the state to amend No. 4 here requiring teachers to expose children to sexual identities. It will likely still go into effect, with slightly different language.The new license requires teachers to affirm transgenderism.
The revisions represent only the latest attack against American heritage in Minnesota’s public schools. In 2013, the state education department successfully removed the four presidents featured on Mount Rushmore from social studies standards.
Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan also got the ax that year, as did the Magna Carta. References to the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were relativized, as students were to be instructed that those documents do not contain universal principles of ordered liberty, but merely the opinion of one powerful group of 18th-century men.
A decade later, the vanguard has advanced again. The revised teacher licensing rules strike the following from the mathematics standards: “addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percentages.” They insert this for teachers of all subjects: “The teacher fosters an environment that ensures student identities such as race/ethnicity, national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional ability, socioeconomic class, and religious beliefs are historically and socially contextualized, affirmed, and incorporated into a learning environment where students are empowered to learn and contribute as their whole selves.”
It no longer suffices simply to discuss the controversies of radical reform; teachers and students must also become advocates for change: “The teacher creates opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empowers learners to be agents of social change to promote equity.” Minnesota’s Scandinavian ancestors must be turning over in their graves at this new smorgasbord of Marxist truffles.
The PELSB’s “Statement of Necessity and Reasonableness” for the licensure changes draws support from two states just as blue as Minnesota. From New York, PELSB gleans: “Inclusive curriculum and assessment … works toward dismantling systems of biases and inequities, and decentering dominant ideologies in education.” In Illinois, each teacher must internalize a Marxist mentalité: “The culturally responsive teacher and leader will explore their own intersecting identities, how they were developed, and how they impact daily experience of the world.”
Illinois has expressly abandoned what Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, called “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” In place of objective truth, “what is seen as ‘correct’ is most often based on our lived experiences.” As in New York, so also in Illinois — and soon in Minnesota — all teachers must practice what cultural Marxists preach: “Assess how their biases and perceptions affect their teaching practice and how they access tools to mitigate their own behavior (racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege, Eurocentrism, etc.).”
But to whom? Neither the people nor their elected officials decided the matter. A solitary administrative judge, appointed by the governor, ordered the implementation of the radical licensure changes after merely recommending a few tweaks.
The labyrinth of administrative procedure affords limited opportunity for appeal, but one can hope that a teacher, a parent, or a teacher-preparation college will petition for declaratory relief. If nothing else, PELSB’s radical rewriting of human nature smacks of a state-imposed religion, in violation of the First Amendment’s no establishment clause, not to mention the dereliction of duty when schools jettison mainstream academic content in favor of extremist ideology.
If recourse to the courts should fail, another remedy remains, modeled for the free world in Norway in 1942. When the National Socialists ordered parents to enroll their children in indoctrination camps with just three weeks’ notice and required all school teachers to implement a Nazi curriculum, the people simply would not have it. Five out of every six teachers resigned.
A similar proportion of parents flooded the Norwegian education bureau with letters — literally, laundry baskets full of letters — registering their protests. Adolf Hitler’s henchmen were grossly outnumbered, and the Nazis’ outward control of state agencies never penetrated to the hearts and minds of the people. The fusion of Viking blood with Lutheran “here I stand” courage made otherwise docile Norwegians invincible. Whether the Minnesotans can muster similar resolve soon will become evident to all.
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy organization, has targeted conservative commentator Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire; the person who runs the Libs of TikTok Twitter account; and Seth Dillon, CEO of the satire site The Babylon Bee, accusing them of causing violence in a new report titled “Online Harassment, Offline Violence.”
The report argues, “Anti-equality, online extremists are leading a proactive and coordinated campaign of hate against hospitals and medical providers who offer gender-affirming care for transgender, non-binary and questioning youth.”
The report states it consists of “an informal exploration across Facebook and Twitter” that identifies “24 different hospitals and providers, across 21 states, who were directly attacked online following harassing, inflammatory and misleading posts from Libs of TikTok, Matt Walsh, and other right-wing accounts.”
Relying on misleading allegations of “lies” and “misinformation,” the report draws a line of causation from Libs of TikTok posting a video from a particular hospital detailing its own practices to inevitable online outrage resulting in angry tweets, emails, and phone calls from individuals, causing the hospital to stop youth-oriented transgender advocacy and/or practices and ultimately resulting in legislative efforts to ban the practices in the first place. The report gives examples of hospitals and doctors receiving hostile or angry communications, threats, and specifically, the false bomb threats against Boston Children’s Hospital.
The report insists, “What occurred in Boston is just one example of coordinated campaigns of hate, violence, and harassment being waged both online and offline against health care providers and children’s hospitals simply for providing age-appropriate, best practice, medically necessary medical care to transgender youth.” However, its claim of offline violence remains abstract and assumed. It provides no examples of actual violence.
Accusations of Hate Speech
Detailing what it argues is a coordinated campaign to target pro-LGBT organizations, the report notes: “hate speech accounts such as Libs of TikTok or Matt Walsh, a known transphobe at the alt-right news site The Daily Wire, post an inflammatory message full of disinformation about gender affirming care and call out a specific hospital or doctor by name.” The alleged campaign continues with “right-wing politicians looking to rile up the most extreme members of their base join in spreading the same transphobic rhetoric from their platforms, in some cases going so far as to introduce legislation to regulate children’s hospitals and gender affirming care providers.”
The final “stage” of these campaigns involves hospitals discontinuing transition practices for minors or legislative efforts that heavily regulate or ban said practices. The report concludes by placing responsibility on social media companies, arguing, “Social media companies have a responsibility to act and to not be bystanders while angry mobs intimidate LGBTQ+ people and our allies into silence.” Continuing, “Without intervention from social media companies, this will just lead to more hate speech, more threats, and more violence.”
Again, without citing any actual examples of violence, the report’s implication is that all negative interactions, from tweets to illegal activity like bomb threats, are essentially equal. The report’s authors then go further by arguing direct causation between the posting of information and the dangerous response. Their conclusion is that authorities must prevent or punish those posting the original information, which allegedly “caused” the violence.
Attempt to Silence Criticism
While obviously any form of violence or threats against an individual or organization is wrong and should be handled by the authorities, the popular left-wing argument that responsibility falls to commentators is absurd — even more so as the targets of their anger quite literally share the information left-wing activists post themselves. What the Human Rights Campaign and other LGBT activists stubbornly refuse to consider is that the outrage and anger are perfectly justifiable. Despite activists’ best efforts, many people reasonably view transgender surgeries on minors as barbaric and destructive.
What these organizations are attempting to do is stigmatize anyone who participates in such criticism by accusing them of contributing to any potential violence that may occur. More to the point, they want to intimidate conservative commentators to prevent them from discussing or sharing provocative LGBT activism, often in their own words, in a way that will result in criticism or outrage. So convinced they are morally justified, they view the natural result of the public viewing this information with outrage and legislative pushback as inherently violent and hateful.
In truth, what we see is the very nature of the democracy they champion in action. A children’s hospital boasts of performing elective double-mastectomies on teenagers as young as 15, as the Boston Children’s Hospital does on its website, and the public is rationally outraged. They express their outrage to the hospital and to their elected representatives, who introduce legislation. The left typically champions public protest and the targeting of organizations with phone calls, tweets, and emails when they disagree with a policy or product decision. Such action only appears to become “violence” and “hate” when the left supports what an organization is doing.
In terms of “causing” things like fake bomb threats or threatening voicemails, the idea that illegal behavior from one individual is the fault of a completely unrelated individual is dangerous and irrational. Libs of TikTok sharing a video produced by a children’s hospital is not a direct link to an unstable person calling in a bomb threat later on. Only the person making the call is responsible. Whatever motivated them to do so is entirely within their control. We simply cannot allow the left to continue bullying critics of their agenda by accusing us of causing violence by doing so.
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.
Last Thursday afternoon, time expired for parents to provide comments on proposed changes to sex education in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), one of the largest school districts in the country, with a population of about 180,000 students. As The Federalist reported last week, the proposal includes labeling boys and girls, respectively, as “assigned” males and females “at birth.” It also includes curricula on “sexual orientation and gender identity” that involves watching a pro-transgender PBS video telling kids they can have “intermediate” private parts.
If you think FCPS officials will carefully consider comments and complaints from parents worried about exposing their prepubescent children to transgender ideology, and perhaps even rethink their plans, I have some swampland in Florida I’d like to sell you. As we have seen from earlier examples of Fairfax County “welcoming comments” on proposed changes to road names, this public survey is nothing more than an empty, perfunctory bureaucratic procedure aimed at pretending that parents have a say regarding what happens during the school day.
Yet even more saliently, FCPS’s willingness to embrace this radical gender ideology and foist it upon thousands of Northern Virginia youth provokes a more important question: If our public schools can’t differentiate boys from girls, what wisdom and knowledge can they impart?
Ignoring Basic Biology in Favor of Gender Studies
I confess a certain embarrassment to be the one writing on this. When I worked in FCPS, I taught high-school history, not science. Years before that, I earned a respectable but certainly not impressive “B” in my ninth-grade FCPS honors biology class. But I’d like to think the lessons my teacher offered on the rudimentary realities of male and female biology — which of course apply not only to humans but the entirety of the natural order — are still in effect, even if it’s been 24 years since the last time I took a test on stamens, pistils, and gametes. I can still remember us boys immaturely chuckling when our teacher discussed ova and sperm.
But this is no laughing matter. School administrators and educators across the country have dispensed with these basic truths of biology in favor of the latest “findings” from politicized university sociology and “gender studies” departments. Schools take their directives not from biology — or, God forbid, classical philosophy and its articulation of the teleological nature of the human body, oriented, as ova and sperm are, toward the creation of new life — but from politically motivated journalists who attack the few teacherscourageous enough to take a stand.
The new FCPS directive — which other school districts will undoubtedly follow — rejects stable and universal distinctions between large and small gametes and the fact that sexes can now also be determined at conception through the SRY gene (resulting in male gametes), or its absence (female gametes). They expound endlessly on “intersex” persons who supposedly undermine “binary norms,” neglecting to note that such persons are incredibly rare: Sex is readily recognizable at birth for 99.98 percent of humans. Of the 3.6 million babies born in America in 2021, there was some manner of sex-related deformity or irregularity in about 750 of them, according to Abigail Favale’s book “The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory.” But to the ideologues, a trait found in .02 percent of people isn’t a biological deformity, but a new “gender.”
The Casualties of the Curriculum
The FCPS directive can only further intensify the casualties from confused gender ideology, well documented in Abigail Shrier’s recent popular book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.” Little girls have been exhorted to go on puberty blockers, causing all kinds of permanent harm, from sterility to arrested brain and bone development. As I noted in a Federalist article earlier this year, a recent Heritage study observed that “easing access to cross-sex treatments without parental consent significantly increases suicide rates.” And a 2016 report found that “a large percentage of adolescents referred for gender dysphoria have a substantial co-occurring history of psychosocial and psychological vulnerability.” A growing body of research indicates that promoting transgenderism in youth increasesmental illness.
Professor John S. Grabowski’s in his recent book “Unraveling Gender: The Battle Over Sexual Difference,” notes that “significant evidence reveals that aggressive hormonal and surgical transitioning procedures do not improve mental health outcomes for people who undergo them — even in ostensibly LGBTQ+ friendly cultures.” Moreover, postoperative transsexuals experience higher rates for psychiatric hospitalization, criminal conviction, and suicide, not to mention higher risk of mortality. In other words, confusing prepubescent fourth-graders or hormonal eighth-graders about their gender and sexuality may very well have lifelong detrimental effects on their emotional, psychological, and physical well-being.
It’s Not Just Biology, but English, Social Studies, Libraries…
If only it were in science classes that children are catechized in errant ideologies. An FCPS English teacher earlier this year read 10th-grade students a poem about masturbation (my 10th-grade FCPS English class, by comparison, read “Brave New World,” “1984,” “Lord of the Flies,” and “Antigone”). School libraries promote trans content for elementary schoolers, including in picture books. FCPS prides itself on its libraries’ queer book selection.
And, of course, we cannot forget social studies, whose curricula have become beholden to racial ideologies pushed by the 1619 Project and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Many Virginia schools have embraced the SPLC’s “Teaching Hard History” curriculum, while school districts across the country are using the 1619 Project’s social studies curriculum. That New York Times-originating project believes that America was “founded … on an ideal and a lie” as a “slavocracy,” and that “anti-blackness” is “at the core of so many of our institutions and really our society itself.”
It depresses me to see what has happened in FCPS, and so many other school districts across the country. I am a product of FCPS, as are many of my extended family members. My mother and I worked in FCPS. It was once an impressive school system, one my parents trusted to offer me a solid, if secular, education. Now its leadership can’t even tell boys from girls. On what grounds should we trust them regarding anything else?
Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.
About a year and a half ago, I noticed that my son — let’s call him Andy — was putting rainbow stickers on his phone. And a friend alerted me that Andy rebuked her daughter in a group chat for being “so cisgender.” I did some delicate digging, and it became clear: My child, then 13, was flirting with going “trans.”
He’s not alone. The number of transgender-identifying kids is up 20 to 40 times since a decade ago, to 1.5 percent of all teens. And the gender facilities that say they are the experts have been unmasked. Videos and statements have revealed that doctors in these so-called clinics are willing to give 15-year-old girls double mastectomies and call it treatment.
I wasn’t about to send my son off for experimental medical interventions that didn’t treat any underlying psychological issues. In this, I think I’m representative of the silent (and bullied) majority. Still, what could I do?
The first thing I had to do was to realize that the gender cult is powerful, and I can’t control the choices and feelings of my kid. I had to accept my limits, but that didn’t mean I was helpless. Parents are still the most important influence on their kids.
Finding a New School
I was lucky: My son was at a private school that did not push kids, behind their parents’ backs, into exploring alternate sexualities and getting “treated” by lifetime medicalization. If my son had been at a trans-affirming school — which means just about any public school — I would have been undermined at every turn.
At this school, however, he did have a cohort of “rebel” friends who all seemed to identify themselves as gender-questioning. And the school itself was not academically challenging enough for Andy. So I focused on academics, and we looked for a new school that would be a better fit on that score — and still supportive of my values. Finding one gave him a fresh start and a new peer group.
Building Real Identity
Next, I decided I would not provoke Andy by debating gender and trans issues. Maria Keffler in her book “Desist, Detrans, and Detox” reminds parents that transgenderism in adolescents is less about sex and more about identity, identity, and identity. A few decades ago, Andy probably would have worked through his teenage crises by going goth or arguing with me about religion. These days, becoming one of the letters in LGTB is the shortcut to being interesting, not “basic.”
Well, I didn’t want to make gender-bending the way he was going to differentiate himself from his parents. If he had been openly claiming a different so-called gender identity, maybe I would have been more confrontational about it. But since he was just flirting with being trans, not yet eloping, I decided not to make the topic of the sexes even more important than it already was. Instead, I focused on helping him build an identity in a healthy way.
I made it a priority to compliment him, every day, praising him for all the good things he is. Every time I “caught him” being funny, smart, helpful, generous, thoughtful, or kind, I noted it out loud. Every day, multiple times a day. I tried to help him see that these things are more important to his identity than some exotic “gender.” I also tried to help him feel more at home in his skin. He was given lessons in a sport he enjoys, so he could experience his body being strong and agile. Whatever reduced his alienation from his body, I encouraged.
Open-Ended Questioning
Next, I focused on building our relationship. I asked a lot of open-ended questions, and I made goofy jokes. We laughed a lot. I learned about him and signaled that I was interested in learning more. De-escalating tension and increasing the joy between us was key.
If Andy wanted to wear a vintage shirt that looked like it belonged on a French aristocrat from a few centuries ago, I just shrugged and let it pass. As long as what he chose was somewhere within the boundaries of socially acceptable male clothing, I didn’t make a fuss. After all, being a man (or a woman) is large enough to encompass differences in style, personality, and interest. It’s the trans movement that stereotypes the sexes, telling us that a sensitive, artistic boy must actually be a girl. Nonsense! My son could be a man and wear pastels.
When opportunities arose in everyday life, I pointed out the differences between men and women. In talking about school athletics, I would casually observe, “Oh, in high school, the athletic teams are divided by sex, because by puberty, boys develop more muscles and have more lung capacity than girls.” I never made these into arguments, just objective remarks.
In fact, we didn’t talk about so-called gender much, although I was prepared to. I coached myself on how to respond with neutrality and interest. I was determined only to ask questions. “I’m not clear how, if gender is socially constructed, that it is also an infallible identity deep inside the person?” “Help me understand. If gender is fluid and changeable, why should people get surgeries to alter their bodies permanently?” Books and essays pointing out transgenderism’s inconsistencies helped me clarify my thoughts. Still, I vowed I would only provide my own answers when Andy asked me a question — only, that is, when he was truly curious about my thinking.
I did take Andy to one talk on gender by a speaker who was calm and sympathetic but still supportive of my values. When he asked why he had to go, I simply said, “It’s an important topic, and this point of view is not well-represented in the culture.” Afterward, when I asked him what he thought, he said, “It was fine,” in a tone of voice that indicated the opposite. I dropped it; the talk still gave him a lot to chew on, even if he didn’t want to admit it.
Limiting Technology
One other piece was key: technology. Much trans proselytizing happens online, with anonymous adults love-bombing vulnerable kids. These adults sell the idea that acceptance can be found only in their new trans family and not in their real home. Some parents need to take drastic steps regarding their kids’ online presence. Fortunately, the screen problem was one I had been addressing for a long time, so I could be more moderate.
Andy did not have a smartphone, although even flip phones these days have internet browsers. I gave him a new phone designed for kids, one that had some carefully curated apps but no internet browser. For computer time, he was limited to an hour a day, and I trusted the internet filters I managed on his computer to keep him off the porn sites and the sexually explicit forums that cater to trans-questioning kids. All that limited (but didn’t eliminate) his exposure to pro-trans pressure. As a bonus, I got a much more cheerful kid at home who wasn’t always in front of a screen.
The point of all of this was threefold: to be the good guy, to distract him from all gender talk all the time, and to provide other identity options than the trans one.
Upping My Parenting
Lastly, I played the long game. Even when I didn’t believe it, I kept repeating to myself that the universe wouldn’t give me a kid that I couldn’t care for. That I had his best interests at heart — and online trans gurus didn’t — and I could wait this out with patience. I prioritized him when we had downtime in the evenings, not my phone. And I did the things I needed to, like sleeping enough and getting my own support system, so I could be available to him. Should I have been doing all of this all along as a parent? Well, of course, and in fact, it’s not like I had to do a total 180 when this emergency happened. Some of these things I was already doing, sort of. But I still needed to level up my parenting.
This summer, when he decorated a new phone, there were no rainbow stickers on it.
I wouldn’t say we are out of the woods, but he seems uninterested in the whole gender question. His wardrobe choices are less outrageous, and he’s not anxious, angry, and approval-seeking. Instead, he’s engaged and happy at school and at home, and he doesn’t need to be “different” according to the trans script. He’s happier being different just as himself. That makes me one happy parent.
This byline marks several different individuals, granted anonymity in cases where publishing an article on The Federalist would credibly threaten close personal relationships, their safety, or their jobs. We verify the identities of those who publish anonymously with The Federalist.
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.
Imagine the Environmental Protection Agency decides that, instead of setting air pollution standards, it will outsource oversight to an industry group called the “Emission Standards Coalition,” which, despite its innocuous name, is funded and staffed entirely by coal companies. Or, closer to home, imagine that city councilmembers in your quiet suburb decide that henceforth all speed limits will be set by the local auto racing club. We all would promptly object, haranguing the government for abdicating its most basic responsibility to citizens. “Foxes shouldn’t guard henhouses,” we’d say. Rules meant for public health and safety shouldn’t become tools to advance special interests and profit seekers. Lifting pollution and speed limits may benefit factory and Ferrari owners, but the public at large will have to cope with the resulting damage.
Farfetched as these examples might seem, something like this is happening in health care. Along the new frontier of “transgender health,” novel and even destructive “standards of care” are being set by ideologues and billionaire-backed foundations — all with the government’s blessing.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a proposed rule under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. Behind its 190-plus pages and innocent-sounding name (“Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities”) hides a radical agenda that would reshape the nation’s health care in alarming ways. HHS is proposing new national standards for what it calls “gender affirming care,” mandating that doctors provide these services and insurance plans cover them. What is “gender affirming care” exactly? HHS never really says. Its proposed rule neither defines the term nor identifies objective standards — such as age limits — that might apply. Instead, HHS incorporates guidance from medical societies and a group calling itself the “World Professional Association for Transgender Health,” or WPATH.
WPATH is not a government agency. It is a trans-activist group. Its president is Dr. Marci Bowers, a man identifying as a woman and self-described “pioneer in the field of Gender Affirmation Surgery” with her own transgender reality show, “Sex Change Hospital.” WPATH’s staff appears to be largely borrowed from Veritas, a for-profit company that does marketing and public relations for medical societies. WPATH’s funders include the Arcus Foundation (“one of the largest LGBT funders in the world”), the Soros-backed Open Society Foundations, and the Tawani Foundation, headed by transgender billionaire Jennifer Pritzker.
‘Standards’ Reflect Radical Backers
In 2018, the Tawani Foundation gave WPATH $200,000 to develop its so-called “Standards of Care,” a gift that earned Pritzker the WPATH “Philanthropy Award.” And Pritzker is heavily invested in trans causes. While the foundation has been funneling money to groups like WPATH and the National Center for Transgender Equality, its for-profit arm, Tawani Enterprises, is making financial bets on medical devices, implants, and surgical cutting tools. With the transgender surgery market expected to grow by billions of dollars over the next decade, one careful observer notes that “it is hard to avoid the impression of complementarity” here.
No surprise, then, that the WPATH standards that HHS hopes to enshrine into law reflect the radical views of its backers. On the list of WPATH “treatments” are mutilating surgeries (mastectomies, vaginectomies, penectomies), “chest binding,” “genital tucking,” “aesthetic procedures” like “body contouring” and “voice surgery,” and puberty-blocking drugs for children. There’s no minimum age requirement for these procedures. WPATH even calls for “psychotherapy” for prepubescent “gender diverse children” to “explore their gender,” with parents involved “as necessary” and excluded if their involvement is “contra-indicated.” WPATH says it’s “committed to advocacy” for “social and political climates that ensure social tolerance, equality, and the full rights of citizenship.”
This isn’t medicine. It is the destruction of healthy bodies, the indoctrination of children, and the dissolution of parental rights. It is radical sexual ideology under the guise of science.
Rest of the World Backs Away
Even to call WPATH’s guidance “standards of care” is misleading. As the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine explains, a true standard of care “is a treatment approach that all reasonable providers would use in a particular clinical situation,” but no such consensus exists for so-called “gender affirming care,” especially for kids. And the mounting damage this form of “care” is doing to both kids and adults is well-documented. It’s why countries around the world are backing away from it, even as HHS bureaucrats are strangely doubling down.
WPATH published its latest guidance in its “partner” journal, the recently renamed “International Journal of Transgender Health.” Among its authors is Susie Green, who heads the United Kingdom-based group Mermaids focused on “gender-diverse kids.” Green is not a medical professional. She spent several years as an IT consultant before famously helping her 16-year-old son undergo transgender surgery in Thailand. Another contributor to the WPATH guidance is Laura A. Jacobs, a self-described genderqueer “activist” and “heretic” whose “psychotherapy specialties” include “LGBTQIA+” adolescents, “BDSM,” “kink,” and “sexwork.”
It isn’t shocking that a bunch of well-funded activists could come together, give their glossy PDFs a veneer of academic credibility, and market their views as a new sexual orthodoxy. What is shocking is that they’ve managed to capture the federal bureaucracy. For HHS to uncritically platform WPATH, mandating shoddy science and destructive medicine as law, is an alarming development that deserves greater scrutiny.
Ultimately, this is a lawless effort. HHS has no power to override the states and the medical profession by imposing “standards of care” for the entire country. Nor can HHS force these standards on health care professionals in violation of their ethical and religious convictions. And purporting to delegate these tasks to billionaire-backed ideologues with no democratic accountability is worse yet. Just as racing enthusiasts don’t set speed limits and coal companies don’t set pollution rules, transgender activists shouldn’t be setting national medical standards.
Douglas G. Wilson Jr. is the chief executive officer of the Catholic Benefits Association and founding board member of the Catholic Health Care Leadership Alliance.
Detransitioner Chloe Cole, 17, speaks about her experience undergoing trans medicalization as a young teenager in a meeting with Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo in July 2022. | Screengrab: Twitter/Joseph A. Ladapo
A detransitioner is suing doctors who performed body mutilating sex-change surgeries on her as a minor, seeking to hold accountable the “mutilators” who “butchered” her.
Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old detransitioner residing in California, has filed a notice of intent to sue the medical facilities that performed procedures that have left her disfigured. The notice of intent to sue in California Superior Court lists three doctors practicing in the Los Angeles area and two medical companies based in California as defendants in the pending lawsuit. The lawsuit will move forward 90 days after the publication of the notice of intent to sue, on Feb. 9, 2023, “unless this matter can be resolved prior to that time.”
A detransitioner is a person who formerly self-identified as the opposite sex but has now become comfortable with their biological sex.
In a statement announcing the letter of intent to sue, Cole described her teenage years as “a culmination of excruciating pain, regret, and most importantly injustice.” Cole recalled that she was “emotionally and physically damaged and stunted by so-called medical professionals in my most important developmental period.”
My teenage life has been the culmination of excruciating pain, regret, and most importantly injustice. It is impossible for me to recoup what I have lost, but I will insure no child will be harmed at the hands of these liars and mutilators. I am suing these monsters. @pnjabanpic.twitter.com/i80VHvGXJn
“I was butchered by an institution that we trust more than anything else in our lives,” she added. “What is worse is that I am not alone in my pain. I will ensure that the blood and tears of detransitioners like me will not be in vain. It is impossible for me to recoup what I have lost, but I will fight to ensure that no other children will be harmed at the hands of these liars and mutilators.”
Harmeet Dhillon, CEO of the Center for American Liberty, is representing Cole in her litigation. Dhillon vowed to “hold the ‘professionals’ involved accountable for their deliberate choices to mutilate children and financially benefit from it without regard to the human tragedies they’ve created,” adding, “We will break the cycle of them breaking America’s children before it’s too late.”
The notice of intent to sue elaborates on Cole’s circumstances: “Chloe is a biological female who suffered from a perceived psychological issue ‘gender dysphoria,’” the document states. “Under Defendants’ advice and supervision, between 13-17 years old Chloe underwent harmful transgender treatment, specifically, puberty blockers, off-label cross-sex hormone treatment, and a double mastectomy.”
The notice classified Cole’s experience as a form of “medical experimentation,” adding, “She now has deep emotional wounds, severe regrets, and distrust for the medical system.” Specifically, the letter adds that because of acts carried out by the defendants, Cole “suffered mutilation to her body and lost social development with her peers at milestones that can never be reversed or regained.”
“Defendants coerced Chloe and her parents to undergo what amounted to a medical experiment by propagating two lies. First, Defendants falsely informed Chloe and her parents that Chloe’s gender dysphoria would not resolve unless Chloe socially and [medically] transitioned to appear more like a male. Chloe has been informed by her parents that Defendants even gave them the ultimatum: ‘Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?’”
The notice of intent to sue notes that “the vast majority of childhood gender dysphoria cases resolve by the time the child reaches adulthood, with the patient’s self-perception reverting back to align with their biological sex.”
According to the letter, “Despite an undeniable body of relevant medical literature, Defendants never once informed Chloe of the possibility, indeed the high likelihood, that her gender dysphoria would resolve, without cross-sex treatment, by the time she reached adulthood.”
“Defendants fraudulently concealed that information from Chloe that the only way to resolve her psychological condition was to undergo physical, chemical, and social transition to a male role,” the document added.
Citing a longterm study finding that “gender dysphoric individuals who undergo sex reassignment continue to have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behavior, and psychiatric morbidity as compared with the general population,” the letter lamented that “Defendants intentionally obscured these facts and defrauded Chloe and her parents in order to perform what amounted to a lucrative transgender medical experiment on Chloe.”
Although Cole was “advised that the distress she experienced because of her gender dysphoria would resolve as she transitioned,” her “distress always came back worse” following the “initial relief” that occurred after “each phase of transition.”Cole’s double mastectomy, which was performed on her at 15, caused her to experience suicidal thoughts and a deteriorating state of mental health.
Cole told Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson last week that the doctors named as defendants in the letter committed medical malpractice. The notice of intent to sue outlined some of the claims of medical malpractice, including the absence of “specific information regarding the actual risks of the testosterone and puberty blockers” she was first prescribed at age 13.
Side effects of puberty blockers include: “Permanent fertility loss, painful intercourse, impairment of orgasm, reduced bone development and inability to obtain peak or maximum bone density, stopped or stunted widening and growth of the pelvic bones for reproductive purposes, increased risk of osteoporosis and debilitating spine and hip fractures as an adult, increased morbidity and death in older age due to increased risk of hip fracture, negative and unknown effects on brain development, emotional liability such as crying, irritability, impatience, anger, and aggression, and reports of suicidal ideation and attempt.”
While much of the notice of intent to sue contains redacted information about the medical consequences of the experimental procedures performed on Cole’s body, the document concludes with an assessment of damages caused by the drugs and operations performed on her body over the course of several years. Cole will seek $350,000 from each of the three doctors named as defendants in the lawsuit and both healthcare organizations where the procedures were performed, making it possible that she could be awarded up to $1,750,000 in damages altogether.
The notice of intent to sue comes shortly after Cole has emerged as one of the most prominent detransitioners in the U.S. Cole founded the support group Detrans United, established to provide detransitioners who regret their attempts at gender transitions with a platform to voice their “dissent against ‘gender-affirming care,’ [and] influence policy.”
Cole has voiced her dissent against sex-change surgeries for minors by calling into a school board meeting last month at Conejo Valley Unified School District in Ventura County, California. Cole expressed concern about the school district’s distribution of a book to 8-year-old students teaching that children could be born in the wrong body. Cole warned that exposing children to such material could lead them to make ill-fated decisions like the ones she made when she was experiencing gender dysphoria.
“I will not be able to breastfeed any children I have in the future and my sexuality has permanently been affected because I was allowed to make adult decisions starting at 13, and then again at 15,” she said at the meeting. “This is what happens when children are sexualized and exposed to developmentally inappropriate and confusing content and ideas from a young age. This is what happens when we treat children like adults and expect them to have the mental faculties for proper long-term decision making.”
In light of the concerns about the longterm impacts of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and body-mutilating surgeries on minors, the states of Alabama, Arizona and Arkansas have banned such procedures for children younger than 18, while the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine voted to do the same earlier this month. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services classified such procedures as a form of child abuse, as has the state’s Republican attorney general.
The 2022 election results aren’t that hard to predict. Republicans will win and they’ll win big. The only questions on that front are how large will GOP majorities be in the House and Senate, and how many governor’s mansions will the GOP control? Will the red wave be a tsunami or just a massive breaker?
Beyond the numbers game, the larger question looming over this midterm cycle is why, at a time when inflation and the economy are top concerns for the vast majority of Americans, did Democrats choose to run mostly on abortion extremism and hysterical fearmongering about “threats to democracy” — issues that appeal to a rather narrow, left-wing slice of the American electorate that already reliably votes Democratic?
Why didn’t Democrats at least pretend to care about ordinary things like the rising cost of groceries and gas, worsening crime in major cities, and a looming economic recession? It’s one thing for President Biden and Democratic Party leaders in Congress to refuse to address these things as a matter of policy. But it’s quite another thing to refuse even to acknowledge that these are real concerns for most Americans right now.
One would think that simply on the basis of crude self-interest — say, clinging to their razor-thin majority — they would muster the will to pretend to care and at least pledge to tackle these issues, even if they’re lying. But they could not even do that. Why?
The answer doesn’t bode well for the country. Yes, Republicans will carry the day, retire Nancy Pelosi, and shatter the career aspirations of an entire cohort of middle-aged Democrat politicians like Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams. But that’s only half the story, and maybe not the most important half.
Democrats’ inability to moderate even a little bit, their unwillingness to snap awake to reality and respond to voters with some measure of empathy, however small, is of course a consequence of the party’s capture by its radical left-wing base. (Henry Olsen had a good line related to this in The Washington Post recently: “[T]oday’s Democratic Party increasingly looks like the Depression-era Republican Party, which consisted of powerful elites who lost touch with the working-class majority.”)
The danger comes when Democrats refuse to accept that they have no mandate from the people to remain in power, and inevitably seek some other justification for clinging to it. For all their talk of “threats to democracy” from Republican “election deniers” — one of the most asinine political epithets of our era, by the way — it’s Democrats who pose the real threat. This cycle has made it clear that they are not trying to forge a majority coalition. Their appeal is exclusive to left-leaning, college-educated voters and the woke institutions and corporations these people now control. That might be a minority coalition, but it’s such a powerful one that it opens new possibilities to scheming Democrats: that there are other ways than winning elections to gain and retain power.
The mumblings of President Biden about “ending coal” and fossil fuels, saving democracy from insurrectionist election deniers, affirming the radical agenda of the transgender lobby, and championing abortion extremism are no accident, however confused the president might otherwise be about where he is and what’s going on. They are, in effect, signals to the elite power base in American society, and they are meant to convey reassurance: we’ve got your back, ordinary Americans be damned.
In the face of a massive electoral loss, then, do you really think a political party that has aligned itself with elite interests and woke morality, that controls the White House and the administrative bureaucracy, that is supported by corporate media and Big Tech (with the recent exception of Elon Musk’s Twitter) is going to simply relinquish that power? Hand it over to the very people it has been decrying as the destroyers of our democracy? Allow someone like Donald Trump ever to get near the White House again?
No, of course not. What Democrats did in the six months leading up to the 2020 election — not just the rioting and looting, but the rigging or “fortifying” of the election through lawsuits and coordinated online censorship — should be understood as a dry run. The Democrats will use every executive branch agency, every tool of law enforcement, every malign demonstration of force at their disposal to remain in power, or at least to deprive real power from Republicans.
Even before Trump won the 2016 election, we know the FBI began crafting an “insurance policy,” the Russia collusion hoax, in case he won. Recall, too, how every major Democrat denounced Trump as “illegitimate” after he won, how left-wing street thugs rioted in major cities, how elected Democrats managed to hobble Trump’s presidency through endless investigations and a frivolous impeachment. And above all, we saw how they were determined not to let the same thing happen in 2020. And it didn’t.
Keep that in mind as the midterm results roll in this week (and next). There’s a reason Democrats and the corporate media have been pushing hard the message that we won’t know the results of key races for days, maybe weeks. It’s not just about counting absentee ballots, it’s about getting the rigging in place, either to claim victory or deny the legitimacy of the vote. Whatever Democrats say they fear Republican “election deniers” might do, they themselves are preparing to do the same or worse.
A political party that has convinced itself the country faces an existential crisis if its opponents win at the ballot box, and that doesn’t even pretend to serve anyone other than its base of college-educated leftists, is a toxic combination. Such a party is of course incapable of winning a majority, but it’s also incapable of relinquishing power, which makes it by far the greatest threat to democracy our country now faces.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
The Pentagon’s investigation into the U.S. military in 2021 found about 100 individuals engaged in extremist activities out of a force of 2 million. It appears investigators were looking in the wrong place. The search for extremists might have yielded better results had they examined the Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA), the government agency that administers K-12 education to the children of military personnel.
The Claremont Institute’s recently released report“Grooming Future Revolutionaries” describes shocking indoctrination taking place at overseas schools. It is a must-read, especially for military parents of the nearly 70,000 children in these schools.
I am a military spouse and the mother of a former DODEA student. The particular teacher training that was the focus of Claremont’s report is the reason, in part, why I lost all trust in the system.
In May 2021, I saw that DODEA would be holding an “Equity and Access Summit” for teachers and administrators. Knowing that “equity” means different things to different people, I wanted to get a sense of what it meant at DODEA. When I managed to gain access to the recordings, I was absolutely floored by what I saw and heard.
As the Claremont report shows, the summit featured hours of teacher training steeped in critical race and gender identity theories.
Claremont released a video of summit clips in which a principal talks about a student who felt like he’d done something wrong because he’s a “young, white male.” The teacher said she didn’t know what to tell him — but she seemed pleased with the breakthrough. Perhaps she was just following the lead of DODEA’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) chief Kelisa Wing, who is currently under investigation by DOD for a history of disparaging comments toward white people.
Video Evidence of Teachers Pushing CRT
The report also highlights literature teacher Gregory DeJardin’s presentation called “Combating 1- Sided Narratives (Decolonize the Curriculum).” DeJardin insists teachers become social activists and interviewed several students in his class at Vicenza High School in Italy about their difficulties with “majority culture.” It was painfully apparent in their answers that they were parroting his dogma, as one student said: “[School] is getting better about being more diverse and not taking a very normative perspective but there are definitely issues and I feel like it is still incredibly skewed to the white, male, heterosexual and Protestant gaze.”
Betty Roberts, an educator at Robinson Barracks Elementary School in Germany, talked about critical literacy. She wants her students to look deeply into textbook versions of events to find hidden biases. She asks her students questions like: “Is the American Revolution still being fought today?” She presses further and asks if the American Revolution was just a “transition from one group of rich white men to another group of rich white men.” Roberts goes on to express her gratefulness to the teachers’ union for its training on white fragility because she recognized her need for cultural humility.
Normalizing Transgenderism
Aside from the relentless instruction on anti-racism and white privilege, a clear effort was underway to normalize transgender identities and the notion of a gender spectrum. Genevieve Chavez and Lindsey Bagnaschi, presenters of “Ally 101 — Creating an Inclusive Classroom for LGBTQ+ Students,” talked about gender transitions they have facilitated for students at their schools in Spain and Germany, respectively — sometimes without parental knowledge or consent.
And many LGBT educators apparently belong to a system-wide resource-sharing group on Schoology curated by a DODEA educator. Chavez recommends resources from the group such as “Teaching with Mx. T” and “Teaching Outside the Binary.” But there is another similar group that’s passcode protected — and it’s for students. Teachers can add students to their own LGBT chat rooms in Schoology, and parents are not invited.
If teachers run out of content from people like “Mx. T,” they can use Discovery Education, which many recommended during the summit. One of the programs is “Speak Truth to Power.” This program offers lesson plans that are “flexible, standards-aligned digital resources, designed to educate, engage and inspire the next generation of human rights defenders.” Sounds good, doesn’t it — until you see that transgender activist Jazz Jennings is one of those human rights defenders. But Discovery Education is password-protected, with one portal for students and another for teachers, so we really have no idea what’s being promoted to our children via third-party content creators who can update information in real-time.
Congress Needs to Do More
Our children deserve to learn in an environment free from divisive ideologies, and thankfully, DODEA’s activism has not gone unnoticed by Congress. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., wrote a letter to DOD asking why teachers are being trained to secretly “transition” children at overseas schools. After a year, she still had not received an answer. She also introduced H.R. 4764, the No CRT for our Military Kids Act.
In the Senate, Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2023 to prevent DODEA schools from hiding important medical information from parents — but it was voted down.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., introduced a Servicemember Parents Bill of Rights amendment to the NDAA to provide for more transparency and accountability in DODEA schools. It was adopted in committee with bipartisan support by a vote of 39-19 and is in the House-passed NDAA.
But Congress needs to do much more to ensure the safety of our military children and also that of any DODEA educator who is being intimidated into conformity. It will likely take years to sort out the mess at DODEA, so in the meantime, Congress could consider extending the military’s Non-DOD Schools Program to all students instead of only to those who are not in close proximity to a DODEA school.
Whatever the case, it looks like an extremist stand down is in order for DODEA, and it just might net more than the .005 percent found among our uniformed force.
Amy Haywood is a former senior legislative assistant for a U.S. House representative and an educator with years of experience working in a research-based program to help third culture kids adjust to life overseas. She holds a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College.
The United States Air Force Academy on Thursday held a seminar promoting “transgender visibility and awareness in our Air Force.” The “discussion” session focused “on awareness for transgender communities in the military,” according to a copy of an invitation for the event obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Events of this nature are part of a wholesale push by the U.S. military to foster a more culturally inclusive environment. Critics say this type of training is part of a woke cultural agenda that is being mainstreamed by the Democratic Party’s far-left flank. The Army, for instance, mandates gender identity training and instructs its officers on the best time to offer subordinates gender-transition surgery. The seminar was held on the same day the Free Beacon reported on an Air Force Academy course teaching cadets to “use inclusive language” that avoids gender pronouns.
The “transgender visibility” workshop featured two Air Force Academy faculty members, Dr. Joseph Currin and Dr. Karin De Angelis. The speakers were slated to “speak on their personal expertise and answer questions from the audience.”
The first 40 cadets to attend the seminar received a free lunch.
A cadet listed as a point of contact for the event, did not answer a Free Beacon request for comment.
A hand holds up a small transgender pride flag. The blue and pink stripes represent the colors for a boy and girl, while the white stripe represents self-declared gender identities, such as transitioning, intersex, neutral and undefined gender. | Getty Images
A journalist who has extensively covered the transgender debate recently revealed why the topic has so resonated, explaining “something inside … snapped” when he learned about what was happening to children, and the “horror” immediately motivated him to action.
Brandon Showalter, a reporter for The Christian Post, is among the most well-versed and unrelenting journalists to tackle the transgender movement, exploring the impact of puberty blockers, “disfiguring surgeries,” and the moral chaos he believes is shielding so many from the truth.
“Something inside me snapped, and I just thought, ‘Well, I’ve just got to dig into this and scrutinize this more deeply, because this is absolutely insane,'” Showalter said ona recent episode of “The Inside Story” podcast. “I just remember thinking to myself, ‘They’re doing what to children?!'”
He continued, “I just realized the extent of the horror, and I realized someone needed to step up and tell the truth about it.”
Listen to Showalter share his story on “The Inside Story” (subscribe to the show here):
Showalter believes the happenings surrounding the transgender movement constitute “one of the most grotesque health scenarios” in America, which is why he continues to lend his voice to the discussion.
For Showalter, covering the transgender movement began after he started exploring the issue and realized many journalists simply weren’t covering it from a place of truth.
Watch him join CBN’s Faithwire to explain:
“I realized that within journalism … mainstream legacy publications were using false pronouns to refer to people as the opposite sex and it was so confusing even reading news articles that I couldn’t even keep the story straight,” he said. “But then … I realized that children were being given puberty-blocking drugs.”
With the reality of what was unfolding — including the prescribing of drugs to kids he believes have no basis for being prescribed — Showalter was stunned.
“I just realized the extent of the horror, and I knew that someone had to stand up and tell the truth about it because very few people in the legacy media were,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
Showalter also began to explore stories of detransitioners — people who started or fully underwent attempts to change their sex but who came to regret their life-altering decisions. The media often shield or ignore these stories, but Showalter hasn’t backed away from delving into the tragic details.
“Theologically, I just see it as we need to stand up for the integrity of the human body. This is so horrible,” he said. “You just don’t do this to the human person … this is a medical scandal. This is one of the most grotesque, horrible medical scandals the world has ever seen.”
Showalter said even non-Christians are beginning to read his investigative reports as they deal with these issues in their own lives and families.
“The truth is true, no matter who says it,” he said.
“I hope that it pulls back the curtain. I hope that people see that this is some of the most wretched, sadistic, monstrously terrible child abuse and that it’s one of the worst medical scandals that the world has ever seen,” he said. “I hope that people are punched in the gut — that they are confronted with the raw, horrific evil that this is.”
Beyond knowledge, Showalter said he hopes people are encouraged to stand up against what’s unfolding.
What started out as an innocent remark on Instagram has left Brittany Aldean, the wife of country music singer Jason Aldean, as the target of an unhinged wave of attacks from America’s demented “Trans the Kids” crowd.
In a late-August video reel showing herself transforming “from a relatively makeup-free face into fully ready glam,” Aldean captioned the post by saying she’d “really like to thank [her] parents for not changing [her] gender when [she] went through [her] tomboy phase” and that she “love[s] this girly life.”
While only an anodyne caption, the comment evoked the ire of self-proclaimed country artist Cassadee Pope, who took to Twitter to lash out at Aldean for comparing her “‘tomboy phase’ to someone wanting to transition.”
“You’d think celebs with beauty brands would see the positives in including LGBTQ+ people in their messaging,” Pope said.
Fellow country singer Maren Morris also decided to throw her irrelevant opinion into the mix, saying, “It’s so easy to, like, not be a scumbag human” and calling Aldean “Insurrection Barbie,” in an apparent reference to the Aldeans’ previously expressed support for former President Donald Trump.
Rather than back down and cower in the face of the latest left-wing, angry mob, Aldean is doubling down and openly criticizing the demonic practice of forcibly mutilating children seemingly being championed by Pope and Morris.
“Advocating for the genital mutilation of children under the disguise of love and calling it ‘gender affirming care,’ is one of the worst evils. I will always support my children and do what I can do [to] protect their innocence,” Aldean said on Instagram. “Some parents want to be accepted by society so badly that they’re willing to make life-altering decisions for their children who aren’t old enough to fully comprehend the consequences of those actions. Love is protecting your child until they are mature enough as an adult to make their own life decisions.”
“Karen Morris, thanks for calling me Barbie,” Aldean added in response to Morris’s tweet.
Since the social media spat, Aldean has continued in professing her advocacy for children being exploited by deranged, pro-trans leftists, with the beauty-line entrepreneur recently reaffirming her views during an interview on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“I think that children should not be allowed to make these life-changing decisions at such a young age,” she said. “They are not mature enough; they should have parents who love them and advocate for them regardless. We have ages on everything. We have it for cigarettes, driving, military, voting. … Yet for some reason people think that we can let a child choose their gender so young? It’s very baffling to me.”
She continued, saying that “[t]here are so many consequences of doing that a[t] such a young age” and that “[s]ociety should be able to sit back, speak our minds about it and fight for these children.”
Aldean has since released a Barbie-inspired T-shirt with the phrase “Don’t tread on our kids,” with profits from the apparel line benefiting Operation Light Shine, a charity dedicated to helping “fight child exploitation and human trafficking.”
Aldean Is Right
Despite the hyperbolic virtue signaling from elitists like Pope and Morris, Aldean’s remarks about the realities of “transitioning” minors are 100 percent correct. Medically mutilating children’s genitals and pumping them full of wrong-sex hormones in the name of “care” is not compassionate; it’s satanic.
Just as is the case with any other weighty subject matter, most children have no clue what sex is, let alone transgenderism. The idea that minors are well-rounded and knowledgeable enough to understand the long-term implications associated with removing one’s penis or breasts is a hair-brained narrative that only the most hardcore leftists in society could convince themselves is true.
As noted by Federalist Contributor Samantha Stephenson, even among youth with gender dysphoria, “studies indicate that in all likelihood, symptoms will resolve in 93 percent of these children by the time they reach adulthood or even earlier — an outcome that is taken off the table for children subjected to experimental hormones with largely unknown effects, whose bodies are mutilated and fertility stolen.”
Ultimately, parents signing off on mutilating their child’s genitals are not doing what’s best for their son or daughter, but for themselves. From its inception, medically “transitioning” minors has always been about adults inflicting their will upon innocent, unsuspecting children, who are forced to live with the consequences of their parents’ ill-advised decision-making.
But rather than stand up and join Aldean in defending these kids, woke-ified celebrities like Pope and Morris will continue to attack anyone who dares to defy their twisted, pagan religion, which somehow convinces them that castrating and sterilizing children is both virtuous and humane. To them, who cares if these kids grow up to regret the procedure or become suicidal as a result? All that matters is getting a pat on the back from America’s residential, left-wing mob.
At the end of the day, Brittany Aldean has nothing to apologize for. The dangers of medically mutilating children are simply too horrific for society to sit in silence. Following Aldean’s lead, any and every sane American who understands the evils associated with this barbaric practice must speak up and get active, lest our children continue to pay the price.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Hand holding a paper sheet with transgender symbol and equal sign inside. | Getty
Imagine being a woman in 1972 when the Title IX Education Amendment was made law. Imagine the elation that girls and women felt when the federal government stepped in to ensure they could fairly compete in sports and other programs by banning sex discrimination.
Now imagine every gain in Title IX being wiped out by a pseudoscience that wants to erase women.
Today, an extremist Biden administration has no regard for the meaning of words. The President’s proposed radical changes to Title IX render the actual text meaningless and turn federally-funded schools into pronoun police and political propagandists for the LGBT lobby. Transgenderism has become this administration’s battering ram as it relentlessly tries to break down the walls of common sense.
Before I go any further, my nouns are factivist and myth-slayer. I can only be referred to in this way. To do otherwise would be semantic harassment.
Ridiculous, right? But this is exactly what’s happening with the Biden administration’s hostile takeover of Title IX. Thought control. Speech control. More government control. Who needs legislation when you have liberal interpretation?
Biden wants to allegedly create a world “free of discrimination” which, of course, requires a world that intensely discriminates in order to fulfill his LGBTQ+++ vision for America. We have to mangle our language, deny basic biology, promote bodily mutilation, and cheer on blatant inequality in the name of “progress.” While the Left obsesses over its emphasis on parts of speech, it dismisses the crucial importance of parts of our body.
We can no longer say what we know. We must repeat what we’re told.
The First Amendment is just part of the collateral damage in this aggressive “progressive” effort. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 never told Americans which parts of speech they have to use, or which words were acceptable, or which speech referencing race was legal. The Biden administration, on the contrary, wants federal policy to dictate personal beliefs. The “wrong” pronouns are now hate speech, and gender-specific sports (or any other programs) are unacceptably discriminatory. The solution? Forced speech and more discrimination.
In Wisconsin’s Kiel Area School District, a Title IX action was brought against three 8th grade boys for “mispronouning” a girl in their class. According to the school administration, the accused committed a crime: sexual harassment. They failed to call a single female “they” or “them”; instead, the boys used “her” and “she.” (Gasp!)
In Virginia, a popular high school French teacher Peter Vlaming was fired for using a so-called “transgender” student’s actual name instead of her “preferred pronouns.” The Virginia Supreme Court hasn’t issued its ruling yet. They ruled in favor of Loudoun County Public Schools teacher Tanner Cross who was immediately fired after speaking at a public school board meeting saying he “loved his students too much to call a boy a girl and a girl a boy.” It should be a no-brainer to rule the same for Vlaming.
When did confusion become a virtue and clarity a vice?
This indoctrination is happening in government-run schools across the country. Both students and teachers live in fear of violating rules that are unconstitutional, anti-science, and demand a new kind of discrimination that elevates all things LGBTQ above everything else. I have two sons and two daughters. My girls deserve an even playing field in sports, not one taken over by guys who “identify” as girls. Because we know how well that goes (here, here, here, and here)!
We must fight for females’ equality against the LGBT patriarchy. I’m honored to join an incredible coalition of over 140 organizations nationwide that are doing just that. Every American should. This Title IX takeover has everything to do with increasing enmity among us all, not increasing equality. I refuse to bow to an ideology that wants to erase women, punish free speech, and obliterate objective truths.
The acceptance of transgenderism as a ‘social good’ requires the rejection of basic biology, common sense, and compassion. As one of those informed and involved Loudoun County parents branded “terrorists” by the DOJ, I care about the harmful ideological climate change in our schools. And it gets worse by the day.
There’s nothing loving about promoting a lie. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity. And that starts with being told the truth.
Candidate Joe Biden once strangely proclaimed: “We choose truth over facts.” President Biden clearly chooses neither. He also said: “We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction.” This Title IX takeover is nothing but widespread division and activist fiction.
Let your voice be heard. Learn more about the major areas of concern with Biden’s new and unimproved Title IX here. You can also let the federal government know your opinions about the proposed Title IX policy changes here before September 12th.
I’m a factivist. Context brings clarity. Clarity brings comprehension. I want to slay the myth that there was any ambiguity about the text of Title IX Education Amendment of 1972.
The original Title IX text repeatedly uses the words “both sexes,” and “boys” and “girls,” “father-daughter,” “mother-son,” and refers to “the other sex” making things quite binary. In 1964, there was no confusion about what sex meant. In 2019, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Gorsuch decided in Bostock vs Clayton County to redefine the word “sex” (from the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Title VII Amendment) to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” They apparently self-identified as legislators. In the process, they and the four liberal justices enabled this supremely destructive attack on reality.
Biden has directed the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services and every other federal agency to follow suit.
Leftists understand that deliberate confusion is power. Miseducation is power. But Americans need to understand there is a difference between being empowered and being fooled by those in power.
Ryan Bomberger is the Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of The Radiance Foundation. He is happily married to his best friend, Bethany, who is the Executive Director of Radiance. They are adoptive parents with four awesome kiddos. Ryan is an Emmy Award-winning creative professional, factivist, international public speaker and author of NOT EQUAL: CIVIL RIGHTS GONE WRONG. He loves illuminating that every human life has purpose.
At the beginning of the school year in 2019, Jennifer received an email from her daughter’s 5th-grade teacher. The teacher, a male, was using a different name for her then-10-year-old daughter. Jennifer thought it was a mistake. The teacher must have accidentally emailed the wrong parent. But then, Jennifer went to her daughter’s room and found a yellow Post-It note stuck to her dresser with that same name, along with the pronouns “they/them.”
“Do you have a new nickname?” Jennifer asked.
Her daughter responded yes.
Jennifer didn’t think much of it beyond harmless identity exploration. But a couple of months later, Jennifer received a more concerning call from a school counselor informing her that her daughter had used the words “suicide” and “cutting” with a friend. The counselor recommended her daughter start seeing a therapist who was contracted with the school. That therapist was free to use, accessible during school hours, and qualified to handle her daughter’s mental health problems, Jennifer was told. Worried about her daughter, Jennifer said yes. But because her daughter was only 10 at the time, Jennifer would have to go into the school and give written permission.
Jennifer lives in a suburb of Washington state, where children as young as 13 years old can access their own medical and mental health services without parental knowledge or consent. Parents in these cases are billed by insurance companies with no explanation of benefits, meaning they’re stuck with the tab but have no ability to know what services or treatments their child received.
When consenting for her daughter to see the school therapist, Jennifer made sure to tell the therapist that her daughter had been talking about her sexuality and gender identity. She shared that while she and her husband believed their daughter was too young to be exploring these ideas, they’d “love her no matter where she ends up.” The therapist made no mention of her own views on the subject or her affirmation-based treatment model where, if a child declares he or she is transgender or non-binary, the therapist would affirm the child’s stated identity.
So, for two and a half months, Jennifer’s daughter was meeting with a school therapist once a week who was treating her as a boy, using male pronouns and a made-up name. When Jennifer would ask how the sessions were going, the therapist acted as though nothing big had come up.
‘Coming Out’
Then in February 2020, right before COVID-19 hit, Jennifer received a phone call from the school therapist with a two-fold purpose: to request that she and her husband come to the school in three days for a meeting where the therapist would assist their daughter in officially coming out to them as a boy, and to obtain parental permission to allow her daughter to stay overnight in the boy’s cabin for an upcoming school trip.
Sensing the meeting wouldn’t go well — and worse, would set them up in an adversarial position with the daughter they loved — Jennifer and her husband called it off.
“We were never going to let her do that, I don’t care who she thinks she is,” Jennifer said. “There are so many reasons not to put a girl in a cabin with a bunch of boys and a male adult teacher. So many safeguarding fails.”
At that point, Jennifer and her husband decided to take more drastic measures. They were skeptical that their 11-year-old daughter was transgender and believed the school and the therapist were actually leading her to identify as a boy. So, they revoked their consent for their daughter to see the school therapist, took away her access to online devices, and soon, unenrolled her from public school altogether.
“I already knew I couldn’t trust the school with my daughter when she was in fifth grade,” Jennifer said. “And going onto the middle school, she would be turning 13. And then I wouldn’t even know. They wouldn’t have to tell me what was going on.”
Identifying as a Boy
Jennifer’s daughter first identified as transgender when she was 10 years old and enrolled in an online drawing program. Prior to that, Jennifer and her husband had restricted their daughter’s access to online devices. But since their daughter was an artist, they agreed to what they thought was a harmless online art program.
Yet, a year and a half later, Jennifer learned it was through that group of online art friends that her daughter was introduced to ideas of sexuality and gender.
“She talked about being asexual at 10 years old,” Jennifer said. “Which of course she’s asexual at 10 years old. But that’s an identity.” She then talked about being demi sexual, gay, non-binary, and finally landed on transgender.
The transgender identity was heightened when her daughter began conversing with a group of girls at school who, at ages 10 and 11 years old, also identified as some form of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. The friends appeared to compete over who could have the edgiest, most unique identity.
“She was trying to fit in. She was trying to have friends,” Jennifer said.
Once her daughter was out of school and no longer communicating online with peers who valued queer identities, her transgender identity lost its importance. Slowly, Jennifer said, her daughter started to let it go.
‘Wasn’t Making Her Happy’
“Her mood changed drastically,” Jennifer said. Identifying as transgender “wasn’t making her happy.”
Since giving up on being transgender, Jennifer has talked with her daughter about everything that happened over the year and a half she spent exploring identifying as a boy. After repeated unanswered requests, Jennifer also obtained notes from the school therapist, which confirmed her suspicion that the therapist was encouraging her daughter’s transition behind her back.
“I was so upset because [the school therapist] was using male pronouns for my daughter from the first moment, from the first notes,” Jennifer said. “He, him. And it seemed like all that she was doing with my daughter was helping her advocate for herself whenever somebody ‘misgendered’ her.”
This included Jennifer’s older two sons, who didn’t even know their sister was identifying as a boy. It also included a boy at the school who Jennifer said got in trouble for “misgendering” her daughter.
“At the school, they’re not just affirming and encouraging my daughter in this delusion,” Jennifer said. “It’s deluding other kids too. They are teaching kids to deny their own sense perceptions.”
More recently, Jennifer felt enough time had passed that she could ask about the idea of staying in the boy’s overnight cabin for three nights without feeling embarrassed or self-conscious.
Jennifer’s daughter told her, “That wasn’t my idea. That was the school’s idea. My teacher asked me.”
“Kids want to please adults,” Jennifer said. “My daughter felt she had to answer yes.”
After that incident, Jennifer said her daughter, who is now 13, decided she didn’t want to go on the 5th-grade overnight trip. Though it wasn’t then, it’s now clear to her why.
‘Going to War Together’
Jennifer feels betrayed by educators, therapists, doctors, and liberal politicians whom she spent a lifetime supporting. That list includes President Joe Biden, who told parents in March that affirming their child’s transgender identity is “one of the most powerful things you can do to keep them safe and healthy.”
“A lot of people think that using the pronouns and affirming a child who says they’re the opposite sex, that that is about kindness,” she said, explaining:
Everybody’s very confused about this. Because the T has purposefully been attached to LGB, which is a completely separate issue. We know the LGB community was mistreated, and so people don’t want to do that again with trans-identified people, so everybody’s being super careful, and they want to be kind. But it’s a different situation. With LGB people, they’re saying, ‘Just let us be who we are.’ And there’s no medical consequences.
But with transgender-identified people or people who identify as the opposite sex, it’s very much a medical situation and it’s about the harm medicalization causes. Children are cutting off their healthy breasts and testicles and doing things to their bodies that they can’t undo. So that is completely different. Of course parents are concerned when their children identify this way because it carries a heavy medical burden which they will have for the rest of their life. They become sewn to the medical industrial complex. They will have to take drugs. They will probably have to have other surgeries. We don’t even know all the health consequences at this point. It’s an experiment happening right now on children.
In the past, most parents followed the watchful waiting approach. Children were not medically or socially transitioned, and the vast majority became comfortable with their sex when they went through puberty. Today, parents are being told that affirmation is the only acceptable response to a transgender declaration. Jennifer’s story is just one example of how there is another possible outcome if a child is not affirmed.
“They might desist,” she said. “Isn’t that preferable to a lifetime of harmful medical procedures?”
For more from IWF’s Identity Crisis series, click here.
Editor’s note: Last names have not been used to protect a minor’s privacy.
Kelsey Bolar is a contributor to The Federalist and a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Forum. She is also the Thursday editor of BRIGHT, a weekly newsletter for women, and the 2017 Tony Blankley Chair at The Steamboat Institute. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, daughter, and Australian Shepherd, Utah.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at The Rosen Shingle Creek on February 24, 2022, in Orlando, Florida. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images
If you did a case study of our political and cultural polarization and how radically different the Democratic and Republican parties are, look no further than each party’s poster boy — California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Earlier this week, GOP darling DeSantis held a press conference where he boldly stated the dangers of transgender medicine — particularly on children. “They are actually giving very young girls double mastectomies, they want to castrate these young boys. That’s wrong,” DeSantis said, “both from the health and children well-being perspective, you don’t disfigure 10, 12, 13-year-old kids based on gender dysphoria.”
Thursday, DeSantis showed the world that he meant business when he suspended Florida State Attorney for refusing to enforce state law regarding the protection of minors from gender transition treatment.
Meanwhile, in Newsom’s California, a radical bill just passed out of committee Wednesday in the state assembly that would give California courts the right to take “temporary emergency” custody of out-of-state children whose parents won’t affirm their gender identity or are stopping their children from receiving gender transition treatment. If this bill passed, California courts would even turn a blind eye if a child from another state was kidnapped from their parents or legal guardians and taken to California for the purpose of gender transitioning.
While the bill still needs to be voted on by the General Assembly and the State Senate before making its way to the governor’s desk, it’s likely to pass and be signed into law by Newsom who, last fall, celebrated signing bills that would hide abortions and gender transition treatment for California minors from their parents.
Now, rather than just submitting children who are California citizens to this dangerous medical experimentation, Newsom and the California Left are ready to export their radical gender ideology nationwide and become a top travel destination for minors looking for hormonal or surgical gender transition treatment.
While California attempts to become a “sanctuary state” for young people who identify as transgender, states across the country and even the FDA are starting to wake up to the risks of gender transition treatment for minors. In July, the Food and Drug Administration slapped a warning label on puberty blockers after six girls between the ages of five and 12 suffered from severe side effects, including tumor-like brain masses and eye paralysis.
Despite this implicit admission of the weakness and dangers of “gender-affirming care,” the radical transgender ideology train isn’t slowing down in California any time soon. In Wednesday’s committee hearing, 17-year-old Chloe Cole, who medically transitioned to become a male from the ages of 13 to 16 before transitioning back to being a female, testified against the bill. In her statement, Cole referred to her gender transition experience as “irreversible and painful” and that she “really didn’t understand all the ramifications of any of the medical decisions [she] was making.” She also expressed that her doctor “brushed off [her] parents’ concerns about the efficacy of hormones, puberty blockers, and surgeries” and “were pressured to continue [her] so-called gender journey.” Despite hearing this heartbreaking testimony, the committee passed the bill 11-4.
On the East Coast, DeSantis is ready to go to the mat to protect children like Chloe from experiencing the same sorrow and regret, while the Left in California are all too eager to help children ignore the care and concern of their parents for the sake of protecting their radical gender ideology.
As major figureheads for their respective political parties, Newsom and DeSantis offer the American electorate a snapshot of two very different paths the country can take. With California and Florida as the examples, Americans will have to choose, come November, if the United States is going to be a nation that protects children or one that experiments on them.
The Women’s March claims that the word “women” includes transgender women. A transgender woman is a biological man who identifies as a woman.
“We got some transphobes BIG mad the other day so let us spell it out for you: ‘Women’ is a term that encompasses cis & trans women. When we talk about ‘people who can give birth,’ it’s because those people aren’t all women! They’re girls, trans men, & non-binary ppl,” Women’s March tweeted on Tuesday.
Some of y'all really struggle with the concept of "assigned sex” vs "gender identity" and it shows!!
“Some of y’all really struggle with the concept of ‘assigned sex’ vs ‘gender identity’ and it shows!!” the group added. “Women’s March is committed to creating equality for women & a feminist future for all. We fight for rights that primarily (but not exclusively!) impact women. We fight for a world where ALL women are safe from gender-based violence, discrimination, and hate.”
The Women’s March received significant pushback after it declared in a tweet last week that “Trans women are women.”
“The point of tweets like this is to demoralize actual feminists, so that we stop fighting for women and girls. Don’t let it demoralize you,” Abigail Shrier tweeted last week in response to the Women’s March’s claim.
The point of tweets like this is to demoralize actual feminists, so that we stop fighting for women and girls.
“Misinformation,” Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon tweeted.
“No, they aren’t. There are massive differences between women and trans women. We can be respectful to trans people while not abandoning reality,” Megyn Kelly tweeted.
“If the point of this slogan is to reject treating ‘trans women’ and ‘women’ as separate or distinct categories of people, then the slogan undermines itself, because it refers to them as separate categories… thus implying some distinction. Otherwise, they’d say ‘women are women'” Michael Tracey commented.
If the point of this slogan is to reject treating "trans women" and "women" as separate or distinct categories of people, then the slogan undermines itself, because it refers to them as separate categories… thus implying some distinction. Otherwise they'd say "women are women" https://t.co/7LEYMUiuON
Bill Maher dared to discuss the sacred cow of transgenderism – which instantly caused progressives to attack the liberal talk show host.
During Friday night’s episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher,” the HBO host discussed a Gallup poll about the increase of Americans identifying as LGBT. The survey found, “The percentage of U.S. adults who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual has increased to a new high of 7.1%, which is double the percentage from 2012, when Gallup first measured it.”
The Gallup poll published in February said that each generation had increased by around double from the previous generation. There were 0.8% who identify as LGBT in the Silent Generation, 2.6% of Baby Boomers, 4.2% of Gen X, 10.5% of Millennials, and 20.8% of Generation Z. Maher hypothesized that some of the massive increase in people identifying as LGBTQ could be because it is currently “trendy” to be considered as such.
“Yes, part of the rise in LGBT numbers is from people feeling free enough to tell it to a pollster and that’s all to the good, but some of it is — it’s trendy,” Maher said.
Maher said, “I’m just saying when things change this much, this fast, people are allowed to ask, ‘What’s up with that?’ All the babies are in the wrong bodies?”
Maher questioned a recent statement by the American Civil Liberties Union that listed groups that would suffer “disproportionately harm” by abortion bans. The ACLU did not name women, but did mention “black, Indigenous, other people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, young people, those working to make ends meet, and people with disabilities.”
Maher asked, “Abortion rights affects gay and trans people more than you know – breeders?”
“I’m happy for LGBT folks that we now live in an age where they can live their authentic lives openly, and we should always be mindful of respecting and protecting,” Maher stated. “But someone needs to say it. Not everything’s about you.”
Maher moved on to children transitioning – which he described as “literally experimenting on children.”
He noted, “Maybe that’s why Sweden and Finland have stopped giving puberty blockers to kids because we just don’t know much about the long-term effects, although common sense should tell you that when you reverse the course of raging hormones, there’s going to be problems.”
Maher then listed the potential health risks of puberty blockers for children.
Maher then highlighted that no gay men were selected as a Grand Marshall for the upcoming New York City Pride Parade. “That’s where we are now – gay men are not hip enough for a Gay Pride Parade,” he said.
Maher pointed out that the “prime directive” of teens is to do “anything to shock and challenge the squares who brought you up. It’s why nobody gets a nose ring at 56.”
“If you attend a small dinner party of typically very liberal, upper-income Angelenos, it is not uncommon to hear parents who each have a trans kid having a conversation about that,” Maher stated, then asked, “What are the odds of that happening in Youngstown, Ohio?”
Maher inquired, “If this spike in trans children is all-natural, why is it regional?”
“Either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them,” he continued. “If we can’t admit that in certain enclaves, there was some level of trendiness to the idea of being anything other than straight, then this is not a serious, science-based discussion. It’s a blow being struck in the culture wars using children as cannon fodder.”
Maher cited Dr. Erica Anderson – a “prominent” transgender clinical physiologist – who believes some children are identifying as transgender due to the “influence of their peers and social media.”
Maher explained that children are not just “gender-fluid,” but “fluid about everything.” He added, “If kids knew what they wanted to be at age 8 – the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses.”
Maher joked, “If you are a man who wants to experience life without a pair of balls, you do not have to get surgery, you can get married.”
New Rule: Along for the Pride | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)www.youtube.com
According to multiple Twitter reactions, Maher’s monologue about LGBTQ enraged progressives. They lashed out and labeled the liberal talk show host “transphobic” and a “transphobe.”
A Twitter user accused Maher of spreading “Gay Replacement Theory.”
One activist said Maher was “spewing dangerous and hateful rhetoric.”
Some progressives demanded that HBO cancel “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
There was at least one Twitter user insinuated that Maher be sentenced to death for the crime of being a transphobe.
No cishet person has ever been culturally pressured into being anything other than cishet.
It's simply not a thing. It's a paranoid fantasy cishet people have that one day LGBTQ people will rise up and do to cishet people what was done to them for centuries. https://t.co/UUaW2WSPME
Dayum, he really went there: "This is not science. It's a blow being struck in the culture war using children as cannon fodder." https://t.co/dH1nYbumkY
— Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) May 21, 2022
Brilliant.
If this spike in trans children is all biological, why is it regional? Either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them. pic.twitter.com/t3Tx23MOsu
If this spike in trans children is all biological, why is it regional? Either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them. pic.twitter.com/t3Tx23MOsu
The nation’s public-health establishment lost all credibility during the Covid era by either ignoring or politicizing scientific data. But health bureaucrats seem to have learned nothing. With respect to the highly charged issue of gender dysphoria, they continue to substitute politics for science when necessary to advance the leftist narrative.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released an official document designed to enshrine experimental medical interventions as the standard treatment for transgender-identifying children. Prepared by HHS’s Office of Population Affairs (OPA), the document is a political statement unmoored from actual medical research.
According to “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People,” medical interventions such as puberty-blocking drugs, wrong-sex hormones, and surgical mutilation are “crucial to overall health” of young people confused about their sex. (For what it’s worth, OPA falls under the supervision of Dr. Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a woman.) The document complements a proposed rule announced by HHS in March, mandating insurance coverage for such “gender-affirming care.”
But the claims made in HHS’s new release have been deftly dismantled by an organization of physicians and scientists who still care about reality, and about ethical medical practice. The Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) — which exists “to promote safe, compassionate, ethical and evidence-informed healthcare for children, adolescents, and young adults with gender dysphoria”—points out that HHS’s discussion is deeply misleading and indeed dangerous. SEGM identifies seven serious misrepresentations of fact crammed into the two-page HHS document. Most of these involve cherry-picking, distorting, or simply ignoring the results of studies on the many facets of so-called gender-affirming treatment.
HHS Mischaracterizes Studies
For example, HHS flatly mischaracterizes a study that failed to find any benefits of “social transition” (presenting oneself as the opposite sex, with a new name, hairstyle, dress, etc.). As SEGM notes, the HHS document cites that study for the opposite conclusion, “wrongly assert[ing] that social transition improves functioning.” HHS presumably assumes readers won’t read the actual study and thus will accept the agency’s false claims about its findings.
SEGM identifies other falsifications of the supposed mental-health benefits of wrong-sex hormones and surgeries. HHS’s “claims of benefits coming from cherry-picked studies do not hold up when the entire body of evidence is properly evaluated in a systematic and reproducible way,” according to SEGM.
The design of the studies cited by HHS made it impossible to link medical interventions and improved mental health, SEGM observes. By contrast, multiple European studies “concluded that there is a lack of convincing evidence for the mental health benefit for children and adolescents of either puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.”
SEGM notes, in fact, that the Swedish health authority warned that “the risks of puberty suppressing treatment . . . and gender-affirming hormonal treatment currently outweigh the possible benefits, and that the treatments should be offered only in exceptional cases.”
HHS ignored all this research, which would have led honest medical professionals to at least acknowledge the scholarly debate about the wisdom of these interventions. But HHS isn’t run by honest medical professionals. It’s in the grip of ideologues determined to drive troubled children and their families into the clutches of the trans industry.
Dishonest Use of Data on Suicide
SEGM also criticizes the HHS document for dishonesty about the related issue of suicide among trans-identifying youth. In claiming alarmingly high rates of suicidal ideation in this population — a claim routinely used to pressure desperate parents into consenting to dangerous medical interventions — HHS relies only on “a low quality, non-probability online survey.”
In fact, SEGM reports, “recent research from one of the world’s largest pediatric gender clinics estimated the rate of suicide in trans-identified youth as 0.03% over a 10-year period, which is comparable to youth presenting for care with mental health problems.”
Even more critically, despite HHS’s strong implication that drugs, hormones, and surgeries reduce suicide rates, SEGM clarifies that “no study to date has demonstrated that transition reduces the rate of serious suicide attempts.” Is HHS afraid that telling the truth about suicide will make parents less likely to place their troubled children on the trans-industry conveyor belt?
Puberty Blockers Are Not Fully Reversible
The mendacity of HHS extends beyond misrepresenting or ignoring studies. For example, the document states, without supporting citation, that puberty blockers are fully reversible (i.e., natural puberty will resume once the drugs are discontinued). But SEGM warns about the utter dearth of research supporting this claim. In fact,
concerns have been raised that puberty blockers are psychologically irreversible (since over 95% of all treated youth proceed to cross-sex hormones), that they may harm bone development, may permanently alter the brain, that it is not yet known how they affect other vital organs, all of which undergo significant structural changes during uninterrupted puberty.
Once again, public-health agencies in Europe are more honest. As SEGM reports, Britain’s National Health Service says that “[l]ittle is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.”
But ignoring the risks of these interventions is HHS’s modus operandi. SEGM calls out the HHS ideologues for mentioning only the supposed (in some cases imaginary) benefits of interventions while failing to mention documented risks to bone development, cardiovascular health, and the mental health of patients who later regret their transition decisions.
Sterility Expected After Trans Treatments
SEGM particularly targets HHS’s failure to mention the effect on reproductive health, which is supposed to be the focus of Levine’s Office of Population Affairs. “When puberty blockers are administered in early puberty and followed by cross-sex hormones,” SEGM notes, “sterility is expected.”
HHS is silent about this potentially devastating consequence. Nor does it acknowledge the “serious ethical questions about whether adolescents can be considered competent to waive their future reproductive rights at an age when they are unlikely to be able to appreciate or predict the importance of fertility to their adult selves.”
Ethics, it appears, is not HHS’s strong suit.
HHS also misleads in stating that mutilating surgeries are “typically used in adulthood or case-by-case in adolescence.” In fact, as SEGM notes, draft recommendations from the influential (though highly politicized) World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) urge broad availability of mastectomies to patients at age 16.
Even worse, patients as young as 13 had their healthy breasts removed as part of a study funded by the National Institutes of Health – i.e., by you and me through our tax dollars. The HHS bureaucrats who prepared this report surely knew this, but distort the facts.
This HHS document, then, is a farce. As SEGM summarizes, HHS inadequately reviewed the scientific literature, issued “biased recommendations that do not acknowledge the low quality of evidence,” failed to solicit input from professionals and patients whose experiences contradict the government narrative, and utterly ignored possible alternatives to medical interventions, such as psychotherapy. The result:
This incomplete representation of the relevant issues is likely to mislead the public to believe that this is the best and only alternative, particularly when no other alternatives are mentioned. The public is also likely to erroneously assume that the risks of affirmative care are low. Patients and families are not capable of providing valid informed consent when the information they receive is inaccurate and incomplete
If the public-health establishment wants to rehabilitate its tattered reputation after the Covid debacle, this isn’t the way to do it. Health policy is too important to be entrusted to political hacks.
Jane Robbins is an attorney and a retired senior fellow with the American Principles Project in Washington DC. In that position she crafted federal and state legislation designed to restore the constitutional autonomy of states and parents in education policy, and to protect the rights of religious freedom and conscience. She is a graduate of Clemson University and the Harvard Law School.
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What Did You Say? 
Virginia college students get heated protesting Liz Wheeler’s ‘Ideology of Transgenderism’ speech
By Kyle Morris | Fox News | Published April 27, 2023 4:27pm EDT
Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/virginia-college-students-get-heated-protesting-liz-wheelers-ideology-transgenderism-speech
Conservative commentator Liz Wheeler was met by dozens of protesters Wednesday evening when she arrived to a Virginia college to deliver remarks about “transgenderism” and its impact in America.
The protest kicked off ahead of Wheeler’s arrival on the campus of James Madison University, where she delievered a speech, “The Ideology of Transgenderism,” and was challenged by a number of her detractors in attendance.
Wheeler, a podcast host who often sounds off on topics critical to the conservative agenda, was invited to speak at the event by the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter.
The demonstrators, all of whom appeared to protest peacefully against Wheeler’s appearance on campus, were captured on video gathering outside and inside the venue as they displayed signs and chanted ahead of the event.
FOX NEWS POLL: BOOK BANNING, TRANSGENDER ISSUES SEEN AS PROBLEMATIC
While several protesters gathered outside the venue, others gathered inside, just outside the room where Wheeler was slated to speak. Those demonstrators also displayed signs that featured messages protesting Wheeler’s appearance on campus and in defense of transgender people.
KANSAS BOARD SETS NEW TRANSGENDER ATHLETE RULE FOR STUDENTS
Wheeler took aim at “queer theory” during her speech, concluding it allows people to “choose your identity” and forgo your “evil identity” of being a certain race because it’s a “marginalized identity.”
Inside the event, Wheeler was also challenged by those who had opposing views about transgenderism after she finished speaking.
Wheeler went on to describe to the individual how sex change surgeries are performed on young males in America and how some sex change surgeries have resulted in death because they are “so dangerous.”
A Fox News Poll released this week found that 48% of respondents believe overly accommodating transgender policies are a major problem for public schools.
Kyle Morris covers politics for Fox News. Story tips can be sent to kyle.morris@fox.com and on Twitter: @RealKyleMorris.
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