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.
Surfed through some channels on my hotel tv. Not shocked that Bill Maher was spreading more transphobic bullshit as I clicked past. @HBO it is long past time to dump this hateful bigot. If it wasn’t transphobic it would be islamophobic. Get rid of it.
— Benjamin Ahr Harrison (@BenjaminAhr) May 21, 2022
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.
“We are being treated like criminals just because we are girls. Afghanistan has turned into a jail for us.” This is how one Afghan girl describes life under the Taliban. Girls across the country had their hopes dashed last week when Taliban authorities reneged on their promise to allow girls’ secondary schools (above 6th grade) to reopen. The decision was so last minute that the students were not told until they arrived at school Wednesday morning and had to be sent home.
One girl tearfully recounted to her mother, “Mom, they didn’t let me enter my school. They’re saying girls aren’t allowed.” Instead of attending classes and progressing in their education, she and other Afghan girls will be expected to stay inside their homes and help with housework.
The pretext given by some Taliban officials is they were unable to plan for a school uniform dress code for teenage girls. This pathetic excuse is no doubt familiar to Afghans who previously lived under Taliban rule. When the Taliban controlled Afghanistan from 1996-2001, education for girls was similarly restricted. But in recent months, Taliban officials have tried to insist that they’ve changed over the last two decades. However, all pretense of modernization within the Taliban is now over; that is a deeply tragic reality for women and girls in Afghanistan who simply want to go to school and live normal lives.
While Afghan women and girls were grieving the loss of basic freedoms and opportunities because of their sex, a very different scene played out nearly 7,000 miles away in a U.S. Senate chamber. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, to define the word “woman.” Jackson responded, “No. I can’t … I’m not a biologist.” It struck many as odd that a well-educated and successful person — whom many hail as a pioneering black woman herself — was unable or refused even to define the word “woman.”
But this ambiguity on the nature of womanhood isn’t limited to a Supreme Court confirmation hearing; it’s taking our culture by storm. In recent weeks, we’ve seen biological males who self-identify as women kicking biological females off the podium in women’s sports and taking their slots in “woman of the year” designations.
Clarity on the sexes is needed now more than ever. But the truth is not that complicated. Writing in the National Review, Madeleine Kearns explains why no one needs a degree in biology to know what a woman is: “Sex is observable at birth, detectable long after death, and demonstrable in our chromosomes, gametes, and reproductive organs. We are reminded of our sex every time we go to the bathroom or look in a mirror. The sex of the vast majority of people is identifiable at a glance.”
The West’s erasure of women puts women and girls at physical risk in shared spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms and robs them of opportunities that policies like Title IX were supposed to protect. It also has the potential to undermine global momentum on women’s rights. What does it mean for international women’s rights advocacy if the West can no longer agree on a definition for “woman?”
While the West is embroiled in debate about gender identity ideology, the heart-wrenching and horrifying situations faced by many women around the world are being overlooked. Female North Korean defectors forcibly sent back to North Korea endure rape, torture, forced labor, and forced abortions in labor camps. Young Christian and Hindu girls in Pakistan are at risk of being forcibly converted and married to their Muslim kidnappers. Uyghur women are targets of China’s genocide, undergoing brutal mandatory sterilization, forced abortions, and arbitrary detainment.
Women have come a long way in gaining equal rights and protections in much of the world. Yet, the West does a disservice to those women still fighting for basic rights when it sidelines their plight in favor of trendy, dangerous, and incoherent gender identity ideology.
Women and girls around the world aren’t being helped by the West’s newfound confusion about the sexes. We shouldn’t be afraid to say what a woman is — a biological female — and defend the human dignity of women around the world. We must convey the value and goodness of women’s unique qualities — not ignore them, undermine them and certainly not erase them.
We’re constantly told, amusingly, by the Left to “follow the science!” When we follow actual science, we get shouted down, censored, purged, and called terrorists. There are only two genders: male and female. I know this triggers those with progressive fragility. For anyone struggling with gender dysphoria, there is help and hope in counseling (as long as it’s still legal). There is an all-out assault on women, and it’s global. It’s a rhetorical, social and political attack intent on erasing objective truths such as what makes women beautifully and biologically different.
Modern feminists decry “the Patriarchy” that keeps women from being equal. Those same fake feminists then celebrate when “the Patriarchy” pretends to be a woman and eviscerates centuries-long efforts of equality. William “Lia” Thomas. Richard “Rachel” Levine. Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner. Roderick “Laverne” Cox. The list goes on and on of the co-optation of women.
These men can be “women,” but a white woman (e.g. Rachel Dolezal) can’t identify as a black woman? Why not?
If self-identity is reality and confers upon you all the rights and privileges of the co-opted identification, why did we bother even having confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson? Couldn’t she just “identify” as a Supreme Court Justice? How can a jurist claim, “I am a woman” and then infamously fail to offer any definition of what a woman is?
I’m not a mechanic, but I can define a car. No one needs to be a biologist to know what a boy is, what a girl is, what a man is, or what a woman is. Only progressives, who want to mangle language and deny basic science, pretend they don’t know the obvious. A judge must be able to rule on objective criteria. Judge Jackson calls herself a woman insisting there should be “meaningful numbers of women” on the Supreme Court, yet she has no objective definition for a “woman”?
The American Medical Association is “following the science” by insisting that our sex designation be removed from our public birth certificates. Why? Well, sex is “determined at birth” they say, defying over a century of scientific knowledge.
That fave mantra of the pro-abortion Left, “No uterus! No say!”, is now rendered meaningless because anyone can identify as a woman. Whoops. Sorry. I meant a “non-prostate owner.” At least that’s what Teen Vogue is preaching to young girls (or whoever reads the soft-porn mag targeting kids).
The leader of this erasure of women is the self-anointed “leading women’s healthcare provider,” Planned Parenthood. They’re super sciency of course. “Your genitals don’t make you a boy or a girl,” the nation’s leading abortion business falsely claims. You know, because our genitals aren’t based on our sex which is determined by our DNA at fertilization — the moment human life begins.
Years ago, Planned Parenthood Action — the political arm that is indistinguishable from its 501c3 parent organization — tweeted a classic erasure of women. “Menstruators in New York started to #TweetTheReceipt celebrating the repealed tampon tax.”
Planned Parenthood’s web pages dealing with pregnancy have purged every reference to the biological label. The abortion giant’s president, Alexis McGill Johnson, won’t even refer to women as “women.” In warning people-formerly-known-as-women of Idaho’s six-week abortion ban (which protects mothers and their unborn children), Johnson tweeted: “it will harm pregnant people and disproportionately impact marginalized communities.”
Women are now the marginalized community.
The highly political CDC also refers to women as “pregnant people.” In pushing their distorted COVID propaganda, the Centers for Dialogue Control tweeted: “Pregnant people with symptomatic COVID-19 have a 70% increased risk of death.”
You’ve got the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine wanting to use the term “chestfeeding” to be “inclusive” of “lactating people.” I’m not making this up! They claim that fathers experience “complications while chestfeeding” too. Yes. Because we don’t lactate. That would be a definite biological “complication.”
The Senate Committee on Oversight and Reform (led by Democrats) declared that “Health equity for Black birthing people is attainable.” How can (fake) equity be attainable if a simple definition of women is so escapable?
President Biden’s FY2022 budget deleted women, too, referring to mothers as “birthing people.” I’m sure he’s used that term affectionately with the First Lady (or is it First Person?), calling the mother of his children one of those pregnant people or Jill-the-birthing-person.
Interestingly, the Left is doing what Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger accused the so-called Patriarchy of doing. She wrote in her book Women and the New Race: “Woman’s role has been that of an incubator and little more.” Well. Welcome to 2022. Where women’s biological designation is being eviscerated to appease biological men who can never share in the experience of the natural acts of pregnancy and birth.
The ACLU even changed a famous quote from the late pro-abortion Ruth Bader Ginsburg to erase the very people she was talking about. Their tweet changed the clearly offensive parts that mentioned “woman” and “her” to: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being and dignity … When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.”
I’m no fan of RBG or her actual quote because the undignified act of harming or killing another innocent human being never gives anyone equality. But this global progressive campaign to erase women sees binary gender as an oppressive biological reality that must be excised from our lexicon.
So, “follow the pseudoscience” or be branded a hater. Too many Americans cower in fear of being called some form of -phobic. Who cares? Love people enough to speak the truth. When did confusion become the virtue we uphold instead of clarity and compassion?
These attacks on the dignity of women are rooted in a lie. Politicians know it. Planned Parenthood knows it. And so does a dangerously leftist judge who may tragically sit, for generations, on a Supreme Court currently made up of men and, yes, women.
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.
As part of a social studies class, a New Jersey public middle school forced students to watch a video about a transgender man’s hormone treatment—all without notifying parents. The video, “Ten Years on Testosterone,” details the transition of LGBT activist Aydian Dowling through hormone injections. Teachers and administrators at Pearl R. Miller Middle School in Kinnelon, N.J., did not notify parents about the lesson, which included slideshows with definitions of different gender ideologies, beforehand.
“You can build up the courage to stand up for yourself in a way that this is what you want to do with your life,” Dowling says in the video after injecting testosterone.
Dowling later spoke at a school-wide assembly as part of the school’s “Stories of Adversity & Resilience Program,” about which administrators notified parents ahead of time, giving them the option to opt out their children. Concerned parents flocked to a school board meeting last Thursday, where board members admitted parents should have similarly been informed about the hormone therapy video.
“I felt as if I was blindsided,” Loren Malfitano, whose two sons were shown the video, told the Washington Free Beacon. “They’re learning about this ideology of gender before they even have classes on the actual biologizes of males and females.”
The school superintendent did not respond to a request for comment.
The tension over sex education in New Jersey is one of many examples across the country where concerned parents battle public schools over radical gender and sexuality curricula. Florida received national attention in March after the state legislature passed a bill that bans lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in K-3 classrooms.
New Jersey is set to enact updated health standards in September pushed by Democratic governor Phil Murphy that teach second-graders about genitalia, reproduction, and “gender expression.”Fifth-graders will be required to define masturbation and differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity, and eighth-graders will have to define gender identity, gender expression, vaginal sex, oral sex, and anal sex. The governor-appointed New Jersey Board of Education adopted the standards in 2020.
Planned Parenthood praised the state’s plan, which the group noted aligns with the updated National Sex Education Standards. These national standards, which were written by three advocacy groups that rake in tens of millions of dollars from the CDC and liberal donors, suggest that elementary students should be taught about hormone blockers.
The Center for Garden State Families, a nonprofit that aims to fight back against progressive gender curricula in schools, first spread the news of the hormone treatment video shown to middle schoolers. Josh Aikens, a father of 6- and 2-year-old sons, has pushed back against radical sex education standards as a school board member in nearby Lafayette, N.J., saying parents nationwide need to be involved in what their children are learning.
“I don’t need them to learn about sex,” Aikens told the Free Beacon in regards to his children. “The communities should determine what is taught in schools because they’re paying the bills for it.”
The last several years can be viewed as a testament to the remarkable strategic power the woke left wields. The speed at which absurd ideas have been thrust into the limelight by vested media and a wide array of well-financed academics and non-profits is both startling and impressive. Not long ago, it would’ve been unimaginable that a seven-year-old boy’s innocent preference for Polly Pockets over Power Rangers would find its tragic end in puberty blockers, chemical castration, and 15 minutes of fame on Snapchat’s explore page. Calling this abuse doesn’t encapsulate the full extent of the damage. It is a culturally bolstered, politically incentivized mass grooming campaign with a disturbing history. Even worse, this all may be eclipsed by a much darker future should it continue unabated.
The push for childhood transgenderism is predicated on a perverse and extreme individualistic sentiment, specifically that children’s rights as individuals imply an autonomous ability to make irreversible decisions regarding their health, rather than require protection from parents and a culture that fend off all that endangers the most vulnerable. The dangerous claim that children can meaningfully consent to puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, or genital mutilation is, besides itself being deeply harmful, also leading our society down a sinister path towards accepting pedophilia. Here’s how.
A Legacy Of Abuse
Unfortunately, this isn’t speculative fear-mongering. Pedophilic child abuse has deep roots in the transgender movement. John Money, a sex researcher who paved the way for acceptance of childhood transgenderism, sexually abused his young patients and defended pedophilia. Money is infamous for the series of experiments he ran on David Reimer, the first child who was born developmentally normal yet underwent a sex-change operation. After Reimer’s botched circumcision, Money saw an opportunity to test his leftwing gender theories. He convinced Reimer’s parents to raise their son as a daughter and subject him to a sex change operation. Reimer and his twin went on to be studied and abused by Money, who according to a peer-reviewed biology encyclopedia from Arizona State University forced them to “engage in behavior resembling sexual intercourse” while he watched and took pictures. Despite this, Money failed to get Reimer to adopt a feminine identity. Reimer, who didn’t know he had been born male until the age of 14, frequently behaved in a masculine manner and resisted Money’s attempts to feminize him.
According to Reason Magazine’s Books Editor Jesse Walker, Money “touted himself as a defender of sexual liberation: for the rights of gays and other sexual minorities, for legalized pornography, for breaking down social taboos.” When his abuse of the twins was exposed, he insulted his critics as “anti-feminist” bigots beholden to traditional gender roles.
Reimer’s life eventually ended in the same tragic way that still disproportionately claims the lives of so many transgender people when he committed suicide at the age of 38. As if it wasn’t sinister enough, Reimer’s case was used to justify thousands more sex reassignment surgeries on children born with genital abnormalities.
Transsexual Pioneer Also Supports Pedophilia
Money also used his stature as a prominent academic to defend pedophilia. The pedophilic organization North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) even references a quote from an interview with Money that explicitly endorses pedophilia in an attempt to normalize their pathology. None of these revelations have prevented academics from lauding this moral monster as a founding father of the transgender movement. Terry Goldie, the author of a biography on Money, explained that Money “didn’t search for biological evidence of transgender identity, but accepted a patient’s conviction as fact.”
Anke A. Ehrhardt, a research partner and disciple of Money, similarily noted his role in the transgender movement, calling him a “pioneer,” crediting him with the introduction of terms like “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” and pointing out his role in our culture’s departure from a biological understanding of sex.
Erhrardt, who was directly involved in the Reimer case, still has a foothold in academia and is now the director of the Division of Gender, Sexuality, and Heath, and The Program for the Study of LGBT Health, a project of Columbia University. The abuser is also honored with the John Money Fellowship for Scholars of Sexology at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, which specifically seeks out those “whose research interests concern the history, politics, and methodology of sexology and sexuality studies.” The institute is named after Alfred Kinsey, another leftwing sex researcher venerated by NAMBLA. Kinsey, who worked alongside transgender activists to normalize gender dsyphoria, also mainstreamed the concept of gender fluidity through experiments that featured the systematic sexual abuse of children and even babies as young as two months old, according to his own books. Kinsey heavily influenced both Money and Harry Benjamin, the latter of whom has been called the “father of transexualism.”
Make no mistake, the transgender movement is predicated on a psuedo-academic legacy that’s replete with the most egregious crimes against children.
The Threat Of A Legacy Fulfilled
It isn’t hard to identify the same trend in the modern incarnations of transgenderism and adjacent movements. Here I highlighted numerous attempts to normalize pedophilia by various entities, the most pertinent being a New York Times article that referred to the serial rape of a 13-year-old homeless victim of transgender groomers as selling sex.
As children are lured into the world of transgenderism, they become open to a number of abuses beyond cross-sexual treatments. One study found that children with a recent onset of gender dysphoria (62.5 percent of whom had previously been diagnosed with “at least one mental health disorder or neurodevelopmental disability”, began to isolate themselves from their families and distrust those who weren’t trans, both of which lead to further isolation.
To make matters worse, transgender figures have told children that “it’s okay to walk away from unsupportive … parents” and to exchange them for a “glitter family, your queer family,” before inviting these children to call or Skype him. And what do “supportive” families look like anyways? How many “supportive” families have encouraged their children to become trans in exchange for social media’s fleeting dopamine hits?
Oops… kid admits in a TikTok live that his mom would convince him to join the LGBT+ community and wants him to be part of it pic.twitter.com/6xCfzjeJhk
The grooming has been institutionalized in American schools, with campus organizations like the Gay-Straight Alliance that seek to “train youth leaders” finding financial favor from Soro’s Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Weingart Foundation, Vans, The California Endowment, and various other elite organizations. The Federalist broke news that America’s second-largest school district, which is associated with GSA, has been holding LGBT club meetings for 4-year-olds and hosted a nurse who discussed “medical transition.” The district refused to answer whether parents were required to accompany children to such meetings.
These moneyed efforts are capitalized on by teachers who’ve used the club to groom children to become transgender under the nose of unsuspecting parents who are subsequently lambasted for not being “supportive.”
These People Aren’t Kidding. You Shouldn’t, Either
Yes, they are coming for your children. It’s a feature, not a bug. The history of transgenderism proves this. You shouldn’t expect them to stop unless you make them through protecting your kids, coordinated activism, and community involvement. If you don’t, it likely won’t be long before it’s argued that children who can allegedly consent to sexual surgeries should also be able to consent to sexual relationships. If such a hellish future seems unimaginable, consider that any number of the outgrowths of sexual progressivism would’ve been beyond the pale only a decade ago.
Alternatively, turn your attention to a 1977 open letter in France from 69 people that defended three pedophiles and argued for the age of consent to be lowered below 15. It also contended that 13-year-old girls, by virtue of receiving birth control pills, should have the legal right to consent to sex. One of the signers was critical theorist Michel Foucault, who would later have a sizeable impact on the field of queer theory that now dominates American society.
Child grooming is already commonplace within the transgender movement as it has been since its inception and attempts to normalize pedophilia have already hit the mainstream.
We Can’t Accept Half Measures In The Defense Of Children
If there was ever an instance in which the right needed moral courage and a healthy dose of stubbornness, this is one of them. You can defeat this, but not alone.
This movement is backed by an array of NGOs, elite interests, and pallets of cash. It’s pivotal that you find like-minded people in your church and community and that you employ all legal and ethical means to collectively reject the dangerous insanity that’s being foisted on your children. For all the risks this comes with, you can be certain that cowardice bears a heavier cost, both on your children and on your psyche. But here’s cause for celebration: this moment is begging to be met by those who have the courage to do so.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
Davis Joint Unified School District in Davis, California, pushed leftwing distortions of gender and critical race theory through its Office of School Climate, which taught staff that “gender is a scam” and advertises the White Privilege Conference on March 9-12, 2022. The office is “responsible for supporting district staff and recommending and piloting ways to address structural oppression and to enhance school climate, equity, diversity, and inclusion,” according to their website.
The district, which includes approximately 8,500 TK-12 students throughout 16 different schools, also recently voted to adopt an Ethnic Studies requirement, which a press release notes will “explore issues of identity, analyze systems of power” and “examine social movements.”
Distortions Of Gender
The district’s site features a number of different resources that pushed radical leftwing distortions of gender. One presentation called “Supporting LGBTQ+ Students and Staff” was given to staff members at Harper Junior High School in May 2021 by two of the school’s teachers, both of whom use “they/them” pronouns. One also uses the abbreviation “Mx.” in lieu of Mr., Ms., or Mrs.
One slide bore a pride flag with transgender colors and black and brown stripes, both of which “sought to further represent the queer and trans identities of black and brown people.” Another one linked to a video titled “Gender is a Scam,” which compels audiences to “decolonize their language,” while a linked article called “15 Things LGBTQ people of colour want you to know” tells you “Why you might be guilty of white fragility.”
The slideshow instructed staff to use the pronouns they/them until someone says his pronouns and told them that “Posters/flags that support LGBTQ+ people are just the beginning” before going on to ask, “does your curriculum center primarily white/cis/straight voices?” The same slide warns against using medical and scientifically accurate terminology in regard to gender.
Meanwhile on the office’s LGBTQIA+ Supports page, a link to the activist group Human Rights Campaign promoted “LGBTQ+ Inclusive Picture and Middle School Books,” some of which are even aimed at children in pre-k. A link to the USC Rossier School of Education’s site “Students and Gender Identity Guide for Schools” also features a “Gender Identity Glossary for Schools” with woke vocabulary terms like “deadnaming,” “gender expansive,” “polygender,” “third-gender,” and “two spirit.”
Critical Race Theory and the White Privilege Conference
The office also promotes a trove of critical race theory resources intended for students, families, staff, teachers, and administrators under the subheading “Anti-Bias and Racial Justice.” The site opens by promoting free webinars from Embrace Race, a left-wing organization aimed at young children. Their webinars bear titles like “Addressing Racial Injustice with Young Children” and “RaceTalk among White Families Post-Floyd. Now What?”
The White Privilege Conference, a project of The Privilege Institute, is also promoted to staff members. The annual conference, not to be confused with the institute’s similarly named White Privilege Symposium, intends to provide “an opportunity for participants to discuss how white privilege, white supremacy, and oppression affects daily life while giving strategies for addressing issues of privilege and oppression and advancing social and economic justice.”
Last year’s conference hosted Robin DiAngelo, who discussed the subject of her latest book “nice racism,” which condemned all white people, including the far-left white people who comprise her audience, as definitionally racist.
The conference featured myriad workshops each day, which boasted titles like “Critical Race Theory/Critical Race Feminism: Creating a Plan of Action during the Biden-Harris era,” “A Good Womyn is Hard to Find,” and “The Making & Remaking of Whiteness.” The institute also hosts the Youth Action Project, with one-day institutes geared towards middle schoolers and high school students.
The district’s office also advertises the 1619 Project curriculum alongside a site called Learning for Justice, which they note “offers excellent, teacher-developed classroom curriculum.”
‘Dismantle White Supremacy’
Included under the heading “For Teachers, Staff, and Administrators” are K-12 frameworks for anti-bias and social justice education from Learning for Justice, a project of the extremist Southern Poverty Law Center whose mission is to “dismantle white supremacy” and “strengthen intersectional movements” by pushing critical race theory into schools.
One such video from The New York Times titled “A Conversation with White People on Race” features white people expressing guilt over their alleged privilege, with one person remarking “We’re all implicated in a racist system, and I play my part in it as a white person.”
The office adds that they have a library of books and videos for staff, including one titled “Cracking the Codes and Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible.”
Meanwhile, students and families are also directed to a number of critical race theory-inspired resources, including one link to a site titled “100 Race-Conscious Things You Can Say To Your Child To Advance Racial Justice,” which includes quotes of things parents have told their children when discussing race. Particularly striking is number 53, which makes the claim that “if you are White and you commit a crime … police might say ‘that was wrong, don’t do that again,’ and that’s all…but if you are Black and commit the same crime, they might arrest you and you might go to prison.” One quote under the subtitle “police violence” discusses black victims of police brutality, writing“The man who killed them didn’t like brown skin. He had white skin like us.”
The list isn’t exclusively focused on race, however, also promoting left-wing distortions of sex with quotes like“You know, some people are born with penises but feel like girls on the inside and some people are born with vaginas but feel like boys on the inside. We can’t always tell if someone is a boy or a girl just by looking at them and that’s okay.”
“Guidelines for Strong White Allies” is also included on the district’s list. Among the guidelines were requests for “resources,” “money,” and even “your body on the line.” Author Paul Kivel also told “white allies” to “understand and learn from the history of whiteness and racism” and to “assume racism is everywhere, every day.”
An anti-racist book list for children promoted by the district explains how parents can ease children into CRT by first starting “very gently” with entirely unobjectionable books that “just show kids that racial diversity exists.” The goal, however, is to eventually employ books that discuss “racial privilege, colorism, and the subtle tools that uphold white supremacy, such as white fragility and respectability politics.”
The district’s previous superintendent John Bowes signaled his belief in the leftist claim that America is fundamentally racist when, after the conviction of Derek Chauvin, he sent out a message explaining that he was reminded of the need to “rid our country of the systemic bias and institutional racism that exists in all parts of our society.” He went on to explain that “public education, including DJUSD schools, are part of the solution.”
Davis Joint Unified School District’s promotion of both critical race theory and leftist distortions of sex are part of a broader leftwing push in K-12 institutions throughout the country. In California alone, other districts have lied about teaching CRT, hosted LGBT clubs for four-year-olds, paid extremist organizations to “disrupt whiteness,” and promoted material that tells students to use witchcraft against those who say “all lives matter.”
The politicized nature of California’s government schools, along with general concerns regarding quality of education, may lead some to support a recently launched bipartisan campaign to pass a school choice initiative in the golden state.
Neither Superintendent Matt Best nor Climate Coordinator Kate Snow responded to The Federalist’s request for comment.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
Events happened this year that would have been believed impossible not long ago, with new lows and technological advances.
The world seemed to get closer to spinning out of its orbit in 2021. If you’d told me five years ago that men would be treated as women, criminals would not be prosecuted, and censorship would be widespread, I wouldn’t have believed you.
What were once considered the most basic, scientific truths (such as that you’re born with your sex and can’t change it) have broken down. Governments are no longer serving their primary function of providing security and protecting borders.
There are many more. As I reflected on the past year, here are just some of the many things that happened in 2021 that I never would have believed possible if someone had foretold them to me just five years ago.
1. Men As Women
The trend that most would have shocked my grandparents is transgenderism. Men are now competing with women in sports and being housed with women in prison. In 2021, President Biden appointed a man as a four-star admiral and proclaimed this was the “first” “female” “four-star officer.”
2. Blocking Puberty
A second shocker is that parents are enabling young children to try to change genders with dangerous surgeries and puberty blockers. Many public schools have a policy of not telling parents if their son or daughter has adopted a transgender identity at school.
3. Drafting Women
Third, the United States narrowly avoided a draft for women, which was supported by many elected officials in the “conservative” party.
Millions of immigrants have crossed illegally into the United States this year, in record numbers. The Biden administration also considered paying $450,000 in reparations to illegal immigrant families separated at the border.
6. Widespread Censorship
The former president of the United States is still banned from Facebook and Twitter. Big Tech censors debate on the most important topics of the day. Comedians can’t make jokes.
7. Parents Labeled Terrorists
Parents were labeled “domestic terrorists” by the Biden Justice Department for showing up at school board meetings with complaints. Schools aren’t telling parents what they teach and politicians are denying the obvious – young children are being taught, using public funds and institutions, that their country is racist.
8. President’s Mental Abilities Doubted
President Biden misspeaks regularly, to the point that many commentators doubt he’s really the one running the country.
9. Asking Athletes for Advice
People turn to athletes and actors more and more for their advice and opinions as many other societal leaders seem to have abdicated their duties to lead.
10. Record Debt and Inflation
With record U.S. national debt, the money supply increased by more than a third in 18 months. The United States is experiencing the worst inflation in 40 years. Energy prices are up, and one of the bigger events of the year was in May, when the main pipeline carrying gasoline to the East Coast was shut down due to a cyberattack.
11. Covid Restrictions Continue and Some Increase
Initially sold as “two weeks to slow the spread,” lockdowns, mask, and vaccine mandates continue two years since COVID-19 started. Some U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C. are now segregating people from public places to penalize their independent assessment of their medical risks.
12. Major Scientific Advances Not Celebrated
Every year brings some surprises and new scientific advances, but this year, living in a time of such great division in society, these breakthroughs were not universally celebrated.
Surely the greatest impact of science this year was the widespread rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. Thankfully, the vaccines have saved countless lives. But many had hoped they would mean life could return to normal; instead, lockdowns and mask mandates continue and vaccines have become yet another point of division, with the vaccinated pitted against the unvaccinated.
A huge portion of the world’s population has been willing to get the jab and trust relatively new Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, but some have been doubtful and resisted coercion and mandates as they have made their own judgments about natural immunity and risk. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “mRNA vaccines are newly available to the public. However, researchers have been studying and working with mRNA vaccines for decades.”
Doubts have been sown because the vaccines don’t completely prevent infection or transmission, but also because the public has lost faith in science as it was politicized by scientists, the administration, bureaucrats, the media, and Big Tech – from discussion of the origins of COVID to its treatment and prevention.
Surely we could at least joyfully celebrate science when the long-time human dream of private space travel became more of a reality in 2021? Three billionaires made expeditions to this frontier. It was a massive milestone, but was criticized by some as a waste of money and an ego trip.
13. Losing Our Lead
While traveling to space sure sounds sci-fi, the United States is losing its lead in science. China continued its advances toward surpassing the United States in technology, surprising U.S. officials by launching a supersonic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The missile circled the earth once and barely missed its target.
It “approached its target traveling at least five times the speed of sound — a capability no country has previously demonstrated,” according to The Financial Times. The Pentagon is unsure how “China overcame the constraints of physics by firing countermeasures from a vehicle travelling at hypersonic speeds.”
China may also be behind some of the Unidentified Flying Objects seen by U.S. military pilots over the past two decades, according to a long-awaited Pentagon report this year, which could not explain the origin of the UFOs.
Even with all this bad news, our nation has so much to be grateful for. But looking at the societal chaos and dystopian scientific advances, it’s no wonder some think the end is nigh. For now, we can hope that Republican wins last November show that many Americans will vote for change in the next election.
And maybe we should celebrate those billionaires escaping Earth after all.
Eleanor Bartow is the features editor at The Federalist. She worked as an editor at The Daily Caller and an investigative reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation. She was editor-in-chief of the American Enterprise Institute’s magazine, The American, and a reporter for Congressional Quarterly. Her articles have also been published with The New York Times, The Washington Post, Real Clear Investigations, National Geographic News, The International Herald Tribune, and The American Spectator. She has been interviewed on Fox News Radio, National Public Radio, and WABC. She received a Fulbright Professional Grant in Journalism and was a fellow with the Claremont Institute and National Review Institute.
A Canadian human rights tribunal has ruled that a restaurant wrongfully fired an employee who demanded that the business use nonbinary pronouns, awarding the ex-employee $30,000. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal released a ruling last week in favor of Jessie Nelson, a former employee of Buono Osteria who prefers the pronouns of they/them. At issue was the restaurant using female pronouns for Nelson, with the business firing her and claiming that she had become too “militant” in the demand to be identified as nonbinary.
Tribunal Member Devyn Cousineau authored the opinion, concluding that the refusal to use Nelson’s preferred pronouns “amounted to discrimination.”
“All employees have the right to a workplace free of discrimination. Trans employees are entitled to recognition of, and respect for, their gender identity and expression. This begins with using their names and pronouns correctly,” wrote Cousineau.
“Like a name, pronouns are a fundamental part of a person’s identity. They are a primary way that people identify each other. Using correct pronouns communicates that we see and respect a person for who they are.”
The decision contrasted the actions of someone who uses a correct pronoun at first before accommodating a person by using the individual’s preferred pronoun and someone who intentionally refuses to use the preferred pronouns of an individual who identifies as nonbinary.
“I order Buono Osteria to include a statement in its employee policies that affirms every employee’s right to be addressed with their correct pronouns,” continued the tribunal. “I also order Buono Osteria to implement mandatory training for all staff and managers about human rights in the workplace. This training should be no less than two hours. I understand that Jessie Nelson has recommended a well‐regarded training provider and I encourage the restaurant to avail itself of this option.”
Tanner Hnidey, a Christian writer from Alberta, penned a column on his website denouncing the ruling as a rejection of objective truth and a disturbing restriction on free speech.
“Now it’s one thing for a person to think they are a different gender than they actually are. It’s one thing for a man to believe he’s plural when he’s singular in reality,” wrote Hnidey.
“It’s quite another thing to force us to believe what another believes; coercing us to say what others want us to say. And that’s precisely what the BC Human Rights Tribunal ruled.”
“There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation,” said Elizabethan sage Walter Raleigh.
Or, as an anonymous patriot of his period put it to would-be agitators in his nation: “You will chip away and chip away until nothing is left that makes Scotland Scotland.”
Wallace Henley, former Senior Associate Pastor of 2nd Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. | Photo by Scott Belin
One looks now at the drastic alterations of America’s spiritual, psychological, social, and political DNA, and the mutating dynamics they set loose upon the nation’s very being, and wonders if America will be America for the present generation’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Scientists like Francis Collins taught us much about the human genome and the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that carries the information and genetics forming the nature of a person.
Collins led the task force that decoded the human genome. On the day of the announcement, President Clinton said: “We are learning the language in which God created life… We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.”
On this July 4th it would be a good idea for Americans everywhere to reflect on the beauty and wonder of the “DNA” that formed the best of America.
Ages ago God led Moses and his people into the Sinai wilderness and to the foot of Mount Sinai. God summoned Moses up the mountain to renew His Covenant with the people. Receiving that Covenant would give birth to the nation, Israel. God made it clear that Israel must not worship the gods of the Canaanites lest they become like the Canaanites. (See Exodus 34)
So, to worship the “gods of the land” is to take on the spiritual “DNA” of the people of the land, and to take on the identity of the people of the land is to adopt their gods.
For example, previous generations in America—including people and churches identifying as Christian—embraced slavery, in conformity with their culture.
Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, nevertheless could not quiet the voice of judgment within his mind and heart: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
And it did not.
A nation-rending war resulted. Succeeding generations learned little and perpetuated discrimination through officially sanctioned racism and segregation.
God warned that If Israel worshiped the “gods of the land” when it arrived in Canaan, then Israel would cease to be Israel and lose its purpose and destiny.
America is by no means the “new Israel,” but she has had remarkable blessings of liberty, prosperity, and security.
God’s aim in history is for the good news of His beautiful Kingdom to be proclaimed to all the inhabited earth. This is the business, not of the state, but of the church within the nation. For this mission to be carried out there must be freedom of religion so the church can go about its business, and have the material means to take the gospel globally.
Any nation that permits such freedom will be blessed. The health of a nation, therefore, is in direct ratio to the health of the church within the nation.
Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington explored what we refer to here as America’s “DNA” in his book, Who Are We? There he discussed the American “Creed” comprised by these and other “DNA” components:
Liberty
Equality
Democracy
Individualism
Human rights
The rule of law
Private property
Huntington did not shy from crediting the Judeo-Christian worldview as the source of these elements of America’s spiritual “DNA”.
If there is socio-cultural sin in our past and present it is not because these principles were corrupt but because sinful human beings of all persuasions corrupted the “DNA”. We have too often worshiped the “gods of the land” and in the process defiled the Source of our blessings, to the hurt of many and alteration of our national character.
The present struggle in American society and culture spans the past, present, and future. All the generations are at stake: We are ashamed of the sins of the past, hopeless in the conflicted present, and anxious about an uncertain future.
Therefore, this Fourth of July we must reflect on the sobering truth of what will happen as America’s “DNA” is altered. The nation will go…
From the conviction that God is Transcendent—above all and to Whom all must give an account, including government—to the belief that there is nothing Transcendent but ourselves and ultimately our rulers
From the freedom not to believe to enforced state or cultural religion
From churches to re-education centers
From schools pursuing knowledge to schools indoctrinating
From the Bible as God’s revelation to us and the source of our formative worldview to the displacement of the Bible from public life
From constitutionalism to tyrannical edict
From healthy individuality to collectivism
From a free market economy to a state-controlled economy
From democracy to oligarchy through the elite establishments of Information, Entertainment, Academia, Politics, Corporations
From mature independence to socialist dependency
From a healthy respect for just law to antinomianism
From unity to fragmentation
From freedom of religion to bondage to the secular humanist religion of the state
From nuclear family to state-determined family
If all that happens our national “DNA” will be altered so drastically that America will no longer be America.
A violent revolution will not save America. The matter at the core is spiritual and only a spiritual revolution, “great awakenings,” will save us.
Pulpits must once again reach into the depths of biblical revelation and proclaim the Kingdom of God rather than the therapeutic or prosperity “gospels”.
Congregations must learn anew the importance of going to their knees… standing in the “gap” … for their nation before God.
ABOUT THE COMMENTATOR:
Wallace B. Henley’s fifty-year career has spanned newspaper journalism, government in both White House and Congress, the church, and academia. He is author or co-author of more than 20 books. He is a teaching pastor at Grace Church, the Woodlands, Texas.
The country’s most powerful business interests are openly collaborating with a radical advocacy group to push sweeping legislation that would set women back decades at the expense of an extreme, elite agenda. The left’s historic skepticism of corporate power has morphed into a demand for more of it.
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT activist group with far-left interests, has assembled a coalition of the world’s most powerful corporations to support the Equality Act. Scroll through the incredible list and you’ll find massive corporations from Amazon to Bain to Best Buy aligned with HRC’s radical mission.
The Equality Act, passed by the House on Thursday, is a deeply radical bill that would put women in danger, erode free speech and religious rights, and destroy Title IX gains for girls’ sports. These claims about its potential consequences are not a cartoonish right-wing intimidation campaign — they are agreed upon by conservatives and honest progressive, feminist experts alike.
Republicans and Democrats should not be intimidated by the far-left’s false advertising of the bill as a commonsense measure to protect oppressed and vulnerable members of the public. There are ways to protect transgender Americans that do not involve putting women in danger while quashing free speech, girls’ sports, and religious freedom.
Corporate America, along with the media, is now run by extremists who’ve brought radical cultural leftism from academia into the corridors of power. They now share the very same cultural priorities as far-left groups like HRC. The effect of this shared cultural consensus is that businesses use their corporate power to push radical cultural leftism on the rest of the country because the media demands and cheerleads such efforts, eliminating the risk of bad press.
The strain of elite leftism that dominates our corporate institutions operates on a firm progressive-or-bigot binary, meaning even a pro-trans leftist like J.K. Rowling faces intense charges of bigotry because she’s skeptical of extreme aspects of the trans agenda. That means baby boomer bosses are intimidated into signing onto efforts like HRC’s Equality Act push and millennial executives and journalists demand it.
Because this progressive-or-bigot binary has such a chilling effect on free expression, extreme elements of the trans agenda like undermining Title IX, hormone treatments for children, and men in women’s shelters are enforced without robust debate. The cost of speaking up far outweighs the benefit for most people.
As a consequence, corporate elites are rendering everyday Americans powerless, colluding to enforce new, radical cultural norms by disempowering the working class to speak up, earn scholarships, or sleep soundly in a shelter for victims of domestic violence. It’s the very reason Abigail Shrier had to write “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” — the normalization of radical new standards for sex and gender are having dangerous real-world consequences, especially for young women.
HRC and its “Business Coalition” are proud of immense corporate power. Here’s how the group describes the campaign on its website: “Launched in March 2016, the 364 member companies of HRC’s Business Coalition for the Equality Act have operations in all 50 states, headquarters spanning 33 states and a combined $6 trillion in revenue, and employ over 13.1 million people in the United States.”
This is a leftist group bragging that it represents Big Business to the tune of a combined $6 trillion in revenue and control over the livelihoods of 13 million people. This is Big Business bragging that it supports the agenda of cultural extremists.
Certainly, HRC’s effort is more evidence of the dissolving marriage between economic leftists and cultural ones. Capitalists are now cultural leftists.
More importantly, however, it’s evidence of an elite effort to wield corporate power over working people in the interest of an extreme cultural agenda. The Equality Act is a plaything of the elites that will disempower working people, and lawmakers should not be intimidated into believing the legislation is anything else.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Emily Jashinsky is culture editor at The Federalist. You can follow her on Twitter @emilyjashinsky .
Medical, legal experts warn of Equality Act’s impact on parents, kids and religious freedom
LGBT activists and their supporters rally in support of transgender people on the steps of New York City Hall, in New York City, October 24, 2018. | Getty Images/Drew Angerer
Legal and medical experts and concerned parents have warned that the Equality Act, which passed in the House Thursday, will have lasting implications on children, parental rights, and religious freedom if it becomes law. The 500-plus page bill, which passed by a vote of 224-206 adds sex, gender identity and sexual orientation to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The measure was reintroduced in the House where it was first passed in 2019 before it stalled in the Senate. It adds sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories in nondiscrimination law. The measure also strips away key religious liberty provisions and conscience protections in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Its effects would be far-reaching because it redefines “public accommodation” to include “any establishment” that provides a service, including churches, shelters operated by religious groups, faith-based adoption agencies, and educational institutions associated with religious denominations and associations.
The three Republicans who joined Democrats in voting for the measure included Reps. Tom Reed and John Katko, both of New York, and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
During a virtual event hosted by the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, Rep. Vicki Hartzler, R-Mo., and Autumn Leva of the Family Policy Alliance, detailed various concerns they have about the Equality Act and its implications for Americans if it’s passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden.
Other speakers at the Heritage event were Maria Keffler of Partners for Ethical Care, Dr. Michelle Cretella of the American College of Pediatricians, and Greg Baylor of Alliance Defending Freedom.
Hartzler, a former teacher and track coach, explained that the bill, if enacted, would erase all the gains that women have made in athletics by allowing trans-identified males to compete in girls’ sports. Thus far, 20 states have introduced legislation intended to keep sports sex-segregated.
If the bill becomes law “we won’t have women’s sports that are fair,” added Hartzler, who derided it as the “Inequality Act.”
Parental rights are also in serious jeopardy with this potential law, she continued. If the Act passes in the Senate it will filter down to what is taught in public school classrooms and parents won’t be able to object to content because it will be seen as a discrimination issue.
Similarly, parents’ rights to make healthcare decisions for their children would erode with the Act, according to Hartzler, referencing a 2018 case where a judge removed custody from the parents because they objected to their 17-year-old child being prescribed experimental cross-sex hormones.
“If this passes nationwide we could see parents facing a similar situation all over the country,” she said.
Hartzler is supporting the Heritage Foundation’s Promise To America’s Children, a national movement the think-tank has put forward to oppose the Equality Act and, more broadly, the imposition of gender ideology on children in the public sphere. The Promise, as Heritage states, aims to “create and support laws that will protect children’s health, safety, and families — especially their relationships with their parents, who have the primary responsibility to love, protect, and educate them.”
During the 90-minute House debate over the bill on Thursday, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., claimed the Equality Act posed no threat to religious freedom and that such concerns being raised by Republicans were “ridiculous.” Maloney then accused the bill’s opponents of using religious freedom as a ruse to conceal their “pro-discrimination against gay people.”
In response to Maloney’s accusations, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, declared: “Here it is, on page 25. It says specifically, ‘The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 shall not provide a legal basis for a claim’ [against a religious discrimination charge].
“The founders said in the first right, in the First Amendment to the Constitution, you can practice your religion as you see fit. But right here in their bill today, the Democrats say ‘No you can’t,’”Jordan asserted.
Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., also derided Republicans’ religious freedom arguments as nothing more than “transphobia,” “homophobia,” and “hate,”The Epoch Times reported.
During the Heritage Foundation’s panel Tuesday, Cretella of the American College of Pediatricians noted how the issue of gender dysphoria in children has become politicized. It’s this politicization that she says has corrupted the entire profession of medicine. The vast majority of medical professionals, therapists, and counselors believe that the best course of treatment for the condition is to first take a very thorough psychological assessment of the child in pursuit of underlying factors, she explained.
“Those in authority over the medical education system and directives to practicing physicians now recommend that all children, regardless of their age, be affirmed in their gender confusion. We are essentially gaslighting children into the lie that they could be born in the wrong body,” Cretella said in her remarks.
This, then, will put them on a medical pathway in which their normal puberty will be chemically arrested and will be followed up by opposite-sex hormones, she added. The combination of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones yields potentially lifelong sterility.
“We already have physically healthy girls as young as 13 being referred for double mastectomies. This is institutionalized child abuse,”she asserted. “We are taking emotionally troubled youth, psychologically abusing them by reinforcing their gender-sexual confusion, and then experimenting on them with toxic drugs and mutilating surgeries.”
Cretella has been contacted by doctors both domestically and internationally who say that it is now “career-ending” for them to suggest to a family or to their colleagues in a professional setting that these dysphoric children need a psychological assessment.
“Cancel culture has arrived in medicine and psychology and it’s very frightening,” she said.
Asked what she thinks could happen in 10 years should the Equality Act become law, Cretella said medical professionals who object to gender-transitioning of children and believe in the principle of “first do no harm”will be eliminated from practice. The ones you’ll be left with are the ones who believe in“experiment first, ask questions later.”
Maria Keffler noted that among the most concerning aspects of radical gender ideology that is all the rage in culture is how young schoolchildren are being instructed by teachers using curricula that is not factual or rooted in science.
“And we’re teaching this to our children en masse. It’s shocking when you see what’s being done in the schools … and where it’s coming from. … It’s about making money. It’s about furthering an agenda.
“Children are being taught from kindergarten upward that some boys have a vagina, some girls have a penis, and that kids can be any gender they want to be, she continued.
Keffler recounted that she has heard stories of elementary school children being asked to stand up in class to tell everyone about their “gender identity.” She added that she can no longer, in good conscience, say that public schools are safe places for children. Many people still don’t realize how dire the situation has become, she asserted, especially as some school officials advise teachers to deceive parents by allowing students to lead double lives by portraying an opposite-gender identity while at school.
The Equality Act will exacerbate this highly politicized approach within medicine, psychology, education, and other professional fields, according to Greg Baylor of Alliance Defending Freedom. Because of the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in nondiscrimination provisions, any entity that receives federal taxpayer dollars is subject to such policies. Among the largest recipients of taxpayer funds are public schools.
When asked whether religious freedom protections outlined in federal law would be preserved if the Equality Act becomes law, the ADF attorney noted the lack of religious exemptions in the bill. At the state and local level where similar statutes have been adopted, such carve-outs are present.
“But with the Equality Act you have none of that, there is no exemption for religious employers, there is no exemption for religious foster care providers, there is no exemption for religious schools.”
It is debated whether existing legal provisions can protect certain religious entities from discrimination claims, such as Title VII in the Civil Rights Act, the section pertaining to employment and section in the Fair Housing Act, the provisions of which would likely apply to religious colleges that have sex-segregated dormitories.
But the most destructive feature is how the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is impacted, he said, a law that was passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis and signed into law by former President Bill Clinton. The Equality Act expressly forbids invoking RFRA from the portions of the civil rights laws that it amends.
This previous approach to religious liberty is “gone, I’m afraid,”he said, “and it’s even to the point of essentially repealing large chunks of RFRA.”
When a federal law conflicts with state law, federal law wins, he said. Thus, if a state statute establishes that males who identify as female cannot participate in girls’ scholastic sports, the Equality Act’s revisions to Title XI would trump the state law.
When teaching our children about the various counterfeit lifestyles promoted by culture, we must be careful not to send the wrong message about Christ’s love for all…especially the wayward.
It’s easy to forget that young children can easily misread our intensity.- Rob Jackson
As a mental health professional, I’m more concerned about transgenderism than I am homosexuality. In a separate post, I’ve written about the increased rates of physical and mental health concerns experienced by transgender individuals. Based on these and other trends, including the recent alarm sounded by the American College of Pediatricians, I predict that transgenderism will eventually prove more prevalent and damaging than other variants of LGBTQ sexuality.
As a Christian, all sexual sins concern me, including those committed by heterosexuals, but transgenderism is especially alarming from a spiritual perspective, too. It not only goes against nature (as does homosexuality,) it requires hormone therapy, body enhancements with silicon and/or surgery, and the altered biological reality of sexual reassignment.While the ACP is correct in their concern for the physical and mental health challenges associated with gender identity disorders, I believe the spiritual wounds are far greater still. We Christian parents now have another level of spiritual attack from which we must guard our children’s developing identity.
In my work as a Christian therapist I frequently meet with parents who are concerned for their children’s sexuality. Childhood exposure to pornography opens Pandora’s Box where counterfeit versions of sexuality abound. For example, in a recent week of intensive therapy with parents and their 11 year-old daughter, I was saddened, though not surprised, to learn their precious child had seen pornographic videos. Porn sites hold nothing back. A curious child is likely to see a wide array of sexual expressions, including, of course, transgenderism.
Here are some ways I encouraged that little girl’s parents to speak with her about healthy sexuality. These four qualities will keep the conversation relational and effective as we talk to our kids about any important subject. They are especially important as we shepherd a child’s developing sexuality. I hope they will help equip you and your spouse to broach the sensitive issues emerging from today’s porn-saturated culture.
Frequency. The US Treasury issues authentic dollar bills frequently, and updates about counterfeits occasionally. You have the privilege of teaching your children daily about God’s plan for new life in Christ. By focusing primarily on the standards that honor him, your children will be more apt to detect counterfeit philosophies and practices of all types, including transgenderism. If, instead, you talk more about the negative than the positive, you may actually cause your children to be over-focused on the sins of our culture. A final caveat is in order here, though. Teachable moments abound in today’s sex-saturated culture. Strive for balance. You don’t have to capture every teachable moment, ruining family outings and creating the dreaded eye-roll response. Balance is key.
Tone. Tone reveals attitude, so check your heart before you speak. Be mindful of how you talk about people who live as transgendered individuals. Kids can tell whether you are working from a position of love versus one of fear or hatred.
Take for example, the ongoing media saga of Bruce Jenner’s attempted gender switch. Recent reports say he has challenged Trump’s reversal of the bill that would allow transgendered people to use the restroom of the opposite biological gender. Now, I find Jenner’s appearance as a woman unconvincing, and there’s a good chance you do, too. It’s easy to find something to critique there. But we can’t be genuinely concerned for this person while speaking in unloving ways about him. When we speak to our children about Jenner and other transgender individuals, we need to voice our convictions and concerns with compassion. If we don’t feel compassion for him in our heart, we need to deal with our unloving attitude before God first, then speak to our children when that sin is resolved.
Intensity. Most Christian parents I know are increasingly concerned and even outraged by the dramatic shift in our culture. According to the liberal media, transgenderism should be considered the new normal. Now, your child is likely to see a new transgender doll when you take her shopping. Righteous indignation over this form of child abuse is the natural response for evangelical Christians. But strong feelings do not justify the misuse of our emotions as we respond.
Along with tone, intensity communicates what we really feel about a subject. Here again, we must take care to respond to our children, and not react to a topic. Our anger over the culture’s promotion of transgenderism, or fear that our child might be led into sexual sin, can quickly ramp up the intensity of our response. Our intensity may trigger an unwarranted sense of shame or blame in our kids. It’s easy to forget that young children can easily misread our intensity. They react to our reactions and may shut down to avoid our anger. At this point, we ourselves have become the problem to avoid in our children’s eyes, rather than the sin we so vehemently protest.
Duration. I’ve always told parents that, when it comes to sex, micro-conversations are way more effective than “the talk.”Specific to this topic, our sermonizing will also create reactions for or against transgenderism. We must bear in mind what the priority here should be. We don’t just want a robot that thinks correctly or a puppet that spouts good theology. We want our child to love Christ and desire to imitate Him in word and deed.
How do we accomplish this lofty goal? A good place to start is to be sensitive to our child’s body language, countenance, and overall receptivity when we talk. Make sure that we’re actually having a conversation and not a monologue. It’s pretty obvious when our child is checking out mentally. When this happens, chances are we missed earlier cues that she needed a break.
Related Topics. Younger children need us to connect the dots for them. Explain each letter of the LGBTQ acronym as simply as possible, based on the age and maturity of your child. Tell him about each of the five counterfeit lifestyles that are becoming more popular as humanity falls further from the genuine standard God declares in the Bible.
Resources. In addition to writing for The Stand, I’ve also written commissioned articles for Focus on the Family. You can find a list of articles about Christian sexuality here.
Finally, I never intend to speak or write about LGBTQ issues without conveying my genuine love and concern for individuals in this community, and for those who are beginning to experiment with their sexuality. While The Stand’s readership is predominantly conservative, evangelical Christians, I’m sure that some reading this post don’t agree with me. God reveals biblical truths to his children. Without a redeemed love for Christ, a person can’t be expected to love God’s Word or desire or be able to live like His Son.
As our culture continues to erode even more quickly than many of us could have predicted, let’s seek peace with God, and teach our children the good news about new life in Christ. As we do this, let’s also be kind to our neighbors who differ from us in appearance and practice, for we are far more alike as humans than our appearance, faith, and politics may reveal.
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Rob Jackson Author, Speaker, Licensed Professional Counselor
Just what my wife and I wanted to see on the front cover of National Geographic magazine after we got our 8-year-old grandson a subscription, a 9-year-old-boy who believes he’s really a girl. My wife called the subscription office of National Geographic on Saturday and canceled the subscription and found out that others have been doing the same.
“As part of its January 2017 issue exploring our evolving understandings and definitions of gender, National Geographic is featuring nine-year-old transgender rights activist Avery Jackson on its cover—the first time a trans person has made the cover of the magazine.
*****
“‘When I was born, doctors said I was a boy, but I knew in my heart I was a girl,’ Jackson explained in her first video. ‘So I may have some boy body parts, but that’s not wrong, that is OK.’”
This boy did not make the cover of the magazine. National Geographic chose to put him on the cover as sexual exploitation. This boy is no more a girl than I am a woman, and anyone who says otherwise is morally corrupt. Today’s defenders of this type of sexual insanity, in the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “defined deviancy down”1 so that what was morally shocking twenty years ago is acceptable and promoted as an enlightened form of morality. Robert Bork explains the phenomenon:
“Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology, posited that there is a limit to the amount of deviant behavior any community can ‘afford to recognize.’ As behavior worsens, the community adjusts its standards so that conduct once thought reprehensible is no longer deemed so.”2
At the same time, these same moral misfits are defining their own brand of moral deviancy up. What was considered morally normal thirty years ago – two parents of the opposite sex married and living together, participation in the Boy Scouts and being protected from homosexual predators, rejecting a pro-death culture, and stay-at-home moms – is now
“portrayed as oppressive and shot through with pathologies, ‘As part of the vast social project of moral leveling,’[Charles] Krauthammer wrote, ‘it is not enough for the deviant to be normalized. The normal must be found to be deviant.’ This situation is thoroughly perverse. Underclass values become increasingly acceptable to the middle class, especially their young, and middle-class values become increasingly contemptible to the cultural elites.”3
This type of moral deviancy has infected the mind of a nine-year-old boy who fancies himself to be a “transgender rights activist.” Instead of debunking the falsity of the claim, the folks at National Geographic promote it as some kind of moral high ground.
Avery Jackson knew in his heart he was a girl? Give me a break. He knows no such thing. This kid is confused, and his parents, the LGBT propagandists, and the editors at National Geographic are enabling and legitimizing a form of sexual abuse.
National Geographic used to have a good reputation for reporting on nature, history, and science. Do you recall this scene from It’s a Wonderful Life?
National Geographic is now plumbing the depths of pseudoscience. None of this nonsense should surprise us given the fact that fake news and fake science have been the modus operandi of the Left for decades – everything from evolution and abortion to the claim that the climate is warming/changing because of humans and cow farts.
If this type of propaganda is promoted as the new morality, how many second and third graders might come to believe they are not what their obvious sex organs tell them they are? Could a child call the local government child protective agencies and claim that he or she is being abused because his or her parents won’t allow him or her be what he or she really is? What if a boy confides in a teacher that he’s really a girl, but his parents won’t allow him to be and dress as a girl?
Will the State intervene and take the child away to ensure that the “appropriate”steps are taken to accommodate the child’s “true gender”?Maybe the child is taken from his parents and placed in a safe “transgender family”environment. Will sex reassignment surgery be performed against the will of the parents to mollify the sexual confusion of the child?
What happens when this nine-year-old boy comes to his senses that he really is a boy but now his “parts” are missing?
Gary DeMar was raised in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University (1973) and Reformed Theological Seminary (1979). He has served as researcher and writer at the Christian Worldview ministry American Vision since 1980 and President since 1984. Today he serves as Senior Fellow at American Vision where he lectures, researches, and writes on various worldview issues. Gary is the author of 30 books on a variety of topics – from “America’s Christian History” and “God and Government” to “Thinking Straight in a Crooked World” to “Last Days Madness.” Gary has been interviewed by Time magazine, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, the BBC, and Sean Hannity. He has done numerous radio and television interviews, including the “Bible Answer Man,” hosted by Hank Hanegraaff and “Today’s Issues” with Tim Wildmon and Marvin Sanders. Newspaper interviews with Gary have appeared in the Washington Times, Toledo (Ohio) Blade, the Sacramento Bee, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Marietta Daily Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Chicago Tribune.
There is a disgusting level of contempt for parents in the modern public school system, and the evidence of this fact is all around us. Whether it’s handing out condoms or implanting IUD’s without parental consent, or mocking family religious beliefs, or attacking parents’ political positions, or even this latest move by public schools in Maryland.
During a training session for teachers in the Anne Arundel County Public School District instructing teachers at how to best support transgender students, Bob Mosier, the chief communications officer for the district, told teachers that they should allow “biological” boys to sleep in the same rooms as “biological” girls on field trips… and then he instructed the teachers NOT TO TELL PARENTS about it.
“So, many of you might be asking yourselves, ‘So I’m at an overnight field trip, and I have student who’s biologically a male, identifies as a female, and we’ve worked with that student and her family, and that student wants to sleep in the dorms, or whatever sleeping arrangements are, with the females. They don’t want to sleep in a room by themselves; they want to sleep with the rest of the females. So what do we do?
“And the answer is, they sleep with the females. That’s not the easy answer; it’s the right answer. And in some cases, it’s going to cause issues, because … the private information piece doesn’t allow you to share that with parents of all of the other campers. Right? So that’s difficult.”
Starting about 27:49 into the video below:
This is such a poorly considered and possibly horribly destructive policy;
What happens when a young girl placed in this dangerous situation is sexually assaulted by her transgender classmate?
What happens when students begin telling their teachers that they are transgendered simply to have the opportunity to “sleep” with their significant other?
What happens when a young lady becomes pregnant and her parents find out that it happened on a school field trip when teachers allowed the young girl to spend the night with a “biological” boy?
Beyond the immediate problems, when did our school systems move from being designed to support parents and families, to being allowed to override the wishes of the parents in raising their children? This is an even more dangerous precedent than you might realize at first blush.
If a school (or a teacher) can unilaterally make as important a decision as allowing boys and girls to sleep together, what else could be under their purview?
Could the school teach our students that our values, beliefs, morality, tradition, history, and faith are all wrong?
Could the schools tell kids that their parents are uninformed simpletons? Yes, the schools can (and already do) do this, it also means they can begin building on this, not only challenging the parents methods and beliefs, but also indoctrinating the children in the preferred beliefs, morality, philosophies, and ideas of the state.
Parents, it’s getting very dangerous in those public schools.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Onan Coca
Onan is the Editor-in-Chief at Liberty Alliance media group. He’s also the managing editor at Eaglerising.com, Constitution.com and the managing partner at iPatriot.com. Onan is a graduate of Liberty University (2003) and earned his M.Ed. at Western Governors University in 2012. Onan lives in Atlanta with his wife and their three wonderful children. You can find his writing all over the web.
Today in America if you dare speak out concerning the evils of homosexuality, same- sex marriage, gender dysphoria and transgenderism you run the very risk of becoming a victim of Gay Jihad. That’s right: Gay Jihad. This particular brand of “holy war” is designed to instill fear and apprehension in all those who oppose the above mentioned abnormalities. The goal is to silence all vocal opposition by way of character assassination, litigation and legislation driven by such groups and organizations as LGBT, the Human Rights Campaign and the Democrat Party. In other words: President Obama–unquestionably–is a key ally of the Gay Jihad movement. His use of the bully pulpit to push for the legalization of same-sex marriage (while at the same time demonizing those who opposed it) was nothing short of stunning. Obama did this knowing full well that it would not only create a backlash against Christians–but also against one of the most cherished and sacrosanct rights in all of Western Civilization–free speech. And just how cherished is this right? Well, it compelled George Washington to state the following: “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” Washington–unlike the childish, thin-skinned misfits of Gay Jihad–understood that all speech must be protected. Yes, even speech which includes expressions and opinions that gays deem “offensive” and “intolerant.” And, yes–that includes Christians bakers who refuse to provide services for a gay wedding, or a Jewish school teacher who is of the opinion that homosexuality is deviant. Again, the First Amendment is not a bulwark to protect gays (and their hyper-sensitive minions) from speech that might damage their fragile feelings. Quite the opposite. It was designed to protect the very speech they disdain and detest. (It’s time for gays to grow-up, get over themselves, stop hiding behind judicial tyranny and grow thicker skin.) In the final analysis–the only way to confront the enemies of free speech–is with more free speech. And that’s why I urge all patriotic Americans to speak out on the issues–regardless of whom it offends. Because–if we don’t–we will suffer the death of free speech. God save the Republic from Gay Jihad (and its ally in the White House).
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Rob Jackson Author, Speaker, Licensed Professional Counselor
This boy did not make the cover of the magazine. National Geographic chose to put him on the cover as sexual exploitation. This boy is no more a girl than I am a woman, and anyone who says otherwise is morally corrupt. Today’s defenders of this type of sexual insanity, in the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “defined deviancy down”
Gary DeMar was raised in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University (1973) and Reformed Theological Seminary (1979). He has served as researcher and writer at the Christian Worldview ministry American Vision since 1980 and President since 1984. Today he serves as Senior Fellow at American Vision where he lectures, researches, and writes on various worldview issues. Gary is the author of 30 books on a variety of topics – from “America’s Christian History” and “God and Government” to “Thinking Straight in a Crooked World” to “Last Days Madness.” Gary has been interviewed by Time magazine, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, the BBC, and Sean Hannity. He has done numerous radio and television interviews, including the “Bible Answer Man,” hosted by Hank Hanegraaff and “Today’s Issues” with Tim Wildmon and Marvin Sanders. Newspaper interviews with Gary have appeared in the Washington Times, Toledo (Ohio) Blade, the Sacramento Bee, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Marietta Daily Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Chicago Tribune.
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