Tag Archive for: gender identity

Biden Urges Congress to ‘Restore Soul of This Nation’ by Expanding Abortion, Transgenderism in SOTU

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During his State of the Union Address Tuesday night, President Joe Biden called on Congress “to restore the soul of this nation” by making abortion legal nationwide until birth and passing a bill that would force religious employers to hire people who identify as transgender. His administration’s focus on pushing polarizing social issues clashes with Republicans’ more mainstream views of abortion and gender identity, a contrast that Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) said gives Americans a clear choice “between normal or crazy.”

“Congress must restore the right the Supreme Court took away last year and codify Roe v. Wade to protect every woman’s constitutional right to choose,” said Biden, an apparent nod to the “Women’s Health Protection” Act, which would erase 1,381 pro-life protections including parental notification requirements. “The vice president and I are doing everything we can to protect access to reproductive healthcare and safeguard patient privacy.” He went on to chide states for enacting “extreme abortion bans” and threatened to veto any national pro-life legislation.

The president also urged Congress to “pass the bipartisan Equality Act to ensure LGBTQ Americans, especially transgender young people, can live with safety and dignity.” The bill, a longstanding goal of the LGBT lobby, would amend landmark civil rights acts to equate sexual orientation and gender identity with race, sex, and religion. It effectively places homosexuality and transgender status above religious liberty by denying protections of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The extreme bill, once supported by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, “would eradicate freedom of thought, conscience, and belief — resulting in the penalization of anyone who disagrees with the ideologies,” wrote Mary Beth Waddell, director of Federal Affairs for Family and Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council.

Passing such social legislation, Biden said, would enhance “the power of our example. Let’s remember the world is watching.”

Biden symbolically gestured toward left-wing social issues with his guest list, which included Gina and Heidi Nortonsmith, the lesbian couple whose lawsuit foisted same-sex marriage on the state of Massachusetts by judicial fiat in 2004. The couple also spoke at the signing ceremony of the so-called “Respect for Marriage” Act, which struck down marriage protection laws nationwide.

Biden also invited Amanda and Josh Zurawski of Austin, who say doctors denied them medical treatment for a miscarriage due to confusion over the state’s Heartbeat law. SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser says the president has weaponized their “tragic” story to further his “deeply misleading” allegations. “Every pro-life law in the country allows necessary and timely medical treatment to save the life of a pregnant woman in an emergency,” she said. “There are no laws in any state that prevent timely and compassionate care for a miscarriage,” added the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG). “Denying proper healthcare to patients facing miscarriage complications is not complying with the law. Miscarriage care is not abortion.”

Some members of Congress made statements of their own, with Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) inviting acquitted pro-life activist Mark Houck, who found himself swarmed by federal agents at his home in front of his family for allegedly violating federal laws against blocking access to an abortion facility.

Even as he discussed bipartisanship, Biden tied conservatives and Republicans to civil war, insurrection, and the attack against Paul Pelosi by a hammer-wielding man with a mental illness. “Two years ago, our democracy faced its greatest threat since the Civil War,” he said, referring to the January 6 riot. “Today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken,” apparently quoting the HBO series “Game of Thrones.” He claimed Pelosi’s assailant had been “unhinged by the Big Lie.”

“This kind of provocative rhetoric has only served to fuel the spread of violent attacks on churches and pregnancy help centers since Biden took office. While ignoring these attacks and their victims, the Biden administration has openly weaponized the federal government against pro-life Americans like Mark Houck and his family,” said Brian Burch of CatholicVote.

Biden also proposed a massive federal intervention into the way families raise children by “providing access to pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds,” a proposal repeatedly made by President Barack Obama during successive State of the Union addresses. Multiple studies have found Pre-K attendance inflicts a number of harms on young students, and polls have found most mothers would like to stay at home. “No public preschool program can provide the environments and the parental love and care of a functioning family and the lifetime benefits that ensue,” said James J. Heckman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist frequently cited by those who support universal pre-K.

Those references aside, Biden’s 70-minute-long address largely focused on economic issues, showing uncharacteristic “restraint,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. Biden “tried so hard to seem like a 1980s Democrat but it’s just not believable.”

The president often cited his economic success by comparing his results to the worst days of the 2020 recession, caused by a government-mandated shutdown to “slow the spread.” Biden said he had “created a record 12 million new jobs, more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years,” he said.

Biden has added 2.7 million jobs over the prepandemic high of 152.4 million reached under President Donald Trump. By comparison, Trump added nearly 5 million jobs in his first two years in office, and 13.4 million in the 22 months rebounding from the COVID-19 lockdown. The labor force participation rate under President Biden remains below prepandemic levels (62.4% this month compared to 63.3% in January 2020).

“The state of our union is miserable, and the blame rests squarely with President Biden and the Democrats,” said Jenny Beth Martin, honorary chair of the Tea Party Patriots Action. “Whether it’s record deficit spending causing the worst inflation in four decades, an ‘open borders’ policy causing a record stream of illegal immigrants crossing our border, or a weak foreign policy emboldening China and other adversaries, President Biden is always doing the wrong thing and American families always end up paying the price.”

President Biden urged Congress to “pass the PRO Act, because workers have a right to form a union.” The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a sought-after legislative goal of labor unions, would strike down all state right-to-work laws and compel workers in a unionized shop to pay union dues, even if they do not want to belong to a union. Federal legislation has protected workers’ right to join a union since the 1936 Wagner Act. Yet only 6% of the private sector workforce belonged to a union in 2022, while one-third of government employees have unionized, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor unions contributed $65 million in union dues to Democratic candidates during the 2020 election cycle, including $27.5 million to Biden’s presidential campaign. The president was also the top recipient of campaign donations from teachers unions.

At two points, Biden paused mid-speech as Republicans opposed his caricature of their platform, accusing Republicans of wanting to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. A legislative proposal to that effect, from Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), received little legislative support.

Biden made a brief reference to the border, which has seen record-breaking levels of illegal immigration and virtually non-existent deportations during both of his years in office. “America’s border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts,” particularly “if you won’t pass my comprehensive immigration reform,” which includes a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, he told lawmakers.

On foreign affairs, Biden pledged continued financial and military aid to Ukraine despite flagging public support, and boasted of a supposed hardline against China. “Before I came to office, the story was about how the People’s Republic of China was increasing its power and America was falling in the world. Not anymore,” he said. “As we made clear last week, if China’s threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did.” Biden shot down a Chinese spy craft this weekend after it had completed its surveillance of areas that included U.S. nuclear installations.

Biden gave a nod to COVID-19, which defined the first few months of his presidency. “We have broken COVID’s grip on us,” he said. “And soon we’ll end the public health emergency.” Biden announced the federal government would end its emergency in May, shortly after the House of Representatives passed legislation ending the government’s state of emergency immediately. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) invited as his guest a U.S. serviceman briefly dismissed from the military for refusing to take the COVID shot.

“Biden’s comments aimed at the need for a world ‘solution’ on certain topics (which understandably concern people) continue to imply the legitimacy of world power centers like the UN, WHO, and the like. Yet this takes power further from the people that true democracies are supposed to represent. If we have a ‘crisis of democracy’ as some think we do, such ‘solutions’ only exacerbate the problem,” Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “To the extent that the Biden administration’s priorities (like abortion or gender transitions for minors) are injected into these centers of world power, we will be exporting spiritually harmful activities to other nations. Social liberals’ intended solutions for these young people only keeps them imprisoned … and they need to find true freedom from the clutches of the enemy of their souls,” Weber said.

The spiritual condition of America figured prominently in his remarks. “Because the soul of this nation is strong, because the backbone of this nation is strong,” he said. Americans “are a good people, the only nation in the world built on an idea: that all of us, every one of us, is created equal in the image of God.”

“I appreciated the president’s affirmation that everyone is ‘created equal in the image of God.’ Unfortunately, for two years the president has demonstrated that he really doesn’t believe that,” David Closson, director of FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview, told The Washington Stand. “Against the moral teachings of his own church, President Biden has pursued the most radical pro-abortion agenda in our nation’s history, and he made it clear tonight that he remains beholden to the abortion lobby by indicating he would veto any federal efforts to protect unborn life.”

“When it comes to protecting life, I wish the president’s policies matched his rhetoric,” said Closson.

“Americans want common sense from their leaders, but in Washington, the Biden administration is doubling down on crazy,” said Governor Sanders.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

New Documentary Sheds Light on Disney’s Sexual Engineering

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A new documentary on the Walt Disney Company is making crystal clear how the once family-friendly company is today one of the most serious peddlers of radical ideology in America.

Released last week by the Catholic League, “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom” is a 50-minute film that highlights how Disney went from entertaining and inspiring kids to indoctrinating and grooming them as it embraces and advances the radical agenda of a very small yet vocal minority that even a growing number of liberals feel have gone too far.

“They want to go after the little kids,” Catholic League President Bill Donohue said during an interview Tuesday on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” “As I pointed out in the movie, they just got off their tricycle. And now they’re trying to sexually engineer them.”

The idea for the documentary came after Donohue and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins were unable to arrange a meeting with then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek to speak on behalf of conservative Catholics and evangelicals in America amid the tumult over Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill last year.

Opponents of the legislation labeled it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill because it prohibits classroom “instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity … in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

More broadly, the legislation reinforces the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children.

Though Disney initially chose not to take a public stance on the bill, its CEO later condemned the legislation following an outcry from pro-LGBTQ+ activists.

“You listened to one side. Will you listen to our side?” Donohue recalled asking Chapek, paraphrasing his joint letter with Perkins to the Disney CEO. “I’m a Catholic leader. Tony’s an evangelical leader. We represent a good swath of the country.”

“Well, they blew us off,” Donohue said.

So Donohue ran with the idea of a documentary, enlisting Jason Killian Meath, CEO of Meath Television Media LLC, who wrote and directed the film. They also brought in an all-star cast, including Perkins, renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, conservative columnist Miranda Devine, media watchdog Brent Bozell, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Jewish activist David Horowitz, film critic Christian Toto, media personality Will Witt, and conservative political commentator Mercedes Schlapp, who hosted the documentary.

“I want to get the word out — to disseminate it to Christians and to observant Jews, Muslims, Mormons, people of no faith, people who are concerned this has gone too far,” Donohue said.

“I also would like to persuade at least some of the shareholders and other people at Disney to say, ‘Wait a minute! Maybe we have gone too far.’ ‘Can we get back to our roots?’ ‘Can we have a family-friendly institution?’ ‘Why are we trying to do this to kids?’”

“There are aspects of this movie — when the viewers take a look at it … your head’s going to spin at certain points. But it’s something that needs to be said,” Donohue said.

Among the concerning revelations about Disney highlighted by the documentary is how members of its entertainment producing teams are injecting “queerness” anywhere and everywhere they can.

“Our leadership over there has been so welcoming to my not-at-all-secret gay agenda,” Disney child programming producer and writer Latoya Raveneau said in leaked virtual meeting footage that is highlighted in the documentary.

“I don’t have to be afraid to like, ‘Let’s have these two characters kiss … in the background,” she said. “I was just wherever I could — just basically adding queerness.”

“No one would stop me,” she recalled.

And with radical gender ideology being thrusted upon children through media and in classrooms at increasingly younger ages, critics of the harmful crusade say there should be no surprise when there is a rise in cases of gender dysphoria — the clinical term describing the conflict some experience when they feel as if their biological sex doesn’t seem to conform with their sense of identity.

“The reason you see gender dysphoria rates now skyrocketing is in part because kids are impressionable,” Ramaswamy points out in the documentary. “They are going to respond to their adults and their cultural leaders in their schools and so it’s no surprise that we are creating the very problem that supposedly the companies like Disney were aiming to solve.”

“And it’s much worse than that,” adds Donohue in the documentary, “because, as we know in these elementary schools, they’re taking kindergartners and first graders, teaching them that they’re ‘gender fluid,’ encouraging them to be chemically castrated, to have puberty blockers — pre-puberty kids — to alter their lives forever.”

“This is an atrocity against children and Disney has allowed itself to become part of it,” he adds.

During his interview with Perkins on Tuesday, Donohue noted that even Erica Anderson, a transgender psychologist who has worked with hundreds of transgender teens, has acknowledged, “This has gone too far. It’s going to get worse. I don’t want any part of it.”

“I’m hoping, at the very least, Disney will tap the brakes and rethink this whole idea of going down the lane of the woke agenda,” Donohue added.

To get the message out, the Catholic League has made the documentary free to view on public platforms such as YouTube and Rumble. It is also accessible on SalemNOW and Amazon Prime.

Notably, on Tuesday, Catholic League was informed that its video has been marked by YouTube as “age-restricted” and not appropriate for viewers under 18. Types of content that is considered “age-restricted” include content with harmful or dangerous activities, nudity and sexually suggestive content, violent or graphic content, content with vulgar language, and content “that endangers the emotional and physical well-being of minors.”

While Donohue noted that the documentary doesn’t contain any of YouTube’s categories of “age-restricted” content, Perkins suggested that it may be in violation of the Left’s terms and conditions.

“You told the truth and you put the information out. Now that violates the terms of the Left these days — when you tell the truth,” Perkins said.

In response, Donohue said, “I couldn’t agree more. And I want to punctuate that. That’s what this is all about. A man can’t become a woman. A woman can’t become a man. We need to tell the truth and stop with the fiction.”

AUTHOR

Kenneth Chan is Director of Communications at Family Research Council and serves as an editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Utah Enacts Law with ‘Massive Loopholes’ for Minors Seeking Gender Transition Procedures

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If the point was grabbing headlines, Utah’s SB 16 has done the trick. More than a dozen outlets, from Fox News to Newsweek to CNN, described the bill Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R) signed Saturday as a “ban” on “gender-affirming” procedures for minors. Unfortunately, the bill no more banned ideological experiments on children than cross-sex hormones are “gender-affirming.”

The bill imposed a “moratorium” on “hormonal transgender treatment to a patient who: (a) is a minor … and (b) is not diagnosed with gender dysphoria before the effective date of this bill.” But the moratorium will only last until the state Department of Health and Human Services conducts a “systematic medical evidence review,” the purpose of which “is to provide the Legislature with recommendations to consider when deciding whether to lift the moratorium.” The Health Department must submit its completed report to the legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, which is chaired by the bill’s sponsor.

It’s unclear how long the moratorium will remain in effect. A sunset provision in an earlier bill draft would have repealed both the evidence review and the moratorium in four years (on June 1, 2027), but it was stripped out by a voice vote on the House floor. The final version of the bill contains no timeline or end date for the evidence review; it could last for four years, or it could be done in less than four months. Once the evidence review concludes, the legislature will be free to replace the moratorium with the Health Department’s recommendation — which will likely permit gender transition procedures on minors.

The study will likely reach a pro-transition procedure conclusion because the Utah Health Department will conduct it “in consultation with” three state licensing agencies, the University of Utah, and a Utah hospital system. Even in deeply conservative regions, universities and hospital systems are often deeply invested in lucrative gender-transition procedures. The University of Utah also prescribes gender transition hormones to adolescents. “You don’t want people who stand to make money off of transitioning kids in charge of determining that this is a safe procedure,” Joseph Backholm, FRC’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement, who has testified on SAFE Act-style bills before multiple state legislatures, told The Washington Stand.

Utah’s state agencies also support gender transition. During the period of the review, one involved agency, the Utah Division of Professional Licensing, will also be issuing “transgender treatment certifications” — essentially approving gender transition treatments for minors.

The Utah Health Department will find no difficulty in tipping the review towards the politically desirable outcome because “so much of the research is politicized,” said Backholm. A peer reviewed study published this month found that two studies which represent “the best available evidence for the practice of youth medical gender transition” are “methodologically flawed and should have never been used in medical settings as justification.” With the research playing to their bias, the Utah Health Department will find steering a scientific review towards their desired outcome to be easier than stealing futures from a child — which is exactly what they’re doing.

Even while the moratorium remains in effect, it won’t protect Utah minors from gender transition procedures. “Written into the law is a loophole so big that anyone who wants to get through it can,” Backholm told TWS. The law prohibits gender transition “surgeries and hormone treatments only until a minor is diagnosed with gender dysphoria,” Backholm explained. “These days, that is a very low bar.” All it takes is an “activist psychiatrist” willing to say that a minor has gender dysphoria, he said, and “everyone knows, ‘Hey, that’s the doctor you’re looking for.’”

Backholm compared the diagnosis exception to an abortion law with an exceptions for the “health of the mother.” Such a term is usually defined broadly to include mental health, which could include any form of stress, which telescopes the exception out to cover just about anything, he explained.

Nearly a quarter of the bill’s length is devoted to building an infrastructure to regulate the ongoing administration of gender transition procedures for minors. The bill directs the Utah Division of Professional Licensing to “create a transgender treatment certification” by July 1. It requires mental health professionals wishing to obtain this certification to complete “40 hours of education related to transgender health care for minors from an approved organization.” That requires the state to approve an organization with staff and curriculum providing training on transgender treatment of minors. It provides a system for individuals to renew their transgender treatment certification at the same time they renew their license to practice. Creating these new procedures hardly sounds like Utah intends to pause all gender transition procedures.

Utah established further transgender infrastructure via detailed treatment guidelines. To provide “hormonal transgender treatment” to a minor, a provider must first treat the minor “for gender dysphoria for at least six months,” including at least three sessions. The provider must “determine if the minor has other physical or mental health conditions” and consider whether “an alternative medical treatment … would provide the minor the best long-term outcome” (with the right activist, that answer is an automatic “no”). The provider must discuss risks, expectations, medical information, and “possible adverse outcomes” with the minor and his or her parents, and then obtain their consent. The provider must “document” this information “in the medical record.” Finally, the provider must obtain a mental health evaluation from a second credentialed provider — that is, from a second individual, who could work out of the same hospital or clinic. Far from obstructing gender transition procedures for minors, Utah Republicans seem to have merely regulated them.

The Utah legislature’s inaction appears more scandalous in light of the medical disclosures they require. Puberty blockers “are not approved by the FDA for the treatment of gender dysphoria,” people must say, who are prescribing them to minors for that very purpose. Not only that, but “possible adverse outcomes of puberty blockers are known to include diminished bone density, pseudotumor cerebri, and long term adult sexual dysfunction.” Oh, and there’s no “research on the long-term risks to children,” nor do we know “the full effects of puberty blockers on brain development and cognition.” That’s written into the law.

The medical disclosure for cross-sex hormones unveiled even graver consequences. For males, the risks can “include blood clots, gallstones, coronary artery disease, heart attacks, tumors of the pituitary gland, strokes, elevated levels of triglycerides in the blood, breast cancer, and irreversible infertility.” For females, the risks can include “erythrocytosis [a blood disorder], severe liver dysfunction, coronary artery disease, hypertension, and increased risk of breast and uterine cancers.” What is this, a commercial during a PGA tournament?

Somehow, Utah legislators acknowledged all these risks and concluded that it was fine for children to be exposed to them — so long as a couple of doctors filled out some forms and checked some boxes.

“This bill is politics,” said Backholm. “These legislators certainly heard from parents who are concerned about how this will affect children. [The legislators] want to tell the parents that they protected kids, but left a massive loophole written in the law. Politicians do this all the time.”

Utah’s feint against gender transition procedures stands in sharp contrast to bills introduced in other states, said Backholm, which say, physicians “may not do [gender transition procedures] under any circumstances.”

Backholm was concerned that other states would use Utah as an example simply because they got a good press cycle. “I am concerned that other states will see this as a way to quickly dismiss the issue, so they can tell the uninformed that they protected kids, without actually protecting kids.” Such a compromise is unacceptable.

Backholm said he is “inherently suspicious of Utah because they have mastered the art of compromise.” He said Utah moderates sold out conservatives by inventing the policy surrender known Fairness for All.

Governor Cox’s record is far from conservative on gender identity issues. In 2022, he vetoed a bill to protect women’s sports before the legislature overrode his veto. Yet Cox was willing to sign this bill on gender transition procedures. He described the weak measure as a “nuanced and thoughtful” strategic pause “as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures.”

“More and more experts, states, and countries around the world are pausing these permanent and life-altering treatments for new patients until more and better research can help determine the long-term consequences,” Cox said.

The question is, when will Utah?

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: Chloe Cole’s Detransition Story

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

4 Ways to Safeguard Your Child from Radical Gender Ideology

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When we find ourselves encountering education professionals who sincerely believe and defend concepts like Queer Theory and believe they have a moral obligation to teach those concepts to children for the good of society, it is long past time for parents and concerned citizens to act. Gender ideology is a dangerous force in education and our culture. Parents can take several important steps to safeguard our own children and our communities from this evil influence.

1. Parents need to be the most important person in their children’s lives.

Our right to direct the upbringing of our children is unquestioned. Our responsibility to our children is confirmed by our love for them. We need to make sure that we know our children’s hopes and dreams, their friends, their teachers, and those who influence them. When schools have policies that would seek to “affirm a gender identity” in children without the knowledge or consent of parents, we can protect our children — and ourselves — by being fully engaged in relationship with our children.

One of the common rejoinders to efforts to enact policies to protect children from secret social transition in schools actually does have a grain of truth in it. Gender activists will demagogue: “If you want to find out what gender your child is, just ask your child; the school can’t hide that from you.” We can see the arrogance and dishonesty behind such a comment, but it makes a point too — never let anyone know your child better than you do.

2. In the event of a gender identity crisis in your home, be careful to get the right help.

There are fewer resources for parents who do not wish to affirm their children in a gender delusion, but they are good resources. Desist, Detrans, and Detox by Maria Keffler is a wonderful book with advice from a mother and former public school guidance counselor. Be careful not to rely on the advice of “gender specialists.” It is more likely than not that advice from this perspective will “affirm” a sex change approach rather than explore the reasons for gender dysphoria and seek to integrate body and mind consistent with biological reality.

3. Engage your school system or state legislature.

If you wish to engage your school system or state legislature to protect the rights of parents and children, there are many efforts underway to use as guides. Groups like Family Research Council, Parents Defending Education, and Parental Rights Foundation are ready to help, with research, advice, and connections to other resources. Making sure to keep parents at the center of the process is key.

Virginia’s recently drafted model policy includes this useful definition: The phrase “transgender student” shall mean a public school student whose parent has requested in writing, due to their child’s persistent and sincere belief that his or her gender differs with his or her sex, that their child be so identified while at school. The Virginia draft is a reaffirmation of parental rights, keeping parents front and center.

4. Never doubt yourself when you stand for the truth of biological sex.

History is littered with examples of medical fads that have victimized people and cultures: lobotomy, eugenics, and recovered memories are just a few examples. The gender fever seems to be breaking. It will take parents and a public committed to truth spoken in love to protect our children and heal our culture.

We live in the greatest nation on earth, the beacon of hope for the world. Let’s make America’s school systems as exceptional as our nation. Our children, entrusted to us by God, deserve our very best.

AUTHOR

Meg Kilgannon

Meg Kilgannon is Senior Fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council.

RELATED ARTICLE: Parents, It’s Time to Get Your Child Off of Social Media

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Team Biden Joins the School Library Wars, Launching Federal Investigation

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UPDATE:

“Whoever succeeds in telling the stories to the children gets to control the future.” That was Kirk Cameron’s answer to people wondering why he’s joined the debate over America’s libraries. As parents everywhere fight to keep graphic content out of their children’s hands, Texas officials are warning the battle is taking an ominous turn. It’s not just the forces of the Left that communities will have to contend with. It’s the federal government, whose new investigation into a local school district could upend every grassroots effort to protect kids.

For leaders in Texas’s Granbury School District, the bomb dropped shortly before Christmas. Officials in the Civil Rights Division of Biden’s Department of Education (DOE) said they’d received a formal complaint from the ACLU that the small community outside Fort Worth was somehow violating the government’s definition of “sex” by pulling books from school library shelves.

The ACLU’s beef dates back to November 2021 when Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) urged the state’s association of school boards to “ensure no child is exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content in a Texas public school.” His letter, which keyed off parents’ growing outrage about the material on school shelves, insisted on greater transparency about the content students can access. Abbott said his office had been contacted by a number of moms and dads who were “rightfully angry” about the “pornographic and obscene” content.

Granbury officials took the governor’s directive to heart, ordering a review of the district’s book titles. But what ultimately landed the district in hot water was a candid conversation Superintendent Jeremy Glenn had with the schools’ librarians — which was eventually leaked to the press. He talked about the conservative make-up of the community and insisted that they would act accordingly. “We do have a very conservative board,” Glenn said in a reference to the two new school board members. “They are elected, and recently more conservative. And so that’s what our community is. That’s what our job is.”

At the end of the day, Glenn insisted, “I don’t want a kid picking up a book, whether it’s about homosexuality or heterosexuality, and reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries. … And I’m going to take it a step further with you,” the superintendent went on. “There are two genders. There’s male, and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women. And there are women that think they’re men. And again, I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries. … I’m cutting to the chase on a lot of this,” Glenn insisted. “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ, and the sex — sexuality — in books. That’s what the governor has said that he will prosecute people for, and that’s what we’re pulling out.”

Over the next two weeks, Granbury embarked on what the Texas Tribune called “one of the largest book removals in the country, pulling about 130 titles from library shelves for review.” Two months later, the volunteer review committee inexplicably voted to return all but three books that they’d permanently banned.

By then, the audio of Glenn’s meeting had made its way to the media, and liberal news outlets like the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and NBC News pounced, accusing Glenn of anti-LGBT bias. That’s when the local chapter of the ACLU got involved, demanding an apology and calling for every book to be reinstated.

Glenn didn’t oblige, conveying through district spokesman Jeff Meador that all the titles they’d pulled from shelves are “sexually explicit and not age-appropriate.” That said, the libraries “continue to house a socially and culturally diverse collection of books for students to read, including,” he pointed out, “books that analyze and explore LGBTQ+ issues.”

Naturally, that didn’t satisfy the ACLU, whose lawyers decided to involve the federal government in a local dispute that could have a chilling effect nationwide. “If the government finds in the ACLU’s favor,” The Washington Post cautioned, “the determination could have implications for schools nationwide, experts said, forcing libraries to stock more books about LGBTQ individuals and requiring administrators — amid a rising tide of book challenges and bans — to develop procedures ensuring student access to books that some Americans, especially right-leaning parents, deem unacceptable.”

Of course, the heart of the ACLU’s allegation — that Granbury (and Glenn, especially) is violating the Left’s new definition of “sex” — is a stretch by almost every legal standard. The Biden administration may have twisted the word “sex” to mean “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” but that interpretation has never been passed into federal Title IX law.

And yet, the ACLU’s Chloe Kempf maintains (unconvincingly) that the “book removals and also the comments create this pervasively hostile environment.” “Both send a message to the entire community that LGBTQ identities are inherently obscene, worthy of stigmatization — and the book removals uniquely deprive LGBTQ students of the opportunity to read books that reflect their own experiences.”

Conservatives pushed back, insisting that this isn’t about LGBT hostility but age-appropriate content. Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, insisted that this whole controversy amounts to a leftist intimidation campaign. “The ACLU is bullying school districts who have responded to parental concerns about pornographic library books offered to children. Access to pornography at school is not a civil right.” Even if the law had been changed to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX, “children still do not have a right to sexually explicit or violent content in public school library books. And school systems are under no obligation to support a publishing industry who can’t sell these books to parents and so sells them to librarians instead.”

Frankly, Kilgannon argued, “This is federal overreach into the education system, which is supposed to be a state issue.” Not to mention that “Biden is weaponizing another government agency: the DOE.”

If the president does intervene, dictating how school libraries handle certain book titles, the issue will almost certainly end up in court. “This isn’t the sort of civil rights issue that requires federal intervention,” Will Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty argued. “It’s a question about books in schools, not about individual rights being violated.”

Either way, it does show one thing: the potency of the parents’ movement. Cameron, who’s in his own fight to host story hours in the same libraries that allow drag queens, is witnessing the momentum firsthand. As many as 1,000 people turned out in Placentia, Calif. to hear the “Growing Pains” actor read his new book, “As You Grow.”

“I know why parents and grandparents are coming out of the woodwork,” Cameron told The Federalist. “They understand there is a war on children — and nobody’s going to stop it but us.” So if there’s one thing Americans can do, he told the crowd, it’s this: “Don’t just talk about what’s going on. Change what’s going on.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Report: U.S. Is ‘Most Permissive Country’ for Minor Gender Transition

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UPDATE:

”The United States is the most permissive country when it comes to the legal and medical gender transition of children,” according to a 12-country policy review by medical advocacy group Do No Harm. The group compared “different legal requirements for gender change-related treatments and actions” among the U.S. and the 11 countries of Northern and Western Europe. These countries — Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom — “share the United States’ broad support for transgenderism” yet “reject the gender-affirming care model for children.”

Do No Harm explained that America has adopted a “gender affirmation” policy for children, which “assumes that gender incongruence can manifest as early as age four and that questioning a minor’s gender self-definition is harmful and unethical. The American Academy of Pediatrics has embraced an affirm-only/affirm-early policy since 2018, and most states abide by its guidance despite withering medical and scientific criticism.” By contrast, some European countries “have explicitly abandoned” the gender-affirming care model and “now discourage automatic deference to a child’s self-declaration on the grounds that the risks outweigh the benefits.” They also recommend “months-long psychotherapy sessions to address co-occurring mental health problems.”

The report proceeded with a country-by-country comparison of requirements for the medical and legal gender transition of children.

American restrictions on puberty blockers vary by state, but “the most permissive states do not impose restrictions,” and blockers have been prescribed “as early as age eight.” Oregonians “are legally entitled” to blockers “from age 15,” with Medicaid assistance and without parental consent. In Iceland, there is “no minimum age” except as a “matter of clinical judgment.” The U.K. permits blockers “from the earliest stages of puberty,” while Belgium, France, and Norway permit blockers from Tanner Stage II, or “once physiological signs of puberty manifest.” Denmark, Netherlands, and Sweden allow puberty blockers “from age 12.” Finland allows them “about age 13.” Ireland allows them “under 16 years old.” In tiny Luxembourg, “no official guidance exists,” but “in practice, adolescents almost always receive blockers in a neighboring country.”

Restrictions on prescribing cross-sex hormones (estrogen and testosterone) to minors also vary state by state across the U.S., but “the practice has been documented with parental consent in children under the age of 13.” In Oregon, minors may “access cross-sex hormones from age 15 without consent and with Medicaid assistance.” France has “no age restrictions” on cross-sex hormones, but “clinicians generally will not administer them before Tanner Stage II.” Again, Luxembourg has “no official guidance,” but “Patients almost always receive hormones in a neighboring Country.” In every other European country studied, cross-sex hormones were available “from age 16,” although the U.K. requires that “individuals must have been receiving puberty blockers for at least one year.”

Do No Harm provided few specifics regarding the status of parental consent for these chemical gender transition procedures. They do say that, besides Oregon, “in most states, puberty blockers cannot be administered before age 18 without parental consent,” but they provide no insight on cross-sex hormones. However, California passed a bill in September effectively removing any parental consent requirement.

By contrast, children may not access gender transition chemical treatments until age 16 or 18 in nearly every country. Denmark is the most permissive, allowing children without parental consent to access puberty blockers at 15. In the U.K., “instances of children under 16 receiving blockers without consent are reportedly rare,” although such consent is not required. To access cross-sex hormones without consent in either country, children must be 16. In Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, and Norway, children must be 16 to access either puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, although Norway raises the age for cross-sex hormones to 18 “if the treatment is considered irreversible.” Sweden also allows cross-sex hormones without consent at 16, “so long as the individual is deemed sufficiently mature,” while it bars puberty blockers without consent until age 18. In Belgium, Finland, and France, neither treatment is available without parental consent until a person turns 18.

The report also compared the number of youth gender clinics in the various countries. The U.S. led by far, with “more than 60 pediatric gender clinics and 300 clinics” that “provide hormonal interventions to minors.” France also has many locations because “care is decentralized,” and “any doctor can prescribe treatment for medical transition.”

But after that the number quickly dwindles. Sweden administers all gender transition procedures through four hospitals, of which three provide surgery. Denmark administers gender transition hormones at only three locations. There are only two hospitals or clinics providing medical gender transitions in Belgium, Finland, and soon the U.K., which currently has one. Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Norway have one gender transition facility apiece. Granted, the United States is far larger than many of these countries. But the U.S. has a population 2.5 times larger than all the countries except France, while it has 20 times as many clinics providing hormonal interventions to minors.

Do No Harm also compared the minimum age at which countries allow persons to legally change their gender in civil registries. In the U.S., “there is no minimum age” for federal documentation, such as passports or Social Security cards, but such changes require the consent of both parents. There is more variation in state documentation, such as ID cards and birth certificates, but at least seven states “permit minors to change their birth certificate gender markers with parental consent.”

Three European countries, Iceland, Luxembourg, and the U.K., have policies similar to the U.S. federal government in that there is no age limit, but children under the age of 18 need parental consent to change legally recognized gender. In Norway, gender markers can be changed, with parental permission, from age six, and from age 16 without parental permission. Netherlands also allows 16-year-olds to legally change their gender without parental permission. In Belgium and Ireland, 16-year-olds may change their legal gender identity with parental consent, and 18-year-olds may change it without parental consent. Denmark, Finland, France, and Sweden do not allow minors under the age of 18 to legally change their gender identity.

The U.S. also exceeds most European countries in legally recognizing genders other than male or female. Federal “passports offer an X gender option,” and a sizable number of states allow a gender marker of “X” on identification documents (22 states plus D.C. on driver’s licenses, and 16 states plus D.C. on birth certificates). Only Iceland permits gender variation, allowing “third gender and/or nonbinary designations” on official documents. Denmark and Ireland allow a third gender option on IDs and passports respectively, but their “civil registry is binary.” In the Netherlands, a person may only obtain a gender neutral designation through a court. In the other seven countries, Belgium, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K., “male and female are the only recognized genders.”

“The United States is the most permissive country when it comes to the legal and medical gender transition of children,” concluded the review. “Only France comes close, yet unlike the U.S., France’s medical authorities have recognized the uncertainties involved in transgender medical care for children and have urged ‘great caution’ in its use.”

“Given the growing body of evidence and the European consensus, which is grounded in medical science and common sense,” pleaded Do No Harm, “the United States should reconsider the gender-affirming care model to protect the youngest and most vulnerable patients.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Religious Freedom for Christian Colleges: A Victory in Federal Court

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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the LGBTQ-sponsored “Religious Exemption Accountability Project” (REAP) asserting that “young and vulnerable” LGBTQ+ persons are “at the mercy of religiously affiliated, taxpayer-funded social service and educational institutions that often turn them away or force them into the closet.”

The students who litigated against the U.S. Department of Education and the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) wanted to overturn “a provision of Title IX that allows religious colleges to seek exemptions” from a law barring “sex-based discrimination.” Title IX is part of a 1972 measure and states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

However, there is a federal statute stating that Title IX “does not apply to an educational institution that is controlled by a religious organization to the extent that application of Title IX would be inconsistent with the religious tenets of the organization.” In other words, if a school believes that sexual intimacy is reserved for one man and one woman in the covenantal bond of marriage, and thereby adhering to 3,500 years of Judeo-Christian teaching, it can receive federal resources without penalty.

So, in October 2021, “the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon allowed three Christian post-secondary schools represented by Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys — Corban University, William Jessup University, and Phoenix Seminary — to intervene in the lawsuit and defend the relevant provisions of Title IX, the federal law under attack.”

The judge who issued the ruling, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, was appointed to the federal court by Bill Clinton. “Exempting religiously controlled educational institutions from Title IX,” she wrote in her decision, “is substantially related to the government’s objective of accommodating religious exercise.”

The judge also “rejected (REAP’s) argument that the exemption ran afoul of the First Amendment’s prohibition against the establishment of religion by Congress, saying they failed to show how the federal government, in contrast to the schools, advanced religion.”

Throughout the country — in workplaces, businesses, and other venues — LGBTQ-identifying persons can be subject to verbal cruelty and personal harassment. These are affronts to the God-given dignity enjoyed by every image-bearer of our Creator. Followers of Jesus should not only oppose them but defend those attacked when able.

With that said, I cannot help but wonder why the students who filed the lawsuit attend Christian colleges and universities whose faith commitments state clearly what they believe about human sexuality. Did they apply to and enter these schools under false pretenses — affirming the institutions’ doctrinal standards while intending to fight them once enrolled? Or upon attending, did they decide they were LGBTQ and choose to remain in order to overturn the schools’ commitments to biblical teaching?

Perhaps they felt they have a strong precedent for such initiatives as the REAP lawsuit. This past fall, the Christian Reformed Church, even though affirming the Bible’s teaching about men, women, and sex, decided to let the faculty at its flagship college, Calvin University, “dissent from a clause in (the CRC) confession of faith that regards sex outside of heterosexual marriage as sinful, enabling them to continue to work at the Christian school while also respecting their convictions.”

In other words, a college founded to uphold scriptural standards allows professors who disdain some of those standards to teach and, thereby, influence the young people who attend the institution. This is like saying that although my car uses diesel fuel I’m going to fill it up with low-octane gas. Hey, I’m filling it up, right? Why judge me for my tolerance of and even compassionate sympathy for diverse fuel types?

Similarly, some churches have abandoned the Bible’s clear teaching about human sexuality after intense and unrelenting pressure from LGBT-identifying activists and their allies. Even though the worldwide Methodist communion uniformly opposes any sexual intimacy outside of traditional marriage, American Methodist advocates of complete sexual autonomy have insisted on violating their church’s stated beliefs and are now dividing the United Methodist Church.

With precedents like these, it is understandable that the insistent and relentless demands of LGBTQ activists and their supporters would try to erode those institutions retaining fidelity to “the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:2).

Anyone who agrees with a school’s doctrinal statement or at least agrees to abide by its standards is welcome at a Christian college or university, depending on the individual institution’s rules. Yet no one is compelled to remain at a school whose standards are repellent to him or her. To do so speaks of a lack of moral courage and personal dishonesty as well, perhaps, of a certain desperation for affirmation that the student himself or herself does not possess within.

My heart goes out to those wrestling with issues of sexual identity. But this court case hasn’t been about any student’s view of his or her sexuality. It’s about standing for the truth of the Word of God and allowing those who follow it to do so without penalty. Continuing to stand without compromise is one of the great and ongoing challenges for the believing church today. May we be found faithful.

AUTHOR

Rob Schwarzwalder

Rob Schwarzwalder is Senior Lecturer in Regent University’s Honors College.

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EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Noem’s Pro-Trans Ties Spark Protests, 2024 Skepticism

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Even the frigid temperatures couldn’t keep angry South Dakotans away. Despite the blistering, nine-degree cold, as many as 150 people gathered in the snow outside the 2023 Midwest Gender Identity Summit in Sioux Falls Friday morning to protest Sanford Health’s unwelcome presence in their state. Standing by snow drifts, with a long convoy of cars heading to join them, organizer Adam Broin insisted, “This is NOT South Dakota!” But according to a bombshell report by NRO reporter Nate Hochman, it may already be South Dakota, thanks to the transgender movement’s unlikely ally: Republican Governor Kristi Noem.

For Noem, who’s been trying to rehabilitate her image for 2024 after a series of conservative betrayals, the timing of Hochman’s piece couldn’t be worse. Two years removed from her shocking veto on a girls’ sports bill — and three from her behind-the-scenes death blow to a ban on child-mutilating surgery — Noem was hoping she could put the questions about her bona-fides behind her. Instead, she’s staring down another career-crushing controversy over her cozy relationship to one of the largest providers of puberty blockers and sex change surgeries in the Midwest.

Of course, the ties between Sanford Health and the state’s establishment Republicans haven’t exactly been a secret in South Dakota. What has come as a surprise is just how deep those political tentacles run — often, as Hochman points out, dictating policies at complete odds with the states’ social conservative roots.

“I think it’s impossible to understate or to overstate how powerful Sanford Health is in South Dakota,” Hochman told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Thursday. “It’s a $7.5 billion company.” They employ almost seven times more people than the second largest employer in South Dakota, he explained. “And they fund the campaigns of a lot of Republican leaders in the state, including a bunch of the Republicans who sit on the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which is the committee that killed the bill” protecting minors from gender transition procedures.

As for Noem, Hochman explained, “She has a very close relationship with Sanford Health. It’s her top career donor.” In exchange, she’s bowed to their demands on LGBT issues, even when it’s in direct conflict with her state’s wishes or her party’s agenda. In a state where the number of self-identified conservatives outweigh liberals by more than 30 points, it’s not a place “where one would expect to find a major trade conference for transgender medical specialists,” he wrote.

But unfortunately, Sanford Health’s influence runs deep — so deep, the country learned in 2020, that Noem was willing to do their bidding on a profoundly popular policy to protect kids. At her behest, the bill’s sponsors said, the committee voted to sink a measure that would give teenagers and their families more time to weigh a decision that could destroy them forever. It’s a “pause button” on transgender surgery, Rep. Fred Deutsch (R) called it. “Nobody is saying that kids can’t pursue these treatments later on — but surely, we can all agree that children who can’t even drive shouldn’t be steering themselves into permanent medical procedures.” Despite having the committee majority, Republicans voted 5-2 to sink the only hope South Dakota parents had.

That was the first inkling that the “most conservative governor in the country,” as Noem likes to call herself, wasn’t as advertised. The second shoe dropped in 2021, when the fight to protect women’s sports started to break out in state legislatures. Buoyed by Idaho’s momentum, both chambers of the South Dakota legislature rushed a bill to the governor’s desk to make biology the determining factor of any athlete’s team.

It wasn’t a heavy lift. As Perkins pointed out, “Almost every state that’s even pink has embraced that.” Noem herself seemed to be on board with the idea at first, tweeting that she was “excited to sign this bill very soon.” Two weeks later, after meetings with left-wing activists (including, Hochman writes, Sanford Health), the governor abruptly changed her mind. On a Friday afternoon, to the astonishment of Americans everywhere, she announced she was vetoing HB 1217 — caving to the mob in spectacular fashion and reaping a whirlwind of backlash so intense that people wondered if her career would recover.

Noem went on a face-saving media tour to try to mitigate the damage, but it was too late. She was tagged as a phony, a squish, a sellout to the liberal interests of the state. Her cowardice was helpful in one way, conservatives would say later. More than a dozen leaders raced to sign sports bills into law, hoping to avoid the wrath the South Dakota governor endured for capitulating.

In the months since, Noem has tried to rebuild her status as a GOP firebrand — an effort that’s fizzled with every failed bill. As Hochman points out, “Conservative lawmakers have struggled to get any number of social-conservative bills, particularly as they pertain to transgender issues, across the finish line” — including more conscience rights for medical practitioners (HB 1247), a ban on sex change surgeries and drugs for children (HB 1057), a ban on changing South Dakotans’ sex on birth certificates (HB 1076), a requirement for teachers to inform parents if their child is struggling with gender identity issues (SB 88), a requirement that students use bathrooms and locker rooms that matches their biology (HB 1005), and the establishment of the “fundamental” parental right “to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education and care of a child” (HB 1246). As of February 2021, there had also been seven failed attempts to protect women’s sports, according to the ACLU.

By all rights, South Dakota has become a state where conservative bills go to die. That’s been incredibly frustrating to the state’s grassroots organizations. Norman Woods, director of South Dakota’s Family Heritage Alliance, told Hochman, “We see [Sanford] attack good social conservative ideas all the time.”

It’s no wonder, Hochman told Perkins, since plenty of Sanford Health employees are either South Dakota legislators themselves or lobbyists — or both. “One thing that I found through a lot of digging through old … legislative hearing files is that Sanford lobbyists show up often, literally in lab coats, to effectively lobby against a lot of these bills that are on the record as testifying and lobbying against things like the ban on the chemical castration of children. And they’ve lobbied against a variety of other social conservative bills, almost all of which have died.”

Sounds like “an enormous conflict of interest,” Perkins shook his head. “And did they recuse themselves,” Perkins asked, “from voting on issues of interest to Sanford?” “Not only do they not recuse themselves,” Hochman replied, “but they actually actively champion the efforts to kill a lot of these bills.”

Meanwhile, for Woods, Noem’s alliance with the far-Left is personal. After South Dakota State University hosted a “kid-friendly” drag show on state property, he dashed off a December 20 letter to the governor, urging her to act.

“Considering you have the power to hold the South Dakota Board of Regents accountable and fire at will, I am greatly disappointed you and your administration have taken no action to rectify this situation or to ensure that drag shows for children never happen again on South Dakota soil. The only answer we have seen from your office is for South Dakotans to reach out to the Attorney General. Our children deserve our protection, and as Governor, you have not only the duty, but the responsibility to act.”

Noem flew into a rage, publicly calling for Woods’s head if the Family Heritage Alliance ever wanted to work with her again. The disproportional response to Woods’s run-of-the-mill call to action was a stunning, over-the-top display.

“I am disappointed in Mr. Woods’ decision to attack me publicly by sending this letter out of the blue and releasing it to the media at the same time, instead of reaching out to my office to have a productive conversation about how we can work together. This behavior is both counterproductive and unbecoming of the executive director of your organization, but unfortunately, it has become a pattern in recent years,” Noem wrote.

“As a result, my office will no longer work with the Alliance until and unless its executive director chooses to act professionally.” She goes on to claim that she shares the Alliance’s goals of “faith, family, and freedom” (despite a checkered record to that effect) and expresses “disappoint[ment]” that the Alliance’s Woods “has made it impossible for us to work together to accomplish our shared goals.”

“I’d encourage the Family Heritage Alliance to evaluate the purpose of your organization. Is it to promote family values—or is it to attack the most conservative governor in the country? I believe it is the former and urge you to focus your efforts on bringing our shared pro-family message to the people of South Dakota. I suggest you find an executive director who agrees.”

Shocked, Woods told reporters, “As an organization exclusively lobbying on behalf of South Dakota families, we naïvely thought we could engage America’s ‘most conservative governor’ (her words) in an effort to put an end to the explicit sexualization of children on our public university campuses. Sadly, she misconstrued our efforts. Regardless, just like Protecting South Dakota Kids was successful this fall, so will we be when it comes to putting an end to these grooming events.”

As for the governor’s insistence that the Alliance should have reached out to her privately, conservative organizations understand firsthand how futile that would have been. At the height of the debate over gender transitions for minors in 2020, Family Research Council’s Perkins requested a phone call with Noem to discuss the bill. In a letter obtained by The Washington Stand, FRC’s president outlined the urgency of the conversation, writing, “I would love to talk to you as soon as possible, to alleviate any concerns you may have about this bill and to receive your assurance that you will do everything possible to protect vulnerable children in South Dakota.”

The governor never responded, despite a follow-up call to then-General Counsel Tom Hart. The only time she did reach out to FRC, ironically, was a year later when she needed help cleaning up the PR mess of her girls’ sports veto.

Unfortunately, Noem’s vindictive streak toward Woods won’t come as a surprise to the state’s conservatives, many of whom found themselves primaried in 2022 for upholding true South Dakota values. The Blaze’s Daniel Horowitz was “shocked” to discover that the governor was “declar[ing] war” on social conservatives like Fred Deutsch, who wrote the child protection bill. Together with Sanford Health, who Hochman explained had “dumped a really significant amount of money into efforts to [unseat] all of the conservatives … who got in their way,” Noem began openly campaigning against several solid Republicans in the midterms.

“All of the people on her target list are true Christian conservatives, and those are the people she wants gone,” Rep. Rhonda Milstead, the lead sponsor of the girls’ sports bill told The Blaze. Noem aligned with “liberal leader of the Senate,” Republican legislators warned, working to purge incumbents with a 90%+ rating from the Family Heritage Alliance.

Less than two months later, the same governor was on Fox News, angling for a spot on the 2024 ticket and insisting her state is “thriving because we put forward and put in place conservative policies.” If those “conservative policies” include rolling out the red carpet to dangerous transgender extremism, count voters out. As Hochman explained to Perkins, he’s been “inundated” with emails and messages from South Dakotans saying they had no idea this was happening in their state — and they’re appalled.

“You know, South Dakotans are a good, solid conservative people. This does not represent their interests or their views, but … a lot of it has been sort of happening under clandestine circumstances. And the Republicans who lead the state aren’t broadcasting that. … The average South Dakotan often isn’t aware. And I think they would be horrified — and they are horrified — when they find out that it is.”

Broin, who organized the event outside of Sanford’s transgender conference Friday, talked about the passion of the protestors who showed up “at the crack of dawn,” shoveling the snow-covered sidewalks outside the event to make room for more. “A lot — a lot — of people want to stand up [to this agenda],” he told “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice, including freshman state Representative John Sjaarda (R), who joined the crowd.

“We wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing as a group if the political folks of South Dakota would truly represent the people,” Broin said. “But unfortunately, even though there’s great people in our in our state … [who] say a lot of really nice things, the most important conservative legislation seems to always fall through the cracks, not make it through committee, get vetoed for mysterious reasons …”

That’s why, he believes, more groups are springing up to fight the “secrecy” and duplicity of the state’s Republican leaders. “With everything in the national media,” Broin said, “we’ve really started to pay attention and realize that our party isn’t doing what they should be doing. … [W]e are pushing back” on anyone urging the GOP to “cleave itself from grassroots engagement,” he insisted. “And hopefully, we can get our party to represent the third most conservative voting population in the nation.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘An Indefensible Assault’: Conservatives Call for Halt to Omnibus

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As an impending snowstorm in the Washington, D.C. area and Senate Democrats put mounting pressure on Congress to push through a last-minute 4,155-page, $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill before the Friday deadline and Christmas recess, conservative lawmakers are voicing strong opposition to the measure, citing irresponsible delays and reckless spending on progressive special interest projects.

“These people, I would not put [them] in charge of a Minute Mart and three gas stations, much less a $6 trillion economy,” said Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.). “They know the deadlines, they fail every year. They bring it to Christmas and then they blame conservatives.”

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) took to Twitter to lambast the bill in a series of tweets. “This omnibus spending bill is the worst of business as usual in Washington and is an indefensible assault on the American people. We will not abide it,” he said. The congressman pointed to a host of inclusions he deemed wasteful, including “$982k for motel vouchers in LA”; “$817k for partnerships with ‘justice-involved individuals’ in Glendale, CA”; “$2 million for ‘improving coordination’ in the NYC Mayor’s office”; “$8.6 million for ‘gender advisor programs’” at the Pentagon; “$65 million for salmon”; and “$3 million for bee-friendly highways,” among other controversial insertions.

Other GOP lawmakers, including Reps. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) as well as Senator Mike Braun (R-Ind.) slammed a provision for $3.6 million to be spent on a “Michelle Obama Trail.”

Multiple earmarks amounting to millions of dollars have also been designated for LGBT-themed special interest projects, along with millions more allocated for “diversity, equity, and inclusion”-themed ventures.

Still, despite the multitude of progressive priorities embedded in the spending bill, pro-abortion groups like NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and others expressed dismay Tuesday that it did not include specific new funding for abortion. “At a time of great crisis for reproductive health in this country, Congress has again utterly failed to safeguard access to the birth control and sexual health services made possible by the nation’s family planning program,” said Clare Coleman, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association.

Family Research Council, however, has argued that language is included in the omnibus that paves the way for abortion expansion. On Tuesday, FRC sent a letter to senators informing them that the organization would score against the bill for a variety of reasons, including language that “seems intent on making clear that VA [Veterans Affairs] facilities need to upgrade to be ready for an influx of abortions by female veterans and their families. The Omnibus should not be a vehicle for the Biden administration’s abortion expansion priorities.”

The letter went on to note that a section of the omnibus dedicated to funding for future pandemic response includes “grant programs that use vague, undefined terms such as ‘health equities,’ leaving the door open for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers to gain access to taxpayer dollars.” The letter included the example of the city of Rochester, N.Y. recently setting aside a “$5 million grant of federal COVID-19 relief funding for Planned Parenthood for being an ‘anti-violence organization.’”

Connor Semelsberger, FRC’s director of Federal Affairs for Life and Human Dignity, underscored that final passage of the omnibus is in the hands of the GOP, which has the choice to delay passage of the spending bill until next January when Republicans will control the House.

“Senate Republicans really control the cards,” he explained on Tuesday’s edition of “Washington Watch.” “No piece of legislation can get through the U.S. Congress without bipartisan support thanks to the filibuster. And so, the Republicans really could band together [and] help their friends out over in the House to set them up for a good spending opportunity [that is in] their own interests next year.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Transgender Agenda Losing Support: Poll

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Although left-wing activists often say they represent “the right side of history,” a well-regarded poll finds that support for a key item of the LGBTQ agenda has collapsed faster than virtually any other issue: Significantly fewer Americans support allowing men to use women’s restrooms in 2022 than in 2016.

“Americans are 17 percentage points more likely to favor” laws requiring the two sexes to use separate restrooms “today than they were in 2016, when the question was first asked,” according to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). “In fact, 2022 saw the sharpest uptick of strong support for requiring transgender people to use bathrooms based on their” sex.

“Typically, opinion does not move so quickly on such issues,” PRRI notes.

Americans of all political views became less supportive of this plank of the LGBTQ agenda over the last six years, with registered independents switching their views completely. “In 2016, most independents opposed” laws respecting female privacy, “but by 2022 a small majority favored these laws,” the polling firm states in an article published on December 15.

Surprisingly, the number of Democrats backing restroom privacy laws has grown by four points in 2022 (31%) over the level in 2016 (27%), according to PRRI’s 2022 American Values Survey.

Support for laws respecting privacy in intimate settings spans all racial and ethnic backgrounds, religions, and nearly all generations. A majority of multiracial (53%), Hispanic (52%), and white Americans (51%), as well as half of black Americans (50%), told PRRI they support legally established zones of privacy where people disrobe. Only college-educated white people, registered Democrats, people not affiliated with any religion, and those under the age of 30 tend to favor sexually mixed restrooms, the poll finds.

One likely reason for the seismic change is increasing public awareness of physical and sexual assaults inflicted by men against women inside restrooms. Last week, details emerged that a male who identifies as female physically attacked two teenage girls in a female restroom inside the Edmond Memorial High School in Edmond, Oklahoma. The nation’s restrooms have been the sight of numerous assaults and acts of voyeurism stretching all the way back to 1999. Recent incidents include:

  • “Two Loudoun County Public School (LCPS) officials have been indicted in Virginia on charges related to attempts to cover up two sexual assaults in a girls’ bathroom and in an empty classroom perpetrated against female students by a male student” who identified as “gender fluid,” The Washington Stand reported last week;
  • In March, an 18-year-old male exposed his genitals to a child inside a gender-neutral restroom in Wisconsin’s Rhinelander High School;
  • A five-year-old girl said a male student who identified as “gender fluid” sexually molested her inside the restroom of Oakhurst Elementary School in Decatur, Georgia, on November 16, 2017. The school district violated Title IX by failing to adequately investigate the incident, according to a 2020 ruling from the Office of Civil Rights in the Trump administration’s Education Department; and
  • Police arrested a man for indecent exposure inside a women’s restroom in Charlotte, North Carolina, in July 2016.

Similar outrages have occurred in intimate facilities other than restrooms:

  • The Daily Mail reported this month that prison authorities transferred convicted child rapist Brett David Sonia, who now identifies as Brooke Lyn Sonia, to Washington Correctional Center for Women, reportedly leaving women “petrified” they will be victimized next;
  • In July 2016, police arrested a man for recording a young girl changing her clothes inside a Target changing room. Sean Patrick Smith, who identified as woman named “Shauna Patricia Smith,” reportedly told police that he exploited Target’s celebrated, transgender-friendly policies to record several young women undressing. Smith entered a guilty plea to one count of video voyeurism in October 2016; and
  • Officials accused voyeurs of recording similar, surreptitious videos in Target’s multi-sex changing rooms in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Texas in 2016 alone.

The real difference on the issue comes down to ideology, not age, PRRI states. The Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, and Generation X oppose opening restrooms to transgender people. Americans aged 30-49 are evenly split, while those 18-29 support transgender restroom use. But the report notes that Millennials and Gen Z who belong to the Republican Party side with older Republicans in backing restroom privacy legislation.

“Generational divisions, then, are largely attributable to differences in the generations to identify with the Democratic or Republican Party,” says the survey. “If younger cohorts start identifying more with the Republican Party,” support for restroom privacy will increase.

“It is not guaranteed that demographic change means a destiny of victory for LGBTQ equality,” concludes PRRI.

Values play a strong role in how citizens view transgender restrooms. A majority of “members of all religious groups support requiring transgender individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex,” notes PRRI, “including three in four white evangelical Protestants (75%), 64% of other Christians, 58% of white mainline Protestants, 57% of Black Protestants (57%), 53% of white Catholics, 51% of Hispanic Catholics, and 50% of non-Christian religious Americans.” Yet only 34% of the Nones support gender privacy.

Americans who believe there are only two sexes are also three times more likely to support separate restroom and changing spaces than those who believe in gender fluidity (69% vs. 23%).

What’s more, the poll’s results fall to the left of many other surveys; for instance, a 2016 WPA Opinion poll found two-thirds of all Americans oppose transgender restrooms. PRRI’s declining numbers indicate public support has eroded even more than the report lets on. The title of the report announcing these results, “Challenges In Moving Toward A More Inclusive Democracy,” reflects PRRI’s pique.

PRRI also complains that “Americans who most trust far-right news outlets” are “notably more likely to support” restroom privacy (84%), even more than those whose first news choice is Fox News (78%). Americans who “most trust mainstream outlets are much less likely to support” female restroom rights (44%).

Time magazine ran an article in 2016 titled, “Transgender Bathroom: Advocates Say ‘Predator’ is Myth.” A year later, CNN asserted that “there is no evidence” that policies giving males access to female’s intimate spaces “lead to attacks in public facilities.”

Nearly two out of three people who stopped or curbed their viewing of CNN (61%) agreed that “one of the reasons I find myself watching CNN less often is because of its liberal/left-wing bias,” according to a new poll from the Media Research Center.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Omnibus Bill Includes over $11 Million in LGBT Special Interest Projects

Trans-Identifying HHS Official Admits Gender Transition Procedures Can Cause Sterility

Republican Cracks Down on Trans Bathroom Policies After High School Restroom Assault

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trans-Identifying HHS Official Admits Gender Transition Procedures Can Cause Sterility

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Rachel Levine, a biologically male senior official at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who identifies as a transgender woman, recently stated publicly that he was happy to have undergone gender transition procedures later in life because it allowed him to have children. Experts, however, are pointing out that the policies promoted by Levine favor allowing minors to undergo gender transition procedures despite the fact that such procedures can lead to permanent sterility.

At a recent public event, Levine stated, “If I had transitioned when I was young, I wouldn’t have my children. I can’t imagine a life without my children.”

Levine expressed relief about having not undergone gender transition procedures such as receiving puberty blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones as a minor, which can cause irreversible, permanent sterility. Notably, however, Levine publicly advocated for minors to in fact be able to undergo such treatment in July. “We really want to base our treatment and to affirm and to support and to empower these youth not to limit their participation in activities and sports, and even limit their ability to get gender affirmation treatment in their state,” he said.

The Biden administration has backed statements like this up with policies. In July, Biden’s HHS proposed a rule that revised Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” and “reproductive health care services” including “pregnancy termination” to existing “protections against discrimination on the basis of sex.” Critics say the rule would have forced conscientious-objecting health care workers to violate their religious beliefs, not only through having to carry out abortions but also having to carry out gender transition surgeries to remove healthy organs and administer puberty blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones. In December, a federal appeals court agreed, ruling that the proposed rule violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The administration has also endorsed gender transition procedures for minors in a series of documents, and administration officials have endorsed using taxpayer dollars to fund these procedures.

Meanwhile, a number of individuals who have detransitioned out of the transgender lifestyle after having undergone irreversible procedures as minors have expressed disillusionment and regret at the prospect of how it will affect their future families. Chloe Cole says she was pushed into undergoing a double mastectomy at age 15, and is heartbroken that she will be unable to breastfeed her future children. “Adrian” has similarly been left “despairing and sterile.” Other examples of those who were pushed into transition procedures and have come to regret them abound.

Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, the director of the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council, noted the disparity between what studies show and the actions of the Biden administration.

“Levine’s comments are illustrative of a psychological disconnect that is embedded in the approach and the implementation of transgenderism,” she told The Washington Stand. “Every front that you look at with the transgender ideology, you see this disconnect between science and the practice, the ethics and the practice, the knowledge of what we know about development and the practice. It is the most disassociated ideology.”

She continued, “Here we have from the very top someone who is illustrating this very dynamic by saying, ‘In my personal life, I’m so grateful that I didn’t transition as a child so that I was able to have what I wanted, but let me impose this on everyone else.’ It’s distressing and at the same time not surprising because it is such an apropos representation of an ideology that promotes disassociation — the right hand literally does not know what the left hand is doing.”

Bauwens, who formerly worked as a clinician providing trauma-focused treatment to children, pointed to a seemingly willful ignorance of science on the part of the Biden administration.

“For someone who is in Health and Human Services and isn’t aware of the studies that are going on in other government agencies that have clearly shown that most brains aren’t even developed until 25 — disregarding all of that knowledge and imposing your own view, which isn’t even your own experience,” she observed. “This approach is not rooted in science, so there’s no grounding in the scientific method onto practice, and everything we know about scientific ethics and protecting vulnerable classes of people — which children are included in that class — that’s just thrown by the wayside.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Republican Cracks Down on Trans Bathroom Policies After High School Restroom Assault

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The top education official in a heavily Republican state is cleaning house, demanding that all public school districts and charter school have policies respecting the privacy of female students, after a male who identifies as female allegedly beat up two teenage girls in a high school restroom.

No media outlet covered the altercation, which took place on October 26, until the website Reduxx got a copy of the police report on December 12. According to police, a teenage boy became enraged when a teenage girl ignored him when he initiated conversation inside the girl’s restroom of Edmond Memorial High School in Edmond, Oklahoma. The boy then asked if she “wanted to fight” and came at her with clenched fists, pulled her hair, and threw her to the ground. the police report says. The girl said she was too weak to fight back. An eyewitness said the boy then “kicked her in the head and the back 2 times,” then punched her repeatedly. Another female said she intervened to stop the fight, because the attacker “is a man,” but said the boy punched her in the face twice; the police report described the second girl as having sustained a “possible concussion.”

“This is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in the state of Oklahoma,” said Oklahoma Secretary of Education Ryan Walters (R) in an online video. Walters said he would launch a state-level investigation into Edmond Public Schools — but he would also require all Oklahoma public school districts to notify parents of their restroom policies and submit them to Walters for review. “Our legislature and governor passed and signed a bill that says boys cannot go into girls’ restrooms for this precise reason,” said Walters. “We will not allow the radical Left’s Woke ideology to endanger our girls by having boys in the girls’ restrooms, where assaults like this can happen.”

Walters previously critiqued public schools in Stillwater after outraged parents complained that administrators opened restrooms to teenagers of both sexes. “You have chosen radicals over your students, ideology over biology, and ‘wokeness’ over safety,” Walters wrote to Stillwater education officials on April 8. “Today I am asking you to work with your fellow board members to make it so that your students only use the bathroom of their God-given natural sex. Biological males should not receive unrestricted access to women’s restrooms, leaving our young girls uncomfortable and afraid to enter them during school.”

“It’s wonderful to see Oklahoma’s Education Secretary Ryan Walters prioritizing the safety of girls over the desires of boys to be accepted as girls,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand.

A month after Walters’s letter to Stillwater, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt (R) signed S.B. 615, which requires schools to designate all restrooms or changing areas used by more than one person for the “exclusive use” of one sex. Schools must make a “reasonable accommodation” by providing a single-use restroom or changing area to students who do not wish to comply. Any school district that refuses to implement this policy would lose 5% of state funding in the next year, and parents would have a “cause of action” to sue noncompliant schools.

Three students, represented by the ACLU and Lambda Legal, sued the state Department of Education this fall, alleging in court filings that people who identify as transgender are “being singled out for discriminatory unequal treatment.”

“Education officials in school districts across the country have been pressured by outside agitators like the ACLU, SPLC, GLSEN, and the Human Rights Campaign to adopt progressive and dangerous policies that undermine children’s safety and learning. In the face of this relentless pressure, it takes leadership to restate the commonsense values that parents expect and under which all children can thrive,” Kilgannon told TWS.

Walters also criticized the legacy media for refusing to cover the story of the alleged transgender physical assault for nearly two months. A Google search found that, as of this writing, the Edmond transgender restroom assault had not been reported by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, Reuters, Axios, or Vice News.

Local media also suppressed the story of the transgender restroom attack. “I don’t think it meets the threshold to be ‘news,’” wrote Wendy Suares, a reporter for the area’s Fox affiliate, KOKH. The incident came as Virginia’s Loudoun County public school officials found themselves embroiled in controversy — and ultimately indicted — for denying that a male student who identifies as “gender fluid” sexually assaulted a teenage girl in a school restroom. Instead, officials had the girl’s outraged father arrested at a school board meeting, after quietly transferring the student to another school, where he reportedly molested another female student.

“Schools are for educating children, not ‘fixing them,’ promoting politics, or virtue signaling,” Kilgannon told TWS. “Thanks to Secretary Walters for this effort.”

Edmond Public School Superintendent Angela Grunewald responded in an oddly upbeat video that the school did not know the alleged perpetrator was a male, because his birth certificate did not mark his gender. Grunewald said her school district follows all applicable state laws and punished the male for fighting, as well as using the restroom facilities of the opposite sex.

Walters, who is running to become State Superintendent for Education, has promised to thoroughly review all state schools for compliance with the law — and, most importantly, to protect the safety and privacy of underage girls.

Walters’s “review of school policies just might reveal additional work to be done in 2023,” Kilgannon told TWS. “Something tells me he’s ready to do whatever it takes to protect all the children in his charge.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trans-Identifying HHS Official Admits Gender Transition Procedures Can Cause Sterility

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Killing Unborn Children Will Never Solve Maternal Mortality

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Since its founding, the abortion industry has always targeted minority and economically disadvantaged women as its prime sources of profit. Today, this anti-life narrative often takes the form of arguing that protecting life in the womb will exacerbate the nation’s maternal mortality crisis — a lie that a bogus new study from Boston University and the Commonwealth Fund attempts to perpetuate.

In the study, titled “The U.S. Maternal Health Divide,” the researchers claim that passing pro-life laws in the states will lead to an increase in maternal mortality and the disintegration of existing maternal health care. The legacy media wasted no time in elevating the report, with outlets like The Hill writing, “The new findings from The Commonwealth Fund confirm what many advocates feared: scrapping Roe v. Wade would have a disproportionate impact on women of color and worsen maternal health overall.”

The pro-abortion narrative is set — the only problem? The study doesn’t actually provide evidence or statistically significant data backing up the claim that protecting life in the womb augments maternal mortality. Rather, the study attempts to correlate the pre-Dobbs maternal and infant mortality rates between 2018 and 2020 with where the state laws now stand on protecting life in the womb in a post-Roe America.

One glaringly obvious issue with the narrative portrayed by this study is that under Roe v. Wade, no state had the ability to enforce a meaningful protection for life in the womb prior to viability. This means that during the period studied, practically speaking, the states now enforcing pro-life protections were indistinguishable from the states that currently allow abortion through 40 weeks of pregnancy.

Furthermore, during the three-year period studied, 20 of the 26 pro-life states reported at least a one-year increase in abortions, with several seeing increases across both years. If abortion were negatively correlated to maternal mortality, then an increase in abortion would cause a decrease in maternal mortality; however, increased rates of abortion in states that are now pro-life did nothing to alleviate the maternal mortality crisis in these states.

The study ignores regions such as our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., where women are almost twice as likely to die from pregnancy complications as mothers in the rest of the nation. The city also maintains one of the most liberal abortion laws in the United States; an abortionist in D.C. can kill a child in the womb at any point in pregnancy, and the abortionist does not need to be a doctor. The D.C. Abortion Fund directly finances abortions for abortion-minded mothers who struggle financially. If abortion were the solution to maternal mortality, why does unlimited abortion fail to remedy the maternal mortality crisis in areas like D.C.?

The answer, of course, is that killing a child in the womb is not a valid solution to any problem — nor is pregnancy itself the problem when addressing maternal mortality. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 63.2% of all pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Treating abortion as the solution to the maternal mortality crisis is a waste of time, money, and energy that would be far better directed to addressing real disparities in human flourishing.

For example, limited access to convenient and quality health care plays a major role in whether a woman is healthy before, during, and after her pregnancy. The Commonwealth Fund study attempts to characterize abortion as a solution to maternity care deserts. Of the 26 pro-life states analyzed, the majority are predominately rural, making the solution to a maternity care desert much more complex than simply opening a new hospital. Innovative medical resources, like telehealth services and mobile maternity care units, would go a long way in addressing the maternal health care disparities that abortion attempts to camouflage.

Likewise, abortion is not the solution to poverty. Nine of the top 10 states with the highest poverty rate in the country are states with pro-life protections in place. Poverty often predicts a mother’s ability to access quality health insurance, healthy food, and pharmaceutical resources. In these instances, mothers require assistance to access the resources needed to experience a healthy pregnancy and postpartum lifestyle — not abortion.

A quick glance under the hood of the Commonwealth Fund study reveals the major logical leaps that a reader must make in order to accept the claim that pro-life laws increase maternal mortality. Beneath the misleading pro-abortion framing, however, the report holds some truth: our nation really is suffering from a maternal mortality crisis. But one must only look around the abortion propaganda to recognize that telling poor and minority women that their safest pregnancy outcome is to kill their child is not a real solution.

AUTHORS

Joy Stockbauer

Joy Stockbauer is a policy analyst for the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council.

Connor Semelsberger

Connor Semelsberger is Director of Federal Affairs – Life and Human Dignity at Family Research Council.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

GENITAL MUTILATION IN AMERICA: List of 13 U.S. Hospitals That Operate on Underaged Children’s Sex Organs For Profit

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There are only two genders and a global epidemic of social disorders and mental illnesses. 

We have been writing about the grooming of children by public schools, colleges and universities to provide sex partners for perverts, pederasts and pedophiles.

But even more onerous are those doctors who swore an oath to “first do no harm” that are profiting from the mutilation of the sex organs of underaged children.

This is nothing more than genital mutilation for profit.

No one can change their gender! What they can do is mutilate themselves psychologically, spiritually and physically. This is the greatest and most culturally destructive myth of my generation.

It is barbaric and goes against science and all that is right and the truth. Genital mutilation is not healthcare!

What is most disturbing is the number of “pediatric gender clinics”, a.k.a. genital mutilation factories, that have taken root across America since 2007.

Joshua Arnold staff writer at The Washington Stand in an August 25th, 2022 article titled At Least 13 U.S. Hospitals Perform Gender Transition Surgeries on Minors listed the following hospitals who butcher underaged children to make a buck:

  1. The UCLA Gender Health Program’s pediatric practice (Los Angeles, Calif.) includes “puberty suppression therapy” and “hormone replacement therapy.” It also features “gender affirmation surgery.” According to their website, “most surgical procedures are not recommended until adulthood,” which implies that at least some gender transition surgical procedures may be performed prior to adulthood.
  1. The Gender Clinic at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health (Palo Alto, Calif.) treats both minors and “adults 18 years and older,” offering “puberty blockers and gender affirming hormones.” They provide gender transition surgery to “adolescents and young adults,” touting their “innovative surgical techniques” and “state-of-the-art operating suites.” They boldly state their not-so-medical opinion that “everyone deserves to have their physical body reflect their gender identity.”
  1. The Division of Plastic Surgery at Connecticut Children’s Hospital (Hartford, Conn.) “offers surgical options for gender affirmation to adolescents.” Their Gender Program recommends parents contact them “when puberty begins” for a range of treatments including “puberty blockers” and “hormone therapy.” They also link to various gender dysphoria support groups, including a Hartford group for ages 16-26 and a Bridgeport group for ages 13-24. In these support groups, children could develop close, emotional bonds to adults who are not relatives.
  1. The Essence Clinic at St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital (Boise, Id.) offers “hormonal therapy, including puberty blockers” and “surgical consultations and referrals” to “children, adolescents, and young adults.” Two of its five providers specialize in surgery.
  1. The Gender Development Program at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago (Chicago, Ill., Westchester, Ill.) offers “gender-affirming surgery referrals” for “children and adolescents,” who may “begin care with us up to age 22.” They say they “work closely with several surgeons who are experienced in this type of care and can provide more information and referrals for patients seeking these services.” However, their 19-member gender development team includes two pediatric surgeons, a pediatric plastic surgeon, and an attending physician of plastic and reconstructive surgery, and one of their three locations is a “surgical treatment center,” making it likely that they perform surgeries in-house.
  1. At the University of Illinois Hospital (Chicago, Ill.), “gender affirming surgery” is systematically interwoven into their surgical department, with no division between surgeons performing gender transition procedures and surgeons performing other types of plastic surgeries, and seemingly no division in care between children and adults. As an example, the program’s director “focuses on the reconstructive needs of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults up to age 25” and “specializes with adolescents and young adults in the realm of chest reconstruction, including asymmetric breasts, oversized breasts (female macromastia and male gynecomastia), and top surgery.”
  1. The Boston Children’s Hospital (Boston, Mass.) has offered “gender-affirming chest surgeries for individuals over 15 years old” (see above).
  1. The Child and Adolescent Transgender Center for Health at Boston Medical Center (Boston, Mass.) provides “access to onsite hormone blockers,” “gender-affirming hormone therapy,” and “referral to … other Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery services” for “children, adolescents, and young adults.” The Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery presents a “unified structure” for all “gender affirming care.” An anonymous testimonial on their website indicates they perform transgender surgeries on minors, “As a parent of a child going through the transgender experience, I have found valuable information on this site. After the surgery, I will be caring for him/her at my home.”
  1. The Gender and Sexuality Service at NYU Langone’s Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital (New York, N.Y.) will perform “gender-affirming medical interventions” on a “child, adolescent, or young adult,” working with health insurers “to obtain approvals for presurgical and surgical procedures.” The sizable “Gender and Sexuality Service Team” of nearly 19 doctors include four who represent plastic and reconstructive surgery.
  1. Golisano Children’s Hospital, associated with University of Rochester Medicine, (Rochester, N.Y.) features “gender health services” to “youth and young adults” including “cross-gender hormone therapy,” “pubertal blockade,” and “surgical services” with three surgeons listed.
  1. Doernbecher Children’s Hospital (Portland, Ore., Beaverton, Ore.) offers “a full range of services for transgender and gender-nonconforming children and teens,” including hormone treatments, surgery, and handouts with tips on how to appear more like the opposite sex. They “evaluate surgery for teens on an individual basis.”
  1. The Gender Clinic at Seattle Children’s Hospital (Seattle, Wash.) accepts “new patients ages 9 to 16.” The services they provide include “puberty blockers,” “gender-affirming hormones,” and “gender-affirming surgery.” While gender transition procedures for minors require parental consent, “Washington state privacy laws limit parent and caregiver access to adolescents’ health information. … The patient chooses whether to consent to releasing medical information.”
  1. The Gender Health Clinic at Children’s Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Wisc.) focuses on “children and youth” and “will meet with new patients through age 16.” They offer “puberty-suppressing hormone therapy, gender-affirming hormone therapy, surgical treatments, and speech/voice training.” They refer patients 17 or older to “an adult hormone provider.”

We are saddened that some of our major university medical centers are in the business of doing irreparable harm to underaged children. This is gender mutilation of the worst kind.

This isn’t doing these patients any good to believe that by mutilating their sexual organs they can change their gender. Gender is immutable. Science tells us so.

To perform these types of “therapies” and surgeries is criminal at best.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis Sweeps School Board Elections with 25 Wins!

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The endorsement of Ron DeSantis for school board candidates has created a “red wave for parents rights” in the Sunshine State.

The Washington Stand’s Marjorie Jackson reported,

Just as school bells across the country begin ringing for another semester of class time again, Florida conservatives are running another victory lap around the school yard.

Tuesday night’s Florida primaries handed victories to 25 of the 30 school board candidates backed by the state’s Governor Ron DeSantis (R), and 35 of 49 candidates endorsed by school board-challenging 1776 Project PAC, flipping several school boards to have conservative majorities.

“It’s the culmination of a lot of hard work,” Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Education Studies, told The Washington Stand. “It’s a reflection of Florida citizens’ anger at the school boards in red counties and a red state acting like they live in blue counties and blue states. A lot of these places very publicly and strongly pushed back on implementing the governor’s recommendations on masking for students and following the federal guidelines. This is a big part of why you’re seeing this big turnout right now.”

Read the full article.

Florida Research Council Action’s Matt Carpenter stated,

“The most important government is the government closest to home, so when parents stream to the polls to toss recalcitrant ideologues off their local school board they are sending a clear message: teach our children to read and write, not gender ideology or dividing them by race.”

According to an October 21st article in the Tampa Bay Times reporter Jeffrey S. Solochek wrote,

In October 2021 the National School Boards Association sent a letter to Biden raising concerns about “domestic terrorism” targeting boards. Although the association did not mention parents, and the Justice Department did not call for investigations, DeSantis and others have framed the issue as a federal attempt to curtail parental rights.

[ … ]

DeSantis said Wednesday that federal officials were trying to intimidate parents from speaking their minds on controversial issues at board meetings.

“As we continue to see the use of fear and intimidation to suppress opposition to the regime, we’re going to find new ways to be able to empower parents’ rights to decide what is best for their children,” DeSantis said. “Parents across the state should know that their freedoms are going to be protected here, and that the state of Florida has your back.”

Governor DeSantis kept his word and helped elect candidates to school boards in Florida that are dedicated to empowering parents’ rights to decide what is best for their children.

For example in Sarasota County DeSantis endorsed three pro-parental right to choose candidates for the school board and all three won, giving parents a voice on matters concerning how and what their children are being taught.

Public schools statewide are under the microscope in Florida and Governor Ron DeSantis is leading the charge to make sure the the voices of parents are heard, loud and clearly, by each and every school board.

Parental rights is now the key issue in Florida with Democrats saying parents have no rights and Governor DeSantis clearly supporting the rights of parents in their child’s education. This issue was a factor in the primaries and will be again in the midterm election for Governor of Florida.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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