Convergence
- Parents Unite
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Two recent SCOTUS decisions have weakened gender ideology's hold on society. The recent United States v. Skrmetti decision allows states to restrict access to care for transgender youth. Mahmoud v. Taylor states that religious parents have the constitutional right to opt their children out of classroom materials that promote views on gender and sexuality that conflict with their faith.
These rulings are significant, and as a result, a multitude of diverse perspectives are converging to speak out against medical gender transition for minors and the indoctrination that has led to a social contagion of gender dysphoria.
Gender ideology has retained its influence through fear, intimidation, and censorship. This belief system asserts people can be born in the wrong body and, therefore, choose their gender. Schools push this belief system to students as part of their DEI programs in the name of inclusion and belonging. Parents and children who don’t conform at independent schools might be told, “This school may not be a fit for your family.” The lack of parental rights in independent schools both compels and chills speech.
When voices as diverse as a liberal MIT professor, a gay rights advocate, a Duke University physician, and a staff writer for The Atlantic all speak out against the dangers of "transing" children, it legitimizes the concerns of those who have long warned about the harms of gender ideology and gender-affirming care.
These four voices reveal four undeniable realities that parents can no longer ignore. What do these now-speakable truths teach us, and how can parents use them to find the clarity and courage to speak up finally?
1. The evidence for medicalized gender affirming care for pediatric gender distress was never there—experts are finally speaking out, and so can you.
President Trump's executive order directed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to systematically review the evidence used to promote gender-affirming care. However, the report had to be done anonymously because the political climate around this issue silenced medical professionals from telling the truth.
Alex Byrne, a professor of philosophy at MIT, was part of the team that authored the comprehensive review in May for HHS, evaluating treatments for gender dysphoria in minors.
He recently came forward to explain the need for anonymity in his article titled “I co-wrote the anonymous HHS report on pediatric gender medicine. The hostile reaction to our work shows why we needed to do it in the first place.”
According to Byrne, “Medicalized treatment for pediatric gender dysphoria needs to be dispassionately scrutinized like any other area of medicine, no matter which side of the aisle is cheering it on. But in the United States, it has not been.”
2. You can oppose gender ideology without fear, and doing so does not mean that you are homophobic/transphobic
The power of gender ideology is that it silences anyone who dares to question it or disagree because no one wants to be accused of being homophobic/transphobic. Under the guise of inclusion and belonging, the highly political LGBTQ+ movement has hijacked and undermined the gay rights movement. Andrew Sullivan recently wrote “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way.”
“In the gay rights movement, there had always been an unspoken golden rule: Leave children out of it.” So what did the gender revolutionaries go and do? They focused almost entirely on children and minors. Partly because the adult issues had been resolved or close to it, and partly because true cultural revolutions start with the young, it meant overhauling the education not only of children with gender dysphoria, but of every other kid as well… Kids all over the country were impacted. Your children were taught in elementary school that being a boy or a girl was something they could choose and change at will. Your daughter found herself running against a trans girl (i.e. a biological male) in athletics. Children in elementary school got to pick pronouns, and some children socially transitioned at school without their parents’ knowledge or permission.” Sullivan also points out that, “The words gay and lesbian all but disappeared. L.G.B.T. became L.G.B.T.Q., then L.G.B.T.Q.+, and more letters and characters kept being added: L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ or 2S.L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ (to include intersex, asexual people and two-spirit Indigenous people). The plus sign referred to a seemingly infinite number of new niche identities, and, by some counts, more than 70 new ‘genders.’ The point was that this is all one revolutionary, intersectional community of gender-diverse people, and intertwined with other left causes, from Black Lives Matter to Queers for Palestine.”
3. Supporting children means guiding them towards truth/reality, not affirming their mental distress
Dr. Farr Curlin wrote a cogent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal titled “Transgender Treatments Distort the Purpose of Medicine: Physicians are supposed to promote patients’ health, not cater to their desires.” In it, Curlin questions the role of medicine in treating gender dysphoria and argues that current practices undermine its core purpose. He writes:
“Described in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, gender dysphoria is a mental disorder. Those who suffer it perceive healthy secondary sex characteristics as disordered. Traditionally, medicine treats a mental disorder by helping the patient align perception with reality—like the reality of a healthy body. Medicalized gender transition turns this norm on its head, “affirming” the child’s disordered perception and treating his healthy body as a diseased one.”
4. It is time to stop lying to children and their parents; there is nothing nice about that
In Helen Lewis’ recent Atlantic article, “The Liberal Misinformation Bubble About Youth Gender Medicine: How the left ended up disbelieving the science,” Lewis debunks the lies that doctors tell parents of gender dysphoric children—that their child would commit suicide if their desired gender were not affirmed. This put an unimaginable burden on parents, forcing them to go against their parental instincts.
“Allow children to transition, or they will kill themselves. For more than a decade, this has been the strongest argument in favor of youth gender medicine—a scenario so awful that it stifled any doubts or questions about puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. “We often ask parents, ‘Would you rather have a dead son than a live daughter?’” Johanna Olson-Kennedy of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles once explained to ABC News. Variations on the phrase crop up in innumerable media articles and public statements by influencers, activists, and LGBTQ groups. The same idea—that the choice is transition or death—appeared in the arguments made by Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s solicitor general, before the Supreme Court last year. Tennessee’s law prohibiting the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat minors with gender dysphoria would, she said, “increase the risk of suicide.” But there is a huge problem with this emotive formulation: It isn’t true.”
Given the recent SCOTUS decisions, what might parents expect from their school?
Independent schools have been the early adopters and promoters of social justice and gender ideology, creating cultures of “inclusion” that exclude anyone who questions the dogma. These institutions, steeped in social justice groupthink and fealty to race, gender, and climate, have ensured that the silent majority who disagree with this belief system keep quiet.
Given the increasingly shaky foundation on which gender ideology rests, schools should now be accountable to make the case to justify their continued promotion of gender ideology. Most importantly, schools should make a commitment to let children be children, respect their development, and not force them to consider their sexuality and gender identity until they go through puberty. Leave the kids alone.
Secular schools are not places to impart morality-based opinions to students, but must equip them with accurate information to make safe, informed decisions about their future actions. Schools should hold to the tenet that parents have the responsibility for the moral upbringing of the children and, as such, are the primary sexuality educators for their children.
We wish you all a Happy 4th of July, and join many in celebrating July as American Pride Month!
Thanks for reading Parents Unite! Subscribe to our Substack for free to receive new posts and support our work.