The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), an office under the Department of Health and Human Services, has announced it is terminating a federal grant used to fund California sex-ed after the state refused to cut “gender ideology” from the curriculum. ACF audited materials associated with California's Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) grant and determined that aspects of the curriculum—including a lesson introducing middle schoolers to “gender ideology”—fell outside the program’s “authorizing statute.” In June, ACF gave the sex-ed program 60 days to remove these elements from the curriculum. “The Trump Administration will not allow taxpayer dollars to be used to indoctrinate children. Accountability is coming for every state that uses federal funds to teach children delusional gender ideology" said Andrew Gradison, acting assistant secretary at ACF.
The Federalist unpacks findings from a new report by the medical watchdog organization, Do No Harm, detailing how the Human Rights Campaign incentivizes pediatric hospitals to embrace “gender ideology.” The report, How the Human Rights Campaign’s Healthcare Equality Index Infects Pediatric Hospitals with Gender Ideology, homes in on how the scoring system for HRC’s “Healthcare Equality Index” deducts points from hospitals that don’t provide sex-rejecting procedures to minors. As the report notes, HRC’s support for “affirming care” fails to grapple with the “low quality evidence” for benefits and the potential for harm described in the UK’s Cass Report, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ report on best practices for treating pediatric gender dysphoria. “By capitulating to the HRC’s political scheme, hospitals have utterly betrayed patients, especially children struggling with gender dysphoria. If health systems care about providing high-quality pediatric care, then they should distance themselves from the HRC and its Index” said report author, Dr. Kurt Miceli.
This past Friday, Alaska’s State Medical Board was scheduled to vote on a resolution to formally oppose sex-rejecting procedures for minors. The Medical Board sent a letter in March to the Alaskan legislature urging them to restrict access to sex-rejecting procedures for minors, however, the legislature did not pick up the issue during the legislative session, which has since ended. The Board is now considering a policy declaring that practitioners who render sex-rejection procedures to minors are guilty of “gross negligence” and subject to disciplinary actions by the Board.
Last Friday, the Department of Education announced that it was beginning the process of cutting federal funds to five Northern Virginia school districts for violations of Title IX, the civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. In July, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights notified the districts that their bathroom and locker room policies, which privilege “gender identity” over biological sex, violate Title IX and instructed them to reverse the policies. Lawyers for the districts, however, maintain that the policies are consistent with state and federal law, as well as court precedent established by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
After Delaware’s Nemours Children’s Hospital announced its youth gender clinic would stop receiving new patients, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings sent the hospital a letter urging it reconsider. Although there is no high-quality evidence that “affirming care” improves the mental health of trans-identified youth, the letter speculates that care restrictions will worsen mental health issues. “While I recognize that you may worry about being placed in a precarious business position, I worry that your decision makes our state less caring, less healthy, and less safe” Jennings writes.
Northwestern researchers Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman describe findings from interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan, which reveal that most students suppress their true beliefs on controversial issues to fit in with peers and avoid social ostracism. “This dissonance shows up everywhere. Seventy-eight percent of students told us they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity; 72 percent on politics; 68 percent on family values. More than 80 percent said they had submitted classwork that misrepresented their views in order to align with professors” Romm and Waldman write. Moreover, 77% of students disagreed with the idea that “gender identity” should trump sex in sports, healthcare, or public data but also admitted that they would never voice that aloud. The researchers contextualize the survey findings within young adult identity development and lament that “Rather than forging a durable sense of self through trial, error, and reflection, students learn to compartmentalize. Publicly, they conform; privately, they question — often in isolation. This split between outer presentation and inner conviction not only fragments identity but arrests its development.”
Philosophers Daniel Kodsi and John Maier write for City Journal about how philosophers can overcome group think and bring their specific skills to the debate over “gender-identity ideology.” Last month, Kodsi and Maier penned a critique of mainstream academic philosophy for uncritically embracing the tenets of “gender ideology.” Kodsi and Maier focus on an amicus brief written by 21 Yale philosophers in support of the plaintiffs in the U.S. v. Skrmetti. Kodsi and Maier challenge the short-sighted reasoning of Yale’s “philosophical luminaries” for too easily accepting the logic and premises of the plaintiffs. “Rather than engaging with the question of whether good functioning in boys is realized differently from good functioning in girls, the Yale philosophers simply elided functional considerations altogether. Instead, they repeatedly claimed that the only motivation Tennessee could have was to ‘enforce sex-specific stereotypes.’” they write. “Important clarifications need to be made, and bad arguments refuted. We hope that more of our colleagues find the courage to use their expertise to help advance the truth about sex and gender identity—not suppress or obfuscate it” Kodsi and Maier conclude.
Retired UK judge Victoria McCloud is seeking a rehearing of the case in which the UK Supreme Court ruled in April that the legal definition of ‘woman’ under the Equality Act does not include trans-identified women who hold gender recognition certificates. McCloud, who identifies as transgender and holds a gender recognition certificate, is arguing that the Court violated their right to a fair trial by not hearing evidence from them or any of the other roughly 8,500 UK citizens who possess gender recognition certificates. “I was refused. The court gave no reasoning” McCloud declared. Meanwhile, gender-critical organizations like For Women Scotland and Sex Matters, have criticized the Scottish government for dragging its feet when implementing the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Joseph Figliolia
Policy Analyst
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