The data came from the first nationally representative survey to include a question on transgender identity across all U.S. public and private high schools. It was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Now corporations are pulling back on support for LGBTQ initiatives, and medical professionals are recommending against gender-manipulation procedures for America’s youth.
Brad Dacus of Pacific Justice Institute, while attending the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters Wednesday, told AFN the U.S. is seeing a tipping point of the LGBTQ agenda, that tolerance is on the decline.
And new data says he’s correct.
Seventy-two percent of Generation Z respondents in a Barna Research Group survey say they believe they’re seeing younger people coming to Christ, Barna CEO David Kinnaman said at NRB Wednesday. Gen Z references individuals born between 1997-2012.
“We’re releasing some brand new trends here,” Kinnaman said, this being the second in 10 trends that “Americans are sensing the conditions that make us ripe for spiritual revival, for spiritual renewal.”
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) last week said that doctors should delay gender-manipulation surgeries until a patient is at least 19 years of age. ASPS is the first major medical group to oppose gender manipulation-surgeries for minors.
The American Medical Association (AMA) followed with a similar recommendation.
Annheuser-Busch, Target, Lowes and Comcast are among major corporations that have scaled back support for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and/or LGBTQ initiatives.
The about-face by so many in Big Business is related to their bottom line and also the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Bottom line impacts
“Legally speaking, we are seeing a major shifting in the agenda of LGBTQ as applied to companies partly because in so doing and behaving in preference to LGBTQ, these companies have been engaging in bigotry and discrimination against Christians or Orthodox Jews and people of faith. They're seeing a pushback legally with lawsuits being filed, as well as this administration’s Department of Justice saying, ‘we're not going to put up with this,’” Dacus said.
Earlier this month Fox Varian, a 22-year-old biological female, won a landmark $2 million medical malpractice verdict against two medical professionals -- psychologist Kenneth Einhorn and plastic surgeon Simon Chin -- in Westchester County, New York.
The jury found that both practitioners failed to meet the accepted standard of care when approving and performing a double mastectomy on Varian when she was just 16 years old. At the time, she identified as male and was undergoing gender-manipulation procedures, but later detransitioned and claimed she had not been adequately informed of the risks, alternatives, or long-term consequences of the irreversible surgery.
“It's major, that is plastic surgeons being sued, hospitals being sued, psychiatrists and psychologists. We want to see more lawsuits against them for writing off and just checking the box after one visit with someone saying, ‘oh yeah, you need to get your body parts cut off,” Dacus said.
“Hospitals, we see them actually starting to say ‘we're not going to do this anymore. We're not going to allow it anymore.’ As the costs increase, they may not change their heart, but they will change their policy because their pocketbook will demand it,” Dacus said.
Trends are encouraging, but cultural battles continue.
Most concerns Pacific Justice Institute hears from parents originate with gender in some way and often involve issues at the child’s public school, Dacus said.
Last summer’s Supreme Court ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor is a big win for parents’ rights.
Three sets of parents -- Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox -- sued Superintendent Thomas Taylor and the Montgomery County, Maryland, school board, arguing that their children’s mandatory exposure to content conflicting with the parents’ religious beliefs violated their religious freedom rights.
In 2022 the district added LGBTQ-inclusive children's books to its supplemental English and language arts curriculum for grades K–5 and did not allow “opt-outs” – the ability for parents to remove their children from such lessons for reasons of religious conscientious.
The Court held 6-3 that the school’s policy substantially interfered with the parents’ freedom to guide their children’s religious upbringing.
Big win for parents
“This is a huge game-changer in empowerment for parents, particularly parents of faith,” Dacus said.
PJI has recently updated its “opt-out forms,” a free service to parents and customized to all 50 states.
“The opt-out forms are now much more powerful than ever before,” Dacus said.
Even with the Supreme Court ruling in pocket, Dacus expects LGBTQ proponents to continue to push the ideology.
“The forces of darkness don't surrender very easily, if ever. So, we can expect groups that want to push this radical, anti-Christian, pro-secular, pro-LGBTQ agenda to find ways around this … or try to,” Dacus said.
