LGBT

‘Mass Exodus’: Dr. Jay Richards on the Demise of Gender Ideology and What It Means for the Pro-Life Movement

What do gender and sexual ideology have to do with protecting preborn babies?

Dr. Jay Richards explained at this year’s National Pro-Life Summit, an annual event designed to help people, particularly students, defend and advance the pro-life cause.

Richards, who directs the DeVos Center for Life, Religion and Family at the Heritage Foundation, joined Kristen Hawkins, Charlie Kirk, Ben Carson, Kayleigh McEnany and dozens of other experts in Washington D.C. to help attendees understand the pro-life landscape in 2025.

“To protect [preborn babies], we need to think about them [within] the institution of the family, and the destruction of the family as a result of the sexual revolution,” he exhorted aspiring activists.

Hosted by Students for Life, the Summit drew energy and inspiration from pro-life wins in the White House. But Richards emphasized the pro-life movement’s unique opportunity to change hitherto inaccessible hearts and minds.

To take advantage of this opportunity, he argued, pro-lifers must understand the President’s actions in the context of a larger backlash against the ideology of the sexual revolution.

To do that, Richards explained the connection between abortion and gender ideology.

Killing children in the womb and abolishing the sexual binary might seem unrelated. But Richards contended both are distinct consequences of the sexual revolution, an ideology that “exploded” in the 1960s with the introduction of birth control.

Richards suggested picturing abortion and gender ideology as two stations on a train track.

Imagine the sexual revolution is a train trip. You’re on a track, so the train is moving you in a particular direction. And there’s different stations along the way to your destinations … At every stop, people can get off the train.

Contrary to popular belief, the sexual revolution isn’t moving passengers to a more sexually liberated society.

“If that’s what it is [doing], we wouldn’t be sterilizing children who are confused about their bodies in 2025,” Richards remarked.

Instead, the fundamental premise of the sexual revolution is the legal and social “fracturing” of marriage, sex and childbirth, or, “The idea that those things don’t have to go together, ought not to go together, might be better if they don’t always go together.”

Abortion and gender ideology should be understood as phenomena that contribute to the rupture of God’s design.

Abortion is one of the revolution’s earliest stops. It is what Richards calls an enabling technology — something that makes the ideas of the revolution feasible. The sexual revolution’s first enabling technology, and train stop, was the birth control pill.

“There’s been types of contraception or contraceptive behaviors for as long as there have been humans,” Richards acknowledged, continuing,

But it was not until the approved birth control pill that it seemed at least [plausible] to have sex, all you want, right in the middle of the most fertile years of your life without having to deal with the consequences, namely a baby.

But birth control didn’t sufficiently delink sex and childbirth. In fact, Richards noted, “It so greatly increased out-of-wedlock sexual activity that it vastly increased the numbers of out-of-wedlock births as well.”

The Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 made abortion the new stopgap — an enabling technology that stopped childbirth by killing the child.

Gender ideology comes quite a few stations down the line, after the Supreme Court detached sex and marriage in 2015.

Prior to the dissociation of sex and childbirth, Richards argued, the state had a compelling interest to recognize marriage as a productive partnership between a man and a woman:

Marriage is the institution that socially ratifies, recognizes, protects and reinforces a basic biological reality, that it takes a fertile male and a fertile female, one of each, to mate.
There’s a widespread assumption, now widely confirmed by social science, that, all things being equal, the well-being of a child is enhanced dramatically if that child is raised by his or her married mother and father.
So, there’s a state interest in recognizing and protecting and distinguishing this institution from, say, a rotary club, voluntary association, or a religious body, or a medical license or a real estate license.

But, by 2015, Americans had largely accepted the idea that sex, marriage and childbirth weren’t related — and didn’t need to be.

Richards decoded the logic behind Obergefell v. Hodges: If sex doesn’t have to take place within a marriage, and marriage doesn’t have anything to do with producing or raising children, then marriage need not be between a man and a woman.

Within a week of the Obergefell ruling, trans activists began appearing on the covers of magazines. The T, joked Richards, began jockeying for a place with the Ls, Gs, and Bs.

Where once all relationships — including homosexual ones — assumed a sexual binary, the introduction of gender ideology now made the sexual binary obsolete, and even discriminatory.

Richards explained the progression like this:

Obergefell decided that the sexual binary did not matter for the institution of marriage. Gender ideology just says the sexual binary does not matter, period.

A logical next step.

Until gender ideology, most people had passively accepted a ride on the sexual revolution express. But this stop struck passengers differently from its predecessors, Richards found:

We’re now far enough along that the victims [of gender ideology] are telling their stories. That makes this different from abortion. The primary victims of abortion very rarely live to tell about it. The detransitioners do. This is a different issue from every one before. This train station is different from every other train station before.

Confronted with the consequences of demolishing the sexual binary, Richards said people have gotten off the ride.

It’s a mass exit of people wanting off this train. People who were partisans in favor of same-sex marriage, people who had been pro-choice their whole lives, people who thought free sex was great, people who had never spent two seconds thinking about the sexual revolution saw Rachel Levine, and big ol’ Leah Thomas standing next to Riley Gaines, and said, “This is insane.”

This is the environment pro-lifers find themselves in, Richards concluded — on a train station with a bunch of confused, disillusioned people that “are open to conversations [they] were not open to five years ago.”

Richards urged pro-lifers to equip themselves to have these important, delicate conversations. His advice? Connect the systematic destruction of God’s design with bizarre ideology making them exit the crazy train in the first place — station by station.

To walk it back, you have to connect pre-born babies to the sexual revolution. You have to be able to situate the sexual revolution as responsible for the destruction of the family and categorize abortion as a weapon of that attack.

If we can convince people in the train station of that, Richards said he’s convinced we can end “the scourge of abortion.”

This author tends to agree.

Additional Articles and Resources

The Two-Parent Privilege: Understanding Contemporary Family Formation

The 4B Movement: Anti-Women, Accidentally Pro-Life

Different Family Forms Lead to Prison or College for Young Men

Important New Research on How Married Parents Improve Child Well-Being

Here’s What Happens When Good People Don’t Connect Gay and Trans Ideology

Sorry ‘Gays Against Groomers,’ But Gay Activists Helped Start This Transgender Fire

Sorry ‘Gays Against Groomers,’ But Gay Activists Helped Start This Transgender Fire — Part Two

WSJ is Wrong About Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Having No Dire Effects

How the Binary in ‘LGBTQ+’ Reveals Its Utter Incoherence

Why Christians Can’t Avoid the “Trans” and Gender Redefinition Issue

How the “Trans” and Gender Redefinition Issue Attacks the Family

J.K. Rowling Promotes New Viral Video with Riley Gaines

A new video featuring Riley Gaines has gone viral, with J.K. Rowling’s help. The video illustrates the real strength and courage it takes for girls to compete, not just in sports, but against the woke mob, too.

The powerful video is part of a campaign called Real Girls Rock.

It highlights Gaines and her little sister, a state champion in gymnastics, among other women in different sports pursuing their athletic goals and dreams despite the criticism, hate, personal attacks and gaslighting of “trans” activists and their allies.

As each of these female athletes train tirelessly to become the best at their sport, they are threatened with labels like “transphobic,” “right-wing bigot,” and “fearmongerer.”  

Audio clips play in the background saying, “Who cares?” “Just be inclusive,” “Female athletes just need to work harder,” and “Don’t blame others for your lack of success.”

The video ends with the words, “Real strength, real courage, Real Girls Rock.”

The ad was produced by XX-XY Athletics, a pro-woman apparel company, of which Gaines is a brand ambassador.

The video immediately received positive responses on X, including promotion by J.K. Rowling who shared the video and wrote, “This is the first and likely the last time I’ll retweet an ad, but I love it.” Rowling has consistently demonstrated courage in standing up for girls and women rights against gender ideologues.

Gaines shared the video on her X account and wrote that her little sister is her inspiration to keep fighting to save girls sports.

The compelling video resonates with so many viewers because we know it’s true. We all lived it.

We saw female athletes robbed of titles, scholarships, and future sporting opportunities because they were unfairly forced to compete against males.

And then when some of those female athletes, and some of us, pointed out the obvious — that it’s not fair to pit a girl against a boy in sports — trans activists gaslit us and said we were the problem.

In reality, the toxic woke agenda of the transgender movement is the problem. It is fundamentally anti-woman and hurts real girls and women.

It’s time for all people of goodwill to refuse to live by the lies being propagated by the transgender movement.

This is our moment to stand up for the women in our lives — wives, daughters, sisters, nieces, granddaughters, and female friends.

We need to tap into the same courage and strength we see from the girls in this video.

Be strong in your convictions and courageous in advocating for the truth on this issue.

There is no need to apologize for speaking the truth.

Related Articles and Resources

Riley Gaines to Nike: ‘Protect Girls, Just Do It!’

The ‘Transgender’ Movement is Canceling Women, and It Must Stop

Allowing ‘Transgender Women’ to Compete Against Biological Women in Sports is Anti-Woman

Riley Gaines’ Sponsors ‘Real Women’s Day’ – Did Penn State Shut Her Out?Video: Riley Gaines on Being Targeted, Advice For Parents, Advocating Female Rights

Image credit: XX-XY Athletics /X

Trump Ends Radical Indoctrination, Promotes Education Freedom

President Donald J. Trump signed two significant education-related executive orders on January 29. The first aims to increase educational freedom for families, while the second is designed to stop the indoctrination of children into “radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight.”

The Executive Order Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families directs the Department of Education to “issue guidance regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives,” and it directs the DOE to prioritize education freedom “in discretionary grant programs.”

The directive explains the need for greater freedom for parents to improve their children’s academic success and provide “the best education for their children”:  

Too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.

According to this year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.

When only 30% of students are mastering basic subjects like reading and math, something is desperately wrong.

The order goes on to state that when schools fail to educate students, “It hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities.”

The executive order provides more momentum for the growing educational freedom movement. The goals of this movement include giving teachers and schools freedom to innovate, encouraging school transparency, holding schools accountable for educational outcomes, safeguarding parental rights in education, and expanding school choice.

School choice is a vital aspect of educational freedom, offering parents a variety of options for how and where to educate their children. Options include traditional public schools, magnet schools, homeschooling opportunities, charter schools, online learning, private schools and hybrid models, which combine several alternatives.

States that support parents’ rights in education provide funding for these choices through different means, such as scholarships, vouchers, educational savings accounts, tax credits and tax deductions. The best option for parents is when states allow funds to follow students to their schooling choice.

While the federal government doesn’t control state legislatures or boards of education, which set policies, regulations and guidelines in each state, it does provide education dollars to states through a variety of programs. States can’t be forced to increase educational freedom, but the order offers incentives to improve educational freedom through funding from different federal departments.

The second order, Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling, first explains some of the activist ideologies that have swept across our educational system and why they are damaging. The order states that parents entrust their children to schools to provide them “with a rigorous education and to instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand.”

Instead, the directive explains, “Parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight. Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination.”

The order indicts false, immoral and divisive ideologies like critical race theory and gender ideology, explaining their effect on students:

In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics. In other instances, young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed.

These practices not only erode critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity.

The order goes on to direct several agencies to collaborate with the attorney general to develop a strategy to end “federal funding or support for illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools.”   

In addition, federal agencies must monitor schools that receive federal monies, ensuring that they hold an annual educational program, teach students about the U.S. Constitution on September 17, Constitution Day.

Finally, the executive order reestablishes the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, which Trump launched in September 2020, appointing Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry P. Arnn to serve as chairman.

One goal for the revived commission is to promote patriotic education, while a second is “to advise and promote the work of the White House Task Force on Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday (“Task Force 250”) and the United States Semiquincentennial Commission.”

Related articles and resources:

Focus on the Family’s free parenting resource Equipping Parents for Back to School explains issues like educational freedom, parental rights in education, and religious freedom and free speech in schools. It’s a terrific resource for parents who want to advocate for their children and guide them toward academic success.

Department of Education Blew $1 Billion on DEI – Here’s Why It Matters

Focus on the Family: Putting Children First in Education

Focus on the Family Parenting: Thriving Student

Is ‘Critical Race Theory’ Being Taught in Public Schools? CRT Deniers Claim it Isn’t

Is it ‘Book Banning’ to Keep Sexually Explicit Books out of Schools?

Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Protect Parental Rights: ‘Parents Know Their Children Best’

Monique Duson: Responding to Critical Race Theory with Grace and Truth

The National Education Association Wants to Indoctrinate Children Across the Country

President Trump Ends Radical DEI Programs, Fires All DEI Personnel

President Trump Signs Order Protecting Children From Transgender Medical Interventions

Students’ Test Scores Tank After School Consults ‘Woke Kindergarten’

Trump’s Promise to Shutter Dept of Education Could End Woke Agenda in Schools

What’s Happening in Schools? Why We Need Educational Freedom

Image from Getty.

New Research: 50-Fold Increase in ‘Gender Dysphoria’ in UK

New research out of the University of York has found a 50-fold increase in “gender distress” in children and young people in the United Kingdom in just 10 years. Social contagion and mental illness may play a role in the large rise.

The BMJ reported the results, which were originally published online in Archives of Disease in Childhood on January 24, 2025.

The study looked at primary care data in England, and suggests that “1 in every 200 17-18 year olds are affected” by “psychological distress caused by a mismatch between birth sex and gender identity.” The BMJ reported that “from 2015 onwards, the numbers of cases rose more rapidly in those recorded as female than those recorded as male by their family doctors, and were around twice as high by 2021.”

The researchers also found that 53% of the children “had concurrent anxiety, depression, or self-harm recorded.”

Such a large increase in a significant mental health disorder doesn’t happen naturally, societal factors must play a role.

While the York researchers didn’t study the issue of causation, they suggested some possible contributing factors to explain the dramatic increase in children struggling with sexual identity confusion:

Recent increases in incidence of gender dysphoria/incongruence have a range of potential explanations, including social factors (for example, changes in public attitudes towards gender differences, greater awareness and acceptance of gender dysphoria/incongruence, increasing use of social media and networking); [and] increasing rates of emotional distress and poor mental health in this age group, particularly for females. …

Here in the U.S., the number of minors with gender dysphoria diagnoses have also surged, with one report showing an increase from 15,175 children in 2017 to 42,167 in 2022.

Those numbers don’t count the growing number of children and young adults identifying as something other than their biological sex. As reported in the Daily Citizen, a 2023 Gallup study of 18 to 25-year old members of Gen Z showed almost 20% identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, with 3.3% identifying as “transgender” or “other LGBT.”

In 2024, Mia Hughes published a devastating exposé of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health’s (WPATH) “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People.”

WPATH supports dangerous, experimental and body damaging “gender-affirming care” for children and adults, including puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries.

Hughes’ report, The WPATH Files: Pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments on children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults, demonstrated “the world-leading transgender healthcare group is neither scientific nor advocating for ethical medical care.”

In a post about the new study on X, Hughes stated, “There has never been a more obvious social contagion in all of history.”

Executive Director and Founder of Genspect Stella O’Malley said of the increase: 

I put it down to social contagion, I put it down to social media, and I put it down to an extraordinary politicization of the trans identity. So that people who are lost, and people who are vulnerable, and the children in this study are shown to have a disproportionately high level of maybe autism, mental health problems.
People are lost and lonely, they look for solutions, and the idea that they can be a different person with a different identity is very alluring to a lost and lonely person, especially a young person who hates their body and is going through an exploration of who they are.

She added that she could understand children struggling, adding that clinicians and other “adults in the room need to exercise caution and be very careful with the treatment they give” children.

Indeed. Children who struggle with this intense self-hatred, along with the fantasy that they can become a different sex, deserve compassionate, loving care to embrace their bodily sex.

What they don’t need are harmful, experimental medical interventions that top their natural body and brain development and growth; disfigure and sterilize them; and risk major medical complications such as low bone density, high blood pressure, breast cancer, liver disease, thrombosis, and cardiovascular disease.

Related articles and resources:

British Lawsuit Says Children Are Too Young To Consent To ‘Transgender’ Medical Procedures

Counseling for Sexual Identity Concerns: A Measured, Careful, and Compassionate Approach

Focus on the Family: Transgender Resources

Important New Journal Article Calls Out Doctors for Harming Youth with Medicalized Gender Ideology

Questioning Drugs, Hormones and Surgery for Youth Confused about Their Sexual Identity

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria – Researcher’s Work Vindicated

Transgenderism and Minors: What Does the Research Really Show? ‘Trust the Science’ About ‘Gender-Affirming Care.’ What Science?

Image from Getty.

Watch This Perfect Response to Gender Ideology

Pierre Poilievre, a current Canadian MP and soon-to-be Prime Minister, gave the world the perfect response to the gender madness being forced upon all of us.

He was recently asked by a Toronto reporter if he would follow President Trump’s lead in having the government recognize only two sexes. The reporter had no idea what he was stepping into.

Poilievre calmly and kindly responded, “Well, I don’t know. Do you have any other genders you’d like to name?”

Poilievre confidently continued, “Well, I am not aware of any other genders than men and women. If you have any others you want me to consider, you can tell me right now.”

Of course, the reporter could not because there are no others. You can see the brilliant exchange below:

Strong, common-sense leaders who are not afraid to dismantle nonsense in such a manner are the order of the day. We need more leaders to stand up.

Remember: If we can’t speak sensibly about male and female, we can’t speak sensibly about the family.

Related articles and resources:

What Does it Mean to Be Trans, Anyway?

Yes, Transgenderism is a False Belief System

The Embarrassing Crack-Up of the LGBT Project

Do Not Fall for the ‘Affirm Them or They Will Die’ Lie

How to Defeat Gender Ideology, Protect Children and End ‘Trans America’

New Research Confirms Previous Findings: Most Gender Confused Kids Desist

The Shifting Ground of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’

How the “Trans” and Gender Redefinition Issue Attacks the Family

How to Respond to “Trans” and Gender Ideology? Simple: Live Not by Lies

Are Sex and Gender Different Things?

No, Trans Rights Are Certainly NOT Human Rights

Image from Shutterstock.