transgender

‘Detransition Awareness Day’ – Hope and Healing for Those Caught in Transgenderism

“Detransitioners” around the world told their stories yesterday on the sixth annual Detransition Awareness Day, an event spotlighting the false promise of transgender ideology that drugs, hormones and surgeries can “transition” a person into becoming the opposite sex.

Hundreds of men and women who endured damaging, irreversible medical experiments shared how they came to reject a false opposite-sex identity and embrace their natal sex.

“Life Beyond Transition”

The annual Detransition Awareness Day, first held March 12, 2021, was created by a coalition of groups “to raise awareness and break down the stigma around detransition.” Keira Bell was one of those who helped launch that event. She was 16 when she was prescribed puberty blockers by England’s National Health Service and then received male hormones and a double mastectomy.

Since then, she has gone back to embracing her natural femininity and has become an outspoken critic of medical interventions for those suffering distress over their maleness or femaleness.

This year, Genspect, an international organization that “advocates for ethical, non-medicalized responses to gender distress,” sponsored a Detransition Awareness Day event in Washington, D.C., “Life Beyond Transition.”

An estimated 70 detransitioners gathered for the event, in addition to clinicians, researchers, lawyers, educators and policymakers.

Genspect Executive Director and Founder Stella O’Malley predicted the event would be “the largest gathering of detransitioners ever held anywhere in the world.”

Detransitioner Stories

It’s not easy to leave transgenderism – especially after undergoing a regimen of drugs, hormones and surgeries and living as the opposite sex. Many who have detransitioned do so because they have found faith and truth in Christ.

It’s important to tell their stories in order to counter false transgender ideology, protect children from harmful medical procedures and demonstrate how trusting Jesus begins a journey of healing and transformation. Here are three testimonies from those whose Christian faith initiated their journey away from transgenderism.

Walt Heyer

Heyer has been telling his story for at least 20 years, publishing his autobiography Trading My Sorrows in 2006. Heyer traces his sexual identity struggles to being sexually abused as a child by an uncle and dressed in girls clothes by his grandmother.

Married for 19 years, successful in business, and the father of two children, Heyer’s life looked like good on the outside. But since childhood he lived with the desire to dress in women’s clothes and be a woman.

After a divorce, and a short visit with a psychologist to refer him for surgery, he endured a number of procedures: electrolysis; breast and buttocks implants; a nose job; facial surgeries; skin peels; hormones; and, finally, “sexual reassignment surgery.”

But eight years of living as a woman did not solve Heyer’s sexual identity disorder. An encounter with Jesus Christ and the support of pastors, counselors and church members brought him grace and forgiveness and placed him on the long, painful road – not without relapses and failure – toward healing.

Heyer has been a fierce advocate for protecting children from what is falsely called “gender affirming care,” testifying before legislatures and telling his story around the world. He has ministered to and mentored thousands as they leave transgenderism behind. He published an updated version of his autobiography in 2015, A Transgender’s Faith.

Laura Perry Smalts

Although she grew up in a Christian home, Laura Perry Smalts explains that feelings of confusion about her sex developed in early childhood. She had a strained relationship with her mom and became very sexualized by a molestation at the age of eight.

She writes:

I spent the next 25 years trying to get fulfillment and love through sex. Feeling objectified by men in high school, I began to believe being female was disgusting, filthy, and worthless. I was sure I should have been a man, so I began the journey of “transitioning” to transform my appearance.

In 2007, she began living full-time as Jake, taking testosterone and undergoing a hysterectomy and double mastectomy.

But none of that helped:

After years of hormones and surgeries, I was empty and broken. I was devastated to realize that none of the changes I was making had actually made me a man, and I knew they never would. All I had done was change the outside. The result? I felt trapped in a world between male and female.

God was still at work, drawing Smalts back to Himself. She tells about His transforming power in her life:

Today, completely reconciled to my family, I continue to experience God’s healing and restoration. In May of 2021, He brought an incredible man into my life, Perry Smalts, and we married a year later in 2022.

Laura Perry Smalts now ministers to those caught in homosexuality and transgenderism through her ministry, Eden’s Redemption, and her book, Transgender to Transformed.

KathyGrace Duncan

“I grew up believing that men were superior to women. My dad was verbally and physically abusive to my mom and me, birthing within me the belief that women were hated, weak, and vulnerable,” writes KathyGrace Duncan.

She explains that the disconnect from her body began at an early age:

From as early as age 4, I felt I was in the wrong body. I fantasized about my pretend girlfriend, and with my peers, I always played the male role: the cowboy, the protector, the fireman. But as I grew older, life became more complicated. Wearing dresses to kindergarten, for example, was a very traumatic experience for me, and my fractured feelings grew stronger and stronger.

Duncan was molested by a family member from ages 10 to 12, creating further sexual identity confusion. She then began living as a man:

I found a doctor who prescribed me hormones to expedite my transition into manhood. Then I had both breasts removed. Before long, I found myself caught in a cycle of broken relationships, pornography addiction, isolation, and self-rejection, living as a man for 11 years. 

Eventually, she came to faith in Christ. Still presenting as a man, even involved in men’s ministry at her church, it was several years before she came to an awareness that God wanted her to embrace her femininity.

The journey back was not easy. She had to walk with God through the pain of childhood hurts and brokenness, forgive those who hurt her, develop healthy relationships with women, and confess and receive forgiveness for her own sins. She writes:

By age 36, everything matched: my heart, body, and mind. Today God sees me as a daughter and a friend, and walking in community with others has further solidified my identity as a woman.

KathyGrace ministers to those leaving lesbianism and transgenderism at The Portland Fellowship.

Even while giving a cautionary tale of irreparably harmed bodies, detransitioners’ stories offer hope. Hope that we can end this evil ideology that has poisoned the minds of so many young people. Hope that we can bring reconciliation to broken families. And hope that a relationship with Jesus Christ can lead more people into healing.

Related articles and resources:

Focus on the Family exists to help families, and that includes help navigating the issues of homosexuality and transgenderism. Focus offers a free, one-time counseling consultation with a licensed or pastoral counselor. To request a consultation, call 1-855-771-HELP (4357) or fill out our Counseling Consultation Request Form.

Changed Movement: Testimonies of Leaving Homosexuality and Transgenderism

‘Chloe Cole Act’ to Protect Minors From ‘Trans’ Mutilation Reintroduced in Congress

Chloe Cole: Gender Reassignment Surgery Regret

‘Detransition Awareness Day’ Highlights Those Embracing Their True Identity

‘Detransition Awareness Day’ Spotlights Those Who Left Transgenderism

‘Detransition Awareness Day’ – Testimonies From Those Who Left Transgenderism

Detransitioner Finds Faith, Realizes, ‘I Will Always Be a Female’

Focus on the Family: Transgender Resources

God’s Amazing Grace in a Transgendered Person’s Life (Part 1 and Part 2)

HHS Releases Report on Harms of ‘Transgender’ Medical Interventions for Minors

The Journey Back to My True Identity (Part 1 and Part 2)

Laura Perry Smalts’ Authentic Shift From Transgenderism To Embracing God’s Design

Ad Targets ACLU for Not Knowing What a Woman Is

In honor of Women’s History Month, the Alliance Defending Freedom and XX-XY Athletics created an advertisement mocking the American Civil Liberties Union for not knowing what it clearly knows: what a woman is. 

Jennifer Sey, Founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics and an advocate for women-only sports, posted the ad, “We Knew What a Woman Was,” along with the comment: 

Up until about 5 minutes ago, we all knew what a woman was. That’s why there is a Women’s History Month.

Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal aid firm working on behalf of life, religious freedom and free speech, also posted the ad, saying: 

We knew then. We know now. We can’t go backwards.

Join us and @xx_xyathletics this Women’s History Month as we continue to advocate for fairness and equal opportunities for the next generation of women and girls.

The ad begins with audio of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Alito asking the question: 

For equal protection purposes, what does it mean to be a boy or a girl, or a man or a woman? 

Justice Alito made the query earlier this year, during oral arguments in two cases concerning Idaho and West Virginia laws prohibiting male athletes from competing in girls and women’s sports, Little v. Hecox and State of West Virginia v. BPJ. 

You would think attorneys fighting these laws would be able to define fundamental human terms. 

But, as the advertisement makes clear, the ACLU team could not do this. Attorney Kathleen Hartnett replied to Alito, saying: 

We do not have a definition for the Court. 

It’s a startling admission from an attorney fighting cases which hinge on the definition of sex – what it means to be male or female. 

The advertisement goes on to show images of historic firsts for women, saying: 

We knew what a woman was when the first one was elected to congress. 

We knew what a woman was when women gained the right to vote. …  

We know what a woman was when the first one became Vice President. 

Then comes the punch line: 

So why doesn’t the ACLU legal team know what a woman is now? 

A second question from Alito finishes off the indictment against the ACLU: 

Well, … how can a court determine whether there’s discrimination on the basis of sex without knowing what sex means for equal protection purposes?

The ACLU used to know what women are. The organization even touts its work on behalf of women since its founding in 1920: 

In the 1930s, the ACLU fought for the right of Connecticut schoolteachers on maternity leave to be reinstated in their jobs following the birth of their babies.

Throughout the 1940s, the ACLU advocated equal pay for equal work. … During this decade, the ACLU also challenged a Massachusetts law that prohibited married women from teaching in public schools. 

In the 1960s, the ACLU intensified its activism on women’s issues, attacking the exclusion of women from juries and petitioning Congress to enact and enforce laws barring discrimination against women.

Although it has always, quite wrongly, supported the evil of abortion as “women’s healthcare – at least the organization was clear about the differences between men and women. 

It even knew that women were the ones who could get pregnant and give birth! 

But that is no longer the case, thanks to gender ideology that ironically sprang from radical feminism.

For years now, the ACLU has believed and promoted a false ideology that says men can somehow magically turn into women by simply declaring it so. 

The organization works to undermine girls and women’s sports, along with their privacy and safety. 

Kudos to organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom and XX-XY Athletics for battling for truth and reminding us that we’ve always known what women are. 

Related articles and resources: 

The ACLU Unwittingly Cancels Language Itself

Athletes Rally at Supreme Court to Keep Boys Out of Girls Sports

Biologically Male Runner Decides to Compete as a Woman in College Cross Country

Celebs Lobby Against Keeping Boys Out of Women’s Sports in ACLU Ad

Idaho Governor Signs Laws Protecting Women’s Sports and Keeping Birth Certificates Based on Biology – Activists and Media Call this ‘Discriminatory’

Key Takeaways from Supreme Court Case on ‘Transgender’ Interventions

Supreme Court to Hear Title IX Girls Sports Case

Top 5 Moments From Supreme Court Arguments Over Girls Sports

U.S. Supreme Court Takes Up Cases on Boys in Girls Sports

West Virginia Passes ‘Save Girls Sports’ Act

HHS Tells States Not to Remove Children From Parents Who Affirm Biological Reality

The Trump administration is protecting parental rights and warning states not to remove children from their parents’ custody solely because they do not affirm their child’s self-professed “gender identity.”

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent a letter to all 50 states reminded them that “state child welfare agencies must base child removal decisions on objective evidence of abuse or imminent risk of harm” under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.

The letter warns states “not to interpret federal definitions too broadly in ways that infringe on parental rights or lead to unnecessary foster placements by removing children for reasons that do not constitute abuse and neglect.”

Furthermore, the letter informs states “that removing a child based solely on a parent’s sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” may violate the Constitution’s free exercise clause and that “removing a child for these reasons may harm both the child and the parents.”

ACF Assistant Secretary Alex J. Adams said in a statement announcing the letter, “Parents have the right to raise their children according to their sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions.”

Assistant Secretary Adams and HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brian Christine released a video announcing the letter.

Assistant Secretary Adams also appeared on Newsmax to discuss the development.

HHS said the letter is a part of the Trump administration’s effort to “defend parental rights and children’s health.”

“Acknowledging biological reality and exercising sincerely held religious beliefs should not constitute child abuse or neglect under federal law,” the agency said.

Think ACF’s letter is unnecessary? Think again.

Two years in a row, Colorado lawmakers have introduced legislation threatening parents’ rights if they don’t immediately support their child’s “transition” to a new “gender identity.” California lawmakers introduced similar legislation in 2023.

Colorado’s Senate Bill 26-018, in its original form, would have required courts to consider whether or not a parent supports a child’s “identity as it relates to a protected class” when “determining parenting time and allocation of decision-making responsibilities.”

These protected “identities” include a child’s “gender identity” and “gender expression.”

The bill is so radical that Colorado Governor Jared Polis intervened to kill the provision for a second year in a row. But if past is prologue, the legislation will surely be introduced again.

Across the nation, children have already been removed from their parents’ custody solely because they affirmed biological reality and would not affirm their child’s “gender identity” – even in red states like Indiana, Montana, Texas and Arizona.

Mary and Jeremy Cox, residents of Indiana, had their 16-year-old son – who began identifying as a female – removed from their custody because the state’s Department of Child Services argued he needed to be in a home that accepted his “gender identity.” One where “she [would be] accepted for who she is,” the state claimed.

So yes, states kidnapping children from parents who won’t affirm their sexual identity confusion is a large and growing evil. One that, thankfully, ACF is paying attention to and addressing.

The agency said it “will continue to monitor states’ compliance with federal child welfare requirements” and “ensure federal funds are used consistent with the law.”

Assistant Secretary Adams said,

When states overstep their bounds, ACF will take action to deter inappropriate policies that drive unnecessary interactions with child welfare systems.

To speak with a family help specialist or request resources, please call us at 1-800-A-FAMILY (232-6459).

Related articles and resources:

Colorado Bill Would Force Parents to Accept Child’s New ‘Gender Identity’

Focus on the Family Testifies Against Nightmare Bill, Colorado’s Radical ‘Trans’ Legislation Advances

Photo from Getty Images.

EEOC Protects Women’s Spaces in Federal Workplaces

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on Thursday voted to protect women’s intimate spaces – including bathrooms and locker rooms – in federal workplaces.

The EEOC voted 2-1 to affirm an appellate decision holding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 doesn’t allow males to access women’s private spaces.

“Today’s opinion is consistent with the plain meaning of ‘sex’ as understood by Congress at the time Title VII was enacted, as well as longstanding civil rights principles: that similarly situated employees must be treated equally,” said EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas.

“When it comes to bathrooms, male and female employees are not similarly situated,” Lucas added. “Biology is not bigotry.”

Chair Lucas and Commissioner Brittany Panuccio, both nominees of President Donald J. Trump, voted in favor of the decision; Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, a nominee of former President Joseph R. Biden, dissented.

The EEOC held that “Title VII permits a federal agency employer to maintain single-sex bathrooms and similar intimate spaces” and that the law “permits a federal agency employer to exclude employees, including trans-identifying employees, from opposite-sex facilities.”

The case stems from a male Army civilian IT specialist at Fort Riley, Kansas who used the Army’s male-designated bathrooms and locker rooms without incident before beginning to identify as a woman in the summer of 2025. He then requested to use female-designated bathrooms and locker rooms.

Management denied his request citing an executive order signed by President Trump which specifies that “intimate spaces … are designate by sex and not identity.” The civilian filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint which the Army dismissed. The complainant appealed, but the EEOC affirmed the Army’s judgement.

In dissent, Commissioner Kotagal claimed without explanation that the decision “suggests that transgender people do not exist.” In reality, the decision simply protects women from being forced to share private spaces with men.

Kotagal argued that males who can’t access female restrooms “[matching] their gender identity … often starve and dehydrate themselves.”

Chai Feldblum, an LGBT activist who served as an EEOC commissioner after being nominated by former President Barack Obama, posted a comment on Kotagal’s LinkedIn page praising her dissent: “Thank you, as always, for your clear voice!”

Yet Commissioner Kotagal failed to consider how forcing women to share private spaces with males harms their privacy, dignity and safety.

The EEOC decision, in contrast, lays out those concerns in detail:

The interest in single-sex privacy is especially heightened for women attending to hygiene related to menstruation, pregnancy, or lactation. No man will ever experience a period, bear a child, or nurse and infant, and we do not think it improper that female employees would expect to manage their unique needs in a space accessible only to other women. …
Women have a vital privacy interest in using a workplace bathroom or similar intimate space outside the presence of men.

While the decision applies only to federal agencies, it nevertheless represents a remarkable shift at the EEOC. Just two years ago, the agency attempted to redefine “sex” in Title VII to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in its “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace.”

The change would have forced millions of American women to share private spaces with males in the workplace; required American workers to use their coworkers “preferred pronouns;” and qualified that “misgendering” or “deadnaming” a coworker creates a “hostile work environment.”

The updated guidance would have even applied to private sector employers, including faith-based employers like Focus on the Family.

In January 2026, the EEOC voted to rescind the updated Harassment Guidance after a newly-constituted Republican majority was established at the agency.

“The Harassment Guidance was an unlawful document and overstepped our authority,” Chair Lucas told the Daily Citizen in a recent interview. “There are two sexes.”

The case is Selina v. Driscoll.

Related articles and resources:

Andrea Lucas Leads the EEOC: Restoring Agency With Truth and Common Sense

Eighteen States Sue EEOC Over Workplace Mandates Endangering Women and Free Speech

EEOC Releases Major Guidance Ending Many Workplace Protections for Women

Photo from Shutterstock.

‘The New York Times’ and 20 State AGs Expose Medical Groups’ Trans Agenda

The walls continue to close in on “trans” and gender ideology. 

On January 30, a New York State jury awarded a 22-year-old woman $2 million in damages for her 2019 double-mastectomy intended to cure her gender dysphoria. Just days later, two major medical organizations — the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association — both admitted on February 3 that the research “is insufficient” for them to continue removing perfectly healthy body parts from gender confused children and adolescents.

Overnight, “the science” became much less “settled.” That unsettling continues.

In fact, the case is getting so strong against “gender-affirming medicine” that even The New York Times felt compelled this week to publish an absolute smoker of an op-ed demonstrating how bad the facade is. The piece was written by Jesse Singal who describes himself as a “left-of-center” journalist and has doggedly reported on the problem of trans activism by elite medical associations for a decade. He masterfully lays bare the problems these organizations created for themselves by simultaneously serving two irreconcilable masters: gender politics and evidence-based medicine. The latter has been sacrificed on the altar of the former.

Singal explains, “The science doesn’t seem so settled after all, and it is important to understand what happened here.” Simply accepting what these ostensibly august associations had to say in their now collapsing support for gender ideology rests upon, according to Singal, “a deeply naïve understanding of science, human nature and politics, and how they intersect.” He indicts liberal groups like GLAAD and the ACLU who have claimed all important medical experts agree that “gender affirming care is life-saving care” and “anyone who questions these treatments, even mildly, is invariably accused of bigotry.”  

Singal starts with examining the embarrassing track record of the widely trusted American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) which has a long record of advocating for gender ideology. Back in 2002, activists within the AAP convinced the organization to publish a major technical report supporting intentionally motherless or fatherless homes as optimal for child well-being. The report served as groundwork in the emerging push for “gay marriage.” They were all too eager to throw in with the trans political agenda.

He calls out assertions like this made by the AAP in its 2018 policy statement supporting “comprehensive care and support” for gender confused children: “Accordingly, research substantiates that children who are prepubertal and assert an identity of [transgender or gender diverse] know their gender as clearly and as consistently as their developmentally equivalent peers who identify as cisgender and benefit from the same level of social acceptance.”

Singal correctly calls this “an extreme exaggeration of what we know about this population,” adding, “The AAP was instructing clinicians to take 4- and 5-year-olds’ claims about their gender identity as certainly true.” Also note the APP’s use of meaningless non-scientific gender jargon like “gender diverse” and “cisgender.” Singal explains this is why the meticulous “Cass reviewers scored this policy statement so abysmally, giving it 12 out of 100 possible points on ‘rigor of development’ and six out of 100 on ‘applicability.’”

He also documents how long-time members of the APP have reported being “stonewalled” when raising scientific questions about the organization’s trans policies and “in many cases the AAP document’s footnotes don’t even support the claims being made in the text.” Yet, the “shakiness” of the APP’s claims didn’t matter as they were “cited numerous times in news accounts and court documents as evidence that the most important pediatric association in the country supported youth medical transition.”

Singal also explains how the American Psychological Association (APA) has had a hard time keeping their story straight on the transgender issue. In a 2024 policy statement “addressing misinformation” on the issue from “legislative efforts to restrict access to care,” the APA confidently warns no one should “disregard the comprehensive body of psychological and medical research supporting the positive impact of gender-affirming treatments … for individuals across the lifespan.” Yet, he points out, just one year later the APA claimed, “Psychologists do not make broad claims about treatment effectiveness.” He gives other examples demonstrating that “it seems undeniable that the 2025 APA published what the 2024 APA considered to be ‘misinformation.’”

Singal then takes a fair run at the American Medical Association (AMA) which now believes those who are underage should be protected from trans surgeries because the evidence is “insufficient.” Yet in 2021, the AMA’s executive vice president James Madara told the National Governors Association (NGA) that “gender affirming surgeries” are “supportive interventions based on the current evidence” and “evidence has demonstrated that forgoing gender-affirming care can have tragic consequences.” This includes “the provision of medically necessary gender transition-related care to minor patients.” The 2026 AMA is demonstrably at odds with the 2021 AMA.

Singal writes in The Times’ pages that “political forces are the culprit” for how these elite medical organizations could end up taking diametrically opposed “research-based” conclusions within years of each other. He states, “You cannot automatically trust what these organizations say at a given moment.”

He’s not wrong. Trans activism has demolished these associations’ own credibility.

An additional blow to the AMA comes from 20 state attorneys general who have signed onto a Feb. 23 letter to that organization’s CEO commending it for now opposing surgical mutilation for gender confused children. Yet they ask why it has not made the shift away from hormonal treatments.

These attorneys general, in their 13-page letter supported by 41 careful footnotes, remind the doctors of the AMA that the 2024 systematic review on puberty suppression commissioned as part of the U.K.’s Cass Review concludes, “There are no high-quality studies using an appropriate study design that assess outcomes of puberty suppression in adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria/incongruence.” Thus, “No conclusions can be drawn about the effect on gender-related outcomes, psychological and psychosocial health, cognitive development or fertility.” In other words, the AMA and all other medical and activist organizations are wrong to claim there is “settled science” on hormone treatments for gender confused children.

They conclude their letter, “We thus request that you clarify some issues regarding the AMA’s position on the provision of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors to treat gender dysphoria.” These issues are communicated in 14 detailed questions on topics like the AMA’s recent ideological involvement in Tennessee’s United States v. Skrmetti case; how they now align with World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the AAPs’ untenable policy positions; and if the AMA has conducted its own literature review on the efficacy of gender intervention.

These attorneys general end by stating, “We know that we share a common goal in wanting to protect patients and their families and ensure that they receive trustworthy information about their medical care.” They ask the AMA to respond to these questions by March 25, 2026. They are on notice.

The manufactured veneer of “settle science” on “trans” medicine is now crumbling because it was never sustainable. It has been built on the lie that gender is a spectrum, and that “empirical evidence has demonstrated that trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression” as the AMA’s April 2021 letter to the National Governors Association put it. This is all work mainstream journalists could have done, if they were true to their calling. Instead, most have carried water for the pro-trans movement. The New York Times has now broken that elite silence in publishing Jesse Singal’s excellent expose and are to be congratulated.

Additional Resources:

A Singularly Christian View of the Transgender Problem

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

Yes, Transgenderism is a False Belief System

The APA’s 5 Failed Critiques of HHS Report Discrediting Sex-Rejecting Procedures for Kids

Florida Sues Medical Groups for Promoting ‘Transgender’ Mutilation of Children

What Does it Mean to Be Trans, Anyway?

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

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

American College of Pediatricians: No Benefits From ‘Gender-Affirming’ Interventions