Capitol Hill panel explores dangers of gender industrial complex: 'This is about good and evil'
WASHINGTON — A panel hosted by Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and the conservative advocacy group American Principles Project at the U.S. Capitol last week discussed the negative impacts of the burgeoning "gender industrial complex" and stressed the importance of legislative protections against it.
The panel — which also included Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Sarah Parshall Perry, and former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Paula Scanlan — also emphasized the destructive and irreversible consequences of sex change treatments on minors.
'This isn't about politics'
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Marshall and Tuberville also announced their support for the "STOP Act," or Safeguarding The Overall Protection of Minors Act, a proposal they said they plan to present in the coming weeks that would fine doctors at least $100,000 if they perform sex-change procedures on minors.
"Any doctor who performs a sex change on a child should be put in jail," Tuberville said. "Period."
The panel was predicated on the data that the American Principles Project released in a report earlier this year, providing an in-depth breakdown of the estimated $4.4 billion market for trans hormones and surgeries.
The report also offered an analysis of the costs associated with various drugs and procedures, as well as insights into the pharmaceutical companies and medical providers that make the largest financial investments.
When Schilling brought up the leaked files from the World Professional Association of Transgender Health that exposed numerous scientific and ethical questions surrounding WPATH’s standards of care, Marshall suggested that doctors who perform such procedures should be stripped of their licenses.
Marshall, an obstetrician and nondenominational Christian, acknowledged the financial incentive behind those pushing the gender industrial complex, but also noted that he believes there are other forces behind the movement.
"I think there's something probably even deeper, though, that's really nagging at me here," he said. "This is an attack on our values. It goes even deeper than just profit margin and how much money you can make from this."
"But I think ultimately, people that are saying that God is wrong — that the sex we were given, that God must have been wrong on this, and if you would just change your sex, it would solve all your problems."
Tuberville echoed Marshall, framing the battle over trans issues as a spiritual one.
"This isn't about politics, folks," said Tuberville, the retired head football coach at Auburn University who has represented Alabama in the U.S. Senate since 2021. "This is about good and evil. At the end of the day, they preyed on the minds of young Americans and misguided parents, confusing them, and that is the Democrats' aim here."
Tuberville suggested the Democratic Party is pitting the genders against each other, which he claimed is a move that has descended into absurdity.
"They want to have gender-versus-gender adversity," he said. "It's resulted in boys competing in girls' sports, which is absolutely absurd, and men invading women's locker rooms. I can't believe it."
'We were the problem'
Scanlan, who had to compete against trans-identifying swimmer Lia (Will) Thomas at the University of Pennsylvania, has publicly recounted that competitive swimming had once helped her to overcome a sexual assault she experienced in a bathroom at age 16, as noted by the New York Post.
Thomas made headlines after he broke women's swimming records and was an NCAA All-American in the women's division after his stint at the University of Pennsylvania.
During the panel, Scanlan claimed she was made to feel like she had a psychological disorder at school because of her reticence to undress in a locker room with Thomas, whose male genitalia she noted remained "fully intact."
"Our university told us that if we objected to him being on our team, that we were the problem," she said. "They sat us down, they said, 'You're hateful and horrible. If you ever speak out against this, you will spend the rest of your life regretting it.'"
Scanlan claimed school officials compared the trans issue to "the next civil rights movement" and that their reluctance to undress alongside a biological male was equivalent to not wanting to undress with someone based on their race.
"They said, 'You'll be on the wrong side of history.' And the last thing that they said is, 'If you still object to everything we've said so far, please seek psychological help.' And they gave us the number for an on-campus counselor," she said.
"And so, this entire situation really made all of us female athletes feel isolated and alone and like we had nowhere to go," she added.
'Getting children'
Sarah Parshall Perry, who serves as a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said the goal of the transgender industrial complex is to go after children.
"The gender industrialized complex, in all of its applications, is about one thing, and that's getting children," she said.
"There are 12 million American school students that now attend a school where there is an express confidentiality policy that will keep your child's gender identity information from custodial parents, regardless of whether or not those parents assert that they have a right to examine curriculum."
Perry noted that she has had many conversations with state legislators who have been "very bold" in introducing bills to protect women's sports and prevent sex-change procedures for minors, but that legislation needs to come from the federal level.
"We are actually going to see gender identity on a continuing basis at the Supreme Court, but I'm encouraged today, because here we are with federal legislators who have decided that they are going to say, 'Enough,'" she said.
"It begins here in Washington, D.C.," she later added. "As the nation's capital goes, so goes the rest of the country."
'This is not going to happen'
Tuberville, though he stressed the importance of a federal response, noted that even an executive order from President-elect Donald Trump wouldn't be able to survive beyond his presidency, and that lawmakers must enshrine a legislative solution. He also urged Americans to get involved politically at the state and local level.
"We've got to get a true law done that means something, and then we've got to go to the state level, and we've got to talk to our people on the state level — attorneys general."
In all his campaign stops, Tuberville said he observed that the most important elected position is always the school board.
"Run for school board," he said. "Get involved, because parents are the ones that are going to have to make the biggest difference of anybody — parents standing up, saying, 'This is not going to happen.'"
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to [email protected]
