We can thank gay activists for today’s epidemic of trans confusion

It is increasingly common for well-known LGB leaders to separate themselves from today’s ever-increasing transanity. The tennis great Martina Navratilova, herself an out and proud lesbian, has spoken forcefully against biological males competing against females. And the influential gay blogger Andrew Sullivan recently devoted a lengthy piece to this subject titled “The Queers Versus the Homosexuals.” These are just two examples among many.

But, as I pointed out previously (in response to Sullivan’s essay), you cannot separate the T and the Q from the LGB, especially when it comes to indoctrinating and confusing children. This has long been an essential part of the educational curriculum pushed in schools by groups like GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network).

Sullivan, recounting the history of LGBT activism, wrote, “Then the queers upped the ante and did something we gays never did: they targeted children. If they could get into kids’ minds, bodies and souls from the very beginning of their lives, they could abolish the sex binary from the ground up. And so they got a pliant, woke educational establishment to re-program children from the very start, telling toddlers that any single one of them could be living in the wrong body, before they could even spell.”

He hit the nail on the head. That is exactly what the “queers” did.

But where he was wrong was in saying that “we gays” never targeted children. That is patently false.

Who, then, were these “queers?” They were part and parcel of the larger gay-activist leadership, not least, in the realm of children’s education. (And remember one of the best-known cries of early gay activists: “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.”)

That’s why, for well over a decade, this has been the official policy found in the Los Angeles Unified School District Reference Guide: “‘Gender identity’ refers to one’s understanding, interests, outlook, and feelings about whether one is female or male, or both, or neither, regardless of one’s biological sex.”

This was not peripheral to the larger gay-activist agenda. It was right in the center of it, part of the radical war against heterosexual normativity and the hated gender binary.

That’s why one of the oldest gay activist organizations in the country began in 1973 as the National Gay Task Force. No “T”; not even an “L,” let alone a “B.” Today, it is the National LGBTQ Task Force, “Celebrating 50 Years of Freedom, Justice, and Equity for LGBTQ+ People.”

Looking at the Task Force’s home page, the operative word is queer: Queering Democracy; Queering Equity; Queering Faith.

Task Force, we hear you, loud and clear (or, should I say, loud and queer?)!

Focusing again on children’s education (= indoctrination), GLSEN was founded by a group of teachers in 1990, devoted to providing a “safe” environment for LGBT-identifying kids.

By 2007, GLSEN introduced the Lunch Box 2, “a comprehensive training program aimed at providing educators and community members with the background knowledge, skills and tools necessary to make schools safer and more affirming places for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students.” (I documented all this information in A Queer Thing Happened to America after buying the lunch box for myself.)

In lesson after lesson and activity after activity, children learn about well-known historical figures who were gay (or, allegedly gay), also mastering the many nuances of LGBT vocabulary. (Surely every child in elementary school should be able to define gender queer!)

But, as I wrote in A Queer Thing Happened to America, “there’s more to the GLSEN lunchbox than queer history.  It also seeks to strike at the very root of male-female distinctives. Thus, the activity called ‘Getting in Touch with Your Inner Trannie’ (i.e., inner transgender identity) has as its stated purpose, ‘To help participants better understand and personally relate to the breadth of issues around gender identity and expression,’ asking the children questions such as: ‘Have you ever been told, ‘Act like a lady/woman/girl,’ or ‘Act like a man?’ What was the situation? How did it make you feel and why?’ And, ‘If you see someone on the street whose gender is unclear to you, how do you react — both internally and externally?’”

Please don’t tell me today that this was not part of the gay activist agenda from early on and that it was somehow hijacked by queer activists. All of this was mixed and mingled together. In fact, the pro-gay and pro-trans narratives were inextricably intertwined.

That’s why, in my sarcastic poem, “Here At School the Slant Is Gay,” I included these lines: “GLSEN will fill in for Granny and help kids find their inner-trannie.”

I could give endless examples of the clear connection between LGB activism and TQ activism. (I have argued that they are inseparable, and there are scores of examples in the Queer Thing book, which came out in 2011.) Thankfully, my colleague at Focus on the Family, Jeff Johnston, has done the heavy lifting when it comes to documenting the gay indoctrination of children.

His two articles, which are must reads, are, “Sorry ‘Gays Against Groomers,’ But Gay Activists Helped Start This Transgender Fire” and “Sorry ‘Gays Against Groomers,’ But Gay Activists Helped Start This Transgender Fire, Part Two.”

It is now incumbent on us as parents, educators, ministry leaders, social media influencers and activists to undo the damage that has been done and restore innocence and sanity to the kids of this world. It’s the least that we can do.