“I owe a lot to the teams I work with. For example, working with Alliance Defending Freedom, generating amicus briefs for [state] high court and Supreme Court cases that deal with [LGBTQ rights] and other things that we’re interested in. Trying to affect legislation, the High Courts, and the peer review literature. The idea being, if you influence the idea makers, that carries out for three generations. It’s important to inform the public…But for that it needs to be done for every single generation, it doesn’t really replicate itself. Whereas if you can influence the idea makers, you’ve got greater reach.”
— Dr. Andre Van Mol, Co-Chair of the American College of Pediatrician’s Committee on Adolescent Sexuality and Board of Directors of Moral Revolution, speaking on The Narrative podcast of Center for Christian Virtue (Ohio), July 22, 2022.

The development, dissemination, and effective application of pseudoscience to public policy requires a team. As Dr. Van Mol’s quote above suggests, for the anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience movement, success is defined not as a one-off policy change, but as the ideological capture of social institutions by the anti-LGBTQ+ Religious Right.

Previous iterations of the anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience movement failed to preserve conversion therapy, bans on marriage equality and LGBTQ+ adoption, in part, because they lacked a “policy window” - an opportunity for advancing their political goals afforded by the convergence of public opinion and the political will of decision-makers. They also failed, in part, because they did not successfully marshall the resources and institutions of the American far right.^[31]

As we detail in previous chapters, to remedy their failures since the mid-2010s, the anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience movement has worked to reshape the scientific literature and popular discourse around transgender identity and rights, thus forcing open a policy window. They have also expanded the network to tap into right-wing funding and media resources and refined the division of labor within the network to prevent inefficiencies and better disguise the anti-LGBTQ+ goals of the research at the heart of the network.

Based on the initial two dozen authors and one dozen organizations represented in our sample of works frequently cited in legal challenges to LGBTQ+ health care, we compiled and cross-referenced boards of directors, advisors, and membership lists gathered from open-sourced data, including internet and social media searches, public records, and tax documents, and data from network leaks reported in the media. We continued building out the network until our research methods produced no additional significant nodes (organizations) or connections (shared personnel) within the network.

The anti-LGBTQ pseudoscience personnel network we identified through this iterative search process is defined by 60 groups, four major joint mobilizations, and 957 personnel connections between them between 2015 and 2023.

Figure 4.2 shows the full personnel network map. The lines between each organization (node) represent a direct personnel connection between the groups. Thicker lines represent more direct connections. The clusters of organizations suggest the formation of specialized subnetworks and analyses of each group’s mission statement and activity indicates a division of labor or delineation of functions as well as preferred constituencies within the network.

Based on mission statements and group activity, we developed three typologies to describe each cluster or subnetwork of groups. Research & Practice Groups (R&P) are represented in green at the left of the figure and are groups and platforms for so-called experts on LGBTQ+ health care. The groups are largely populated by academics and health care workers and help produce anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience. Narrative Manipulation Groups (NM) are mostly in the middle of the figure in purple, pink, and blue. The groups are subdivided when they clearly appeal to parents (pink) and LGBTQ+ people (blue). All are largely policy advocates that “spin” the pseudoscience into effective media and lobbying campaigns to challenge LGBTQ+ rights. These groups are generally the mouthpieces of the network and conduct significant publicity campaigns to disseminate their biased narratives. This often includes hosting and publicizing represenatatives of the R&P groups.

Finally, Legal Advocacy & Think Tanks (LATT) are represented in gold. They are primarily responsible for filing legal challenges to LGBTQ+ rights; however, rather than one-off political campaigns, their mission is to enact more systemic changes in how the scientific and legal academies understand LGBTQ+ people and their rights. They generally employ R&P members as fellows or subject matter experts to provide testimony, write reports and public scholarship to affect an anti-LGBTQ+ sea change. Since LATT groups represent established conservative institutions with large professional staffs, they also help construct media narratives, craft policy, and lobby; they are also deeply embedded within far-right funding networks. Much of their lobbying and media strategies are coordinated with NM groups. Notably, the typologies help classify the groups, but they are not exhaustive, meaning some groups may perform multiple functions. Major joint mobilizations are in red.

Research & Practice Groups

“Few things compromise the scientific integrity of a field more than throwing their weight behind overtly political campaigns.”^[32]
– Colin Wright, SEGM Board of Advisers, Manhattan Institute Fellow, Twitter/X August 13, 2023.

 

At the heart of the anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network are the research and practice groups. These organizations are largely populated by academics, people with medical credentials, and health care workers. The groups’ missions generally include producing or disseminating information about LGBTQ+ identities and health care, including resources that challenge the affirming care model and promote conversion therapy for practitioners. Some groups also offer therapy and referrals to LGBTQ+ people and their families. Most of the groups were founded between 2016 and 2021 and remain active.

Several organizations, like the Alliance for Therapeutic Integrity and Scientific Choice (formerly NARTH) and ACPeds, which purport to be professional associations of scientists or doctors, attempt to lend a façade of credibility to anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience but are well-known proponents of discredited convesion therapy and their leadership has actively promoted anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracies for decades.^[33] However, the medical credentials of the R&P group’s members encourage deference to their claims and policy recommendations and, for some, have provided a platform to sell their conversion therapy services and merchandise.^[34] However, their work suggests the primary purposes of these organizations are to inculcate extremist anti-LGBTQ+ positions, including subsittuing fundamentalist Christian dogma for scientific inquiry, into scientific disciplines.

Although populated by more than one dozen separate organizations, groups in the R&P category frequently collaborate and their work is deeply intertwined. For example, in 2021, Dr. Lisa Littman published a study of detransitioners in Archives of Sexual Behavior, a journal whose editors include Dr. Kenneth Zucker and Dr. Ray Blanchard, that she suggests ”strengthens” her ROGD hypothesis.^[35] The open-access fees were paid by the organization she leads, the Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research.^[36] One of the journal’s editors, Blanchard, serve with Littman on the board of Gender Dyphoria Alliance (GDA); and, in the acknowledgements section of the paper, Littman thanks SEGM’s Roberto D’Angelo for revieing an earlier version of the paper.^[37] Both Littman and D’Angelo serve on Genspect’s advisory board, whcih began promoting ”ROGD Awareness Day” in 2023.

Despite their mission statements and many members’ claims to pursue objective truth about LGBTQ+ health care by applying the scientific method, many of the R&P Groups are also founded by people with close ties to white Christian nationalists, those whom Anthea Butler has described as operating on “the assumption that Christ is at the core of efforts to establish and promote white protestant Christianity in the service of white male autocratic authority.”^[38] In addition, many R&P Groups are alligned with anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Muslim extremists, and others who have expressed a willingness to use the mechanisms of public policy and government to impose conservative Christian beliefs on society.

The most obvious examples are ACPeds and ATISC, whose members are closely tied to anti-LGBTQ+ extremist groups and who have long couched their demonization of LGBTQ+ people and support for conversion therapy in religious rhetoric. Alliances between R&P and anti-LGBTQ+ extremist groups, though, are not a “bug,” but a “feature” of the network. Other examples include organizations connected to the American psychotherapist Lisa Marchiano, who founded the website Youth Trans Critical Professionals in 2016 and helped recruit participants for and review Dr. Lisa Littman’s 2018 ROGD study.

In 2016, Marchiano psuednymously signed a letter opposing gender-affriming care and LGBTQ civil rights protections with mulitple extremist groups including MassResistance, the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Family Association, the Center for Security Policy, the American College of Pediatiricans, and major players in the Religious Right including Richard Viguerie, Morton Blackwell, and former U.S. House Freedom Caucus member Louie Gohmert.^[39] As the report makes clear, Marchiano and therapists Sasha Ayad and Stella O‘Malley are also important network entreprenurs, either founding or on the board of 10 groups incluidng SEGM, Genspect, and Gender Exploratory Therapy Association (GETA).

The SEGM-Genspect-GETA Triad

The relationship between three groups, SEGM, Genspect, and GETA, represents the strongest triad (relationship between three nodes or groups) within the R&P subnetwork. Along with Marchiano, the groups share two dozen personnel connections, suggesting deep integration and mutual support.

GETA is a group of therapists founded in 2021 by four SEGM members--Sasha Ayad, Roberto D’Angelo, O’Malley, and Marchiano--along with American psychotherapist and Genspect advisor Joseph Burgo to market what many experts beleive is functionally transgender conversion therapy.^[40]

Genspect is a hybrid research and advocacy group founded by SEGM member and Irish psychotherapist Stella O’Malley in 2021. The group operates as a not-for-profit corporation based in Ireland and appears to generate revenue through donations and annual subscription fees of rougly $63/€60 a year per member.^[41] Its members and advisors are active across Europe and the U.K., Australia, and North America, and it has become a powerhouse in the dissemination of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience.

Namely, the group partners with Marchiano’s other organization, Rethink Identity Medicine Ethics (RIME), to produce the podcast Gender: A Wider Lens, hosted by O’Malley and GETA’s Sasha Ayad. The podcast has published more than 130 episodes and has thousands of subscribers on multiple social media platforms. RIME reported spending nearly $7,000 in 2022 on the production of an “educational podcast.”^[42]

In 2022, Genspect hosted a symposium featuring Paul Hruz of ACPeds. Meanwhile, one of the group’s advisors, American psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Levine, has been employed by the anti-LGBTQ+ group Alliance Defending Freedom to testify against LGBTQ+ rights, including in at least two challenges to gender identity protections for American school students.^[43]

In 2023, Genspect announced the formation of the Killarney Group and the addition of Burgo (from GETA) and Dr. Colin Wright (from SEGM and the Manhattan Institute) as advisors.^[44] The project bills itself as “the world’s leading think tank for sex and gender.” It says its mission is to “develop and promote new policy ideas.” In addition to Burgo and Wright, advisors include American Jamie Reed, a former caseworker at Washington University Pediatric Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital represented by anti-LGBTQ+ activist Vernadette Broyles of Child & Parental Rights Campaign. Reed‘s unsubstantiated claims to the state‘s attorney general, combined with an online disinformation campaign about LGBTQ+ health care waged by right-wing commentators, led to an ”emergency” youth gender-affirming care ban in Missouri and the shuttering of the Washington University clinic in 2023.^[45]

In addition to programmatic support, Genspect, SEGM, and GETA also share personnel connections with Dr. Lisa Littman’s ICGDR. Both Marchiano and O’Malley serve on the board of ICGDR while psychologist J. Michael Bailey serves as the group’s treasuer. Dr. Littman is also on the advisory board of Gender Dysphoria Alliance (GDA) with Canadian psychologist Ray Blanchard. While the group claims it “strive[s] to be free of conflicts of interest,” Blanchard is an editoral board member of Archives of Sexual Behavior, which published Littman’s 2021 study on detransitioners.

Anti-LGBTQ Rhetoric and Activism

Despite their medical and academic credentials, many of the groups’ members have made numerous misleading, false, and conspiratorial claims. For example, GDA claimed on its website in 2021 that the most common types of gender dyphoria were “early onset homosexual GD” and “late onset autogynephilia.” The former, it claims, “starts in early childhood,” but “most kids with this type of GD become adult gay or lesbian people” and “stop having GD” while the latter is “a kind of heterosexual inversion” that is “seen only in natal boys.”^[46]

Members of R&P groups also frequently claim the affirming model of care is “inadequate,”^[47] that LGBTQ+ activists have taken over the major medial accosiciatons. Some have equated the affriming care model to the recovered memory movement,^[48] and have claimed that transgender identity either stems from shame or doesn’t exist at all. Some have amplified the desistence myth,^[49] while others inveted and perpetuated the ROGD myth.^[50] The ”gender exploratory” conversion therapists have suggested affirming therapists are ”colluding” with trans patients to support a delusion, and claimed the media is colluding with LGBTQ+ activists to censor anti-trans voices.^[51]

Most R&P groups support conversion therapy for transgender people and banning medical transition, beginning with people under age 25.^[52] This is illustrated best by the ACPed ”biological integrity” project introduced in 2023 that, in words reminiscent of the Religious Right’s anti-abortion crusade, claims gender is set in stone ”from the moment of fertilization.” The group cites numerous SEGM studies to claim that ”gender exploratory therapy” is necessary to restore the ”biological integrity” of trans people.

Focusing on trans identity as a mental illness, promoting conversion therapy, and centering young people, the groups’ rhetorical strategy is intended to call into question the affirming care model, but also reflect a political strategy consistent with anti-LGBTQ+ ideologies that typically caricature LGBTQ+ people as dangerous to children and society.^[53] For example, Ayad has repeated claims that schools are “teaching confusing gender beliefs” to kids and agreed that gender-affirming therapists ”go for the vulnerable” kids using ”indoctrinating” practicies.^[54] While, in a podcast titled “Help GENDER [sic] is a Mess at My School,” O’Malley says, it is not “appropriate” for adults to encourage the “solidification” of any identity, including gender and sexual orientation, until a person reaches their “early 20s.”

Lobbying and electioneering are often coordinated by other organizations, although R&P groups do attempt to translate their pseudoscientific narratives into public policy. Members of R&P groups frequently testify on behalf of anti-LGBTQ+ laws and are often employed to defend the same laws in court or otherwise legally challenge LGBTQ+ rights.^[55]

The groups also initiate contact with public offiicals. In September 2022, GETA members submitted a comment opposing U.S. Department of Education guidance protecting gender identity under Title IX in American schools arguing the guidance would amount to the mandatory social transitioning of children without parental consent.

On April 25, 2022, SEGM met with White House officials in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs about a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights on “nondiscrimination in health programs and activities.”^[56] The group used the platform of an objective research organization to argue HHS’ actions would “effectively force physicians to provide hormonal and surgical interventions” on young people. Malone‘s remarks repeated many of the debunked claims identified in this report and, ultimately, falsely concluded that “every” review of the evidence “has failed to demonstrate any lasting or credible benefits” of gender-affirming care.

Along with Malone, the meeting featured SEGM treasurer and Ohio physician Dr. Stephen Beck. Beck’s spouse, Sharon (aka “Maria Polaris” in testimony to the Ohio state legislature in 2022) has been identified as a leader in the Narrative Manipulation (NM) groups Parents of ROGD Kids and Cardinal Support Network. Importantly for undermining SEGM’s representations as a neutral arbiter of fact, Cardinal Support Network partnered with International Partners for Ethical Care (IPEC) to post billboards in Ohio beginning in 2021 to support the proposed SAFE (Save Adolescents from Experimentation) Act – model legislation to ban gender-affirming care for minors developed by the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Family Research Council. On November 29, 2021, Stephen Beck tweeted his support for IPEC and the Cardinal Support Network’s billboard campaign, saying that “both public AND [sic] clinicians need to understand harm” of “#gendermedicine” and equating gender-affirming care to experimentation on children.

In September 2023, Genspect, GETA, and SEGM members and advisors filed a petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) calling for an end to prescription puberty blockers for trans kids. ^[57]The petition inlcuded suport from other R&P groups including GDA and RIME, as well as multiple Narraive Manipulation (NM) groups including Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) in Medicine, IPEC, Detrans Help, and members of ACPeds.

Finally, R&P groups often take their advocacy to professional organizations that are not aligned with their anti-LGBTQ+ ideologies. In 2022, SEGM’s Julia Mason and the Manhattan Institute’s Leo Sapir kicked off a lobbying campaign aimed at the American Academy of Pediatrics.^[58] In an op-ed, the pair argued that the organization has been ”captured” by supporters of the affirming care model and advocated a resolution denouncing ”affirmation on demand.” The letter never discloses Mason’s affiliation with SEGM or the Manhattan Institute’s ties to FAIR.^[59]

Also in 2022, Genspect and SEGM advisor Dr. Joseph Burgo wrote a letter attacking the WPATH SOC 8. In a podcast hosted by FAIR and released on January 20, 2023, Burgo said many of the groups he works with “support one another” but do not always “work together,” however, the “Beyond WPATH” letter is a major node in the network that helped bridge R&P, NM, and Legal Advocacy and Think Tank subnetworks.

In May 2023, FAIR sponsored its own letter, this time to Springer Nature demanding the publisher refuse calls to retract a methodologically flawed paper on ROGD by Suzanna Diaz (pseudonym) and J. Michael Bailey and retain Kenneth Zucker as the journal’s editor. In addition to Blanchard, ASB’s editoral board includes Bailey and Dr. Stephen Levine.^[60]

The letter defends Diaz and Bailey’s article, claiming it was not necessary for the researchers to seek approval from an institutional review board (a key feature of human subject research ethics) and asserts the “potential viability” of the “ROGD hypothesis.” The letter also defended Zucker for publishing articles on “both sides” of the “contentious issue” of ROGD, yet never disclosed how FAIR and its affiliates helped manufacture the concept and controversy. Diaz’s and Bailey’s article was retracted in June 2023 because the authors reportedly did not obtain informed consent from the survey participants they recruited, but Zucker remains the journal’s editor. ^[61]

The letter became another important node for the anti-LGBTQ+ psuedoscience movement’s mobilization. Namely, the groups capitalized on Joseph Burgo’s 2022 camaign against WPATH and connected over 350 individuals from within the network. More than 150 signatories of Burgo’s “Beyond WPATH” letter also signed FAIR’s letter in 2023. Strong representation among ACPeds (16 signatures), Genspect (19), GETA (16), and SEGM (12) suggest substantial intra-group communcation between the members of these groups, in particular.

 

Consistent with thier advocacy strategies, other members of R&P groups have articulated a political strategy for their “research.” Citing school-based advocacy as a winnable political issue for American conservatives, for example, Genspect advisor Abigail Shrier commented on bridging the work of the R&P and the NM groups in a column published on October 11,2021, in the conservative Washington Examiner.^[62] Shrier, who signed FAIR’s letter and promotes the social contagion myth in her book “Irreversible Damage,” argues that political conservatives should “spend the next decade championing” the cause of so-called parent’s rights and use “science” to help make the case.^[63]

By claiming to fight for ”evidence-based medicine,” ”responsible therapeutic practices,“ and using the politicized framework of opposition to “gender ideology in schools“ and the anti-LGBTQ+ trope of “defending the rights of women and girls,“ Shrier says it is possible to defeat “[transgender] activists and their shoddy science.”^[64]

The job of crafting messages that resonate with enough conservatives to push the country full-tilt into attacking transgender rights fell to the Narrative Manipulation groups, many of which are fixtures of the Christian Right. Facing such a monumenal messaging task, however, required the formation of new groups and new alliances, including those discussed in Chapter 3. In what follows, we provide an overview of the major groups and narraiives they use to manipulate public perceptions of transgender peolpe and affirming health care.

Narrative Manipulation Groups

NM groups generally integrate anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience into narratives common to the anti-LGBTQ+ movement and the broader Religious Right, often seeking to use the lanugage of science to validate religious or moral claims about gender and sexuality. Many of the groups promote conversion therapy, for example. For many of the groups’ members, their support is based in conservative religious belifs; but, pseudoscientific cliams about the equivalency of sex and gender and the immutability of the gender binary help translate these strict religious interpretations of scripture into palatable pulbic and legal messaging. In this way, NM groups largely function to translate pseudoscience into digestiable political narratives (e.g. “parent’s rights,” “protecting children,” “family policy”) that fulfill two goals: 1) eliminating LGBTQ+ rights and 2) fueling a broader conservative Christian theocratic agenda of weakening the searpation of church and state and eroding principles of individual freedom and equal protection under the law.

 

To these groups, science may only matter insofar as it can be used to support their preferred political position. For example, the Family Research Council (FRC) attributes the passage of gender-affirming care bans, like its own model SAFE Act, to pseudoscientific campaigning by NM groups. In a July 2023 article, FRC’s Joshua Arnold suggests anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience has “emboldened” state legislators despite opponents “trotting out medical experts and medical opinions to testify against the [negative] bills at official hearings.”^[65]

NM groups generally “trot out” expert opinions derived from the work of R&P groups at official hearings and engage in direct advocacy strategies such as lobbying (link to VA Case Study). However, they primarily share disinformation through social media, webinars, and traditional media outreach to conservative news platforms, while utilizing their own in-house media outlets to share reports and health care “guides.”

These groups also regularly collaborate and cross-promote ideas, events, and public appearances with R&P and Legal Advocacy and Think Tank groups. Through narrative manipulation, the groups justify policy interventions that eliminate gender-affirming care, limit access to LGBTQ+-affirming spaces, ban drag performances, and censor LGBTQ+-inculsive curricula in schools. In the following section, we detail some of the most common narratives and tactics of the NM groups in the network.

Parents’ Rights

“Gender affirmation is a false love. What gender confused people need is compassionate help in coming to terms with the fact that God does not make mistakes by putting us in the wrong body.”
— “Do Not Fall for the ‘Affirm Them or They Will Die’ Lie.” Daily Citizen, July 20, 2023.

This line from Focus on the Family’s Daily Citizen appeared after the unnamed authors heavily quoted a SEGM critique of a study evaluating the relationship between conversion therapies and suicide risk. According to the Daily Citizen, gender-affirming care does not help mitigate risk of self-harm among LGBTQ+ people.^[66] What the ”science” (produced by SEGM) shows, they argue, is that “gender confused people” need to come to terms with the “facts” of creationism and gender binarism - beliefs that the Christian God created humanity in his cis-male image with a gendered companion (cis-female) to complement his creation.^[67]

This has been a political message of the Christian Right since its take over of the modern American conservative movement in the 1980s and 1990s. The most common refrain among the Religious Right has been that LGBTQ+ rights represent an attack on the “religious freedom” of anti-LGBTQ+ Christians.^[68] Previous iterations of the anti-LGBTQ+ pseudosceince movement helped previous leaders of Focus on the Family articulate similar claims about gays and lesbians’ “special rigths” and reinforce creationism that helped spawn the “ex-gay” movement. Still, Conservaive Christian theology has generally had a limited appeal, and public opinion even shows demonization of LGBTQ+ people is major source of religious disaffiliation among many young people.^[69] As we detail in Chapter 3, the relative lack of knowledge about transgender experiences provided a way for the Christian Right to revitalize old tropes to once again attack LGBTQ+ rights.

As Abigal Shrier and Todd Gathje of the Virginia Family Foundation^[70] have argued, one way to do this is to frame gender-affirming care as a battle over parental rights. Another way, which we highlight in Chapter 3, is to frame any representation of LGBTQ+ identity as “sexualized” and pornographic, dangerous to children and unsuitable for public spaces. While many of the NM groups widely use these frames, several groups that describe themselves as “parents’ groups” or promote stories of families who claim to be adversely affected by gender-affirming care emerged between 2016 and 2022 that highlight the strategy.

Like 4thWaveNow and TransgenderTrend, this subset of NM groups claimed to be led by parents of trans kids. Importantly, they do not accept and refuse to affirm their LGBTQ+ children. Seeking someone to blame, their public comments often center their own distress about having a trans child.^[71] They accuse teachers (and teachers unions), medical providers, and social media of “recruiting” or “transing” kids without their parent’s consent. They also take advantage of the fact that transgender experiences are undrerpresented in soceity and that some parents legitimatley seek out expert adivce, wanting to do what is best for their LGBTQ+ kids, to share misinformation.

Despite presenting themselves as parents’ groups, many are advised or connected to anti-LGBTQ+ activists and pseudoscientists and some even add a disclaimer to the information they provide that warns it “should not be used as a substitute for the advice of a licensed medical professional” and that they are not liable for "any damages or loss ... caused by or in connection with use or reliance on any information” on their websites.^[72]

The goal of NM groups is to build support for anti-LGBTQ+ policies. For example, the Kelsey Coalition, a group advised by Dr. Michael Laidlaw that claimed to represent parents of transgender kids who were harmed by medical transition, was established by Jay Keck and a handful of pseudonymous “parents" in 2018. The group was a major component in the Deutsch network (see Chapter 4), uncovered in 2023, that helped craft anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in South Dakota, Idaho, Flordia, and other states until 2020.^[73]

In 2019, the group partnered with the Family Policy Alliance, the Heritage Foundation, Parents of ROGD Kids, and the Women’s Liberation Front to produce a guide titled “Responding to the Transgender Issue.”^[74] The 66-page guide^[75] was published by the Minnesota Family Council, a Minneapolis-based “Christian organization” in the state family policy council tradition that advocates against LGBTQ+ and abortion rights. ^[76]

The guide defines “parents’ rights” as a “fundamental right to control the upbringing and education” of children and warns that affirming LGBTQ+ kids may violate conservative Christian parents’ right to “control their child’s exposure to ... transgender-themed books and curriculum” as well as conservative Christian students’ rights to “bodily privacy, religious freedom, and free speech.”

By citing members of the R&P groups, including Drs. Littman, Laidlaw, and Paul Hruz, the groups argue for a “better approach” than affirming transgender kids’ identities, since affirmation makes it “more likely [that trans kids will] persist in identifying as transgender and pursue irreversible medical transition with hormones and surgery later.” Citing Littman’s corrected ROGD paper, for example, the guide specifically attributes transgender identity to supportive “peer groups” - a claim not supported by the study.^[77]

Parental rights, then, is a euphamism for suppression of LGBTQ+ represetnation and has also been wielded by far-right extremsist groups to challenge anti-racist education and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in both public institutions (like schools and universities) and private businesses.

Two notable exmamples of this extension of the parental rights frame to attack inclusive education comes from Do No Harm and FAIR. Do No Harm was founded in 2021 by Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a kidney specialist who opposes anti-racist education in American medical schools. The group claimed in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal in 2022 that diversity training in medical education will “give black mothers preferential access to care” and “de-prioritize mothers of other races.”^[78] Laura Morgan, the group’s program director, similarly claimed that ”woke” education about systemic racism will result in ”preferential treatment for the nonwhite.”^[79]

With an influx of $250,000 in funding from the Gregor G. Peterson Prize in Venture Philanthropy^[80] in 2022, it quickly morphed from renting mobile billboards protesting Harvard Medical School graduation ceremonies into a machine for diseminating anti-transgender messaging. In a January 2023 interview with FRC’s Jody Hice, Goldfarb attributes transgender identity to mental illness and suggests access to gender-affirming health care gives trans kids and their parents too much “freedom,” freedom that has “gone in a terrible direction.”^[81]

Other members of the group include plastic surgeon Dr. Richard Bosshardt, a fellow with FAIR in Medicine; podcaster, therapist, and GETA member Stephanie Winn; ACPeds member Miriam Grossman; and anti-trans detransition activist Chloe Cole. In an episode of her You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast published on August 7, 2023, Winn hosted the pseudnomymous parent “Josie” of the online forum Parents for Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT). “Josie” claims to be the mother of a trans child and compares trans identity to indoctrination while describing the origins of PITT’s substack as a collabration with Alisdar Gunn of Genspect. Specifically, “Josie” describes how she helped Gunn inflitrate her affirming parents support group, then write and post transphobic articles based on their joint “research.”

On the same episode, Winn featured Gigi LaRue of the group Our Duty. Our Duty’s most public American member, Erin Friday, held a press conference on August 8, 2023, with Protect Kids California, the California Family Council, Riley Gaines then affiliated with the Independent Women’s Forum and, now, affiliated with the Leadership Institute, and Chloe Cole. At the press conference, they announced that the groups intend to place three ballot measures before California voters in 2024: one that would require schools to out trans kids to their parents, another to ban trans kids from school sports, and yet another to end gender-affirming health care for minors in the state.

In the same vein as Do No Harm, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism was founded in 2021 by Bion Bartning to oppose anti-racist education efforts and challenge inclusive education practices in court. It has since expanded its fight to oppose social affirmation of transgender people.

The group’s FAIR In Medicine program is led by Dr. Carrie Mendoza, who serves as an advisor to Genspect and Detrans Help – an organziation that promotes therapists, doctors, and detransitioners who are willing to testify before legislators and lawmakers against affirming care.^[82] FAIR in Medicince also manages a “Gender Healthcare Policy Map” and attemtps to distinguish “talk therapy” for transgender people from other forms of conversion therapy. Like SEGM, the group opposed a DHS nondiscrimination rule covering gender identity. FAIR, like Do No Harm, was founded to largely oppose anti-racist pedagogies in American education, and its members claim that therapists are trained to tell white patients that they are “oppressors.“^[83] It has since become a key voice amplifying anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience.

One of FAIR’s original members, Chris Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, is a key figure in the “parents rights” narrative manipulation strategy. FAIR’s board of advisors also includes SEGM’s Stella O’Malley and Robert P. George – who is also affilated with the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and Star Parker’s Center for Urban Renewal and Education. George was also a member of the drafting committee of the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, a conservative Christian manifesto calling for civil disobedience to laws (like marriage equality) that are perceived to infringe on so-called “religious liberty.”^[84]

FAIR, however, is a chapter-based organziations with affiliates across the country. Recent reports show how these local chapters are also part of networks that disseminate pseudoscientific disinformation and influence education policy, especially challenging local diversity programs and inclusive curricula.^[85] For example, in 2023, FAIR’s El Paso/Teller County, Colorado, chapter leader Joseph Boyle was shown to be part of a Discord chat for members of Advocates for D20 Kids, a Colorado Springs group, that included local school board members and a former Moms for Liberty chapter leader. In the chats, one member says that ”transitioning and chemical castration should be legally outlawed” but noted the group should be careful when making claims about the local district. ”If we start throwing blanket statements that they are mutilating our children without evidence- we take five steps backwards in building trust,” the member wrote in January 2023.

In September 2022, Boyle shared a link to FAIR’s comments to the Department of Education, which opposed Title IX nondiscrimination protections for transgender students. He also shared a link to a Gender Health Query webpage that cites 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend, and authors in our study including J. Michael Bailey and Ray Blanchard, and makes the argument that gender-affirming care does not help reduce suicide risk. ^[86] Earlier in 2022, the Washington Post reported that Boyle and other FAIR members followed the local school equality director to various community forums so much she accused them of ”poisoning the room[s]” against discussions of racial inequities in local education.^[87]

The Conpsiracy of Social Affirmation

Anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracies, like conspiracies targeting many marginalized groups perceived as threats to the white Christian family, have long demonized LGBTQ+ people by falsely linking LGBTQ+ identity and child sex abuse. Either by falsely claiming gay and lesbian identity is caused by sexual trauma or falsely claiming that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to be predators, these narratives are once again wielded by NM groups to manipulate attitudes about LGBTQ+ people and gender-affirming care.

Most recent iterations of the tropes perpetuated by NM groups center the idea that medical professionals, schools, and even other parents who accept their LGBTQ+ kids are “grooming” children to be LGBTQ+ and that transgender identity is spread thorough contact with “transgender ideology” in affirming spaces. In short, the groups claim social affirmation creates new LGBTQ+ kids by exposing them to “sexualized” identities. To stop that from happening, the groups argue, affirming spaces and expression should be censored, if not eliminated entirely. The message is given weight when it is repeated by groups that claim to be composed of LGBTQ+ “whistleblowers” such as Gays Against Groomers.

NM groups have weaponized the experiences of LGB people and, especially, detransitioners to support the idea that transgender kids are being “recruited” or infected with an opportunistic social contagion. The social affirmation conspiracy framing often ends with the absurd claim that identifying as LGBTQ+ will result in grave “irreparable” harm. To this end, and much like the anti-abortion movement, NM groups share graphic stories and depictions (e.g. infections and surgical scars) on social media without context, claiming they are representative of complications from medical transition procedures.

Two groups help demonstrate these narratives and strategies: International Partners for Ethical Care (IPEC) and Advocates Protecting Children (APC). IPEC is a Chicago-based organization founded in 2020 by Sheryl Throckmorton of the Kelsey Coalition, Erin Brewer, Maria Keffler, Alexandra Hecht (Aharon), and Jeannette Srivastava. The group was founded with the explicit mission to “stop” gender identity affirmation by “schools, hospitals, and mental and medical health care providers.”

IPEC led an advocacy capaign in 2021 for Ohio’s SAFE Act with Cardinal Support Goup which is led by Sharon Beck, wife of SEGM’s treasurer Stephen Beck. IPEC also leads the so-called Transition Justice Project which engages in a narrative manipulation strategy of promoting one-sided^[88] detransition narratives and refers clients to legal services that help generate cases challenging gender-affirming care, typically through malpractice lawsuits targeting health care providers. IPEC also cross-promotes the work of many of the groups in the anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network. For example, IPEC‘s YouTube channel frequently features members of SEGM and ACPeds, and the group promotes the work of the Family Policy Alliance and Child & Parental Rights Campaign.^[89]

Keffler and Brewer--the latter often says she is a “former trans kid”--cofounded Advocates Protecting Children (APC) in 2021. The group claims to be mostly “moms and teachers” who support churches, schools, and famillies seeking “facts and guidance on responding to gender ideology and activism.” APC’s advisory board includes Michelle Cretella and Andre Van Mol of ACPeds, Jennifer Morse of Ruth Institute (also a member of ACPeds), Carolyn Pela of the International Federation for Therapeutic Counseling and Choice (IFTCC), a conversion therpay advoacy group, Elizabeth Woning, an “ex-gay” minister and board member with Van Mol and Pela of IFTCC and the California-based Moral Revolution, and Jennifer Bauwens of FRC.

In addition to linking to Genspect and IPEC materials, the group hosts multiples podcasts. One, called Transjacked shares one-sided detransition stories. One called Commonsense Care amplifies anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience. In a May 5, 2022 episode of the podcast titled “Role-Playing the Coming-Out Speech,” Brewer and Keffler play parts in a “coming out” dramatization in which Keffler portrays the mother of a trans youth and Brewer portrays the young person. In the skit, Brewer’s dialogue and tone seem to imply that transgender people are being led astray by doctors, teachers, their friends, and social networks. The point of the skit is to seemingly suggest that social affirmiation creates new LGBTQ+ people from confused kids.

APC similarly curates a webpage of memes – easily sharable on social media platforms – that attack trans people and inclusive education practices.^[90] The “translating transspeak” series includes a meme claiming affirmation really means ”a person is so inherently and irrevocably flawed that it’s necessary to kill off the person s/he is” and “try to become someone else.” The “once upon a time” series features memes that include: “once upon a time nearly everyone agreed that drag queens are neither safe nor appropriate for children”: “once upon a time adults didn’t teach children that suicide is an appropriate response to not getting everything you want”: and “once upon a time men who tried to gain access to women and children by entering their private spaces were recognized as predators.”

Legal Advocacy & Think Tanks

The same research that underpins the messages of NM groups is generally translated into legal arguments and case law by LATT groups. While NM groups generally attempt to activiate like-minded constituenceis (like co-religionists, parents, conservative voters), LATT groups – especially thorugh Think Tanks – help translate pseudoscience into the intellectual mainstream of the American conservative movement. While NM groups tend to focus on singular campaigns or bills, LATT groups are in for the “long haul,” promoting what the Alliance Defending Freedom calls “generational wins,” which shape culture, law, and society for a generation.

 

LATT groups, then, pull double-duty. Their legal missions put them at the forefront of the effort to change policy while their institutional connections to funders, elected officials, private Christian colleges, and thought leaders within the broader conservative political movement (e.g. think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the Manhattan Institute) help them entrench anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience as conservative ideological orthodoxy.

Once false beliefs about LGBTQ+ identity and health care founded on anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience become polarized (i.e. closely associated with conservative political ideology and Republican Party identification), it will be an unchallenged feature of all future conservative political mobilization. These are the tasks of the LATT groups and evidence of the strategy is already apparent in the partnerships between think tanks like the Manhattan Institute and R&P groups, employment of R&P group members as subject matter experts in cases challenging LGBTQ+ rights, and in the plans for governance, like Project 2025, jointly drafted by organizations with deep ties to Republican politicians.