There comes a time in the life cycle of every cult when things become so insane that, one way or another, the whole operation falls apart. It wasn’t too long ago, for example, that a cult called “CUT” convinced tens of thousands of people to hide in fallout shelters in Montana. The point was to save themselves from nuclear apocalypse. But the apocalypse never came, so eventually the cultists left the bunkers and gave up on the whole idea. This was in the ’90s, if you can believe it.
A few decades before that, the same thing happened with “The Seekers” in Michigan. Back in the ’50s, The Seekers thought they’d get swept up by aliens in UFOs and taken to some faraway planet. Admittedly, it’s not the most unreasonable belief. That one I might have actually joined. But eventually, when they picked specific dates for the aliens’ arrival, and they never came, even the diehard Seekers gave up and disbanded. Some dreams die hard.
Until recently, a notable exception to this general rule — the rule that most cults quickly collapse under the weight of their own absurdity — has been trans ideology. Transgenderism is a far deadlier and more destructive cult than CUT, or The Seekers, or anything like that. It also makes a lot less sense. The idea that anyone, even children, can snap their fingers and become the opposite sex is, objectively, crazier than fretting over nuclear war, and much crazier than anticipating the impending arrival of aliens. And yet, for most of the past decade or so, transgenderism somehow only grew more influential, and corrupted more institutions, the more unhinged it became. How could that be?
Whatever explains the remarkable longevity of the cult of transgenderism — and we have talked extensively about how it came about, and why — there is finally some good news to report. At long last, the spectacular, slow-motion implosion of trans ideology is underway. It’s only a matter of time — though it may be a while yet — before it goes the way of all those other cults. We’ve seen the signs of this for the past year. Think about the nearly two dozen states that passed laws outlawing the sterilization of children. Consider the success of “What is a Woman?,” which became one of the most-watched documentaries of all time. And of course, recall the catastrophic market failures of Bud Light and Target, when they embraced the most demented aspects of trans ideology.
Now there’s yet another sign that the fall of transgenderism is finally upon us. And it may be the clearest sign yet. It comes from, of all places, the state of California, where transgenderism is basically the state religion.
WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show
This week, the Murrieta Valley School District in southern California voted to require parental notification when students give any indication that they want to change their gender. So, for instance, if a student tells his homeroom teacher that he wants to be referred to as a girl all of a sudden, then the homeroom teacher would be obligated to inform that student’s parents. Murrieta became the second school district in California to approve such a measure in just the last month, after the Chino Valley School District.
This is a policy that trans activists, and state Democrats — most notably the state attorney general — desperately wanted to prevent. They understand that they need to indoctrinate children into the cult of transgenderism as soon as possible, in order for the cult to survive. And they understand that this indoctrination process is a lot more difficult if parents are given the chance to interfere. That’s why corporate media was united against this. The Advocate, for example, ran this headline: “California School District Will Make Staff Out Trans Students to Their Parents.”
And yet, in California, arguably the most Left-wing state in the country, despite all this pressure, the trans activists failed. How did that happen?
To answer that question, and to understand the significance of this moment, it’s important to start by presenting the trans activist side of the argument, because you really need to see how much they’re flailing. Here’s how one school board member began her argument in opposition to the measure this week. To be clear, she’s arguing that teachers should not have to tell parents if their children suddenly start identifying as members of the opposite sex. Watch her opening argument:
This is the first, best argument that the school board member could come up with. This is her case for why schools shouldn’t tell parents that their boy now thinks he’s a girl, or vice versa. Notice that the school board member doesn’t say she’s advocating for the best interests of children. She doesn’t say it’s the best thing for the parents, either. Instead, she issues a threat. She makes an appeal to lawfare. She says that California has created a maze of laws and regulations on this topic, and if the school board dares to take the side of the parents, then the school board will be sued by the state attorney general. And no matter what, that will cost millions of dollars, because lawyers are expensive. And ultimately, parents will have to pay those costs in the form of taxes.
That’s not an idle threat, by the way. Already, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, has opened an investigation into the Chino Valley school district for its parental notification policy. But put that aside for a moment. Think, again, about how callous and brazen this is. She’s not opening by saying her policy makes any sense, or helps anyone — least of all the children she’s supposed to care about. She’s just saying: obey, or prepare to deal with bureaucratic hellfire.
To be fair, a few minutes later, this school board member, whose name is Nancy Young, eventually came up with another argument. Here it is, in its entirety:
Let’s break this down. Nancy Young is saying that, at one point, she had an openly gay male student. This student’s parents, allegedly, told him to kill himself because he identified as a homosexual. Put aside just how implausible and made up that story sounds. Let’s just take it at face value for a second. Nancy Young concludes, based on that singular anecdote of an obviously deranged hypothetical parent, that no parent, in any circumstance, has the right to know what his or her child is doing at school. You might as well point to a story of a suicidal mother driving herself and her children over a bridge, and conclude that no parent should have the right to drive their children anywhere, for fear that they are all secretly plotting murder-suicides.
As with all logic by trans activists, this collapses the moment you pause to think about it for more than two seconds. For one thing, it would justify hiding literally everything from parents. If you follow Nancy Young’s line of thinking, then schools shouldn’t tell parents if their child was caught with, say, heroin, or a 9 millimeter handgun, or anything. After all, some parent somewhere might overreact and say something really nasty. Perhaps parents shouldn’t be told if a child has bad grades. You never know how the most unhinged parent might react to that information.
But Nancy Young’s “reasoning” — if you can call it that — is completely anecdotal. It’s based on one example she provides, with no corroboration whatsoever. Therefore, all we need to refute it is a single child who regrets her decision to supposedly “transition.” Two can play at the anecdote game, and the anecdotes on the other side of this discussion are much more powerful. Not to mention they’re actually true. And, as it happens, one such person was present at this school board meeting in Murrieta. Her name is Chloe Cole. She’s become one of the most outspoken advocates against so-called “gender affirming care” for minors. In Murrieta, Cole testified about her experiences, including getting a double mastectomy as a 15-year-old girl. She also spoke about what happens when kids can hide their alleged “gender identity” from their parents. Watch:
Now you see why trans activists desperately want to silence Chloe Cole. In fact, they wanted to silence her at that very school board meeting. She’s a walking refutation of arguments from politicians like Nancy Young.
So what else is there? What other possible reason is there to hide information from parents about what their children are doing and saying at school? You can probably guess by now that no other real arguments were presented. But, just in case you’re curious, here’s a sampling of what the trans activists served up:
“Agree with us or you’re homophobic; agree with us or you support violence against children.” Convinced yet?
Probably not. Either way, there is an irony underlying all of this. And it’s important to highlight it, because it exposes, once again, the incoherence of trans ideology. As you saw, in California right now, trans activists are arguing that parents don’t deserve to know anything about their kids’ so-called gender identity in schools. But, at the same time, trans activists — in the courts and in Congress — are opposing bans on child mutilation on the grounds that *parents*, as opposed to the government, should be intimately involved in their kids’ “healthcare” decisions.
Right now, for example, the ACLU is fighting to overturn Tennessee’s ban on child sterilization. Here’s a quote from the legal complaint against Tennessee: “That fundamental right of parents includes the right to seek and to follow medical advice to protect the health and well-being of their minor children.” A district court judge accepted that argument. He found that, “The Court therefore agrees with Plaintiffs that under binding Sixth Circuit precedent, parents have a fundamental right to direct the medical care of their children, which naturally includes the right of parents to request certain medical treatments on behalf of their children.” (Ultimately, the appellate court quickly reversed that decision, finding that sterilizing children may not, in fact, amount to constitutionally protected medical care.)
So, to recap: On the one hand, trans activists are saying parents have the right to “transition” their kids. On the other hand, they’re saying parents don’t have the right to know if their kid is “transitioning.” This is the position of trans activists. Parents have the right to do this to their kids, but don’t have the right to know if it’s being done. This is the best reasoning they can come up with.
As another example, here’s a Democratic representative at House Judiciary Committee a few weeks ago again citing “parental rights” as an argument against bans on child mutilation:
A leading Democrat says that parents are, “involved in every phase of decision-making” involving child transgenderism. Any suggestion to the contrary, she says, is fear mongering. As we showed you a few weeks ago, a Republican member of the committee later asked that same Democrat whether she would therefore support a law requiring parental involvement in any child gender transition, she stammered and stuttered and refused to commit. That’s because the parental rights line is a total farce. It’s a shield they use whenever it’s convenient, and then drop it the moment they have no use for it. They pretend to defend the fortress of parental rights, but a moment later they have turned around and trained their guns on the very thing they were claiming to defend just a second before. And in this case, the hypocrisy and self-contradiction is not just academic — there are real-world consequences. After all, trans activists are the first to point out that trans-identified kids are much more likely to be suicidal, which is true. And yet if a parent has a child who is in a group that makes him a high risk for suicide, trans activists believe this fact should be concealed from them. How many children have died because they were convinced to hide their gender confusion from their parents? How many suicides do these trans activists have on their blood-drenched hands? Too many to count, and yet these callous, narcissistic sociopaths don’t care.
But this is what happens. This is what is revealed. Without fail, anytime you allow trans activists and pro-trans politicians to speak, and you consider what they’re saying, the true horror of their ideology comes into view. Along with its incoherence. They contradict themselves. They reveal their own hypocrisy. They lie. They obfuscate. They do all of that because they know, in the end, every cult suffers the same fate. It collapses under the weight of its own absurdity, and then is forgotten and disgraced forever. That is the future of trans ideology. And it’s coming sooner than trans activists think.