Even as the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Tennessee SB 1, described in Supreme Court to Weigh in on Transgender Madness, the high court let stand a ruling by the 7th U.S. District Court of Appeals in Wisconsin that allows schools to secretly encourage children’s gender dysphoria.

The suit was brought by parents in the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, School District (Parents Protecting Our Children, UA v. Eau Claire Area Sch. Dist., Wis.), who asserted that the school district’s 2021 policy on transgender issues “directly harms [parent-child] relationships by communicating to minor students that secrets from their parents—including an entire double life at school—are not only acceptable, but will be facilitated by the District upon request.”

In a December 9 article, WorldNetDaily’s Bob Unruh explained that the district court claimed “parental rights were not affected when schools secretly encouraged children to be transgender, so the parents had no standing to bring the case.”

Three justices, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Thomas, disagreed, saying they would have granted the petition because “it’s an issue that is coming up more and more.” CNN reported that the court “didn’t say why it declined to hear the case,” but noted the lower court’s ruling that the parents “didn’t have standing to sue since they didn’t demonstrate the policy affected their children.”

According to Unruh, Justice Alito said:

• This case presents a question of great and growing national importance: whether a public-school district violates parents’ fundamental constitutional right to make decisions concerning the rearing of their children...when, without parental knowledge or consent, it encourages a student to transition to a new gender or assists in that process.

Justice Thomas added “We are told that more than 1,000 districts have adopted such policies.”

Alito further pointed out that the Eau Claire policy is accompanied by “equity training” which encourages teachers and other school personnel “to keep parents in the dark about the ‘identities’ of their children, especially if the school believes the parents would not support what the school thinks is appropriate. Thus, the parents’ fear that the school district might make decisions for their children without their knowledge and consent is not ‘speculative.’”

Americans disagree with trans agenda

One of the issues that contributed to President-elect Donald Trump’s impressive victory in November is the radical transgender movement, which the Biden Administration has relentlessly pushed for four years. Voters indicated through election-related polling that they hope the new administration will put the brakes on this agenda. In one example, a Napolitan News Service poll showed that, despite Democrats’ vigorous transgender partisanship, including support for biological men competing in women’s sports, just 13 percent of all voters, including Democrat voters, agree with them.

The Napolitan survey also found that 72 percent of voters think it should be “against the law to provide children under 18 with puberty blockers, drugs, and/or surgery to help them transition from one gender to another.” A significant majority, 71 percent, said schools should not teach children about gender identity, and 95 percent believe such topics should be off limits for children in 3rd grade and younger. [Emphasis added.]

Clearly, a majority of Americans disagree with the transgender ideology currently dominating our culture and being taught in schools. Most parents don’t want school personnel to pursue transitioning their kids without their knowledge or consent and, in general, most Americans are opposed to the transgender procedures performed on minors as a result of such grooming.

International influence

Nevertheless, the transgender juggernaut rolls on. Last month, Education Reporter noted that a proposed new rule in the State of Oregon, which takes effect in January 2025, will force both public and private insurance companies to cover transgender surgeries and cross-sex hormones “for all ages.” The law will impose penalties, including loss of license, on those who resist.

The rule is based on Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, a guidance developed and funded by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. This international non-profit organization promotes “its world vision that people of all gender identities and gender expressions have access to evidence-based healthcare, social services, justice, equality, and respect,” and dedicates itself to the oft-repeated leftist litany of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Although not the only state with such a policy, Oregon is the first to base it on WPATH guidelines.

The good news is that, as The Washington Free Beacon noted last month, WPATH and its guidelines “face mounting scrutiny,” and the organization is “increasingly seen as putting activism over medical credibility.” Despite its influence, “even mainstream outlets like The Economist have reported on the group’s alleged research manipulation.”

The Beacon added that “internal emails released in court filings show WPATH also suppressed its own commissioned research about transitioning minors when it failed to show promised benefits.” And it’s no surprise that, when pressured by the Biden Administration, “the group lifted age limits from its standards of care.”

One year ago, an article on the website “Reality’s Last Stand,” accused the World Health Organization (WHO) of squandering an opportunity to create “a reliable international guideline, especially considering the increasing global scrutiny of the affirming care model endorsed by WPATH. In several countries, notably the United States,” the web article noted, “this debate has become entangled in partisan politics. Ideally, an international organization like the WHO would help steer this debate towards evidence-based medicine.”

Unfortunately, the WHO’s guideline development group “blatantly violates” its own mandate that group members be free of conflicts of interest. The “Reality” article shows that “published biographies of 14 out of 21 members reveal clear and significant financial and non-financial conflicts of interest, and there may be undisclosed conflicts as well ... The group includes three former WPATH presidents,” two of whom contributed to the most recent versions of WPATH’s “Standards of Care.”

The article offers little hope that the WHO will do anything to establish sensible guidelines for dealing with transgender care issues, but it does note that “Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have all abandoned the WPATH Standard of Care.” (Since the article was posted, the U.K. issued the Cass Review report, cited in Education Reporter’s previous article, which confirmed a shift there similar to that of the Nordic countries. — Ed.)

UN gender treaty a threat

On December 9, vice president for legal studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), Stefano Gennarini warned in The Federalist that outgoing President Joe Biden has “agreed to advance a new United Nations treaty that weaponizes international criminal law against opposition to transgender policy.” This treaty penalizes politicians who deliberately “’misgender’ someone or advocate for female-only private spaces” by finding them “guilty of gender-based persecution, a crime against humanity.”

Last month, the UN General Assembly agreed to a timeline of 2029 for finalizing the treaty, which will “enshrine an open definition of gender in international criminal law,” effectively replacing the Rome Statute that accurately defines gender as “the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society.”

Gennarini explains that the Rome Statute “was a hard-fought definition to clarify the meaning of ‘gender persecution,’” a new category of crime invented when the International Criminal Court (ICC) was formed in 1998. He credits “the work of pro-life nongovernmental organizations in collaboration with the Holy See and other delegations” for pushing the Rome Statute through “during many months of negotiations.”

But as conservatives, pro-lifers, and believers in sound science may imagine, this common-sense definition of gender has been a thorn in the side of leftists and LGBT activists, both within and without the UN. “Western countries have been trying to get rid of it,” Gennarini writes. “Now they are closer than ever to achieving their goal with a treaty that, unlike the Rome Statute, is expected to be ratified by the U.S. government.”

The treaty poses an obvious threat to free speech and religious freedom, both in the U.S. and internationally. Gennarini further cautions that “Western leftists want the crime of gender persecution to include things such as denying children cross-sex hormones and surgeries, not recognizing same-sex marriage or adoption, laws against LGBT propaganda in schools, women-only sports, and even denial of abortion. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is already being done by the prosecutors of the (ICC).”

While incoming President Donald Trump is likely to reverse U.S. support for the treaty, Gennarini reasons that, given its extended timeline for final adoption, “a Democrat may be in the White House by 2029.” He recommends that President Trump “simultaneously signal that the United States will not be a part of this dangerous new gender treaty, as well as engage aggressively in negotiations to sanitize the treaty as if he expects the next U.S. president to sign it.”

The new administration should also take advantage of the majority of citizens who voted to stem the tide of transgender madness, and who are rooting for a favorable decision in the Tennessee case, by encouraging them to contact their congressional representatives and ask that they cut off funding “to organizations and multilateral programs” that lobbied for the removal of the Rome Statute at the UN.

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