Editor’s note: Earlier this year I sent this letter and the research it contains to members of the state legislature. HB808 has replaced HB43. HB808 and SB49 received an expected gubernatorial veto July 5. Veto over-ride was successful August 16. The bills are law.
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Put yourself in the shoes of a parent who finds out that his daughter’s school was encouraging her to question her body, to take a new name, to live as a boy, all without telling him.
Can we be realistic? What do you think such a parent would be capable of doing?
The issues intersecting children, gender/sexual ideology, and parental rights in schools are deal-breakers in our social compact. The foundations of our republic now face the universal solvent of gender ideology as identity politics mutates into medicalized violence and self-harm.
Must we really tolerate a world where shirtless young women on TikTok show off the scars from their amputated breasts with the filtered “happiness” and charisma of the Instagram models that made teen girls uncomfortable with their bodies 10-plus years ago?
The North Carolina legislature has the opportunity to take up these issues, most notably through SB49 and HB43 (“Parents Bill of Rights” and “Prohibition of Certain Hormone/Surgery/Minors”). These bills at the very least would protect teachers—protect them from doing things that would endanger their safety.
My name is Andrew Branch. I’m 31 and have lived in Wake County all my life. I want to be frank with you as a citizen. This letter is neither hate mail nor fan mail. I want to show you what is actually happening in schools and gender clinics—and what officials are openly advocating right over in Durham, without euphemism.
Worldview, not expertise, is at issue
Many Democrats express the desire to allow “experts” to develop curriculum on these topics. Are we talking about Dr. Diane Ehrensaft, the “gender therapist” who has said that a one-year-old boy who unbuttons his onesie such that it looks like a dress is making “a pre-verbal communication about gender”?
The experts have worldviews and assumptions that they bring to their expertise. Germany in the 1930s was the most educated country in the world. The “experts” tell us that men can get pregnant now.
Children are now asking if the normal awkwardness and discomfort of adolescent body changes actually means they’re trans.
Must we really tolerate a world where an awkward 14-year-old boy with autism who likes pink and struggles to connect with his male peers is tacitly led to believe that maybe he’s supposed to cut off his penis or risk killing himself?
So-called “puberty blockers” and cross-sex hormones stunt, disfigure, and sterilize children. Girls as young as 15 in this country are receiving “top surgery” to cut off their breasts. Chemically castrated boys are being groomed for “bottom surgery” when they reach 18, which can cause permanent urination problems. Vaginoplasty creates a permanent wound between his legs for the sole purpose of allowing another man to sexually violate him in said wound.
I’m writing to appeal to you to push back against this. If your husband cheats on you, he cannot accuse you of causing division if you file for divorce. But that is the accusation of so many Democrats toward people like me in the so-called “culture war.” We didn’t start this.
You do not give an anorexic girl liposuction. But that is transgenderism.
Gender is not separable from biological sex any more than a man temporarily becomes a woman when he washes the dishes. Gender is not separable from biological sex any more than a woman temporarily becomes a man when she gets on a ladder to change a light bulb.
The emperor has no clothes! This ideology can’t survive except by the raw use of power, censorship, and the emotional blackmail of suicide—to the point where activists practically encourage our kids to consider becoming martyrs. Activists and Leftist legislators regularly violate CDC warnings regarding suicide contagions, as they declare all questions hateful, harmful, and violent.
This is happening here
Should we wonder why nearly 20% of Generation Z now identify as some form of LGBT? If they only just now in 2023 are free to be “who they are,” where were all the suicides in generations past?
What about the Triangle? LGBT content is not prominent on the Durham County Library website except in one place—the teen programs page pushes teens directly to sexual identitarian content. A Durham Public Schools policy explicitly treats parents as potential threats to their child’s “wellbeing.” The policy states outright that schools do not need parental consent to change a student’s name, pronouns, etc. And when a student expresses a change in identity, administration will determine “how to involve the student’s parents, if at all.”
At least one Wake County teacher within the last month has changed the name and pronouns of a student without telling the parents. I’d say more, but to guard the family’s privacy, I’ll say the story of manipulation has an easy summary. In the world of critical theory, being an “ally” still makes you an oppressor, makes you “less-than.” So what better for a girl to do with her body discomfort that’s wrapped up in depression and natural aversion to increased attention by her male high school classmates?
This is happening here. Duke University established the state’s first pediatric “gender care clinic” in 2015. Now with a months-long waiting list, they offer puberty blockers and then irreversible cross-sex hormones at 16, which they call a “lifelong commitment.” And while they don’t perform surgeries on minors, per their website, they do at 18, even as they admit “bottom surgery” often leads to incontinence.
While Duke admits that research on hormone therapy is scarce and they don’t know its long-term effects, Planned Parenthood (PP) advertises hormone therapy in both Raleigh and Durham.
Numerous PP affiliates nationwide cite as a matter of pride that “most patients are prescribed hormones that [same] day.” And for at least some regional affiliates, this may occur for those under 18.
“Sometimes, you need a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria to get gender-affirming health care,” PP tells teens. “You can be medically diagnosed with gender dysphoria if your feelings have a big impact on your life” [emphasis mine].
Their teen-focused companion resources (screenshots appendix) come specially designed with “quick escape” buttons to discourage parental knowledge.
And in one page directly to teens (screenshot appendix), PP purports to tell confused teens the kind of services they “need.” That “hormones and surgery” are “medically necessary” and can “increase gender euphoria” [emphasis mine].
Children who can’t consent to sex are able to consent to being sterilized with this kind of manipulation? All of a sudden the terms “predator” and “groomer” become more plausible (not to mention that “grooming” commonly applies to, say, a CEO grooming his successor and doesn’t inherently imply a kind of pedophilic blood libel).
So what do many Democrats in our backyard think about this? What do they think about parents?
The Durham County Board of Commissioners doesn’t use euphemisms. When it met on February 27, the Board condemned SB49 and HB43 with candor (full text in appendix).
This resolution expresses full-throated support to Durham schools hiding from “parents if their child asks to use a different name or pronouns at school.”
This resolution expresses full-throated support for “hormone treatment, puberty blockers, and surgery for people under 18.”
This resolution expresses full-throated opposition to anything that “erodes … bodily autonomy of LGBTQ+ people, including minors.”
Speed limits restrict bodily autonomy!
In March 2022, Duke University hosted a Zoom panel in which Dr. Marci Bowers (a male) admitted that few who receive puberty blockers can experience orgasm. Some concerned doctors, Bowers says, are now “talking about masturbation” to their minor patients. Why? Bowers admits in so many words that people like him are flying blind as to what they will do to these children’s ability to ever be intimate in adulthood.
But the Durham County resolution clearly shows the Board does not believe parents have any rights.
Let me borrow social justice categories for a moment. When these kids decide they want to have children or recover the sexual function they lost with their amputations or chemical castrations, they won’t be able to. Girls will never get their altered voices back. Those consequences have lasting, generational, systematic effects.
I have no inherent animosity toward people who simply have different beliefs. But even in the interest of accommodation and peaceful cooperation of people with diverse beliefs, the government can never itself tell or facilitate a lie.
A functioning society is built on foundations that must remain firm for institutions built on that foundation to stand. (I expand on this thought here.) We cannot stretch our view of pluralism to allow us to define for ourselves the meaning of the colors of stoplights.
As a Reformed Presbyterian, I’m more broadly skeptical of a system built upon a frankly vague head-nod to rights “endowed by our Creator.” Even so, postmodernism has turned the Creator into Ourselves. We must defend the foundations. You can’t conserve inalienable rights if those rights are endowed by ourselves.
Our postmodern society is playing Jenga, snatching truths out from under our institutions. You cannot allow the “natural” in natural law to be redefined and expect institutions (like pluralism) higher up the societal structure not to totter.
This is zero sum. The “experts” have one of the following worldviews.
Do my feelings tell me who I am? Or does who I am tell me how to interpret my feelings?
Is my body in conflict with who I am? Or is my mind in conflict with who I am?
There is no appeasement, because the two views cannot co-exist. Ontology—who and what we are irrespective of what we feel—determines what counts as “equal protection” under the law. The state must act in accord with what is true.
And if the Durham County commissioners are right, every state has the legal compelling interest and moral duty to enshrine gender ideology and ignore religious liberty, parents’ rights, or anything else.
Mentally unstable postpartum mothers have drowned their children thinking that they’re loving them. We may not replace what is true (natural law) with feelings, even if we call those feelings “love.” A pluralism built on lies about “the loving thing to do” will irreparably sacrifice children while gaining little more than a temporary pause in our cultural rupture.
People identify as transgender, but that does not turn a man into a woman.
People identify as gay, but no amount of same-sex attraction creates a different type of human.
The “Parents’ and Students’ Bill of Rights” Bill Won’t Do
Regarding parental rights and public schools, some Democrats have responded with their own counter proposal, the “Parents’ and Students Bill of Rights,” or SB58. I read it.
The Democrat bill says parents are entitled to “timely notification of information related to his or her child’s health, well-being, and education”—as well as “to know of threats to his or her child’s safety.”
While that is welcome, I find it difficult to trust an odd term like “timely notification” when it’s the Left that views the parents as the “threat to his or her child’s safety.”
The bill also says that students are entitled to “a learning environment in which discrimination in all forms is not tolerated by the public school unit or school administration, school police or security personnel, or students” [emphasis mine].
How is that enforceable? It practically says students have a right not to get turned down by a potential prom date.
Under the current worldview in Durham schools, that means girls who protest males being in their locker rooms would be the ones punished. This is pure virtue signaling. It’s not a serious proposal.
And what exactly do you think will be done with “mental protections for students and staff” such that students have a “feeling of safety and comfort”? Are we really to put “safe spaces” directly into legislation and under the authority of people who think men can get pregnant?
Because even many Democrats in the state legislature cite their church membership and claim faith in Christ, I can appeal directly with Scripture. In theory, you’re in submission to pastors who will “give account” for you (Hebrews 13:17-18), including whether you take the Lord’s Supper in unrepentant sin (1 Corinthians 11:30 and context).
If God did make us male and female, then that matters. And a state that denies that erodes its stability and legitimacy.
If you use an iPhone as a hammer, don’t be surprised when it breaks. That’s not its purpose. When we misuse ourselves, in a way we weren’t created, don’t be surprised when our kids and our communities erupt with angst and self-harm.
We hear the saying that “love is love,” but love “does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the Truth” (1 Corinthians 13). The government has a God-given duty: To “punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Peter 2:14).
Will you participate in these Democrats’ praise of evil?
You will answer before Almighty God for what you do to protect children. If Jesus rose from the dead, he does not abide those who cause children this kind of harm (Matthew 18:6).
And if Jesus rose from the dead, then the Father has surely given “all authority in heaven and on earth” to Him (Matthew 28). A state that openly defies that Truth will give an account to Him who judges with righteousness and equity (Psalm 98).
Conclusion
This is not a question of whether we will win or lose. We’re not asking for permission to protect our children. The only question is what lengths we will have to resort to.
We’re asking you to repent (Psalm 2) and to protect those who cannot leave public schools.
To Democrats: What if you are the ones in the bubble? I don’t blame you for distrusting the GOP. But I’ll tell you what I tell my more Republican friends about the media: Just because we have an earned distrust does not give us an excuse to eschew all discernment and only believe what we want to believe.
I recognize that the actual wording of a law matters. And lots of things can factor into a vote. But only by fostering a culture that affirms the Truth can we identify those children who are truly suffering from body dysmorphia, etc., and work to shepherd them into wholeness, not further confusion.
You’ve been given this information. You’ve been called to repentance. Will it “be more tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom than for you” (Matthew 11:24)?
Appendix: Some cited documents
Appendix: Durham County February 27 Agenda Summary of Resolution & Resolution Text
Appendix: Planned Parenthood Linked Resources: https://imi.guide/gender
Appendix: A Note on the State of the Law
Parents are poised to lose custody over gender ideology. Author and activist Abigail Shrier has already documented parents who have lost their children to the system or left home practically overnight to escape it.
Threatening to separate families, Senate Bill 107 in California allows the state to take “temporary emergency jurisdiction” in custody matters regarding children who seek so-called “gender-affirming” medical interventions.
Washington and Oregon removed parental consent years ago, including blocking parental access to health records. But a far more sweeping Canadian law on “conversion therapy” in 2022 made parents or pastors liable to jail-time if they so much as seek to “reduce” a child’s sexual behavior or gender expression.
Female prisoners are getting raped by males who pretended to be women to enter their prisons. Rachel Levine, a man who fathered several children, promotes trans experimentation on children as the United States Assistant Secretary for Health. In Virginia, the Loudoun County School Board is now well-documented attempting to bury a rape that took place because of its bathroom policy—buried in front of the victim’s father at a school board meeting.
If we have to start a new Underground Railroad for parents to escape rainbow totalitarians, we will.
Non-discrimination ordinances have swept North Carolina’s metro areas and now ooze through suburbs. Ordinances that ban acting as if male and female are real things in key aspects of your public life are no longer controversial enough to make headlines.
I am puzzled. I look at Louisiana, where a healthy portion of Democrats can join a bipartisan coalition and a Democrat governor to vote to ban most abortions. I do not understand why this state (and Congress) is so polarized such that Democrats seem only allowed to believe one thing.
Appendix: Food for Thought
(A tweet proves nothing, I know. Just presented without comment)
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