MUSIC Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. Today we're joined by a mother whose 13-year-old daughter was socially transitioned at her Florida middle school in 2020 without her parents' consent or even knowledge. That mother, January Littlejohn, is a licensed mental health counselor now dedicated to educating parents, school officials, legislators, and mental health professionals on the dangers inherent in this gender ideology. January Littlejohn, welcome to Family Policy Matters.
Thank you so much for having me. So give us the story. Tell us what happened with your daughter. So in 2020, at the height of COVID, our 13-year-old daughter came to my husband and I and said, I no longer feel like a girl. And this announcement came out of nowhere, and it was shortly after three of her friends at school had also started identifying as some form of transgender. And so my husband and I were very concerned about our daughter, and we elicited the help of a mental health professional and notified the school as to what was happening. Well, several weeks later, my daughter got into the car and said, Mom, I had a meeting at school today. And they asked me which restroom I wanted to use. And so that really propelled us into this nightmare of a situation at the school where we eventually found out that the school had performed a psychosocial medical intervention in the form of a gender transition plan that they created behind closed doors with our 13-year-old daughter without our knowledge or consent. And this was done with three adults and our child. And so it went well beyond just asking her what name and pronouns she wanted to be called. They asked her which restroom and locker room she preferred to use and which sex she preferred to room with on overnight field trips. And these transition plans was not an isolated case here in Florida.
These are being used all over the country. They're from an organization called Gender Spectrum. And they even go so far as to ask the child, how should we refer to you when speaking with your parents? And this is to effectively deceive parents that these social transitions are ever even occurring.
Wow. Why do you think you were caught off guard by this? There are some states where we would imagine this would be a danger, but not necessarily Florida. Well, you have to recall back in 2020, there was very little known about gender ideology. The landscape on this topic has drastically changed in four years. And that is in part due to advocacy by parents like myself that blew the whistle.
So prior to 2020, this was happening in Florida. But parents, unfortunately, there is so much shame and embarrassment and mistrust. And rightly so, my trust was completely broken with the school district after they did what they did. And so parents were not going public with their story. And in fact, prior to our family going public with our story, there was no lawsuits with the exception of one in Madison, Wisconsin. And it wasn't based on harm that had actually occurred.
So our federal lawsuit that we ended up filing in October of 2021 was the first of its kind in the country. And that really started to increase awareness about not only what was being taught to our students, but these medical interventions were being done behind the backs of loving parents. And parents were being cut out for these critical decisions being made at school with no due process. And in fact, they were proclaiming and presuming all parents to be a danger, an actual danger to their child with no due process because in some of these LGBTQ guides, which is what they finally gave my husband and me when we continue to ask for legal justification that they were using to meet with our minor daughter without our knowledge or consent, it explicitly stated in these guides that you are not to disclose any kind of LGBT identity to parents because it could cause abuse or make them homeless when there was no evidence to back this up.
And frankly, that is illegal. You cannot presume all parents to be a danger to their child with no due process. We have very clear reporting laws.
If a child is ever in danger of abuse or neglect, the school has a duty to report that to CPS services. Okay. So you decided to speak out.
Tell us how that went and what kind of reaction did you get? That was the last thing on our mind. And it was almost like a desperate attempt to try to get the school district to stop violating parental rights in this manner. And we were very lucky that once we went public with our story, our legislators here in Florida acted swiftly. And so they had just signed into law the Parent Bill of Rights. And so after that, they created the Parental Rights and Education Law.
And that was a firestorm that I was just unprepared for. I am a normal stay-at-home mom that just was trying to raise our children the best that we could. I was really unprepared for the firestorm that that turned into, but I was incredibly grateful for the leadership of Governor DeSantis and our many legislators that made that law possible to protect parental rights in this arena.
Because parents should never be cut out of critical decisions being made about their children. We are the ones ultimately responsible for their physical and mental health care. So as a result, you started to help other people who might find themselves in a similar situation.
Tell us about that. Dr. Stanley Goldfarb and the organization is called Do No Harm. And they really saw a need for this organization because identity politics had infiltrated every aspect of our medical field. And so as they were starting to look at how these DEI initiatives were playing out in patient health care, people continued to raise the alarm about gender ideology and how children were getting unnecessary, very invasive interventions done to them when they couldn't possibly give informed consent because their brains are not fully developed. And so Dr. Goldfarb looked at the evidence, looked at what was actually being done in the name of health care to children suffering from distress over their sex, and was alarmed.
Because once you see what's happening to children under the guise of health care, all due to an internal feeling that these children are having, you can't look away from that. You found help out in the community. And there are a lot of organizations that will help, legal and otherwise, right?
Absolutely. Like I said, with the lawsuit, that was the furthest thing from our mind. That's why it took us so long to file a lawsuit in this regard.
I really naively thought if I just take the evidence to the school, if I show them the harm that's occurring, and give them evidence of this social contagion among these vulnerable teen girls. And so my hope was that we wouldn't have to go public because at the same time that we went public, our daughter was still in the throes of this indoctrination and confusion. And so it was a huge risk that we took because at the same time that we were trying to protect her and parent and walk her through this confusion, we went public with our story. And there was an incredible amount of media attention placed on our family during that time.
And so we were walking a difficult line to parent our daughter during this time, when her mental health was spiraling, and also make sure that the school was going to be held to account and all the schools, frankly, for what they were doing to parents in this manner. You mentioned in some of your talks about the Stop the Harm database. What is that? And why is that an important resource for all of us? Well, it's an incredible new resource that Michelle Habrilla, she analyzed publicly available insurance claims. And so they were very conservative at the data that they looked at. And one of the reasons why they were so conservative is because for the last four years, when we started to really raise the alarm on these interventions being done on children, many were falsely claiming that it wasn't happening. And so this database proves without any doubt that not only are these interventions being done on children in hospitals across our nation, but this is a huge moneymaker for these hospital institutions.
Any other stats you'd want to share as far as what is found in that database? What we found was that 5,747 children have undergone some form of surgical intervention in the name of gender. And so the reason why that's so alarming is not just because these are all minor children, but because what the research shows is if you allow these children to go through their natural process of puberty, just like my daughter did, they will desist in their confusion. So when you look at what we're doing to children when they cannot give informed consent because their brains are not fully developed, these children are not going to know how they're going to feel about the potential loss of their fertility. This is unconscionable that we are doing this to vulnerable children, because what you also have to realize is these children are vulnerable.
They have co-occurring mental health issues. Many have previous sexual trauma, and up to 40% of them are on the autism spectrum. And so these are very alarming numbers. We found that 8,579 children were given hormone and puberty blockers, and then a total of 62,682 prescriptions were written for cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers. And remember, this data did not include some of the biggest perpetrators of this, like Kaiser Permanente, and it also didn't include parents who paid out of pocket for these interventions, which we know is also happening. So we believe these numbers are very low. They also stuck to the ICD code of gender dysphoria. And we also have become aware that some surgeons and doctors are using other ICD codes to hide these interventions from this kind of data search. What do you need parents to know?
What are some things that we need to look for so that we can catch some of this maybe before it gets to the point that yours did? What I tell parents is you have to be actively inoculating your children from this destructive ideology. What's happening in the schools is children are being falsely taught that you have something called a gender identity.
And this is made up nonsense. The children are being told that a gender identity is an internal sense of their gender, that it's completely separate from their biological sex, and that they actually choose to be a boy, girl, neither or both. And there are over 72 of these gender identities that are now being marketed and taught to children. And so this is being not only promoted, but it's being actively encouraged.
My daughter received an incredible amount of encouragement and affirmation when she started to identify as something other than her sex. And so this is a really serious issue in our country right now, because even with wonderful laws that we have in Florida, the faucet of gender ideology has not been turned off. It is still being taught through sex ed curriculum, social emotional learning.
There are GSA clubs. These are a vehicle for how this destructive ideology is actually being taught to children. But parents have got to be actively inoculating their children with the truth. And the truth is there are two sexes. Sex is binary. And regardless of what someone does to their physical appearance, it does not change their sex.
And you know, when you start to really look at this ideology, you realize how regressive it is. We have tomboys that are being told that God somehow makes them not a girl. It means they are a boy. We have prepubescent girls at the thrust of puberty when no one is happy with their body. And instead of being given the body positive message of this is normal, you're going to get through it. These girls are being taught if you have discomfort with your body, you can take puberty blockers to buy you time to see what gender you choose. That is the horrible message that we are telling children. And it's a lie.
And when you look at the evidence behind this, you realize it's very low quality, which is why other European countries are moving away from this. Before we go, if parents want to learn more about this, where can they go to see the Stop the Harm database, but also all the other great resources that are out there? So for the Stop the Harm database, they can go to Stop the Harm database dot com. And then for resources specific to gender ideology, I have created a parent page on our website, which is DoNoHarmMedicine.org. You can also create like an inquiry. So if you are a parent who has a child that is struggling with this, you can actually reach out to DoNoHarm and be connected with me.
This is what I do in my free time now. I help parents get connected to the resources they need to parent their children through this confusion. And there are so many parents choosing to affirm their child and the reality of their sex and not undergo medical interventions when their children are coming out on the other side of this confusion, just like my daughter did. All right. Well, January, little John, thank you so much for your courageous work on this issue and the way that you give every day. And thank you so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters. Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy. Thanks and may God bless you and your family.
