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Guest post by Jeff Cleghorn
I am a 6th generation Georgian, Army veteran, lawyer, and gay man who lives in a rural county with my husband and our two dogs. I am struck by the disconnect between reporting in mainstream media, like the Atlanta Journal Constitution, about “LGBTQ discrimination” and an “epidemic of hate” and the starkly different reality I observe every day. What the media and “LGBTQ” activist groups like Georgia Equality and the Human Rights Campaign say is happening is very different from reality.
I speak out as a gay rights advocate since 1993, having worked on the legal staff of the Washington, DC based gay rights group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, from 1997 through 2003. I later served on SLDN’s board, as well as the boards of Georgia Equality and Lambda Legal. I am a past President of Georgia’s Stonewall Bar Association. I have long advocated for the equal dignity of gay men and lesbian woman across Georgia and the United States.
I have not heard of a single instance of “hate” or “discrimination” directed towards a gay or lesbian or transgender Georgian in recent memory. Nor has the media or activist groups pointed to any specific examples, which tells us they don’t have any. So, what is going on?
Georgia, like the rest of our country, is embroiled in a cultural debate about “Queer” (the word LGBTQ activists prefer) and Transgender issues. For reasons no one seems to understand, following the successes of the gay rights movement (legalization of same-sex marriage, military service, etc.), the apparatus of that movement was hijacked by far-left activists who were looking for a reason to justify staying in business (and obtaining massive funding from corporate America and big pharmaceutical companies). What they came up with was a plan to spread their ideology (that sex, gender, and sexuality are fluid social constructs that can mean anything someone says they mean) by targeting children.
Transqueer activists believe that propagandizing queer sex and sexuality ideology (rainbows, unicorns, and drag queens) to kids will help kids believe people can change sex if they want to – in other words, to believe in make-believe. We have seen Cobb County and Marietta City school boards needing to remove sexually explicit children’s books because they are age inappropriate. For example, books like “Flamer” cause objection because of its graphic descriptions of nudity, sexual conduct, and kink. Why people are writing books like these targeting kids, and how they are getting inside Georgia libraries, ought to trouble every Georgian. And there is nothing “hateful” about protecting kids from this.
A secret 2019 report The Dentons Report (“Only adults? Good practices in legal gender recognition in youth”) by the prestigious Denton’s Law Firm lays out a plan to covertly infiltrate schools and other institutions with child-targeting transqueer ideology. Among other things, the report claims that medically transitioning children is a “human right” and there should be no minimum age. It further advises activists to deemphasis the medical aspect and, instead, claim it as a “human right.” Activists should use covert, surreptitious means instead of public debate, avoiding press coverage and exposure. Dentons advises activists to cloak transqueer activists’ goals by claiming it is all a natural, logical extension of the gay-rights movement (thereby giving activists permission to paint anyone voicing skepticism as “hateful” and “bigoted”).
The result? Transqueer activists propagandize falsehoods and disinformation, at every turn. Pointing to the onslaught of state-level legislation seeking to protect children as evidence of “discrimination.” Nothing could be farther from the truth, safeguarding kids ought to be everyone’s highest priority always. Instead, activists like Georgia Equality falsely claim an “epidemic of hate,” with the Human Rights Campaign recently claiming a “first-ever national emergency.” This is not the Georgia I see and not the reality I, and my many gay friends around our state, experience.
Transqueer activists claim kids can be “born in the wrong body” and that “sex is assigned at birth,” much like mid-1900’s doctors claimed lobotomies treated mental illness. The only difference between today’s “evidence based,” “medically necessary,” “lifesaving,” “gender-affirming,” “healthcare for kids” and lobotomies is the doctor who invented lobotomies got a Nobel Prize. There is zero evidence “trans healthcare for kids” is safe and effective long term, and none of the medications pushed by transqueer activists are FDA approved (neither has any pharmaceutical company making puberty blockers or synthetic sex hormones ever requested FDA approval to treat any mental health condition).
Countries all over Europe – from the United Kingdom to Finland – have recently stopped using the “affirmation only” approach with kids experiencing psychiatric distress because of their bodies. Every country to examine the medical basis for “trans healthcare for kids” has determined there is no reliable evidence these “treatments” help psychiatrically distressed children. The Cass Review released in the UK on April 10, 2024 lays bare the medical fraud being pushed on vulnerable kids by transqueer ideology masquerading as evidence-based medicine.
The bombshell March 5, 2024 release of The WPATH Files Report proves what many have long believed: that the World Professional Association of Transgender Health is a fraud. Their “Standards of Care” are based on ideology and junk science. WPATH identifies as a scientific, medical association of “trans medicine” practitioners. US medical associations, children’s hospitals, and “gender clinics” point to WPATH to justify their work. The nonprofit group Environmental Progress published the WPATH Files, comparing the WPATH promotion of “the pseudoscientific surgical destruction of healthy genitals in vulnerable people” to the mid-20th-century use of lobotomies, “the pseudoscientific surgical destruction of healthy brains.”
Transqueer activists also falsely claim “suicide” as a reason for transitioning kids, despite the absence of any reliable evidence that sex distressed kids kill themselves at higher levels or that “gender affirming care” for kids reduces suicide. This is emotional blackmail.
There is no epidemic of hate. There is no “anti-LGBTQ discrimination” in Georgia that anyone can point to. Gays and lesbians all over our great state are living lives of dignity, indeed we are grateful to live in a country where this is possible.
Jeff Cleghorn is on X at @jeffcleghornga.
