Meet the Companies Helping to Trans Kids and Hide It from Parents

It’s been a while since Americans could actually sit back and enjoy June. Now, instead of bumping into rainbows in every aisle and choking on the colored logos of every conceivable brand, there’s some freedom from the suffocating fumes of Pride Month.

In these last two years, the march to pull companies back to neutral has outperformed everyone’s expectations. But in this process of rolling back decades of corporate wokeism, one thing is clear: this isn’t over. No matter how much success conservatives have, not everyone will go quietly. When it comes to LGBTQ activism, some businesses are playing for keeps.

While most of this week’s coverage seems to be about who isn’t joining the parade, there’s a proud contingent of CEOs who have no intentions of backing off their radicalism. To those who would shrug and say, “It’s just a few splashy logos. What’s the big deal?” the reality is much more sinister. This isn’t about slapping a few Progress flags outside headquarters or queering the Sesame Street puppets. It’s about financing a dangerous enterprise to keep children in bondage and parents in the dark.

The corporate darling of this year’s celebration, The Trevor Group, isn’t just another rah-rah LGBTQ crusader. Billed as a youth suicide prevention organization, one look under the hood shows that this group is anything but uncontroversial. And yet, sponsors are lining up to finance the group—to the tune of millions of dollars. The heavy-hitters, who are giving upwards of six-figure donations, are mostly familiar names: Macy’s, Petco, Abercrombie & Fitch, Pure Vida, Guess Watches, Kohl’s, Lululemon, MAC Cosmetics, and a collection of lesser-known brands.

A lot of these businesses will ring a bell, simply because they’ve been stubbornly clinging to their LGBTQ alliances through months of nationwide backlash (along with headstrong lefties at Levi’s, Converse, and Nike). Interestingly, the brands that are listed as year-round Trevor Project partners also happen to rank the highest on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. With a few exceptions, almost every company that submitted their information to the Human Rights Campaign earned a perfect score—meaning they’re completely on board with transgender insurance coverage and benefits, gender-neutral restrooms and dress codes, and preferred pronoun usage, as well as LGBTQ hiring quotas, non-discrimination standards, sensitivity trainings, recruitment efforts, community outreach, philanthropic support, and lobbying on local, state, and federal issues. In other words, the hardest of the hard core:

• $1 million: Abercrombie (100%), Lululemon, Macy’s (100%)
• $500,000: AT&T (100%), Deloitte (100%)
• $250,000: Coca-Cola (100%), GenDigital (100%), Gilead (100%), Harry’s, Hot Topic Foundation, Jingle Jam, Sephora (100%), MAC Cosmetics, Procter & Gamble, Rare Beauty, The Game Company
• $100,000: David Yurman, Delta Airlines, Delta Dental, Dolce Vita, FedEx (85%), Forever 21, H&M, Humble Bundle, Kate Spade, Kohl’s (100%), Lemonade, Makeship, Maybelline, National Education Association (NEA), Native, NFL, OPI, Pair of Thieves, Petco (95%), Saks Fifth Avenue, United Airlines (100%), Wells Fargo (100%), Williams-Sonoma (90%), XBox

And while The Trevor Project claims to be harmlessly dedicated to “advocacy, education, and crisis support for LGBTQ+ young people,” it’s the nature of that advocacy and education that should disturb Americans. For starters, this is a group that, just three years ago, was exposed for stealthily grooming children online. A suspicious mom, whose daughter struggled with gender dysphoria, logged onto the organization’s TrevorSpace chat room to see what kind of advice she was getting—and was horrified at the graphic and disturbing nature of the site.

She sent the screenshots to National Review, a “Pandora’s box” of “sexually perverse content, aggressive gender re-assignment referrals, adults encouraging minors to hide their transitions from their parents, and many troubled kids in need of psychological counseling. Like most moms, she said she’d turned to The Trevor Project in “desperation.” “‘I thought my child was going to kill herself,’” she admitted. “In TrevorSpace,” the National Review Online explains, “she got a bird’s-eye view of the progressive non-profit giant that is claiming to save young lives but is really driving them further into existential rabbit holes, depravity, and potential danger.”

At one point, “Rachel then dove into an abyss of concerning sexual conversation. Some transgender-identifying adults confessed in detail their [fantasies and deviances].” In some cases, “users under 18 spoke with adult users about their sexual preferences, including BDSM, polyamory, and others.”

Equally as disturbing, The Trevor Project has its hooks in countless K-12 classrooms across the country with its so-called “resources for educators and school officials, including the Is Your School LGBTQ-Affirming? checklist and Creating Safer Spaces in Schools for LGBTQ Young People, which can help determine whether a school is adequately supporting LGBTQ+ students.” The website “also offers several educational guides for adults working with LGBTQ+ young people, including the Guide to Being an Ally to Transgender and Nonbinary Youth, How to Support Bisexual Youth, and Preventing Suicide.”

“We’ve increased our efforts in public education,” the project’s website brags—and that’s exactly what parents should be afraid of. The group’s resources include a Model School Policy Booklet that it distributes to “ally” teachers, counselors, and volunteers across the country. Among other things, it urges educators to hide information about students’ sexual orientation or gender identity from parents:

• “Information about a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity should be treated as confidential and not disclosed to parents, guardians, or third parties without the student’s permission. In the case of parents who have exhibited rejecting behaviors, great sensitivity needs to be taken in what information is communicated with parents.”
• “While parents and guardians need to be informed and actively involved in decisions regarding the student’s welfare, the school mental health professional should ensure that the parents’ actions are in the best interest of the student (e.g., when a student is LGBTQ and living in an unaffirming household).”
• “In the case of parents who have exhibited rejecting behaviors, great sensitivity needs to be taken in what information is communicated with parents. Additionally, when referring students to out-of-school resources, it is important to connect LGBTQ students with LGBTQ-affirming local health and mental health service providers. Affirming service providers are those that adhere to best practices guidelines regarding working with LGBTQ clients as specified by their professional association (e.g., apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/guidelines.aspx).”

These are the kind of anti-parent zealots Macy’s, Abercrombie, Petco, and others are donating your June dollars to. Sometimes it’s 10% of the purchase price. Other times it’s the change you round up. But whatever the amount, it’s fueling a team of ideologues intent on destroying America’s children—and keeping it a secret while they do.

Don’t get me wrong. This country should be jubilant about all it’s accomplished. Robby Starbuck and other activists who’ve been fighting this war before most people knew we were in one deserve medals. But the biggest mistake any of us can make is believing we’ve won. Because a single dollar in the wrong hands is a weapon. And the pain, thousands of parents and their young patients will tell you, lasts a lifetime.

Originally published by The Washington Stand.

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