Generation Indoctrination’ Season 3: Growing resistance

By Brandon Showalter, Opinion writer and social commentator Tuesday, January 02, 2024

A critical mass of Americans finally seemed to wake up to the dire threat of gender ideology in 2023, and not a moment too soon. 

I’ve tracked and reported on these issues at CP for nearly seven years and I can say with confidence that in terms of public awareness, last year was like none other. It seems that, at long last, the atrocious medical scandal, so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors and young adults, is being seen for what it is: horrific, unmitigated child abuse and a grossly unethical experiment on the vulnerable. 

Thus, it is with unequivocal zeal and resolute determination that The Christian Post is proud to release the third season of our award-winning documentary-style podcast series, “Generation Indoctrination: Inside the Transgender Battle”. 

In these five episodes, we take a look back at 2023 on the public policy front particularly given the state-level legislative efforts to prohibit experimental gender medicalization – puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and medically unnecessary trans surgeries performed on minors. Such efforts began with state Rep. Robin Lundstrum’s successful push in the Arkansas House of Representatives in April 2021. Lundstrum’s was the first ever bill – model legislation called the SAFE (Save Adolescents from Experimentation) Act – to cross the finish line and become law after both chambers overrode the then-governor Asa Hutchinson’s veto. Since then, around 20 states have enacted similar measures. 

Other voices from across the political spectrum and who have been in the trenches for years have continued to decry both the irreversible medical harm and the dangers gender ideology poses to women’s sex-based rights and have proven prescient. Radical feminist Democrat Kara Dansky recounts in episode 1 how her new, no-holds-barred book The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls spells out in granular detail how systematically the American political left has become captured by trans ideology. But the Democratic party and political left are far from the only culprits that have enabled this ideology. Republicans, churches, and other actors are likewise complicit. 

Meanwhile, liberal states are going in the opposite direction of the states banning the trans-ing of minors, chief among them California, which many consider the U.S. epicenter of transgender activism and ideology. The podcast explores in episode 2 how and why the Golden State has had outsized influence on the rest of the nation given its culture-shaping industries and the legislative push that has been largely sponsored by one man, state senator Scott Weiner. From K-12 education and medical care to athletic competition and state prisons, in every area of the public domain, often via Weiner’s bills, the California legislature has rigidly enshrined transgenderism. Among the most blatantly egregious examples is how the state allowed a male serial killer, Dana Rivers – who savagely murdered a lesbian couple and their son in 2016 – into a women’s correctional facility. This was in keeping with a 2020 state law, sponsored by Sen. Weiner, that permitted men who claim to be women to transfer into a women’s prison merely by self-identifying as female. In episode 2, we speak to a former inmate who is now an advocate for female prisoners, Amie Ichikawa, who is in touch with such women daily. 

Moms and dads whose children become swept up in the transgender social contagion feel the impact of gender ideology more than most. Those parents who have had to navigate the struggle and often endured a hellacious ordeal trying to protect their children from experimental medicalization share what it’s like in episode 3 of this season. Their stories crush the heart. Yet, some parents who object to gender ideology are having success resisting, even if none of their children are presently identifying as trans. CP interviewed one such parent in Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who launched an investigation into a prominent university hospital system after a whistleblower detailed in sworn testimony how children were being harmed and parents were undermined at its pediatric gender clinic. Bailey has also defended Missouri’s law prohibiting the trans-ing of minors at the trial court level. 

But no one has experienced the devastation of these ideas more than what are called “detransitioners,” young men and women who were permanently altered with hormones and surgeries. Some of them underwent these procedures as minors, now regret it, and are suing the doctors that irreparably damaged their bodies. In episode 4, we engage two such detransitioners, one young man and a young woman, along with an attorney working on behalf of several women who have filed malpractice lawsuits, and a documentary filmmaker who has written a new book that profiles several detrans young people and explains how gender ideology has eroded biomedical ethics.

Since we are The Christian Post, in the season finale we will examine how the Church must respond to these issues with grace and truth, animated by the transformative power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We engage some of the best Christian thinkers and theologians who have tackled this thorny subject. 

Tune in to “Generation Indoctrination: Inside the Transgender Battle” on all major podcast streaming platforms.