This summer, Governor Healey proposed a new Comprehensive Health and Physical Education Curriculum Framework for MA public schools. Since that announcement, we have been sounding the alarm about the extreme content in this document and encouraging MA residents to tell DESE to reject the Framework. The end of the public comment period for that Framework is today, August 31st, at 5:00 p.m.
However, shortly before the Framework was released, another alarming document was unveiled that could also impact the safety of youth in MA: the MA Commission on LGBTQ Youth Report and Recommendations for Fiscal Year 2024.
This 290+ page report encapsulates the LGBTQ Commission’s view on how MA is doing through an LGBTQ lens and makes recommendations for what they think the state should do to better serve LGBTQ people ages 13-24. This report does not carry the force of law, but with allies in the Governor’s office, we believe they will be taken seriously. And if these recommendations are put into practice, they will harm MA youth and families.
As we mentioned previously, this report is alarming for parents and families who hold to a traditional view of gender.
Blaming what they refer to as “a significant rise in public transphobia across the state,” the Commission recommends that the state move toward codifying “gender-affirming child welfare protections.” If this recommendation is adopted, it will pose a direct legal threat to parents who do not support gender ideology by labeling them as child abusers. This represents a grave danger to the families of impressionable children who have fallen prey to the transgender craze.
This is only one of the many recommendations that could impact a parent’s right to guide their child through gender confusion. The Commission also wants to hide mental health-related medical records from “unsupportive guardians” (236); train school nurses on trans-specific health information like safe binding practices “so they can provide better information to students” (29), provide trans and gender expansive youth with funds to purchase items like binders and packers (37), and pass S.68/H.164: “An Act Establishing A Bill of Rights For Children in Foster Care” (12) which would give every child in the MA foster care system “the right to access gender-affirming care.”
If a parent were to “withhold gender-affirming care,” and this was considered a crime, would the child then be placed in foster care and have their gender-affirming care paid for by your tax dollars? It certainly seems that could be their end game.
But the MA Commission isn’t just looking to impact parental rights – their vision is much grander. “LGBTQ youth mental health is in crisis,” they say, and to help these youth “…all support efforts should be anti-oppressive: they should fuel systemic change that tangibly reshapes services, schools, communities, policies, and laws rather than focusing only on individual mental health support.” (61)
In other words, chipping away at parental rights is only the tip of the iceberg. They want to rejigger the whole system. They will accomplish their sinister plans through four main objectives:
Collecting data on the sexual desires and gender confusion of youth, and then use that data to justify more LGBTQ initiatives.
“The Commission recommends that agencies explore ways to include SOGI data collection where appropriate to better understand the need for LGBTQ-inclusive health care in all areas.” (97) This report contains 23 unique recommendations to initiate or enhance collection of SOGIE (sexual orientation, gender identity and expression) data from MA youth. These recommendations span 15 state departments and 5 focus areas and represent a drastic increase in the collection of sensitive, personal data from minors. One data collection recommendation is to give a version of the MA Youth Risk Behavior Survey to middle-schoolers (187). The MYRBS is currently given to MA high schoolers and includes questions such as “…Are you transgender?” and “During the past 3 months, with how many people did you have sexual intercourse?” Posing such questions sexualizes minors, invades their privacy, and produces data that can be manipulated.
Indoctrinating a captive audience of students in MA public schools.
Schools are just the starting point. The report states, “Entire cultural shifts must happen before we achieve a state where LGBTQ youth experience affirmation wherever they go, and the concept of sexual health and affirmation is broader than just looking at education in schools. In fact, LGBTQ-affirming education begins before a child’s first birthday, by teaching children that they have agency over their own bodies…” (121)
The Commission has their eyes set on infiltrating every level of the public school system. They want to do this by pushing LGBTQ topics into “all subject areas” (22, 26) and intentionally hire more LGBTQ teachers. (202) (This prompts the question: how would students know a teacher was LGBTQ? Are LGBTQ teachers expected to discuss their sexuality in the classroom?) They want to push Gender-Sexuality Alliances (GSAs) into more schools at taxpayer expense (22) and provide Professional Development for GSA advisors (38) (which is remarkable considering GSAs are supposed to be student led). They demand passage of the Healthy Youth Act and the CSE model sex ed it would enforce, but they want the opt-out provision tightened up so that any districts that might currently be allowing parents to opt out of LGBTQ-related curriculum would no longer be allowed to do so (117). And their classroom push goes beyond the public school system – they even want to insert LGBTQ-affirming material into curricula and programming given to kids served by the Department of Youth Services, including those who live in residential programs. (254)
The indoctrination extends to the school library, as well. They want DESE, the Massachusetts School Library Association and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners to coordinate efforts to keep inappropriate library books in school libraries (204, 263). They want to develop and disseminate a new LGBTQ book list to all libraries in MA “to ensure that youth consistently are able to gain access to LGBTQ-inclusive and anti-racist books” (262). They want to train librarians on how to stand fast against parental concerns (262) and push more programming like Drag Queen Story Hour and Pride celebrations (261, 263).
Forcing state employees to fall in line with LGBTQ ideology, whether they like it or not.
The report states, “The Commission recommends that all agencies engage their employees and contracted providers in mandatory, recurring, and in-person LGBTQ cultural awareness trainings.”(187).
The Report contains 23 unique recommendations to initiate or increase LGBTQ-related training for state employees spanning 18 state departments. The majority of these recommendations are for mandatory training – a recommendation with serious implications for state employees. One example calls for evaluating public counsel attorneys who work with youth to make sure they buy into gender ideology and giving youth clients and adult allies easy access to file a complaint if they do not think the attorney is being supportive enough (223). Mandatory training like this presents a clear and present threat to the rights of employees who have a religious or philosophical objection to the LGBTQ agenda.
Using doctors and counselors to affirm gender ideology, disregard basic biology, and push their agenda.
The Commission wants to use the medical system to expand their mission and call on providers to treat youth in an “affirming” manner – that means, when a child expresses a new sexuality or alternative gender identity, the professionals are expected to reinforce it. This includes counselors and mental health providers who practice in the school system (61). They want to increase the financial incentive for doctors to provide “gender-affirming care” to youth, including “fertility preservation,” and increase access to transgender medicalization by having all pediatricians and clinicians trained to provide this care (83, 90). They claim that pregnancy enhances gender dysphoria for LGBTQ youth and therefore want to increase youth abortion access and revise the Department of Public Health provision of abortion requirements for DPH-funded medical facilities and programs (109). And in a direct assault on basic biology, the Commission continues to tout the existence of the “nonbinary” identity (a designation that appears 66 times in their report), insists that menstrual products should be placed in men’s bathrooms (100), and even recommend that doctors allow patients to use “preferred anatomy terms” such as “front hole instead of vagina” (103).
And while these four objectives are shocking, this only constitutes a portion of the concerning content in this Report.
The activists at the LGBTQ Youth Commission want to tip the scales in favor of their agenda by using the educational and medical systems to promote their goals and scare parents and state employees into compliance. They want to do this at your expense, with MA taxpayers footing the bill for everything from binders and packers to “free contraceptives to youth in public buildings and hospitals” (118). They want to do this even though research quoted in their own report exposes three troubling facts: LGBTQ-identified youth reported childhood sexual abuse at a higher rate than heterosexual teens (125), that there is an explosion of trans-identification amongst teenage girls (1), and that 98% of youth who use puberty blockers continue gender-affirming treatment into adulthood (122).
Could abused and confused teens, especially young girls, be turning to an alternate gender identity as a shield to protect them from predation, only to find themselves fast-tracked into life-altering medicalization, preyed upon by the same activists that promised to protect them? Prominent detransitioners Prisha Mosley and Chloe Cole have testified to that exact experience and young men have found themselves caught up in the transgender agenda as well.
And if the LGBTQ Commission has its way, caring parents won’t be able to protect their children struggling with gender identity issues. Instead, parents would be silenced and every adult professional in a gender-confused child’s life would be forced to affirm their delusion and push them further down the road to irreversible harm all with the support of the State.
At MFI, we believe that youth who experience same-sex attraction or gender confusion should not be sacrificed on the altar of gender ideology, or used as fodder for the billion-dollar gender-affirming care industry. These vulnerable and precious youth deserve care and compassion.
They also deserve the Truth. The truth that:
- God’s design for human sexuality and gender is best.
- Gender transition doesn’t fix your problems: Listen to detransitioner Katie Lennon’s story HERE.
- There is hope for healing and change through Christ.
MFI is working hard to spread God’s truth and protect vulnerable youth, but we can’t do this without your help. Activist organizations like the LBGTQ Commission have state funding and powerful institutional support from DESE and the Governor’s office. We do not receive any state or federal funding; we exist because of the generosity of people like you. Would you partner with MFI through a one-time or recurring gift?
