Inside California's bipartisan fight to save kids from Big Trans

"It's insane medical mad scientist stuff with kids," Gigi LaRue tells me.

She's talking about the internal files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health that leaked Monday.

"I've realized it's really easy to say, 'In Nazi Germany, I would have been one of the ones helping people.'"

The files reveal an organization controlled by ideologues, many of them trans-identified themselves. While WPATH members publicly advocate irreversible surgical and hormonal interventions on minors, in private, they acknowledge that these children are incapable of understanding the long-term consequences of their decisions.

And yet, WPATH is considered the leading authority on transgender health care. "[WPATH] is why we are where we are," says Gigi. "There's going to have to be some inquiries as to why this was allowed to go on for as long as it was and why [The American Association of Pediatrics] and why the Endocrine Society [followed WPATH's guidance]. Everybody knew that there’s no evidence."

I first met LaRue (not her real name) in January at One Life LA, an annual pro-life march sponsored by the Catholic diocese of Los Angeles. It was the last place she ever expected to find herself.

"I grew up believing that religious people wanted to take away my bodily autonomy as a woman," says LaRue, a self-proclaimed lifelong "liberal Democrat" who describes herself as pro-choice and pro-gay marriage. Now, she regularly attends Catholic events as well as other conservative-coded gatherings like gun shows.

She does so as part of her volunteer work gathering petition signatures for Protect Kids California, an organization seeking to introduce a statewide ballot initiative prohibiting the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, mastectomies, and genital surgeries for minors. The initiative would also bar biological males from competing in girls' sports or using girls' locker rooms as well as require schools to inform parents of children's mental health concerns identified in school settings, including gender-identification issues.

According to LaRue, she and her fellow Protect Kids activists quickly realized the benefit of reaching out across the ideological divide to people who "already get it."

The battle Protect Kids is fighting began with AB 1314, a proposed California state law mandating parental notification concerning any gender issues a child reports to teachers or other school employees. When that bill was struck down, its author, Bill Essayli, brought the idea directly to school boards. Those who implemented such notification measures found themselves embroiled in lawsuits filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Protect Kids then decided it would be more efficient to take the issue directly to the public in the form of a ballot initiative, which could be voted on as early as this November.

It is the attorney general who summarizes and titles ballot initiatives. In this case, Bonta's office came up with the "Restricts Rights of Transgender Youth" initiative. Protect Kids recently sued the AG to change the title to something more descriptive and less inflammatory.

Not long ago, LaRue would've maintained the typical "accepting" attitude towards trans individuals befitting a nice, affluent coastal liberal. It was when her high school-age daughter's soccer team faced off against a team with a trans-identified, biological male player that she started to dig deeper.

What she discovered shocked her — and compelled her to act. "Now I know what it's like to have a calling. If I can help in any way, shape, or form, and keep one person from taking their kid to a gender clinic and buying into it, I will do that. How am I going to feel if it continues to get worse and I didn't do anything?"

In her daily life, LaRue finds herself surrounded by the kind of people who angrily dismiss her views as "transphobia."

"I've realized it's really easy to say, 'In Nazi Germany, I would have been one of the ones helping people,'" she notes.

She also sees a lot of people going along to get along in order to avoid the consequences of this label. "We know someone whose kid just died, and the first thing the coroner asks is, 'What's his gender identity?' I would have punched him in the face."

As for the specialists most qualified to oppose gender ideology, "They're not standing up because they don't want to risk anything. They're just not doing the surgeries, and so they're letting somebody else do it."

All of this has given the non-religious LaRue newfound respect for the Christians she encounters in her activism. "They have the courage of their convictions in a time when it's unpopular."