How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way

By Andrew Sullivan for @nytopinion
🧵⬇️ GIFT LINK: How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way

By Andrew Sullivan
nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opi…

Debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes has issued a stream of false or misleading claims about the Times article about the @ACLU’s tangled path to Skrmetti—the SCOTUS case on pediatric gender-transition treatment.

Allow me to demonstrate how wrong Hobbes is.

🧵⬇️ The thing about conspiracies is that sometimes they actually occur. Subpoenaed records show WPATH squelched systematic reviews of gender care they commissioned when the results did not support their advocacy movement.

And Hobbes, perhaps because he doesn’t know or understand what those reviews are about, issues a sleight of hand by suggesting that the reviews were irrelevant since there is no evidence kids are getting rushed into surgeries. But that’s not what the reviews were about. They were about the strength of the evidence backing gender-transition treatments.

A must-read that diagrams how Chase Strangio at the @ACLU and others in what @MattYglesias, for one, calls The Groups—the advocacy nonprofits that form a backbone of Democratic power structures—advocated for maximalist advances in trans rights and lost spectacularly.

https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1935678922009526583

Alejandra Caraballo is livid over the Times article, in particular for citing @BriannaWu, who has called for moderation while Caraballo has been out front taking maximalist positions on trans rights and attacking her perceived adversaries left and right.

How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost

The inside story of the case that could set the movement back a generation, by @NickConfessore for @NYTimes. nytimes.com/2025/06/19/mag…

BREAKING: U.S. v Skrmetti has been decided, 6-3, upholding the constitutionality of Tennessee's ban on gender-transition treatments for minors.

This will likely entrench bans of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in 25 states. supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf…

NEWS: Under pressure from all sides by the Trump administration, the pediatric gender clinic at Children's Hospital Los Angeles that is run by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, will stop providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender-transition surgeries to minors. removepaywall.com/search?url=htt…
latimes.com/california/sto…

Despite copious evidence supporting the conclusion that there are many avenues for kids to be referred to an endocrinologist to receive pediatric gender-transition treatment after a single assessment appointment, debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes continues to pretend otherwise. open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…

The long-awaited New York Times six-part podcast series on pediatric gender medicine, The Protocol, is up. Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

YouTube: youtube.com/playlist?list=…

I have been subjected to Alejandra Caraballo’s calls for people to blacklist me. She is one of the loudest and most effective voices to silence and intimidate reporters covering pediatric gender-transition treatment.

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1929909094556520486

How Cancel Culture Is Still Coming For Me


And how activists will eagerly cut off their noses to spite their faces in service of virtue signaling and maintaining an image of ideological purity amid the battle over pediatric gender medicine. open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…

Pete Buttigieg told @BulwarkOnline that if he could do it over, he would’ve worked to get the schools open faster in 2020. In response, @TaylorLorenz denounced him as a eugenicist.

Meanwhile, @DavidZweig’s new book presents an avalanche of evidence indicating that school closures likely did not reduce morbidity and mortality and harmed children. He also demonstrates that there was considerable evidence of the apparent lack of benefit from European nations as early as May 2020. I interviewed @davidzweig about his book about the folly of the Covid school closures, An Abundance of Caution, for my pod. I drew parallels to the pediatric gender medicine field:

open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…

The Utah state government commissioned a report on pediatric gender-transition treatment. It comes in at over 1,000 words and concludes that the evidence favorably backs such treatment.

But despite the fact that it bills itself as a systematic literature review, it isn't one.

The authors of the report, from the University of Utah College of Pharmacy, did not register their methodology on PROSPERO in advance as is required for a systematic literature review. Nor did they rate the quality of the evidence as all other systematic reviews of this field have. What's more, their report explicitly takes on faith the claims of authors of treatment guidelines that their own process in developing those guidelines was rigorous. This after the University of York's systematic literature review on such guidelines, published in April 2024, found that all but a couple of such guidelines were of poor quality and not reliable.

Essentially, this report is a narrative review that summarizes the bulk of the research in this field. But it does not seek, like all the actual systematic literature reviews have, to make sense of whether that research is reliable and whether it can properly guide doctors and families in making a solid calculation about the risks vs benefits of these drugs when given to children.

In sum, this report reflects everything that the authors of systematic literature reviews and groups like @SEGM_EBM have been seeking to respond to. Source: le.utah.gov/AgencyRP/repor…

I strongly advise people who think that @AlecMacGillis, who wrote one of the finest Covid-era articles critiquing the school closures, is “lying” about their impacts read @DavidZweig’s scathing new book about the lockdowns, An Abundance of Caution.

Zweig makes a very strong case that there was substantial evidence by spring 2020 that lockdowns did not substantially lower COVID morbidity and mortality. And he further makes a very strong case that the lockdowns harmed kids in myriad ways.

I also suggest people stop and consider that Blooskie is just as toxic as X, but in a kind of mirror image. Here is my interview with @davidzweig about his book on the Covid school closures. open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…

Helping out young people need not be a zero-sum effort. Accurately observing that boys are falling behind in many respects need not divert attention away from the plight of women and girls. The real problem is when people pit the interests of the sexes against one another. Moira Donegan really should go read @RichardVReeves’ work and stop trying to be so divisive and dismissive about a real and serious problem facing boys and young men. In fact, Moira's attitude, which is essentially, "Screw those boys, the girls need help," is a pervasive bias that is likely part of the reason why boys are struggling! People look at boys and see the patriarchy and something that needs to be pushed down. This is harmful to everyone in the long run, boys and girls alike.

One of the authors of a just published critique of Britain’s Cass Review on pediatric gender medicine and the systematic reviews on which it was partially based suggests that the authors were “bribed.”

It’s unclear what McLamore means by the comparison of how long peer review took for them, since the Cass Review took four years and was not peer reviewed. But the SRs on which it was based were peer reviewed and published in a journal.

Quinnehtukqut McLamore (they/them) is an assistant professor of social psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia. “The Cass report’s recommendations, given its methodological flaws and misrepresentation of evidence, warrant critical scrutiny to ensure ethical and effective support for gender-diverse youth.”

bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

Today, I was on a Zoom call by an HIV advocacy group about their efforts to combat the Trump admin's cancellation of HIV research grants. One of the activists presenters said he refused to present if I was on the call, clearly due to my reporting on pediatric gender medicine.

The organizer said he couldn't eject anyone from the call; there were about 80 participants. (This despite the fact that that organizer, a longtime activist, had already ejected me from his HIV-advocacy listserv.) So the activist refused to present and had his colleague present in his place. She made a big point about how he had made an "ethical" stand not to present.

I told everyone via the chat on the Zoom that I stood by my reporting on pediatric gender medicine. Which I do.

The irony is that I am among only a small handful of reporters who maintains a specialty in HIV coverage—I have been writing about HIV for 25 years and started doing work in the field in 1995—and who writes for mainstream outlets. And I just published a major article in NBC News about the cancelation of LGBTQ-related research grants, the very subject of the Zoom call, that was totally sympathetic to the activists' cause.

I see a lot of this in my work, in which HIV activists seek to punish me for my reporting by seeking to stonewall and blacklist me. They go to great lengths. It winds up just being inconvenient for me; I still get my work done. What it does accomplish is it ensures that these activists' voices are not heard in my reporting. And it does not stop me from writing about gender medicine. It boils down to ideological purity on their part. They need to take that stand. If these activists had their way, I would not publish articles like this that are very critical of the Trump administration and bring attention to the activists’ cause. Some of them tried to get my sources for this piece to join the blacklist against me. nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-ne…

This is an apparent contradiction that adults such as myself have trouble reconciling with: that there is an apparent element of adolescent culture today that, at least in certain communities, values and valorizes trans over gay identities.

Erin Reed is thus incredulous at the suggestion in the new HHS report on pediatric gender-transition treatment: Fact check: There are, in fact, two studies that have found that suicide deaths in gender distressed youths are rare:

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/27/1/e…

NEWS: HHS has published a 409-page document, per Trump's request

Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria

Review of Evidence and Best Practices LINK: opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/…

100s of NIH research grants have been summarily canceled over the past couple of weeks, on the grounds that they support DEI, trans issues, or are at Columbia. Now Trump is targeting mRNA studies, which scientists tell me could jeopardize research into new cancer treatments, for one, as well as the quest for and HIV vaccine. Many of these grants have nothing to do with DEI per se or are particularly focused on transgender people in particular. They seem to have been flagged simply because they have key words that have drawn the attention, and ire, of DOGE. I only have second-hand reports of what DOGE has been doing inside of the NIH and the NIAID. Today, a titan of biomedical research called me and was reduced to pleading over and over, “Why are they doing this?” as he watched in fear that his life’s work would be destroyed by the Trump administration.

LEAKED: Trans-Care Training Videos By Beleaguered Top Gender-Clinic Doctor, Part 1

I have obtained 12 hours of videos of top pediatric-gender-clinic physician Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues, including her husband, providing training to mental-health providers on how to treat minors who have gender dysphoria or otherwise identify as transgender or nonbinary.

This is the first of 12 installments I will post during the coming weeks of these videos. Subscribe to my newsletter (link in bio) to receive all of them as I publish them.

A 19-year veteran of the pediatric gender medicine field and one of its leading physician-researchers and advocates, Dr. Olson-Kennedy is the medical director of the gender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. According to figures she provided during this particular video, annual referrals to her clinic surged from just 25 in 2010 to 436 in 2022—following a similar pattern seen in clinics throughout the Western world.

The past six months have been challenging for Dr. Olson-Kennedy, to say the least.

Dr. Olson-Kennedy is the principal investigator on a National Institutes of Health grant for a long-running research project concerning pediatric gender-transition treatment, one that has received over $10 million to date. In October, The New York Times reported that she has withheld null findings from a study of puberty blockers funded by this grant, doing so for political reasons. The grant is now the subject of a probe by congressional Republicans. In November, however, she asserted in a sworn deposition in a civil case that the Times had mischaracterized her words.

In December, Dr. Olson-Kennedy was sued by a former patient, Clementine Breen, who reported that the gender doctor prescribed her puberty blockers at age 12—on her first appointment, without a psychological assessment—and testosterone at age 13, and then referred her to receive a double mastectomy at age 14. Ms. Breen, now 20, has since detransitioned, reverting to presenting and identifying as a woman.

The Trump administration has unleashed an onslaught against the field of pediatric gender medicine, seeking to wipe it off the map. In recent weeks, the NIH has been canceling research grants related to transgender people, including those conducted with animal models. There is currently a preliminary injunction in place to block the president’s executive order that would freeze federal funds to hospitals that provide gender-transition interventions to those under age 19. Prior to the injunction, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s clinic had “paused” new cross-sex hormone treatments for youth, only to lift the pause a couple of weeks later.

It remains unclear whether the grant for which Dr. Olson-Kennedy is the top investigator has been canceled. But it is no longer listed on the NIH site where active grants are described.

I reached out to Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her co-principal investigators on the grant to ask about its status. I did not hear back.

Prior to the October Times article, Dr. Olson-Kennedy was perhaps best known by the general public for a previous leaked video in which she was giving a training in 2018 to mental health care providers on how to write referral letters for minors seeking gender-transition surgeries. In the video, she expresses exasperation with what she sees as hand wringing over whether natal girls will later regret having their breast removed during adolescence. (At least 1,000 such surgeries have been conducted annually in recent years.)

She says: “What we do know is that adolescents actually have the capacity to make a reasonable, logical decision. And here’s the other thing about chest surgery. If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them!”

Ms. Breen recently reported that she was undergoing reconstructive surgery to provide herself with new breasts. However, it is very unlikely she will ever be able to breastfeed should she have children.

Dr. Olson-Kennedy is also newly the president of USPATH, the U.S. branch of the medical-activist group the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. WPATH, which despite is name is largely a U.S.-based organization, has been besieged by damaging publicity over the past year, in particular after internal documents subpoenaed by Alabama’s attorney general revealed that its leadership was aware that the evidence behind pediatric gender medicine was weak and sought to paper over this fact.

12 hours of leaked Olson-Kennedy training videos

The 12-hour training in what is known as the gender-affirming care method for minors who identify as trans or nonbinary took place in late April 2024—a few weeks after Britain published the Cass Review, which found that this medical field is based on “remarkably weak evidence.” The training was led by Dr. Olson-Kennedy; her husband, Aydin Olson-Kennedy, who has a doctorate in social work and is a transgender man; and licensed clinical social worker Darlene Tando.

I obtained the videos a few months ago.

The training videos are a window into not just the methods of these individuals, but their overall attitudes about gender dysphoria and transgender and nonbinary identification in children. A prevailing attitude they share is one of indignation and irritation with a medical system that demands that children betray a substantial level of distress before they are granted gender-transition medications. Overall, these three favor less gatekeeping and less pathologizing of the mental states and internal lives of the children in their care. If a gender-incongruent child arrives in their care absent any particular distress about their identification as the opposite sex, they believe that that child should be granted the opportunity to medically transition by taking puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones if the family wishes.

I have edited the videos to snip or crop out images that would identify the participants in the training, whether because of Zoom-chat questions that pop up in the right-hand corner of the screen, or moments when a matrix of the participants is visible. You can watch the video at the beginning of this Substack. Otherwise, I wrote a summary below: LINK:
LEAKED: Trans-Care Training Videos By Beleaguered Top Gender-Clinic Doctor, Part 1
benryan.substack.com/p/leaked-trans…
I am publishing 12 hours of videos of Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy and colleagues in which they train mental-health providers on treating children who have gender dysphoria or otherwise identify as trans.

Subscribe to my newsletter to receive all the videos as I publish them.

Research indicates that even after undergoing lengthy testosterone suppression and estrogen treatment, natal males who identify as female hold a competitive advantage in women’s sports. This is not just about height. It’s about muscle strength, shoulder and hand size, oxygen processing, etc.

And there are teenage boys who can bear Katie Ledecky, one of the most unbeatable long-distance swimmers in history. *beat Katie

The difference between the trans sports question and past battles over interracial and same-sex marriage is that there was never any rational scientific support for opposition to those rights. But research does indicate that trans women maintain a competitive advantage in women’s sports. @mattyglesias @drvolts See:

https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1880698617482068269