CP event tackles ‘turning tide’ of trans ideology

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Monday, September 29, 2025An expert panel discusses the deep infiltration of transgender ideology into cultural institutions at The Christian Post’s event “Unmasking Gender Ideology III: Contending for Truth Amid a Turning Tide,” hosted by Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Sept. 24, 2025. From right to left: moderator and Christian Post opinion writer Brandon Showalter, parent advocate January Littlejohn, pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Quentin Van Meter, LCSW Pamela Garfield-Jaeger and Woman II Woman founder Amie Ichikawa. | Courtesy Institute for Faith and CultureHundreds recently gathered at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for The Christian Post’s “Unmasking Gender Ideology III: Contending for Truth Amid a Turning Tide,” its third such event that gathers expert panels to discuss the harmful effects of transgender ideology.The event, hosted last Wednesday by Coral Ridge Senior Pastor Robert J. Pacienza and the Institute for Faith and Culture, struck chords of optimism as the Trump administration pushes back against transgender ideology at the federal level through executive orders. But panelists warned that much work remains to be done as vulnerable young people continue to be swept up in a destructive ideology that has forced its way into the major institutions of the culture.”We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Christian Post opinion writer and “Generation Indoctrination” podcast host Brandon Showalter, who moderated the panels.Opening the event, Showalter described transgender ideology’s assault on humanity as “nefarious spiritual warfare” that strikes at the heart of the Gospel, God’s image in man and God Himself.’Laws are not enough’The first panel — which discussed the deep infiltration of transgender ideology into professional associations, schools, media and prisons — included parent advocate January Littlejohn, pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Quentin Van Meter, licensed clinical social worker Pamela Garfield-Jaeger and Amie Ichikawa of Woman II Woman, a nonprofit organization devoted to serving the needs of incarcerated women.Ichikawa, who spent half a decade in a California state prison as an inmate, has participated in each of CP’s gender ideology events and said that, despite Trump’s executive order in January banning men from women’s federal prisons, women in state prisons are still suffering from transgender ideology seeping into the system.”As wonderful as the executive order was, and as big of an honor it was to be able to participate in the creation of those with the help of the Independent Women’s Forum, there hasn’t been any improvement on any level, as a matter of fact, on the state side,” she said.Littlejohn, a fellow with the nonprofit Do No Harm, sued her daughter’s Florida school district after officials helped her 13-year-old “socially transition” and use they/them pronouns. She and her story featured during President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in March.Littlejohn emphasized that despite the inroads organizations such as Do No Harm have made in promoting legislation to restrict “horrible interventions” against minors, such as double mastectomies for 12-year-old girls, the battle is still raging.”What I want to say is laws are not enough, and we are still contacted almost weekly by families newly waking up to this nightmare, whose children are still falling prey to the lies that they were born in the wrong body.””What’s really important to understand is that even with laws, the faucet of gender identity ideology is still free-flowing into the vast majority of our institutions, including our medical institutions,” she said.’Very perverted ideas’Dr. Quentin Van Meter, a pediatric endocrinologist who completed his fellowship at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore from 1978 to 1980, said many of his pediatric endocrinologist colleagues disagree with the ideology but are afraid of being labeled a bigot and losing their jobs.He also recounted his interactions with New Zealand-born psychologist and sexologist whose work at Johns Hopkins helped to lay the groundwork for modern transgender ideology.Money, who died in 2006, is notorious for his role in the case of David Reimer, a Canadian twin boy whose penis was severely injured during a botched infant circumcision and whose story was popularized in John Colapinto’s 2000 book As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl.Believing that gender is a social construct detached from biology, Money convinced Reimer’s parents to raise David as a girl while raising his twin brother as a boy, though the experiment led to suffering for the boys, both of whom took their own lives.Van Meter said Money, who was raised in a fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren family, was a man with “very perverted ideas” who would go out of his way to offend those around him at Johns Hopkins, especially if they were religious. He characterized Money’s theories as reckless and “junk science.””What he told us was not reality,” he said of Money. “It was bizarre, heinous, criminal behavior on his part.” In 1979, Johns Hopkins shuttered the Gender Identity Clinic that Money co-founded in 1966, which was the first of its kind in the United States, but reopened it in 2017 as the Center for Transgender and Gender Expansive Health.Van Meter noted that support for transgender ideology has withered among the public and in European nations with socialized medicine, but that it remains entrenched in academia and in the transgender clinics that have proliferated during the past decade.He soberly predicted that the effects of widespread ideology will likely linger and continue to destroy young people, but noted the courage of detransitioners in telling their stories will play a major role in pushing back. He said the federal government choking off the tax dollars to medical schools that promote it is also critical.”The detransitioners are now finally feeling their strength to be able to stand up in the face of adversity and say, ‘I’m so ashamed of what I did to myself. I’m going to tell you my story,'” he said.”And the stories are heartbreaking, and many of you might have heard them, but it’s probably the most effective way to get the tide turned back.””It’s absolutely insane that this is going on; it’s not going to be over overnight. I think we’ve got another, probably a generation, of children who are going to be badly hurt by this.”Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com