Members of the American College of Pediatricians, also known as ACPeds, and other medical professionals will announce their signing of the “Doctors Protecting Children Declaration” on Thursday during a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, The Daily Signal has learned.

“As physicians, nurses, other health professionals, psychotherapists, and behavioral health clinicians, scientists, researchers, and public health and policy professionals, we have serious concerns about the physical and mental health effects of the current protocols promoted for the care of children and adolescents in the United States who express discomfort with their biological sex,” the declaration states.

It is co-signed by medical and health organizations including the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, Genspect, the American College of Family Medicine, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Catholic Medical Association, and many individual doctors, pediatricians, and nurses.

The document emphasizes that most children and adults whose “thoughts and feelings do not align with their biological sex will resolve those mental incongruencies after experiencing the normal developmental process of puberty.”

It also notes that the young children who are going through attempted “gender-transition” procedures cannot really give “responsible informed consent” due to the “extremely limited long-term follow-up studies of interventions, and the immature, often impulsive, nature of the adolescent brain.”

Notably, the declaration points out that the many ”gender clinics” in the U.S. are basing their transgender protocols on the “Standards of Care” developed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, which was recently exposed for hiding the dangerous and experimental nature of these procedures. The declaration points out that the very foundation of WPATH’s guidelines is “demonstrably flawed, and pediatric patients can be harmed when subjected to those protocols.”

The declaration also highlights the very serious long-term risks of so-called gender-affirming care, including when doctors or medical professionals ”socially transition” children (by referring to kids with pronouns or names that don’t match their biological sex), put them on puberty blockers, prescribe them masculinizing or feminizing hormones such as testosterone or estrogen, or perform irreversible ”sex change” procedures.

Sterility is just one of these long-term risks.

Social affirmations make youth more likely to progress on to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, the declaration states.

Puberty blockers “permanently disrupt physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development” and can worsen psychological illness, cause low bone density, impair memory, lead to brain swelling, and more.

Cross sex-hormones, such as testosterone for girls and estrogen for boys, are “associated with dangerous health risks across the lifespan including, but not limited to, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, heart attacks, blood clots, stroke, diabetes, and cancer,” the declaration continues.

And genital surgeries, perhaps most obviously, affect “future fertility and reproduction.”

“Evidence-based medical research now demonstrates there is little to no benefit from any or all suggested ‘gender affirming’ interventions for adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria,” the document says. “Social ‘affirmation,’ puberty blockers, masculinizing or feminizing hormones, and surgeries, individually or in combination, do not appear to improve long-term mental health of the adolescents, including suicide risk.”

The document also emphasizes that European countries like England, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland have all paused such protocols given the evidence demonstrating that social, hormonal, and surgical interventions are “not only unhelpful but are harmful.”

Yet professional medical organizations in the U.S. continue to promote these interventions and call legislation protecting children from so-called transgender procedures “dangerous.”

The signers call upon top medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and others to “follow the science and their European professional colleagues and immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex.”

“Instead,” the declaration says, “these organizations should recommend comprehensive evaluations and therapies aimed at identifying and addressing underlying psychological comorbidities and neurodiversity that often predispose to and accompany gender dysphoria. We also encourage the physicians who are members of these professional organizations to contact their leadership and urge them to adhere to the evidence-based research now available.”

Recently she began sending distressed messages to her fiancee, Raymond Slater II, describing a transgender prisoner named “Mark Campbell” with whom she shares both a cell and a bunkbed. McGraw expressed extreme anxiety as she described her cellmate’s constant masturbating, sexual comments, and aggressive behavior, and she asked her fiancee to find out what exactly got Campbell locked up.

“I’m just sooooo extra stressed out with this weirdo under me,” she wrote in one message to Slater, shared with The Daily Signal, which Slater believes was sent in mid February. He communicates with her through CorrLinks, a platform for people to message their incarcerated loved ones, but said that prison guards will often hold up the messages from being sent or received in a timely manner.

“What did he/she do?!?” she questioned her fiancee. “Mark Campbell?! Goodnight babyyyyy, ILY [I love you].”

Her concerned fiancee quickly turned to the internet to discover who this prisoner was. To his horror, he stumbled upon The Daily Signal’s reporting from September 2023, a report that revealed Campbell to be a man who now identifies as a woman, who raped his own daughter, and is a registered sex offender convicted of first-degree sexual assault of a child.

Since Campbell identifies as transgender, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections has housed him in a women’s prison, Taycheedah Correctional Institution, since August 2022.

‘Anything Is Better Than a Cell With Him’

McGraw also spoke to The Daily Signal through a CorrLinks message, sharing that she was moved to the correctional facility’s psychiatric services unit, called “Monarch,” sometime earlier this month. DOC has not responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment for this story, including a request for an interview with Campbell, and questions about whether Campbell is now housed with other female inmates.

“They moved me to Monarch because they believe Campbell over me,” she said in the message, delivered to The Daily Signal on Feb. 19. “He told them I’m delusional cuz I said he was masturbating all the [time] which he was…and they told me if I refuse Monarch I’ll go to [segregation].”

“Anything is better than a cell with him,” she added. “He [asked] me when he first moved in if I have any friends cuz they’re gonna be curious if I [have] seen his vagina cuz it looks great and the surgeon did an amazing job and how its fresher than ours.”

McGraw expressed herself disgusted and “traumatized” with Campbell’s alleged proposition.

“I don’t wanna see nobody’s privates,” she wrote. “Yuckkkkk. Also he told me he don’t have a clit or can’t cum, I said I don’t care, I don’t wanna knowwwwww.”

The female prisoner is 31 years old, standing at only five feet and two inches tall, and weighing 150 pounds, prison records show. According to her fiancee, she was a victim of childhood sexual abuse by her father, who taught her to use drugs when she was a little girl “so that he could start abusing her.”

She has lived a very hard, very rough life, Slater said, and has been in and out of prison since 2017. But this is the first time that she has complained about the treatment she received from both the guards and the other inmates, he insisted.

When he spoke with The Daily Signal, before his fiancee was moved, he said he was terrified that Campbell will sexually assault her and beat her, and that the guards won’t do anything about it.

“It’s all very heartbreaking to me,” he said in emotional text messages to The Daily Signal.

Mark Campbell, Child Rapist

Campbell is 52 years old, five foot nine inches, and 225 pounds. His prison photos depict him with long hair and wearing makeup, including eyeliner, eyeshadow and blush.

Court documents allege that Campbell would sexually assault his daughter while her little brother was home and that “her little brother would sometimes come into the room while the sexual assault was occurring.”

“I can’t believe that the people in charge there decided to put her in the same cell as a man that raped his 10-year-old daughter knowing Katie’s background,” Slater said.

Campbell first requested transgender surgery to attempt to become a woman in 2013, according to a Wisconsin outlet, but the DOC denied his request at the time. In 2016 he filed a lawsuit accusing Department of Corrections officials of being indifferent to his medical needs by not allowing him to get so-called sex change surgery, the publication reported.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2019 that the DOC officials couldn’t have anticipated that denying such a surgery to Campbell would violate his rights.

However, in December 2020, a federal judge ruled that Wisconsin must offer Campbell taxpayer-funded transition surgery and must move him to a women’s prison while awaiting that surgery.

The DOC housed Campbell in men’s prisons until August 2022, according to the inmate locator. In August 2022, authorities moved him to Taycheedah Correctional Institution, which “provides female inmates with a safe and secure environment that is gender-responsive,” according to the prison’s website.

Bunking With a Man

In messages shared with The Daily Signal, McGraw described a stressful and unhappy existence in prison, where other prisoners appeared to avoid her because she smelled and her guards didn’t believe her when she complained about Campbell. According to McGraw’s messages to Slater, Campbell shared a bunk bed with McGraw, and she frequently was forced to listen to him masturbating below her.

McGraw said that when she asked Campbell to stop, saying that his actions were disgusting, Campbell “went crazy” and “snapped.”

“[Campbell] punched the top of my bunk a bunch of times then said, ‘[You] wanna spaz out let’s spaz out,’ threw [his] cast off, put [his] fist up as I’m laying in my bed,” McGraw shared. “Like, wtf, what a sick psychopathic weirdo.”

“Really can’t believe they got me in this cell with a man!!!” she concluded the message.

In another message, McGraw again addresses Campbell’s incessant masturbation: “Barffffff! Some sickos will never change!!! It makes my skin crawl! I wanna puke, gag, can’t think about eating sleeping relaxing. This ain’t right…it’s not normal….it’s so wrong on every level! It’d be different if there was a level of respect! There’s not!”

Some of the female prisoner’s graphic descriptions of Campbell’s masturbation habits indicate that Campbell may have undergone a vaginoplasty, wherein surgeons remove the penis, testicles, and scrotum, rearranging tissue to create a faux vaginal canal and external genitalia.

“To create the vaginal canal, the surgeon uses a combination of the skin surrounding the existing penis along with the scrotal skin,” explains Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Dr. Fan Liang. “Depending on how much skin is available in the genital area, the surgeon may need to use a skin graft from the abdomen or thigh to construct a full vaginal canal.”

The procedure costs around $25,000 to $30,000, and takes six to eight weeks to recover from, according to Johns Hopkins. Liang claims that this faux vagina is sexually functional, but says that patients must avoid any form of sexual activity until 12 weeks after surgery.

McGraw vented to her fiancee that Campbell’s new, faux genitalia “stinks like rotten chicken.” She also said that Campbell, like other men who believe they are women and try to maintain a fake vaginal canal, dilates himself everyday so that the surgeon-crafted wound does not close.

Johns Hopkins Medicine describes this dilation as “part of the healing process after vaginoplasty” that involves “inserting a medical grade dilator into the vagina to keep your vaginal canal open as it heals.”

“A doctor or therapist from your care team will show you how to dilate,” writes Liang. “This can be difficult at first, but professionals will work with you and your comfort level to help you get accustomed to this aspect of your healing process. You will begin dilating with the smallest dilator in the dilator pack. You continue to use this dilator until cleared to advance to the next size by your care team.”

“Some patients may need to dilate their whole lives,” Liang adds.

McGraw described the process as “sickening,” writing to her fiancee that Campbell “literally shoves bananas inside of him or hot dogs, he told me when he moved in, and uses shampoo and f—- himself.”

Guidance from the DOC dated April 2018 states that “inmates may self-identify as transgender or intersex at intake or at any other time during an incarceration” and that “all sites are approved for transgender and intersex inmates” except for six facilities: Prairie du Chien Correctional Institution, Gordon Correctional Center, McNaughton Correctional Center, Chippewa Valley Correctional Treatment Facility, Flambeau Correctional Center, and St. Croix Correctional Center.

“Facility and housing assignments shall be made on a case-by-case basis, considering the inmate’s health and safety as well as potential programming, management and security concerns,” the guidance notes. “An inmate’s own views regarding safety shall be given careful consideration.”

If an inmate has undergone an attempted transgender transition surgery, that inmate will likely be placed in a facility consistent with the “reassignment treatment,” the guidance states. In other words, if a man undergoes attempted sex-change surgery to look like a woman, he will be housed with women — as Campbell’s case demonstrates.

“For the purposes of facility placement, self-inflicted genital mutilation does not constitute sexual reassignment surgery and does not qualify an inmate for placement in a different facility,” the guidance adds.

Transgender Inmates And Sexual Abuse

The Daily Signal previously reported that a little more than half of the men housed in Wisconsin Department of Corrections facilities who identify as transgender women have been convicted of at least one count of sexual assault or sexual abuse.

The revelation comes from records obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project through an April 2022 public records request. The Oversight Project sought information on biologically male inmates seeking transfers to female prisons by saying they identified as transgender females. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Of the 161 biological men who are housed in Wisconsin Department of Corrections facilities who self-reported as transgender, 81 (50.3%) have been convicted of at least one count of sexual assault or sexual abuse as of late July. The prisoners may have been convicted of additional offenses for their current incarceration periods that are not sex offenses, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections noted.

Inmates convicted of sex offenses may have committed crimes including sexual exploitation of a child, sexual exploitation by a therapist, forced viewing of a sexual act, rape, sexual intercourse without consent, incest, sexual intercourse with a child, indecent behavior with a child, enticing a child, and more.

This is far from the first story of its kind. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in April 2021 that a two-time baby killer had requested to be transferred to a women’s prison where the mother of his child was housed.

Forty-six-year-old Jessica M. Hann, formerly known as Jason Michael Hann, underwent a state-funded gender transition before transferring to the Central California Women’s Facility under the name “Jessica.” He is currently housed there on death row, inmate records show.

Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, Jennifer Vitsaxaki of New York filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Skaneateles Central School District and Board of Education, accusing them of violating her constitutional rights through their deception and their social transitioning of her 12-year-old daughter, Jane.

The Daily Signal first obtained the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. Skaneateles, New York, where the school district is located, is about 22 miles southwest of Syracuse.

“Parents have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their kids, and they cannot fulfill those responsibilities when schools hide information from them and make critical decisions that can have lifelong consequences for their child,” said Kate Anderson, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom. “So, this case is important to ensure that all parents can have the information they need to do what’s best for their kids.”

Though Michael Vitsaxaki and Jennifer Vitsaxaki are both U.S. citizens, the Vitsaxaki family had spent almost a decade in Greece, where the Vitsaxaki parents were from, and Jane’s primary language was Greek. The family decided to leave Greece when its economy collapsed and they realized that they could not continue raising their children there, but the transition from their closely knit community in Greece to the U.S. was disruptive to the entire family’s lives.

Young Jane Vitsaxaki had to adapt to a “new culture, including learning to go through each day speaking primarily English instead of Greek,” and her father’s job required him to frequently travel out of the country.

The complaint states that Jennifer Vitsaxaki began to be increasingly concerned as her daughter was exhibiting signs of anxiety and depression and occasionally refusing to leave home. The mother repeatedly asked school district employees about whether they had noticed anything troubling her daughter, but was met with denials and assurances that her daughter was fine.

“Those repeated reassurances concealed the truth,” the complaint states. “While school officials kept telling Mrs. Vitsaxaki that there was nothing to report, a school counselor was regularly meeting with her daughter and her peers to address ongoing bullying suffered by … Jane, and other girls in the group.”

Worse than that, the complaint said, the district began treating Jane as though she were a boy—”just as it had done with several other girls in her grade.”

“The same counselor instructed school staff to treat Mrs. Vitsaxaki’s daughter as though she were a boy by referring to her with a boy’s name and the third-person plural pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’—part of a controversial psychosocial intervention often called ‘social transition,’” the complaint states. “Then, a school psychologist, who told school staff to keep their actions secret from Mrs. Vitsaxaki, began meeting with Jane regularly without Mrs. Vitsaxaki’s knowledge.”

No one had told Jennifer Vitsaxaki that the district had made any of these decisions or taken these actions.

“School staff carefully used Jane’s given name and female pronouns when speaking with Mrs. Vitsaxaki, and they repeatedly said everything was fine, all the while treating Jane as a boy and sending her resources for medical transition behind Mrs. Vitsaxaki’s back,” her lawsuit says.

The district employees didn’t tell Vitsaxaki about any of this for months, the lawsuit alleges, and Jane’s mental condition worsened. She was resisting going to school and becoming increasingly anxious and negative.

“At one point, and at her daughter’s request, Mrs. Vitsaxaki even took a job as a bus driver to learn more about what could be causing her daughter’s distress,” the suit says.

Finally, a staff member “could no longer stomach” the deception and urged the principal to tell Jane’s mother.

“When [the principal] finally did, Mrs. Vitsaxaki was shocked,” the complaint says. “She and her husband, Jane’s father, met with representatives of the school district. They directed the school district to stop taking any further action without their consent and sought open communication with the teachers to understand what had happened.”

It continued: “But the principal told them school district policy required employees to deceive them, and despite assurances to the contrary, the deception continued. Left with no other options, Mrs. Vitsaxaki withdrew her daughter from the school district.”

Vitsaxaki’s lawsuit stresses that she has a fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education, and health care of her child, a right that is “inconsistent with the deceptive, heavy-handed, and disruptive intervention that the school district perpetrated against Mrs. Vitsaxaki’s daughter—an intervention that gravely interfered with her ability to raise her daughter and contradicted her religious beliefs.”

“Ultimately, parents—not school employees or other government officials—ought to decide how to resolve a child’s questions about sensitive topics like identity and gender confusion,” the complaint says. “Parents like Mrs. Vitsaxaki know their children better than anyone else. And parents, not school employees, will be there for a child in the long run, when the consequences of these decisions become fully apparent.”

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected], and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

Prisha Mosley says she suffered severely from mental and emotional health issues as a child and young teen. Her home life was troubled due to an alcoholic mother, she told The Daily Signal, and she struggled to make her own problems heard. She developed anorexia, and as she sought information online, slipped from pro-anorexia groups into pro-transgender groups very easily.

She became convinced that she was a boy.

According to her lawsuit, she sought the help of Shana Gordon, a licensed counselor in North Carolina who worked for Tree of Life Counseling, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Daily Signal. Gordon pushed her to transition, Mosley’s lawsuit says.

She also sought the counsel of Brie Klein-Fowler of North Carolina-based Family Solutions PLLC, who is also named in the lawsuit. Klein-Fowler did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

So, Mosley began testosterone treatment and ultimately underwent a double mastectomy. Her lawsuit names Dr. Eric T. Emerson as the plastic surgeon who removed her breasts. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal.

The suit similarly names Dr. Martha Fairbanks Perry, a physician with Moses Cone Medical Services Inc. in North Carolina. Perry also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Now, Mosley has realized that “she is not and never has been a boy,” according to her suit. She continues to experience pain, suffering, and emotional distress “as a result of living in a body that has not developed the way it should have.”

She once loved to sing; now, she cannot. She will never be able to nurse a child.

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Her lawsuit notes that her “shoulders are too broad and heavy” and her waist and hips are “too small and narrow.” She now has “unwanted unnatural body hair growth,” as opposed to her former natural hair growth. She has vaginal atrophy, her suit says, and she may never be able to conceive her own child.

“No amount of money can undo the damage Prisha has suffered at the hands of” her doctors and counselors, her lawsuit says.

According to the suit, the medical professionals who facilitated her attempted transition “withheld information, concealed and misrepresented her psychological and physical condition, and failed to perform their services in compliance with applicable standards of care.”

“Instead of telling Prisha the truth and informing her accurately and fully,” the suit says, “Defendants lied to Prisha. They lied when they told Prisha she was actually a boy; they lied when they told her that injecting testosterone into her body would solve her numerous, profound mental and psychological health problems, and they lied when they told her about the nature and effects of ‘breast reduction’ surgery, which in actuality was a surgery to remove her healthy breasts and render her incapable of nursing a child … .”

Mosley’s lawyers also accuse the medical professionals of lying to her by omission, by “withholding critical information from her about the long-term adverse health consequences and permanent damage these ‘treatments’ would cause her, and failing to inform her of alternative courses of treatment for her psychological problems, and ensure she had a clear understanding of those alternatives.”

Mosley shared with The Daily Signal that she was a victim of sexual assault, raped by an adult when she was a young teenager. That assault heavily influenced her ideas about womanhood, femininity, sexuality, and gender.

But that traumatic incident factored very little in the “treatment” that the doctors and counselors offered her, as her suit notes: Instead of providing “competent treatment for her depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and emergent borderline personality disorder, they convinced her that changing her body to appear as the opposite sex would solve her substantial mental disabilities that had plagued her for years.”

And this “substantially and permanently compounded Prisha’s physical suffering and mental anguish.”

Mosley joins detransitioners Chloe Cole, Layla Jane, and others in suing the medical providers who facilitated their gender transitions.

This is a breaking news story and may be updated. Article cross-posted from Daily Signal.

The HRC’s Healthcare Equality Index sways the practices of hospitals and health care facilities by scoring them on whether they are adopting “LGBTQ+ inclusive patient, visitation and employment policies,” the The Washington Free Beacon highlighted in a recent report.

“Over time and due to a decade of advancement in LGBTQ+ inclusion in daily life, health care facilities have worked harder than ever to increase their work to provide equitable care for the LGBTQ+ community,” the HRC boasts, “and now the [Healthcare Equality Index] survey reflects and promotes these efforts through its scoring criteria.”

The Healthcare Equality Index objectives make it clear that to be scored well, health care institutions must prove they are inclusive of LGBTQ patients, cultivating inclusive workplaces by promoting LGBTQ policies and benefits, and engaging publicly with the LGBTQ community.

Inclusivity in those contexts may mean allowing patients or employees to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity, rather than biological sex, or providing access to “gender-affirming care”—a phrase used by activists to mask the grisly realities of transitioning, including hormones, puberty blockers, and surgeries to remove or “create” breasts, remove or “create” a penis, facial feminization, and more.

Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., earned a perfect score from the Healthcare Equality Index in 2022, the Free Beacon reported. The index uses a 100-point scale and awards points for things like displaying LGBT symbols, using patients’ preferred pronouns, asking what someone’s preferred pronouns are, conducting LGBT training sessions approved by the HRC, and more.

The index also punishes hospitals that allow “discriminatory treatment that is in conflict with their non-discrimination policy” and requires hospitals to offer the same treatments to treat gender dysphoria as the hospital offers to treat other medical conditions. That means, as the Free Beacon noted, that if a hospital uses puberty blockers to treat early puberty, it also must allow their use for children who “identify” as transgender.

The HRC prominently features both Pfizer and PhRMA as funders: “The HEI was funded in part by generous grants from Pfizer Inc. and PhRMA,” its website says, referring to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group representing companies in the pharmaceutical industry.

Pfizer did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal. In a statement, PhRMA spokesman Brian Newell said that PhRMA supports and works with “a wide variety of organizations to help promote affordable access to health care.”

“Our work with HRC has primarily focused on issues impacting patient access and affordability, including for those with HIV, cancer, and other deadly diseases,” Newell added. “We were not involved in the development or release of this specific project.”

PhRMA declined to answer further questions about possible conflicts of interest.

Asked why hospitals across the country would implement the diversity, equity, and inclusion recommendations, David Gortler, a former senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration commissioner and current Ethics and Public Policy Center scholar, told The Daily Signal that “hospitals are no longer run by physicians following scientific evidence anymore; non-physician administrators outrank medical doctors in leadership hierarchy.”

“Hospitals are also too administrator heavy, affecting the practice of medicine,” he explained, noting that academia has the same problem. Gortler pointed to the surprisingly faculty-heavy student-teacher ratios at Yale and Harvard. Many of those people in academia and hospitals nowadays have irrelevant degrees, he suggested, and gain their positions through “H.R. departments, which are also fully saturated with leftists” that “keep hiring DEI people in order to force through unscientific policies.”

“It’s a very pernicious way of altering the practice of medicine,” he said. And the new generations of physicians coming into hospitals are “fully pre-indoctrinated by the aforementioned medical school administrators,” Gortler added.

“These are the next generation of pharmacists, physicians, and nurses, and they’re being taught to specifically ignore fundamentals of biology and data-driven findings,” he emphasized. “They’re not following what science is trying to tell us. That’s a really bad problem.”

Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that Pfizer and PhRMA have turned to an “ideologically driven interest group to do the dirty work” because federal law prohibits them from “directly pushing their dangerous drugs on kids with gender confusion.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

“Pfizer and PhRMA are profiting off the broken lives of children who would have come to accept their bodies if only their natural development weren’t interrupted by their drugs,” Severino said. “Yet they continue to pay HRC to bully doctors and insurers into prescribing and paying for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones that are sold with a smile by Pfizer and PhRMA members. These companies have absolutely no shame.”

Jay Richards, director of the DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation, similarly told The Daily Signal that “it’s a self-evident conflict of interest for private industry groups and drug companies to fund activist organizations that push ideological ‘medicine’ that creates lifelong patients for the drug companies.”

“But what should we say when those same activist organizations create score cards to reward those same drug companies with good publicity?” he asked rhetorically. “It’s hard to imagine a clearer case of cynicism masquerading as virtue.”

Those familiar with the topic will notice the Healthcare Equality Index’s similarities to the Corporate Equality Index, another Human Rights Campaign initiative thought to be behind Bud Light’s financially disastrous decision to use a biological male who “identifies” as a transgender woman, Dylan Mulvaney, as its public face.

Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, formerly was honored with HRC’s “Best Place to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality” title. But HRC removed Anheuser-Busch from the list and suspended its Corporate Equality Index score over Bud Light’s response to public outrage over its promotion of Mulvaney, a biological man, as a woman.

“We don’t make this decision lightly,” Jay Brown, senior vice president of programs, research, and training at the HRC, told Business Insider, citing the growing number of Republican-led bills protecting children from irreversible sex-change surgeries, banning biological males from women’s private spaces, and prohibiting classroom discussions of sexual topics. The HRC opposes such legislation.

“This is about supporting the current and future workforce, as well as shareholders and consumers,” Brown added. “We’ve seen that when businesses center inclusion in both policy and practice, they come out on top, regardless of baseless, hateful attacks.”

HRC also revealed to Business Insider that it had pressured Anheuser-Busch in late April to release a statement supporting Mulvaney. That move came before the HRC’s subsequent punishment: stripping Anheuser-Busch of its score.

Even Fox News follows the directives of the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, “the nation’s foremost benchmarking survey and report measuring corporate policies and practices related to LGBTQ+ workplace equality.” The Daily Signal reported this week that for the past several years, Fox has received a perfect score on the Corporate Equality Index, and a former Fox News employee also told The Daily Signal that the company frequently mentions its perfect score in employee-training materials.

According to Fox’s company handbook policies on gender transition, Fox News employees are allowed to use restrooms that align with their gender identity, permitted to dress in alignment with their preferred gender, and must also be addressed by their preferred name and pronouns in the workplace.

The HRC did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal.

Article cross-posted from Daily Signal.

These are just a few of the policies outlined in the company handbook, dated January 2021, a copy of which was shared with The Daily Signal. Fox also offers to help employees come up with a “Workplace Transition Plan” to ease their gender transition at work.

The revelations comes amid conservative consternation at Fox Digital’s use of activist language like “gender affirming care” in stories on its website, as well as the site’s consistent use of female pronouns for biological males like TikTok celebrity Dylan Mulvaney and swimmer Lia Thomas (formerly known as Will Thomas).

Fox also drew strong backlash for a June 2022 on-air segment praising a child’s gender transition as an “inspiration to others.” That segment quoted California state Sen. Scott Weiner, a far-left Democrat who led the move to soften sex offender registry requirements for sodomy with minors, and highlighted the activist claim that a child might commit suicide if he or she is not permitted to transition.

As part of our “America Together: LGBTQ+ Pride Month” series at Fox News we highlighted the story of Ryland Whittington – a trans California teen and his family who openly spoke about their journey. “I Would Rather Have a Living Son Than a Dead Daughter”https://t.co/rn3RVwd7JW

— Bryan Llenas (@BryanLlenas) June 10, 2022

The Daily Signal talked to current and former Fox employees who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the company.

“They want you to think it’s this place that supports traditionally conservative values,” a former producer for “Tucker Carlson Tonight” told The Daily Signal. “But in reality, they’re pushing this nonsense behind the scenes.”

Carlson’s show was canceled April 24, days after he delivered a viral speech at The Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala. Fox News Media has not given a reason, simply stating that the two parties “agreed to part ways.”

A source who still works at Fox News told The Daily Signal that after Carlson’s show was canceled in April, producers for the new 8 p.m. “Fox News Tonight” program were told not to bash Mulvaney. That directive came from high-level executives, the source said.

Fox News did not respond to The Daily Signal’s multiple requests for comment.

Under the category “Gender Transition,” Fox’s employee handbook promises that the company is dedicated to “expanding and strengthening” efforts to “sustain a more inclusive work environment.” The Fox employee handbook is posted on Workday, where employees can see company guidelines or policies, a former employee told The Daily Signal.

“Employees who are transitioning their gender have the right to be open about their transition if they so choose, and to work in an environment free of harassment, discrimination, or retaliation, and without fear of consequences or transphobia for living openly,” the policy says.

Citing the Human Rights Campaign, one of the most prominent LGBTQ organization in the country, the Fox handbook defines a slew of LGBTQ terms, including cisgender, gender expression, gender-fluid, gender identity, gender non-conforming, gender transition, LGBTQ, non-binary, and transgender.

For the past several years, Fox received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, “the nation’s foremost benchmarking survey and report measuring corporate policies and practices related to LGBTQ+ workplace equality.” A former Fox News employee told The Daily Signal that the company frequently mentions this perfect score in employee training materials.

“Fox News devotes hours of programming to attacking ‘woke companies,’ but ironically Fox is as woke as the rest of them,” another former Fox News employee told The Daily Signal, emphasizing that Fox viewers would be “astonished to find out what the company is like.”

Fox’s policies appear to be aligned with the legal requirements in New York City, where the company is headquartered.

The New York City Human Rights Law requires employers to use the name, pronouns, and title with which a person identifies, regardless of the sex assigned at birth. It is a violation of the NYCHRL to intentionally or repeatedly refuse to use a person’s preferred name, pronouns, or title.

Additionally, the New York City law requires that people “be permitted to use single gender facilities, such as restrooms or locker rooms…that most closely align with their gender, regardless of their gender expression, sex assigned at birth, anatomy, medical history, or the sex or gender indicated on their identification.”

If a biological woman objects to sharing a bathroom with a trans-identifying man, her objection will not be considered a “lawful reason to deny access” to the trans-identifying individual: “In those circumstances, a covered entity may offer alternatives for the individual expressing discomfort, by,
for example, providing a single-occupancy restroom to change in.”

The law also specifically states that it is “unlawful” to require a trans-identifying person to use a single-occupancy restroom “because they are transgender, non-binary, or gender non-conforming.” New York also outlines the “Workplace Transition Plan” mentioned in the Fox handbook.

Employees who are attempting transitions are encouraged to “inform and educate” their co-workers about their experience, according to the Fox policy obtained by The Daily Signal, which emphasizes that only transitioning employees may disclose that they are trying to change their biology, and anyone who might know about their colleague’s gender transition must respect that person’s right to privacy.

Fox’s handbook notes that the man or woman attempting to transition may find the experience “stressful and trying,” and states that “with advance preparation, the road for someone to be able to express their true self can be made smoother.”

Fox also offers to help employees come up with a workplace gender transition plan.

“During the initial and any subsequent meetings, you and the Company should develop and maintain a Workplace Transition Plan,” the handbook says. “This Plan will outline the steps that need to be taken to ensure a successful transition at work.”

Those steps include when employees want to start using a different bathroom aligning with their gender identity and assuming a new gender identity at work. It also provides employees with time off for treatment (possibly hormonal treatments, like testosterone and estrogen) or medical procedures (such as the removal of breasts or testicles, facial feminization or masculization, or the creation of fake genitalia).

Additionally, Fox and the employee would plan out “the manner in which, and to what extent, coworkers and non-employees in the workplace will be made aware of your transition,” and when the company will change the employees’ name or make other “administrative or personnel changes.”

Fox employees can go by their preferred name and pronouns, the handbook states, at least to the “extent possible.” But for apparently logistical reasons, until a transitioning employee gets a legal name change, their legal name (often referred to by LGBTQ advocates as a “dead name”) must remain on company payroll, insurance, and personnel documents.

The handbook explicitly states that any employee “may access the restroom corresponding to their gender identity.”

“If a transitioning employee expresses a desire for increased privacy they will be provided access to a single occupancy restroom where available,” the handbook says. “However, no employee shall be required to use a single occupancy restroom if they do not wish to do so.”

The former Fox employee who spoke with The Daily Signal scathingly critiqued the network for running “hours of programming attacking companies for having leftist policies.”

“Fox is no different,” the former employee said. “It’s a standard American mega corporation with all the same types of policies and employees as those other companies.”

The Daily Signal sent Fox’s corporate public relations staff detailed questions about the policy and the accusations from former employees last week. As of publication, Fox did not respond.

The handbook specifically acknowledges that “individuals who are transitioning their gender will be encouraged or required by their health care practitioner to live full-time in their impending gender role before gender reassignment surgery can be performed.” This is called “Real Life Experience” or “Real Life Test,” Fox notes. Fox employees are told that they are “permitted to express their gender” in accordance with company dress code policies.

When trans-identifying TikTok star Mulvaney was first gaining prominence last year, producers for “Tucker Carlson Tonight” had to fight to be able to refer to Mulvaney with male pronouns in the show’s chyrons,” the former “Tucker Carlson Tonight” producer told The Daily Signal.

Carlson’s team also fought to be able to host The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh on trans issues, the producer said, but the team was repeatedly met with resistance from Fox on this due to Walsh’s frank condemnation of transgender ideology. This may have also been due in part to Fox’s view of The Daily Wire as a competitor, the former producer suggested.

In a phone interview with The Daily Signal, Walsh said he was aware of the alleged blacklisting and believes it began after he slammed Fox for the June 2022 segment praising a child’s gender transition. Since then, Walsh appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” a few times, but he was aware that Carlson’s team had to fight for these appearances.

“Fox’s viewers think that Fox shares their values,” Walsh said. “And it’s very clear that that’s just not the case. Gender ideology is as far radical Left as you can possibly go. They have embraced radical leftism in its most extreme form.”

“There’s no daylight at all between Fox News and MSNBC when it comes to gender,” Walsh added. “And I think that’s something that Fox’s viewers need to know. … If it were up to me, Fox would get the Bud Light treatment.”

Activists with Our Rights DC marched into the Barrett family’s quiet Virginia neighborhood on Sunday evening, despite a federal law (18 U.S. Code 1507) that forbids picketing or parading “in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer” with the intent of intimidating or influencing that person.

“Cut her time short,” they chanted as they processed. First they shouted (presumably to Barrett) about the death of Tyre Nichols and racial justice.

“Say his name!” they chanted.

Then they quickly moved on to abortion.

“My body my choice, my body belongs to me,” they sang into megaphones, as one of the activists beat a drum.

WATCH:

Far-left protestors are back at Amy Coney Barrett’s home demonstrating in violation of 18 U.S. code 1507 pic.twitter.com/5r0D2cpryd

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) January 29, 2023

The Daily Signal repeatedly asked the activists, without response, why they were protesting in the Barrett’s neighborhood. The activists similarly would not address questions about the protest’s effect on Barrett’s seven children (there are many other children who reside in the neighborhood as well).

The activists have been protesting outside the homes of the justices for almost nine months, since the May leak of the draft opinion indicating Roe v. Wade would be overturned. Frequent protesters include Sadie Kuhns, Melissa Barlow, Nikki Enfield, and Nadine Seiler.

Many of these protesters have ties to ShutDownDC and Ruth Sent Us, organizations that have posted the addresses of the Supreme Court justices online, offered bounties for sightings of the justices, and called for continued protesting intended to make the justices uncomfortable with overturning Roe v. Wade.

Only last weekend, The Daily Signal covered a protest at Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. As has been the case in recent months, Kavanaugh’s home was heavily guarded by U.S. Marshals standing between the protesters, who were on the sidewalk, and the house.

Conversely, Barrett’s home did not have U.S. Marshals stationed in front of the house (perhaps because the demonstrations at Barrett’s home are typically smaller than that at Kavanaugh’s). The Daily Signal observed two or three policemen as well as two U.S. Marshals on Sunday. The authorities did not stand in front of the house but largely stood by their vehicles.

After processing around the neighborhood several times, the protesters marched back to their meeting place, a middle school parking lot.

Both Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan begged the Department of Justice in May to enforce the federal law protecting Supreme Court justices.

The DOJ did not fully respond to the request until June 8—the same day that authorities arrested Nicholas Roske and charged him with attempting to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh—but refused to discuss whether the protesters had broken the law citing “longstanding policy.”

“We thought there would be more urgency,” Michael Ricci, who served as former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s spokesman, shared with The Daily Signal in a Wednesday phone interview. “In this climate, there are any number of threats, both specific and vague, against public officials. And we thought there would be more urgency about protecting the perimeter of the justices’ homes, and by extension, their neighborhoods.”

Laws in both Maryland and Virginia also prohibit picketing to disrupt or threaten to disrupt that individual’s “tranquility in his home.” The Maryland Attorney General’s Office has reportedly disputed the constitutionality of the state’s law.

And in Virginia, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeffrey McKay denied Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s request to establish an expanded security perimeter around the homes of three Supreme Court justices who live in Fairfax County.

Hogan’s office began coordination calls with law enforcement after the governors sent their letter to the DOJ, according to Ricci. That coordination included state law enforcement, Montgomery County law enforcement, and then Supreme Court law enforcement.

“To the extent that federal law enforcement was involved, they were more focused on getting the justices to and from their homes, and weren’t as focused on the immediate community,” he explained. “So it was clear to us we were not going to get a lot of backup, in terms of protecting the area and keeping the peace on the streets, so to speak. So that really became a state, county operation.”

On July 2, the Supreme Court’s chief security officer, Gail Curley, asked top Maryland and Virginia officials to enforce their laws protecting the justices. Since then, law enforcement have continued to stand outside the justices’ homes as the protests take place.

Youngkin’s office continues to monitor the situation and has directed Virginia State Police to be at the ready and in “constant coordination” with local authorities, spokesman Christian Martinez told The Daily Signal on Tuesday.

“Governor Youngkin will continue to push for every resource of federal law enforcement, including the U.S. Marshals, to be involved while the Justices continue to be denied the right to live peacefully in their homes,” he said.

And until now, Maryland has used county statues and laws on disorderly conduct and noise ordinances to keep the peace.

Article cross-posted from The Daily Signal.