ADAMS: As a parent, you probably care a great deal about what your child learns at school. Maybe you’ve heard the terms “curriculum transparency” or “parental rights,” and are wondering how you can harness these buzzwords to better help you navigate the school system today to help your child attain an education that will best serve their future.
It’s no secret that some schools across our country are secretly helping children begin gender transition without ever informing the parent. Even parents with no hint, let alone a record, of abuse. This horrible reality has its roots in a lack of transparency with parents and their right to oversee their child’s education.
Joining me on The State of Education today is Erin Friday, a licensed California attorney and concerned parent. She has her story to share with us about her daughter who, in seventh grade, began receiving instruction that propelled her towards proclaiming that she was transgender. All without parental knowledge.
Since then, Erin has been on an uphill battle to rescue her daughter and fight for her right as a parent to guide her daughter’s education. Join me in welcoming Erin Friday to today’s show. Erin, welcome!
FRIDAY: Thank you so much!
ADAMS: It’s so good to have you with us today. Erin, you were eventually able to rescue your daughter from this ethically poisonous situation from school. She no longer believes that she is transgender. Would you like to start off by telling us the story of how you were involved in your daughter’s education and how you came to learn about what was happening in school?
FRIDAY: Sure. I was actually gobsmacked when I found out what my daughter was being taught at her middle school. I say that because I was one of those parents that was so involved at the school—I volunteered, I did fundraising, I was at the school once a week, I drove for all the class trips. I was a very involved parent. I knew all the teachers personally, even went out for drinks with them.
I thought we were partners, and that’s how I looked at school as being. That changed dramatically throughout the years. When I go back a little bit, it really started earlier than the seventh grade sex ed curriculum. It started with SEL which I thought was nonsensical in that I felt that schools were taking parents’ jobs.
Our job is to give children their morality and teach them to be polite and how to see the world. Teachers, I thought their job was to teach them math and English and science. In hindsight, I can see the trajectory of where the schools were going.
Come seventh grade, the school invited third parties to come in and teach the sex ed curriculum. I think that’s where teachers lost their control. These third parties came in who didn’t know our students and didn’t know the parents and taught for five hours about sexual activities that are well beyond the understanding of eleven year olds and should never have been taught to them.
I think, too, the teachers that I knew would never have taught that stuff. It was very slick of the schools to bring in these third parties, paying with our tax dollars to teach these kids an entire hour about gender identity, that they could be born in the wrong body, they could have a male brain and a female body, they could be myriad of genders, sexuality…again, these kids are eleven.
ADAMS: Wow. So you’re telling us that third-party entities—because we’re hearing this all across the country—a lot of times, this stuff is subcontracted out to other organizations that come in and do this instruction.
Tell us a little more about that experience and what you learned from that. You mentioned some things, but what were the key components of gender ideology that were being taught at the school that was guiding your daughter’s mentality.
FRIDAY: Well, they spent a whole hour on gender identity and saying that, essentially, a child could be born wrong. Which is a horrible thing to tell a child, that everything about them could be wrong from their head to their toes. And that if they have male attributes, masculine attributes, should I say—which all females do! We all do. We all have a little bit of each. That they could actually be a boy trapped in a girl’s body.
This class was so interesting to the kids that these girls—my daughter and four other girls—came over to my house and they started to talk about gender identity and say what they were. They all picked something on the alphabet. They were lesbian, pansexual, polyamorous. I thought, what are you guys learning at school?
I was, again, gobsmacked that the teachers I knew would be introducing this to a bunch of eleven year old girls. And of course, like I said, I found out that it was really third parties coming in. These were activist groups, if you look them up, your typical they/them, mixed up pronouns, piercings, super liberal schools, sex positivity—all of this stuff. Most of them without kids coming in and teaching our children.
I took it one step further: I went to the parenting class that was about the sex ed, what they taught our kids. What I learned there was just so alarming. They took—if you are not G.I. Joe or Barbie, you’re somewhere on the gender spectrum, so you’re neither girl nor boy. Which makes us all trangender because there’s no such thing as Barbie and there’s no such thing as Ken.
We’re talking to eleven year old kids, very malleable kids who are just starting to get into puberty, body changes, and discomfort. Especially with girls—boys have it too—but especially with girls, puberty is a rough time in their lives. Their body changes before they’re brains mature. They grow breasts and hips and they get underarm hair. They don’t like this. This is a very normal reaction.
You talk to most women, they’ll say, “Yeah, the first couple years of puberty are awful.” Pimples, men are looking at you…it’s uncomfortable. You’re getting teased now, boys are teasing you. They use this. They use this as a way to disrupt what if normal distress and say, “Well, maybe you feel this distress because you’re actually a boy.” They use cartoons, they use a film with a little kid saying that they're trans. It’s very indoctrination, it’s very cult-like, it’s very unscientific.
ADAMS: Now, you shared just a minute ago that you first discovered this with your child when she was actually with a group of her friends. I think you said they were at your place and they were just talking amongst themselves.
That’s interesting to me. How much would you say that her social group and peer pressure played into the whole experience for her and for her friends in a positive or negative way?
FRIDAY: Well, remember, all of this is going on during the Critical Race Theory at school also. Kids are trying to individualize, they’re trying to be special, they’re trying to be cool, they’re trying to be different. Again, all normal things that happen during puberty. It’s kind of fun for them to pick these labels.
It was boring—truly boring, they laughed at me and said, “You’re cis. Boomer!” Being “normal” is something to tease someone about. Everyone wants to individualize. They want to be different, they want to be special. If you’re not the sporty kid or the really smart kid, what are you? Well, you’ve got to pick something.
This wouldn’t be so alarming if they were just trying on names and labels, but what’s terribly frightening is it concretizes over time and it medicalizes over time.
ADAMS: It’s interesting what you just said because that kind of response would not be a normal response, I think, for most eleven year olds. It seems to me that that type of thing is a learned behavior. In other words, dissing somebody who didn’t understand or wasn’t in tune with the way you were thinking or something.
Normally kids at that early age aren’t having that kind of engagement, certainly with their parents, over that kind of thing. What are your thoughts? Did you think about that? Do you think that this is something that was systematically programmed into them as to how to interact with people who were traditional views or however that was brought to them?
FRIDAY: I think that’s a bigger question and a broad question because we are the first generation of parents that are parenting against the internet. We are losing our power over our children and our influence over our children.
You bring up a lot of good points. When I was growing up, I would never speak to my parents the way these kids were speaking to me. Whether or not I liked all the things my parents required of me, I still respected them. Children now are getting messages from the internet that we can’t possibly fight against. There are thousands, millions of them and they’re being told that we’re not cool, we’re passe, that tradition is old fashioned.
It’s really difficult to parent against that.
ADAMS: Yes, it is. That’s very important. That’s one of the huge challenges that every parent—every adult, really, the same thing applies to teachers and everybody—because our children, our young people, are getting so much information from so many sources and things that some of us are not even really aware of yet.
Yet, they are influencing our children’s lives and behaviors and thinking, very clearly. That is a big topic and probably one for another day. It’s good to tease that a little today and we probably should have some deeper conversation on that, whether us or at least as an organization. That’s an important thing.
But let’s go back to the school situation. You didn’t hear about this directly through the school, you heard about it through your kid. Do you believe there was secrecy involved, from the standpoint of the school? Did the school encourage her to talk to you and be transparent with you? You told us you found out her and her friends speaking together. What was the school’s response to your questions or conversation with them as a parent?
FRIDAY: See, I think I failed. This is where I fall on my sword. Because again, I was so involved in the school and I trusted the school that when I filled out the “yes, my child can get the sex ed class,” I assumed, incorrectly, that it would be factually and scientifically accurate and that it would be age-appropriate. Because that’s what the law is. That’s actually what the law is in California. It must be scientifically correct and it must be age-appropriate.
So I took it for granted because, again, I knew the teachers and I din’t think for a second that these teachers would confuse kids or they would lie to kids or they would talk about anal sexual acts with eleven year olds. But it wasn’t the teachers, again. It was these outside groups. I was really naive and I fault myself for that.
In hindsight, of course, I would never have given permission for my daughter to take these classes. That’s on me because I trusted.
ADAMS: But when you found out, when you heard the conversation, did you have a conversation with the school? What did you discover? What was going on?
Obviously you know now, but how did that go and what was the school’s response?
FRIDAYS: In the grade school—like I said, I went to the parenting class and I was with the third party entity. I was the only parent and the only person raising her hand. I actually got quite rude because I just kept interrupting. This is nonsensical, why are you doing this? What is a demi boy gender, what is this gender? This is absurd. Why are we doing this to children, why are we teaching this to children?
I was basically told to shut up and they’ll answer my questions afterwards. Of course, they didn’t. They packed their bags and ran off. But that was right before COVID was about to come on the scene. It just opened me up to, hey, I’ve got to be on top of my child now.
ADAMS: Did you ever go to the administration and have a conversation with them?
FRIDAY: I did later. I went to the principal and brought some books to the principal. I had discussions with the principal about this transgenderism and what’s happening. But at the time, too…I didn’t know the seriousness of this. I just know why they are teaching this? These kids are glomming onto these silly labels.
I thought of it almost as all the kids started to dye their hair orange and red—pretty innocuous stuff—until we started to move along the line of different identities. The next year, when she landed on transgender and was really saying she is a boy, then I thought, here it is.
That’s the normal trajectory of these girls. They start with polyamorous or pansexual, they move to non-binary then they move to lesbian, and finally land on trans. This is a very normal kind of what happens. Most kids don’t go from female to trans. They try on some more.
But again, it’s this internet crowd or need to take it one step further. Lesbian’s not enough, let’s move to trans and when it’s on trans it sticks because there’s no farther to go.
ADAMS: A moment ago you said you weren’t aware of the more serious stuff. So if we could, let’s dive into some more of the serious stuff because we can skirt around the issue, but there are some very serious issues related to all of this.
Let’s talk a little bit about and acknowledge some of the dangers for transitioning children like sterilization, health issues, bone development issues, psychological issues. Across all sides of the political spectrum there’s a general agreement that children are damaged by transitioning, regardless of their beliefs about adults.
In other words, people have political ideologies and have all kinds of ideas about adults, but the majority of Americans are concerned about this being introduced to our young children and where that leads. Let’s dig into that a little bit. Talk to me about that and some of your journey and your experience.
FRIDAY: Let’s talk about the mental health piece. When a child is told that they could be born wrong, that everything is wrong with them—not just that they have big ears, you know. But everything is wrong with them. What does that do to their psyche?
It does horrible things to these kids’ psyche. I work with thousands of parents. When the child comes out as transgender, their mental health plummets. Again, we know this. As soon as they say they’re trans their kid becomes despondent, angry, depressed. Eating disorders come along with it because they’re being told that they’re wrong.
Then they’re being told that if their parents don't affirm them, if their parents don't say, yes, you are a boy even though I birthed a baby, I birthed a girl, that your parents don’t love you. That they’re transphobic, that they’re hateful, that they should be rejected. You say to a child that your mother and father don’t love them, what does that do to the mental health of a child? It really, really unwinds them. And of course they get severely depressed.
You have the internet, again, saying your parents are bad. All these random people: your parents are bad, they’re bigots, they’re right-wing…whatever it is. I’m a democrat! It’s still…my daughter called me all sorts of names. So the mental health piece is huge and if the adults in this child’s life—and teachers, especially—say yes, you are trangender, we’re affirming you, that child starts to believe that they can actually change sex. That they’re actually a boy.
It’s really important for parents to hold the line because we’re the only ones holding the line. Especially here in crazy California, we have to hold the line into reality for our kids. And set up the boundaries of no, you’re not actually a boy, right?
ADAMS: You know, it’s interesting…love, above all else, speaks truth. Sometimes the truth is hard to hear but people who love tell the truth. You’re talking about the mental agony that goes on in a child when they’re being told one thing and yet they’re in total conflict with what their parents, who love them more than anybody else, assume and probably—it is. It’s a devastating thing.
FRIDAY: The child’s in the middle. The child’s in the middle and the teachers are affirming. They’re going against the parents and the child is confused. And just a little bit about the schools too: I don’t want to say all teachers because it’s never a zero-sum game, but these teachers are promoting it, they’re keeping secrets, and they’re telling the child to lie to their parents.
Here in California, we get investigated by CPS—Child Protective Services. Teachers will send them to our homes if we are not affirming. So there’s an absolute stress of that. Then the medical cost to these children if you follow the path…and really, the doctors here—you take them to a gender clinic, almost 100% of these kids are then medicalized because there’s some strange belief that no matter what age the child is, no matter what maturity or co-morbid mental health issues—autism, severe depression, cutting, ADHD—no matter what that is, the child knows who they are.
At whatever age that is—they could be three! And that child will be put on a medical pathway that is irreversible. It is a colossal lie to say that puberty blockers are a pause button. They are not. They have long-term effects that are known and many that are unknown. Lupron is the puberty blocker that is used most. There were 10,000 complaints against Lupron when it was used for precocious puberty. You think it doesn't affect kids that are gender confused? Of course it does.
That was used to sterilize sex offenders. It’s used off label and it stunts the brain from maturing. How is it a pause button when you’re almost freezing the kid in place? Plus 95 to 99% of these children move on to cross-sex hormones. Not to get gross here, but I’m going to because it needs to be said.
When a boy is on puberty blockers, his genitals do not grow. They stay like little boys forever. There’s no reversing that. He’ll never experience sexual pleasure. Ever. How do you explain that to a child? How do you explain what this child is giving up?
So that’s you puberty blockers and then you put cross-sex hormones on top of it and they’re sterile. This is a child that you are making a life-long decision for that you cannot reverse.
FRIDAY: Yep. This is a heart-breaking conversation, to be honest with you. But it has to be had because this is an increasingly relevant topic for parents and school-aged children today, all across this country.
As we’re here talking, so many things are going through my mind and I’ll express a few of them very quickly and try to get us back on topic. First of all, these issues tend to be driven either politically or “follow the money.” That’s always when something unusual or different starts to happen, you start tracking. Who is benefiting from these processes?
When entire industries shift away from known and a long-recognized science into this pseudo-science focus…and yet they’re just being promoted unbelievably. Then you talk about the costs involved financially with the medical stuff. The medical industry, the pharma industry and so forth, they have to be among those that are gaining in such a thing. Again, I don’t want to get too far off topic, but I think parents need to look into these things, they need to be aware of these things.
Sometimes we have to call the emperor’s clothes what they are and not be afraid of being canceled by a culture because if we don’t stand up and speak truth, not only will our children be canceled in the culture and from the culture, the culture itself will be canceled.