At the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels last week, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview on stage that he protected Hungary from gender ideology. It’s true, but I sometimes wonder if Hungarians really understand what that means.
Last week in the United States, President Joe Biden released new rules governing Title IX, a part of American civil rights law governing its application to discrimination against women. The new rules are 1,600 pages, making it longer than Tolstoy’s War And Peace. With no participation of Congress, Biden’s administration declared that the Title IX rules now generally apply to transgendered people. That is to say, federal legal prohibitions against sex discrimination are now to be understood to cover transgenders.
The meaning of this cannot be understated.
This has never happened before in the U.S. For the first time, civil rights protection under Title IX now covers gender identity. The civil rights law passed to protect women now protects men who declare themselves to be women.
What does this mean? It means that universities that in any way—aside from athletics, for now —treat men who believe they are women as anything other than full women, could face prosecution from the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. government has infinite resources to pursue its goals. A college or university facing a Title IX lawsuit will have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars at minimum to defend itself.
What about private or religious colleges? Well, if they accept government money in any way, no matter how small, then they are subject to Title IX. Under the new Title IX rules, a private or religious school that in any way at all discriminates against transgenders in hiring or admission, or in student housing, could be sued by the U.S. government. If a college has all-male and all-female dorms, and it does not allow biological males who identify as females to live with women, the Justice Department could come after them.
So many Christian colleges and universities depend on government money to exist—even if it’s for something as minor as student loans—that they could not survive a government Title IX lawsuit. They will face a stark choice: change your policies, or face destruction.
It is a bitter irony that Title IX was originally conceived as a way to support female athletics in colleges. Now it might be used to compel female sports teams to accept biological males. The new Title IX rules does not take a firm stand on athletics, but the direction of the policies is clear.
Six years ago, when I first started traveling in the former Communist countries of Europe, people would ask me about gender ideology in America. They genuinely could not conceive that America was going so crazy. I warned them that yes, it’s true—and it is coming here, so prepare yourselves to fight it. I could see in their eyes that they found this almost impossible to accept.
Now you all know better.
The situation in the U.S. has gone very far, very fast. In America, for Generation Z (those born 1995 to 2012), over half believe that there are more than two genders. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, members of Generation Z—the generation of my children—are twenty times more likely to identify as transgender than people from my generation.
How did this happen? There are two basic reasons. First, Gen Z was the first to be raised fully online, especially with smartphones and social media. This has had a devastating impact on their sense of identity, as a new book by the sociologist Jonathan Haidt documents.
Second, all the institutions of American life have been captured by gender ideologues, who constantly propagandize for this ideology. Two years ago, Latoya Raveneau, an executive producer of children’s programming at Disney, bragged in a corporate meeting that she and her team were adding queerness’ to all of Disney’s children’s programming.
What sounds like right-wing propaganda is actually true!
Three years ago, I had a scheduled meeting with Katalin Novák, then the family minister, who arrived with news that the prime minister had just informed the cabinet that Fidesz was going to introduce a media law to prevent LGBT propaganda aimed at kids. I asked Novak and her staff if they had heard of the ‘Blue’s Clues’ Pride parade. They had not. I explained that Blue’s Clues is a very popular U.S. program for little children. It has become ultra-woke. The show featured an animated drag queen singing a marching song celebrating rainbow families: gay ones, lesbian ones, trans ones, polyamorous ones, and so forth.
The Hungarians were totally shocked. They could not understand how something like that could exist. Well. Not only does it exist, but this kind of thing is so common in the United States now that people hardly noticed.
The Hungarian government passed the media law, and stood strongly condemned by the rest of Europe. The prime minister of the Netherlands at the time, Mark Rutte, said that Hungary should be kicked out of the European Union. The Orbán government did not flinch.
Of course, it is impossible to keep this messaging fully away from Hungarian youth. Social media (at least outside of China) knows no borders and boundaries. Nevertheless, the Hungarian government understands well the campaign from the American left and their European allies to mainstream this madness in culture.
There is a heavy price to pay for standing against it. But what choice does Hungary have? Last month at a conference in Texas, I met a young woman named Soren Aldaco who is a detransitioner. She has become a face of the movement to defend children against transgenderism. Soren told me that she began to think she might be a boy when she was only 11 years old. She went onto the Internet and found communities that encouraged this belief. In mainstream culture, Soren found lots of support for her trans identity. She began hormone treatment at 17. At 19, she had her breasts surgically removed. Now, at 21, she identifies as a woman once again, and speaks out against those adults who ought to have protected her, as a troubled teenager on the autism spectrum, from permanently mutilating her body.
Americans are now beginning to learn the hard way the cost of gender ideology. There will be much more learning ahead—and a lot more suffering for children and families—before this insanity is defeated.
The U.S. Government has made itself the enemy of children and families. The Hungarian government, by contrast, is their ally.
One day, the courage of Hungarian lawmakers in defending Magyar children will be recognized. Until that day comes, though, Hungarian parents should not be ashamed that they live in a country where the government cares more about the welfare of children than the opinions of Western elites. In fact, Hungarians should be thankful.
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