“Would you like to write an op-ed for the Washington Post about what’s going on in your school?” my well-connected journalist friend asked me over the phone.
I’d been fighting Arlington (VA) Public Schools’ determination to funnel the GLSEN Model School District Policy on Transgender Students (which obliterates rights and protections for girls and children) into our system for months, mostly anonymously and behind the scenes with the Arlington Parent Coalition team. But now I had the chance to have a national audience, as long as I’d sign my real name to the op-ed.
I wrote the piece.
Hours before the deadline, I sat in front of my computer with the cursor blinking on top of the SEND button. My finger hovered over the ENTER key as my mind catalogued all of the bad things that could possibly happen to me if I came out publicly as someone who questioned the gender cult.
Would trans-rights activists come after me? Might they vandalize my home or my car? Were they vicious enough to go after my kids? What if they tried to get my husband fired from his job? What if I ever needed to find a job in my woke-to-the-core county?
I knew I’d lose friends and gain enemies. My recently-developing writing career, at which I’d labored for more than two decades, would probably go down in flames.
My finger continued to hover, anxiety-ridden about what could happen if I sent the piece to the editor.
But then I came upon the linchpin question: “How are you going to feel 24 hours from now if you don’t submit this article?
I answered myself: “I will know for the rest of my life that I am a coward.”
My finger tapped SEND.
While, sadly, many people have lost jobs, suffered broken relationships with children and family members, and had their reputations attacked for expressing views contrary to transgender doctrine, I’ve been surprisingly unscathed by my activism around this issue. I’ve had no graffiti sprayed on my property, but I’ve occasionally been the subject of some trans-rights activists’ hate blogs. My husband’s career is intact, but a few of my (former) relationships are not. I’ve been told I should die, but no one has fired any rounds at me yet.
As unpleasant as this work is at times, when I have to pull up a front-row seat to the carnage being gleefully perpetrated on children and families by the gender industry and its minions, at the end of the day, I know that I’m on the side of what’s right, true, and honest. I will not regret having taken a stand to protect children, and every time I hear of another family who got their child back from the gender cult, I thrust my fist into the air, feeling that victory for every single one of us who’s fighting this debacle.
I will never be ashamed that I came out publicly as gender-critical.
Won’t you join me?
Maria Keffler is a co-founder of Advocates Protecting Children, Partners for Ethical Care, and the Arlington Parent Coalition. A teacher and parent with a background in educational psychology, she is the author of Desist, Detrans & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult. Contact Ms. Keffler at advocatesprotectingchildren@gmail.com.