Not long ago, the T in the LGBTQ+ alphabet was poised for success as transgender activists were gaining ground in health care, education, sports and popular culture.

But a shift in public opinion that influenced the 2024 presidential election and led to a series of executive orders by President Donald Trump appears to have stemmed the transgender tide for now.

In 2021, for example, there were 90 known gender clinics in operation in the United States, but as of Aug. 6, 35 had closed and another 28 had suspended treatment on minors. Additionally, 27 states have banned so-called gender-affirming care for minors, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee has barred transgender athletes from competing for the U.S. in women’s sports, and the University of Pennsylvania has restored all individual records and titles to female athletes who lost to transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

Theresa Farnan, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), traces much of the change to last year’s presidential campaign, especially regarding the effects of gender ideology on children in schools and in athletics.

“President Trump is the first major candidate who had the courage to make this an issue,” she said. “He is very shrewd at ‘reading the room’ and realized that this was a winning issue.” Indeed, a Trump campaign ad proclaiming, “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you” was hugely effective in appealing to voters who were uncomfortable with gender-transition treatment for minors and other aspects of gender policy.

Farnan, who focuses on gender ideology as part of EPPC’s Person and Identity Project, said although Trump earlier had seemed unbothered by adults who transitioned to a different gender, when he looked into indoctrination in schools, pediatric gender transition and boys in girls’ sports, he was genuinely shocked by the harm being caused to children.

Once in office, he responded swiftly with a raft of executive orders dealing directly with gender ideology or its application. The first declares that the federal government will recognize only two sexes, male and female; protects women’s privacy and safety in federally funded shelters and prisons, and ends federal funding of gender ideology. Others include orders that stop federal funding for gender-change procedures on minors and defund K-12 schools and programs that promote gender ideology.

Trump’s willingness to pull federal funding from schools and health care institutions that advance gender ideology and transition is a huge step, Farnan said, adding, “The challenge will be to codify his policy changes into law so that they are not immediately reversed in a progressive administration.”

Chloe Cole agreed. A woman who is suing the Permanente Medical Group, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals for the chemical and surgical sex-change interventions she received when she was between 13 and 16, Cole said, “We’re seeing a lot of change with major hospital systems shutting down their gender clinics and operations on children, but those are not permanent measures. They’re only responding to pressure put on them by the president and his executive orders.”

Cole said most institutions and organizations that have complied with the orders would resume operations the moment an administration friendly to their cause was in place in Washington.

“The tide will continue to turn only if we continue to push back on institutions and this ideology,” she said. “I’m afraid a lot of people think we’re already at the finish line, but we’re not even halfway there.”

For instance, Cole said half the states in the country still do not ban transgender treatments in children and some are still fighting bans in court. She said, “While the president has a lot of executive orders to combat different facets of gender ideology, they’re still executive orders and not laws. If we have another president or one bad judge, it all could be repealed.”

However, Charles LiMandri of LiMandri & Jonna LLP, which is representing Cole and three other clients who have detransitioned, said although a new administration certainly could reverse everything Trump has done, he does think public sentiment is such that any attempt to do so would be a hard sell with the majority of the American people.

“Trump saw the writing on the wall that this is not something the American people wanted,” LiMandri said. “They don’t want men competing in women’s sports.” Nor, he said, do they want gender changes in children. “There will always be vulnerable kids subject to being influenced,” he said, “but it will be harder to get parents on board as more become aware how harmful this is.”

A 2024 poll taken after the presidential election found that 72% of Americans, including 86% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats, oppose child gender transitions, and that the percentage had increased by 10 points in just three months.

Even before that, however, public opinion on the transgender issue had been moving in this direction.

A 2023 poll found that 78% of American voters, including 67% of Democrats, supported restrictions on sex changes for anyone under 18. A majority — 70% — also said schools should not be explaining to children under 10 that gender is something they can declare.

Interestingly, such polling aligns U.S. voters with the Catholic Church. The Catechism teaches that except when done for therapeutic, medical reasons, “amputations, mutilations and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.” The Church also teaches that God created human beings male and female, that each person should acknowledge and accept his or her sexual identity, and that “being man” or “being woman” is a reality that is good and willed by God.

Addressing participants of the international Symposium “Man-Woman: Image of God” in March 2024, Pope Francis called transgender theory “an ugly ideology of our time” because it erases all distinctions between men and women. To cancel this difference “is to erase humanity,” he added.

EPPC’s Farnan added that even before Trump issued his executive orders, it had become socially and politically acceptable to voice opposition to the imposition of the “transgender agenda.”

This was due in part, she said, to key voices who were willing to speak out openly without backing down.

“The testimony of female athletes and their willingness to walk off the playing field when a male player sought to participate in girls’ sports inspired adults to respond with courage. Other female athletes who were injured also provided compelling testimony,” Farnan said.

Cole agrees that personal stories contributed greatly to changing people’s minds on the transgender issue.

“For so long, no light was being shed on what kids experience and so people bought into the lies that gender-affirming care is lifesaving and prevents suicide,” she said. “But when the stories of what men and women like me go through very young and come out with parts of their bodies missing and deep grief for the rest of their lives ... it has made it so that nobody can ignore any longer the harms that have been occurring for far too long in the country. People have been trying to sound the alarm for decades, but it took the real experiences of people for the tide to truly start changing.”

Likewise, the 2022 Daily Wire documentary What Is a Woman? was considered groundbreaking in reaching audiences with the truth about gender ideology. A year after its original release, it had surpassed 170 million views on Twitter, now known as X.

Cole called the film “a massive cultural moment” that revealed the reality of gender ideology in its various facets. She said, “It highlighted all the different ways this has impacted normal American life and institutions and made it palpable to the average American person who did not know this was happening in the country on such a massive scale. I think it was instrumental in waking a lot of people up.”

To illustrate the awakening that has occurred, EPPC’s Farnan said as recently as three years ago, most Americans had no idea what a pediatric gender transition involved or how it harms children, or they thought very few children received puberty blockers, hormones or surgery.

“As the medical facts have become part of the public discussion,” she said, “Americans, especially parents, have been deeply disturbed by it, more so than the issues of men in women’s bathrooms or sports.”

Cole concurred. “The fact that we’re medically experimenting on children has to be the primary thing that has woken the American people up. You don’t get to mess with the kids. You don’t get to mess with children and get away with it in a country that should be standing for justice and what is right.”

According to the Stop the Harm Database, between 2019 and 2023, 13,994 minors underwent “sex-reassignment” treatments, 5,747 had surgeries, 8,579 received hormones and puberty blockers, and 62,682 sex-change prescriptions were written for minors.

Interestingly, Farnan added, students also find these issues deeply troubling, though they feel powerless to address them. She said, “There is a tendency to regard young people as having bought into this ideology completely, when in fact many are just afraid to voice their real views.” In a survey of Northwestern University and University of Michigan students, 77% disagreed that gender identity should override biological sex in such areas as sports, health care or public data, but said they would never speak their views out loud.

Meanwhile, Farnan said, the overall standing of the LGBTQ+ movement has been harmed by its attempts to indoctrinate children in gender ideology and to normalize their transitioning. “Poll after poll has shown the movement is losing ground, driven by public opposition to the way gender ideology has targeted children,” she said.

Despite this, Farnan said she sees no evidence that transgender activists are backing down on their agenda.

“Even though gender clinics at some major children’s hospitals have closed down, for example, they are outsourcing care to private clinics and encouraging children to bide their time until they are old enough to receive medical and surgical transition interventions,” she said.

Furthermore, Trump’s executive orders threatening to defund schools and programs promoting gender ideology are being resisted in some places, according to an investigation by The Daily Wire. Many schools are still permitting boys to use girls’ restrooms and to take part in girls’ sports, as California, Minnesota, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington are openly challenging or ignoring the orders.

Farnan said she expects continued pushback in health care as well as in education. Already, she said, “Major medical societies like the American Academy of Pediatrics are doubling down on their support for pediatric gender transition.”

And, she added, gender activists have shifted their arguments from describing transition as medically necessary to claiming that it is important to honor the patient’s autonomy, regardless of the physiological effects. Furthermore, she said, the Trump initiatives only prevent pediatric gender transitions, not those involving vulnerable young adults who may have been promised that altering their bodies will solve their problems.

“So even in states that comply with the executive orders,” Farnan said, “this ideology is flourishing and being promoted in colleges and at centers catering to young people.”

Nancy Charles, a former trans-identifying LBGTQ+ activist who recently converted to Catholicism, said she expected to see more pushback than she has and that concerns her. “I’m always suspicious of quiet when it comes to activists.” she said. “It seems like a re-group, a ‘this is too easy’ kind of feeling. It’s why I hope we keep our guard. When we’re dealing with spiritual matters like this we don’t win, we just fight.”

Farnan added, “For this reason, it is important for us as Catholics to speak up. The Church has been consistent in opposing this harmful ideology — we have clear, convincing and compassionate teaching. We should be using this debate as an opportunity to introduce people to the truth about the human person. Our witness is so crucial to ending these practices that harm children.”