Enough With Their Lies

LGBT organizations and mainstream news outlets do more to contribute to the youth mental health crisis than the Trump Administration ever could.

In August 2017, the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), a nonprofit think tank, published the second addition of its messaging guide, Talking About Suicide & LGBT Populations. The guide’s cover page lists The Trevor Project, GLAAD, and the Human Rights Campaign as MAP’s partners, which is surprising, given that these organizations are perhaps the most frequent violators of these very guidelines.

“At the outset,” the guide states, “it is critical to remember that the large majority of LGBT people, including LGBT youth, who experience stressful external factors like discrimination, bullying or family rejection do not become suicidal.”

The guide says to emphasize resilience among LGBT people, and to help them understand the relationship between mental health and suicide risk, as opposed to a relationship between identity and suicide risk.

And yet, over a seven-month period in 2018, the Trevor Project targeted LGBT-identified youth on social media with advertisements for a survey about mental health and suicide.¹ After the organization reported the findings from its survey, GLAAD tweeted, “The @TrevorProject found that 39% of LGBTQ respondents between the ages of 13 and 24 ‘seriously considered suicide’ within the past year.” GLAAD’s tweet included a link to a Rolling Stone article about the survey, which also violated MAP’s guidelines.

The MAP guide urges people not to “attribute a suicide death to a single factor (such as bullying or discrimination) or to say that a specific anti-LGBT law or policy will ‘cause’ suicide.” This, the guide explains, “can normalize suicide by suggesting that it is a natural reaction to such experiences or laws.” Further, premature speculation about the reasons for a suicide “can fuel false narratives about suicide (for example, claims that multiple suicide deaths occurred because of the results of the 2016 elections) and contribute to the risk of suicide contagion.”

Nevertheless, here’s GLAAD on September 15, 2020: “Among transgender and nonbinary youth, those who reported having their pronouns respected by all or most of the people in their lives attempted suicide at half the rate of those who did not have their pronouns respected. Your words matter!”

The MAP guide says not to “talk about suicide ‘epidemics’ or suicide rates for LGBT people” and not to use social media to announce news of suicide deaths or speculate about reasons for suicide death. It adds that “presenting suicide as a trend or a widespread occurrence (for example, tallying suicide deaths that occur in proximity to an external event) can encourage vulnerable individuals to see themselves as part of a larger story, which may elevate their suicide risk.”

On June 18, 2018, GLAAD, tweeted a quote from a U.S. senator: “The suicide epidemic has touched all sectors of our society, but the problem is particularly acute among LGBT youth, who experience bullying and discrimination at every turn.” In February 2021, HRC tweeted: “Trans kids have a higher risk of attempting suicide because they so often encounter people who deny their humanity.”

Since his inauguration, President Trump has signed a slew of executive orders concerning gender. The first one sought to combat gender ideology by correcting the “erasure of sex in language and policy,” which, it rightly stated, “has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.”

A week later, Time published The Implications of Trump’s Executive Order on Sex. Reporters Solcyré Burga and Chantelle Lee wrote:

Research published in the journal Nature Human Behavior found that anti-trans laws have led suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth ages 13 to 17 to increase between 7-72%. The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ+ youth, reported a 33% increase in volume for its crisis line on Inauguration Day compared to the weeks leading up to Trump being sworn in as President.

The Time reporters even mentioned the Movement Advancement Project in their editorial on Trump’s Day 1 executive order, and yet they still failed to heed its guidelines.

On January 28, President Trump signed an executive order that seeks to end the non-evidence-based practice of pediatric sex-trait modification (puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries like double mastectomies and castration). Noah Michelson, who launched HuffPost’s Queer Voices vertical, wasn’t happy:

The narrative that these organizations and news outlets spread is not just dangerously irresponsible. It’s also false.

A 2024 study published by BMJ Mental Health analyzed overall mortality and suicide mortality among 2,083 young people (median age 19) in Finland who had been referred to gender clinics over a 25-year period. The study found that suicide among young people seeking gender services in Finland is uncommon. Just as important, when comparing this cohort with a cohort of matched controls, the Finnish study found no convincing evidence that gender-referred youth are more likely to commit suicide than the general population, after controlling for psychiatric treatment history. “This does not support the claims that GR [gender reassignment] is necessary in order to prevent suicide,” the authors wrote. “GR has also not been shown to reduce even suicidal ideation, and suicidal ideation is not equal to actual suicide risk.”²³

The Finnish study concluded: “Clinical gender dysphoria does not appear to be predictive of all-cause nor suicide mortality when psychiatric treatment history is accounted for.”

From 2010 to 2020, four out of 15,000 patients at the U.K.’s largest gender clinic were known or suspected to have died by suicide. Two of these patients were on the waiting list, and two were receiving treatment. This gives a suicide rate of 0.03%, which is in line with the suicide rate for youths with other mental health difficulties.

Experts agree that the suicide narrative is erroneous. “As far as I know, there are no studies that say that if we don’t start these kids immediately on hormones when they say they want them that they are going to commit suicide,” said Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper, who adapted the Dutch Protocol (puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones) for use in the U.S. “So, that is misguided.”

Dr. Erica Anderson, a transgender psychologist, said, “To have [the risk of suicide] be used as a lever to force someone to concede to treatment that may or may not be appropriate—I think is unwise and, and borders on malfeasance.”

And Finland’s renowned pediatric gender expert, Dr. Riitta Kaltiala, has said that the suicide narrative pushed by “irresponsible” activists is “purposeful disinformation.”

Even the ACLU’s trans-identified lawyer, Chase Strangio, admitted as much during the United States v. Skrmetti oral arguments in December. After Justice Samuel Alito, citing the Cass Review, said “there is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide,” Strangio replied:

What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some—in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare and we’re talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don’t necessarily have completed suicides within them.

The adults in the room should be encouraging resilience in young people. They should be telling them that they don’t need drugs and surgeries in order to be themselves, and that their self-worth doesn’t depend on the validation of others. Instead, in a shameful dereliction of duty, they’re lying and fearmongering.

If, God forbid, there is an increase in suicides among trans-identified youth in the coming months and years, it will be the reporters and the NGOs, not the Republicans, who have blood on their hands.

1. In the final report, former Trevor Project CEO Amit Paley wrote of the survey: “[W]e are particularly proud that it is inclusive of youth of more than 100 sexual orientations and more than 100 gender identities from all 50 states across the country.” That’s right, the Trevor Project, a youth advocacy organization that in 2023 brought in over $87 million (including about $20 million in government grants), claimed there are over 200 sexual orientations and genders.

2. Edit 1 (2/3/25): The preceding two sentences were added to elaborate on the study’s findings about psychiatric comorbidity, suicidal ideation, and suicide mortality.

3. Edit 2 (2/3/25): A helpful friend pointed out that I didn’t explain the difference between suicidal ideation and completed suicides. This is an important point. Suicidal ideation are thoughts centered around death or suicide, including thinking about and considering suicide. Suicidal ideation is common in both the trans-identified population and the general population. A WHO study found that about two-thirds of people with suicidal ideation never make a suicide attempt, and that only 7% of people with suicidal ideation attempted suicide during the subsequent two years. “The Trevor Project et al are not careful to make those differences clear,” said my friend.