Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the first nationwide survey of high school students to inquire about students’ gender identity. The survey of 20,000 high schoolers concluded that “3.3% of U.S. high school students identified as transgender, and 2.2% identified as questioning,” a result that sounds like really high numbers” to Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice. Education expert Meg Kilgannon likewise advised Americans to “take these surveys with a grain of salt.”

“Nationally, they have asked the question for the first time in 2023 … but they’ve been asking that question in my county and many other counties across the country for ten years or so,” said Kilgannon, a Fairfax County, Virginia parent and Family Research Council senior fellow for Education Studies, who previously worked in the U.S. Department of Education. “The ‘sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll survey,’ the parents used to call it,” because “they ask kids questions that would make anybody blush.”

Students receive this survey at school and encounter “all kinds of leading questions,” Kilgannon continued. “The questions on these surveys are … how many times did you smoke meth in the last three months? Or, have you had sex once, or twice, or 12 times this month? I mean, the questions are really outrageous.” Such questions violate, rather than presume, the innocence of children.

With the 2023 nationwide rollout, the CDC has expanded this outrageous survey to school districts across the nation. Kilgannon surmised that “most counties” will adopt it because the CDC has linked it to funding through the local health department, “so that they can basically spend more taxpayers’ money.”

Promoters of the survey claim its purpose is to “raise awareness about sexual minorities and STDs and all kinds of things,” said Kilgannon. The problem with this reasoning is that they are asking these questions to children, for whom such sexual issues should be irrelevant.

“No doubt this generation is being bombarded with all kinds of voices, leading them astray into all sorts of sexual behavior and now transgenderism,” Hice responded. But should children face such moral corruption from a government-funded survey?

Sexual propaganda to students has advanced so far that “in some places [that] it’s very fashionable to identify as [someone who] is not heterosexual, or [not] the sex you’re born,” Kilgannon exclaimed. “I think it’s a way to get attention. I think it’s a way to get out of class. I think that vulnerable children are being asked leading questions and led to these conclusions by staff who are not qualified or trained to do so.”

Those seeking to advance a transgender agenda — whether school officials or the CDC — have both ideological and political motives to boost the numbers of students identifying as transgender, and to boost them now. “This is the kind of thing that comes out in the last year of a presidential administration, because the ideologues who have been laboring at the CDC have one last shot to get out the final misinformation,” Kilgannon described. Meanwhile, “they know that, across the country, legislatures are passing all kinds of laws to restrict their efforts to indoctrinate children. … This is the CDC’s way of trying to have a win on their side.”

How much psychological pressure has nudged children into deviant sexual responses, all for the advancement of a political ideology? How many children were misled about the nature of reality and biology to the point that transgender ideology even sounded plausible? How many children were deceived about their deepest desires and true identity by a deafening charm offensive? How many children lied about their own internal feelings to cultivate a persona that school officials celebrate and acquire social capital? So, yes, “I do question these numbers,” Kilgannon insisted, for many good reasons.

Kilgannon refuted the CDC’s contention that, since gender confusion among young people is “more prevalent among young people today,” they need more affirmation. “The few actually good academic studies we have on this topic all show that children who are not ‘affirmed’ and who are allowed simply to go through their normal puberty and to have therapy … most of them desist from this idea that they were born in the wrong body,” she said. “This would be a much healthier outcome than the idea that you have to affirm these kids with hormones and surgery — make a lifelong medical patient of children, essentially.”

“That’s really always been the crux of this problem,” she continued. Transgender affirmation treats a mental illness as not only normal but something to be celebrated. “To be transgender requires … everyone else to go along with your delusion that you were born in the wrong body and that you were not the sex you were born. And I can’t imagine that that leads someone on a path to mental health,” Kilgannon said.

Unfortunately for children targeted by transgender propaganda, they lack the experience and discretion to realize when that they are being force-fed a lie. “Children are very vulnerable,” warned Kilgannon, not only during classroom instruction and government-issued surveys, but also from peer-to-peer interactions and social media algorithms. “Social media and access to cell phones and screen time for kids is something that is terribly detrimental to their mental health, and it is certainly a delivery mechanism for information that is untrue, ungodly, and unhealthy,” she said.

“We’re conducting [an] experiment in real time, in allowing children access to these devices that are untested for their age group, known to be addictive, and proven to cause them mental distress,” continued Kilgannon. “Is it any wonder that children are experiencing more mental illness? Is it any wonder that they’re confused about their identity?”

Thus, Kilgannon identified at least three reasons to be skeptical of the results obtained through CDC’s survey. The surprising finding that 3.3% of high schoolers identified as transgender could be due to leading (and misleading) questions that reinforce overly sexual propaganda, the perceived social advantages of insincerely embracing a transgender identity, or the inherent vulnerability of children, many of whom will later embrace their biological reality.

Kilgannon could not overlook the relationship between the presence of pro-transgender ideology in the classroom and the absence of the Bible. “Obviously, there is a deep-seated longing for something inside you,” said Kilgannon. “We know that that is longing for God and for love. But that answer cannot be given in the setting where these questions are being asked, because we have removed God from the public school system. And with him went love, frankly.”

The transgender ideology is so fragile that it shatters on contact with an alternative worldview. For example, the Bible teaches readers that a good God made two kinds of people, male and female. Both are good, both have value because they bear his image, and both cannot be changed.

“When there is the absence of God, when biblical truth is kicked out, sin enters,” Hice pointed out. Paul wrote that “the wrath of God is revealed” against those “who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” God “gave them up to dishonorable passions,” which includes embracing relations “contrary to nature” (Romans 1:18, 26). “Sin brings with it blindness,” said Hice.” It is illogical. It makes no sense. And it just turns people into all sorts of behaviors that are destructive.”

The lies of transgender ideology will not be countered unless someone stands up to oppose them. This is why parents and other concerned citizens must “keep voting down the ballot,” Kilgannon urged, “for your state legislature, and your school board, and your health department. All of those things are very important. They really affect so many people that you live with in your community and who you love.”