by Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
A California high school refers students to an LGBTQ+ nonprofit that helps minors get transgender surgery referrals, documents obtained by The Daily Signal reveal.
The high school in the Newport Mesa Unified School District in Southern California has scannable QR codes in its hallways that take students to a number of “LGBTQ+ Resources,” including the LGBTQ Center of Orange County’s website, according to photos shared with The Daily Signal.
The resources, compiled by the Newport Harbor High School, include a link to “LGBTQ Affirming Therapy” provided by the LGBTQ Center OC.
The link takes students to a form that helps them connect with a therapist who can write a referral letter for transition procedures. The LGBTQ Center’s website also has a form that connects minors with doctors who prescribe sterilizing hormone-therapy regimens and perform irreversible gender-transition surgeries.
The form asks the person filling it out to select what kind of transgender surgery they are interested in. Options include “top surgery/chest masculinization,” “breast augmentation/chest feminization,” “facial feminization or masculinization,” “tracheal shave,” “body contouring,” “hysterectomy,” “phalloplasty,” “vaginoplasty,” “metoidioplasty,” and “orchiectomy.”
Stories of children undergoing transgender procedures then regretting it have become increasingly common. For example, Chloe Cole—now a detransitioner—started identifying as a boy at 12 years old and got a double mastectomy at just 15, only to regret it a few months later.
Newport Mesa proposed a Memorandum of Understanding with the LGBTQ Center OC in 2022 to counsel LGBTQ+ students, but parents persuaded the school board to withdraw it, a local mother who asked not to be identified told The Daily Signal.
In the memorandum, the district would have agreed to provide the LGBTQ Center “a list of student referrals, upon request of LGBTQ Center OC staff.” The LGBTQ Center would have agreed to help students start Gay-Straight Alliance clubs, conduct LGBTQ+ training and workshops, and more.
Employees of the LGBTQ Center have spoken to the Newport Harbor High School’s LGBTQ+ club during the lunch period.
A presentation in the spring of 2022 obtained through a California Public Records Act request and shared with The Daily Signal discussed “Trans Health and Wellness” and advertised the center’s LGBTQ+ groups for children.
Those include the Rainbow Group, a “social drop-in group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning and allied youth ages 13-18″ facilitated by three adults, and Inbetweeners, which “provides a safe and supportive environment for LGBTQIA and allied youth (or ‘tweens’) ages 10-13.”
After the lecture, the speaker emailed a district employee a list of resources to share with students, including a “Linkage to Care” form for LGBTQ+ kids to find doctors.
The LGBTQ Center offers monthly “Trans Orientation” sessions in cooperation with the University of California-Irvine Health’s Gender Diversity Program. Topics discussed include immigration, hormones, referral letters, getting insurance to cover transgender procedures, and changing one’s name, according to a video on the district website.
“Then we move on to hormones, the exciting part that most people kind of want to figure out,” Miliana Singh, health care and transgender services coordinator at the center, says in a video describing the “Trans 101″ course.
“Strengthen[ing] youth” is one of the LGBTQ Center’s strategic priorities.
Later this month, the center will host a “prom” for a wide range of ages, 13 to 20.
The LGBTQ Center OC provides “education, resources, and referrals” to “undocumented migrants.”
The center works with “LGBTQ, immigrant rights, and social justice advocates to fight for the dignity and rights of immigrants and refugees.”
The Newport Mesa Unified School District is largely funded by property taxes. As such, whether or not families who live there send their kids to Newport Mesa schools, they fund them with their tax dollars.
A mother in the district who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about threats to her family told The Daily Signal she doesn’t want to pay for the district to help kids transition.
“I’m in several chats with a lot of moms, and we have had a lot of people pull their kids from the district after finding out all of this stuff, but the district doesn’t care, because they still get your money either way,” she said. “They don’t care if your kids are there or not.”
The mother pulled her kids out of the school system after the COVID-19 pandemic and now homeschools them.
“There are a lot of parents that are like, ‘Oh, it won’t happen to my kid. It could never happen to my kid’—until it does,” she said.
Neither the school district nor the center responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.
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Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is a reporting fellow for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Daily Signal Podcast.” Send her an email.
Photo “Pediatrician” by cottonbro studio.
