Evangelicals who have worried about the uptick in gender-identity confusion among youth applauded President Donald Trump’s executive order banning federal funding of gender transitions for minors as a “refreshing return to sanity.”
The January 28 executive order “protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation” stated that the United States “will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
“The federal government is showing its commitment to protecting children from radical gender ideology that has devastated countless lives,” said Matt Sharp, senior counsel at the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). “Not a single dollar should be spent to facilitate or push vulnerable kids towards experimental, often irreversible, drugs and surgeries.”
The order will restrict federal research and education grants to institutions that provide gender-transition treatments to minors. It also will cut government funding of such treatments for minors through Medicaid, military insurance plans, and other forms of federal health insurance.
Previously, the Biden administration had opposed surgical interventions for minors but still backed what it called “gender affirming care” in other forms, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
After signing the order, Trump posted on Truth Social that such treatments had “already ruined far too many precious lives.”
In the executive order, the Department of Justice is directed to “prioritize enforcement of protections against female genital mutilation” and combat “deception of consumers” about “long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation.”
Evangelical ethicists praised the order, including Ryan Anderson, president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Anderson, the author of When Harry Became Sally, has argued that it violates medical ethics to tell children they are not their biological sex and to use treatments to disrupt their natural development. He blamed ideology for driving medical decisions that he said remain experimental and, in children, cannot be reversed.
The order also drew affirmation from the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).
Trump’s action “is desperately needed in an era when culture is consumed by the fiction of gender fluidity,” ERLC president Brent Leatherwood said. “So-called ‘gender transition’ procedures, which were funded and celebrated by the Biden administration, go against God’s design for gender and sexuality and perpetrate permanent, detrimental harms against children, both physically and psychologically.”
Trump repeatedly emphasized transgender issues during his campaign, referring to “left-wing gender insanity” as child abuse and promising executive orders instructing federal agencies to stop all programs affirming the notion of gender transitions.
He acted quickly once in office, bringing up a federal only-two-genders policy in his inaugural address. He signed an executive order the same day defining male and female as biological realities determined at conception and ordering federal agencies to maintain that definition of gender.
Trump also pledged to ask Congress for “a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states.”
Individual states have enacted bans on procedures for minors and faced legal pushback; the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments last month in a dispute over a Tennessee law that bans youth from receiving medical treatment to facilitate transitioning.
In Congress, Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley introduced legislation January 29 that would allow individuals harmed by gender-transition procedures as minors to sue people and institutions that participated in the transitions. The US House of Representatives passed a bill earlier this month that would ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports at federally funded schools.
Some observers have wondered whether political actions opposing gender transitions—especially for minors—could signal a shifting cultural consensus on the issue. ADF’s Sharp thinks so.
“Instead of being a global outlier,” Sharp said, “America will now ‘follow the science,’ like the U.K. and other European countries have done, to ensure that we are identifying safe and effective ways to help kids who experience distress over their biological sex.”
Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom are among European nations that have backtracked on policies regarding treatments for children who struggle with gender identity. The Norwegian government’s Healthcare Investigation Board recommended in 2023 that adolescent hormone therapy and gender-reassignment surgery be labeled as experimental and not supported by sufficient medical evidence. Finnish and Swedish health authorities made similar recommendations while the UK put gender-dysphoria treatments for minors on hold during a review.
LGBTQ-affirming Christians and other advocates have opposed the Trump administration’s moves, saying they discriminate and target transgender Americans. But conservative evangelicals say more work remains to be done.
According to the Colorado Springs–based Family Policy Alliance, only 23 states have passed adequate laws to protect children from transgender medical treatments.
“We thank President Trump for keeping his promise to lead in protecting children at the federal level,” said Family Policy Alliance president Craig DeRoche. At the same time, “we still need members of Congress and legislators in the other 27 states to make these protections permanent.”
