In a rather surprising development a U.S. District Judge, Terry Doughty, has temporarily blocked the White House, along with a number of federal agencies including the Justice Department, the FBI, the CDC, and others from pressuring social-media companies to censor free speech the government doesn’t happen to like (Missouri v. Biden). It’s fitting that the ruling was issued on Independence Day. Prompting it was government actors openly strong-arming companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google and a raft of other media organizations to censor viewpoints that challenged the government’s Covid narrative. Following Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, it came out that some 80 FBI agents had been embedded into social-media companies for this purpose. Writes Bret Swanson of the WSJ: “The agents mostly weren’t fighting terrorism but flagging wrongthink by American citizens, including imminent scientists who suggested different paths on Covid policy.” Of course, and as Judge Doughty notes in his Ruling, “the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech.”

Regardless of the outcome in Missouri, expect an appeal, then another one, until the Supreme Court is asked to map out the parameters of the First Amendment in our ever more censorial society. In the meantime, another form of censorship is raging across the nation, where dissenting voices are quashed, de-platformed, terminated from their jobs, or simply bullied into submission. I’m referring here to gender ideology.

It’s been said that if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it. Children are especially subject to such manipulation. According to the prevailing narrative in the public schools, we now get to choose our gender. And those who identify with a gender different from the one mistakenly “assigned at birth” must be “affirmed” in their gender choice. If not, according to the narrative, they will suffer a host of mental and emotional consequences that, if left untreated, may result in suicide. Along with the federal government and the nation’s public schools, this narrative is being pushed by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and most other professional medical organizations. Medical schools too are being pressured to cave to the new orthodoxy or risk losing accreditation. Radicalized state legislators are similarly pushing the narrative. California’s AB-957 would make parents who don’t go along with their child’s gender identity akin to child abusers.

The gender narrative relies on two essential claims, both false: 1) Sex is not Binary, and 2), “Gender Affirming Care” (i.e., puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatment, gender transition surgery) results in beneficial, healthy, outcomes.

Dr. Miriam Grossman, a practicing psychiatrist, author, and speaker, has been on the front lines of refuting the gender narrative before barely anyone knew it was an issue. In light of Judge Doughty’s ruling, Grossman’s remarks in the video below, made last year, are more pertinent than ever.

During the Covid pandemic, as Bret Swanson notes, “legions of doctors stayed quiet after witnessing the demonization of their peers who challenged the Covid orthodoxy. A little censorship leads people to watch what they say. Millions of patients and citizens were deprived of important insights as a result.”

It’s one thing for private professionals to suppress their opinions on matters of wide public interest; it’s quite another for the government to compel such suppression. This is something new, but “[d]uring the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’ “ U.S. District Judge, Terry Doughty, Missouri v. Biden.

Today the same and worse is happening to an entire generation through gender ideology. This has been allowed to happen, in large part, through the silence of medical and other informed professionals who know better. It’s well past time to speak out. As Dr. Grossman exhorts, “We can’t be complicit in the lie by staying silent.” Indeed, we mustn’t.

Mark Schneider