Former transgenders, parents and activists braved frigid temperatures on Wednesday morning to rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court to demand an end to the "butchery" and "trauma" of child sex-change surgeries and treatments.
The rally took place as the court heard oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, a high-stakes case over the constitutionality of Tennessee's ban on puberty blockers and transgender surgeries for minors.
One of the rally speakers, Matt Walsh, who is a podcast host for the Daily Wire and creator of the "What Is a Woman" documentary, told Fox News Digital that the case is about "basic truth."
"The trans agenda represents a unique, distinct threat to children. We have to stand up and protect them, that's what this is all about," he said. "If the Supreme Court gets this case right, then we could be looking at ultimately the death of the gender ideology industry. That’s what we want, and that’s what's at stake."
The rally was organized by a diverse set of groups, including medical watchdog Do No Harm, the Heritage Foundation, Catholic Vote and the LGB Alliance.
One member of the LGB Alliance, Glenna Goldis, from Brooklyn, told Fox News Digital that many lesbian, gay and bisexual people see sex-change treatments as a form of conversion therapy.
"A lot of gay people feel strongly about this issue," she said. "But we're not able to get our voices out, because the LGBTQ lobby has so much money, and they drown us out, and they pretend that they're speaking for gay people, but they do not."
There was also a significant presence of former transgender people – "detransitioners" – many of whom said they did not want more children to undergo the negative health effects they had endured due to sex-altering treatments.
One detransitioner, a woman named Laura Becker, told Fox News Digital that she had stopped the treatments after realizing that they were causing her incredible harm and trauma.
"My advocacy is around healing the trauma instead of permanently medically mutilating the bodies of children and vulnerable young adults like I was," she said. "I took testosterone when I was 19, and I had my breasts sliced off when I was 20 years old, despite being suicidal. I ended up being diagnosed with PTSD two years later, just from the transition."
"I had trauma already, which made me have an identity crisis, [and] then I had even more trauma from the medicalization," Becker added. "That's a permanent effect I live with for the rest of my life."
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Another detransitioner, named Claire A., from Maryland, told Fox News Digital that the vast majority of people who undergo sex-change surgeries and treatments suffer from severe traumatic experiences that are only compounded by transitioning.
"I started going to therapy for trauma that I experienced in my childhood that contributed to my trans identity, and through healing from that, I healed from the pain that made me feel I needed to change my body," she said.
Despite ending her treatments, Claire said she continues to suffer daily pain.
"I'm three years off of testosterone, and I still experience pelvic floor dysfunction," she said. "My voice hurts, I can't raise my voice very loud, it hurts to talk. It hurts. My joints hurt. It's not a fun life to live. I would like to keep other children from being forced to live this life."
There were also several parents of transgender children who have been denied custody and access to their children because they would not affirm their transgender identities.
"I haven’t held my son in four years, my son is six years old now," Adam Vena, a father from California, told Fox News Digital.
Vena said that with the prompting of his son’s mother, his child, Aidan, began transitioning into a girl at two years old. Two years later, Vena said, he lost custody of his son, "because I was not a gender-affirming parent."
"A California court ordered my son to go to a gender clinic at a Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles when I requested to sit in on the gender assessment, they denied me access to ask my own questions as his father," he explained. "They also denied me a phone call. So, me being a father has been completely cut out of my son's life."
Harrison Tinsley, another California father who recently regained custody of his son, told Fox News Digital, "I think this is one of the greatest evils of our time, like our lobotomy or slavery, transgender mutilation of children."
"The time to stop this is right now," said Tinsley. "The Supreme Court's going to rule the right way, and I'm hoping that Trump and Congress can ban this federally, stop the mutilation of children and stop this irreversible damage."
