(The Washington Stand) — In progressive America, the Democratic Party’s litmus test for public service is transgender ideology. And not just casual support, nor a general affirmation of “LGBTQ+ rights.” Those who wish to participate in the system must embrace every last jot and tittle of the transgender agenda, specifically.
For those who prefer to side with the truth, even members of other favored minority groups had better look out, lest the door hit them on the way out.
The latest casualty to this ideological intolerance is Glenna Goldis, a lawyer in the New York attorney general’s office, who was fired in late January for telling the truth about the lack of evidence for carrying out gender transition procedures on minors.
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On January 15, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) accused Goldis of “disruptive public speech” for publicizing her views and gave her one week to recant. On January 22, after Goldis “rescued my space heater from the office and rode the subway home,” as she wrote in The Free Press, she received an email at 5:08 p.m. informing her that her position was “terminated effective immediately,” and that she was “barred from entering the premises.” Thus did the office tersely terminate Goldis after four years.
Goldis was no closet conservative or unaligned misfit. “For 15 years I worked as a public interest lawyer in civil legal aid and Democrat-run government agencies,” she wrote. “As a lesbian, I care passionately about the safety of gender nonconforming youth.” Goldis worked in the consumer fraud division, targeting debt collectors and “protecting low-income New Yorkers.” She seemed like the perfect progressive fit.
However, precisely because she “wanted to fight for vulnerable people,” and was “troubled by how vulnerable patients in psychological distress are being misled” in pediatric gender medicine, the prosecutor’s office unceremoniously ejected Goldis from her justice-oriented position.
What first alerted Goldis to the troubling trend was the testimony of a detransitioner. “I’d become concerned after hearing a lesbian detransitioner on a podcast explain the disturbing side effects she’d suffered: painful vaginal atrophy caused by taking testosterone and permanent nerve damage from her double mastectomy that limited her range of motion,” she explained.
“To make sure I understood both sides of the story,” Goldis “began researching the explanations of gender doctors” and was shocked to find that “the explanations were incoherent. The definition of gender identity seemed circular: ‘A man is someone who identifies as a man.’ And the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) repeatedly implied gender identity has a biological basis, yet it couldn’t back that up with studies. I later learned why – because it’s false.”
Goldis began refuting these false claims on a blog called Bad Facts, where she eventually published 60 essays. She initially “wrote under a pseudonym to preserve my career,” but felt the obfuscation become “more and more ridiculous” until, “by October 2024, I was writing under my own name.”
When James’s office filed amicus briefs defending gender transition procedures for minors (e.g., against Tennessee’s law at issue in Skrmetti) or opposed President Donald Trump’s executive orders, Goldis raised internal concerns. But, she wrote, “I was at best ignored, at worst threatened.” When James’s office claimed that gender transition procedures for minors were “life-saving medical treatment,” Goldis wrote, “I knew this wasn’t true – even the ACLU had acknowledged as much a few months earlier before the Supreme Court – so I emailed the press office and civil rights bureau chief to alert them to the falsehood. They never replied.”
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But the silent treatment was worse in person. When Goldis “proposed joining a multistate fraud investigation into the American Academy of Pediatrics,” her boss “barely said a word,” and Goldis eventually “gave up when I couldn’t stand the awkwardness anymore.”
Still, silence was preferable to open threats. While Goldis was attempting to “have a constructive conversation” with a colleague over men in women’s sports, a colleague told her, “If you say one more word on this subject, I’m calling HR.” Eventually, the Office of General Counsel found Goldis’s blog and threatened “discipline, including dismissal,” for “violating the office’s ‘outside activities’ policy.”
Goldis knew her speech outside of work was constitutionally protected, as the Supreme Court ruled in Pickering v. Board of Education (1968). But, in an attempt to smooth things over, she began filing “outside activity requests,” which were always ignored or denied. In June 2025, Goldis spoke at a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop on “The Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors.” Her request to speak had been denied by her office, which provoked Goldis to respond, “I’m a consumer fraud attorney alleging that pediatric gender medicine could be a consumer fraud. Doesn’t anyone in this office care?”
Goldis concluded that they did not. She endured more months of persecution for exercising her free speech, as James’s office steadily approached the decision to fire her. The attorneys tasked with disciplining her “struggled to explain why my public statements were problematic. It was as if they hadn’t even read what I’d written,” Goldis recalled. “When the general counsel finally identified … an objectionable line in my blog, it was where I’d referenced the Supreme Court’s holding that banning pediatric gender medicine is not discriminatory. The general counsel wrote that it contradicted James’s legal position. Indeed.”
New York’s persecution of Goldis demonstrates the intolerance for any deviation from transgender orthodoxy that prevails on the Left. No longer is it enough to endorse homosexuality, or even to practice it. One must also deny the fundamental distinctions between male and female. The experience led Goldis to conclude, “The Democratic elite’s zombie-like devotion to pediatric gender medicine is as obstinate as ever.” That line would fit in a fundraising appeal for Turning Point USA, but the woman who authored it is no conservative.
“Increasingly, common sense knows no party label,” Quena Gonzalez, Family Research Council’s senior director of Government Affairs, told The Washington Stand. “It’s only within the elite level that the Democratic Party is so beholden to its radical fringes that it must fire and destroy anyone, even one of its own, who dares to believe that men and women are different. ‘Follow the Science,’ indeed.”
Goldis’s courageous rejection of transgender orthodoxy also proves that it is possible for a progressive lawyer to change her mind by honestly considering the evidence. Several years ago, queer-identifying leftist Jamie Reed blew the whistle at a pediatric transgender center in St. Louis, Missouri, after she became convinced that the center’s practices were “morally and medically appalling.”
READ: ‘Detransitioner’ wins $2 million malpractice suit in major legal victory
What makes the actions of Goldis, Reed, and other left-wing critics of transgender ideology most courageous is the strict orthodoxy enforced by the Left. Because their critique is unwelcome, these leftists find that they themselves are no longer welcome among their fellow leftists. The truth they have come to believe is “politically coded” as conservative, so it is hard to find anyone but conservatives who will listen to them. For those who have spent their whole lives opposing and fearing conservatives, that can be a fearful thought.
Yet, for those progressive outcasts who take the plunge, they are often surprised by the reception they receive. Instead of the coldness and hatred they are taught to expect from conservative Christians, they often meet the warm love of Christ. In some cases, this can be the beginning of a journey, not only for reshaping their political worldview, but also for embracing the gospel of Christ.
When secular progressives buck their party’s orthodoxy on transgenderism, that is a victory for persuasion, and for truth itself. Christians should pray that such people experience not only a political transformation, but spiritual salvation, through the power of Jesus Christ.
In New York state government, the truth will get you fired. In Jesus Christ, “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
This article is reprinted with permission from the Family Research Council, publishers of The Washington Stand at washingtonstand.com.
