My liberal, “gender-affirming” past

by Shannara Johnson

I just watched a YouTube video with former FOX News host Megyn Kelly where she declares that she’s “done with preferred pronouns.”

She then lists things she used to do and say in order to appease LGBTQ+ people, which ultimately contributed to the absolute madness we’re seeing today.

I started tearing up while listening to her confess. You see, before I became a conservative and a Catholic, I was a liberal and a New Age disciple.

You know how they say, “Some people are so open-minded that their brains fall out”?

That was me.

In my twenties in Germany, I didn’t just accept gay people, I went all out in my attempts to show an “inclusive mindset.” I hung out with gay friends at gay bars, swooning over the handsome guys (which of course were out of my reach). I went to drag shows and even to one Pride Parade, although I found its open displays of sex and depravity disgusting even then.

Years later, when my contractor husband invited a gay couple who were his customers over for dinner, I fawned over them like crazy—to a degree that made them uncomfortable—and urged them to consider adopting. I’m blushing even now thinking back on how I embarrassed myself.

When my son’s best friend in middle school “transitioned” into a girl (the first kid in his class to do so, but not the last), I cheered him on and even went shopping for girls’ clothes with him when his own mother wouldn’t.

Becoming a Catholic shifted my worldview. I realized that what I’d been celebrating and promoting was not only hurting the people themselves who engaged in it—by acting in defiance of natural law and the way God intended us to live—but was hurting all of society.

At the same time, I heard about the first “drag queen story hours” where gay adult performers who usually work in nightclubs were now displaying their kink in front of preschoolers and kindergartners.

Then came the “trans activists” crying about how oppressed they were, even though they (as a group that makes up only 1% of the overall population) were garnering huge attention from the mainstream media.

Things started happening faster and faster.

Suddenly, our culture—for the first time in history, as far as I know—started celebrating mental illness.

We went from thorough psychiatric evaluations for gender dysphoria to “trans” becoming a fashionable trend. Anyone who “self-identified” as the opposite gender, or no gender, or any of the other 45+ genders, was proclaimed to be that by the woke crowd and had to be addressed with their “preferred pronouns.”

Whole cliques of middle-school girls started transitioning together, and bearded men donned cheap wigs and smeared lipstick all over their mouths, claiming they were women now and must be treated as such. They didn’t even need hormone treatments or cut off their male genitals anymore… just say you’re a woman and voila, you are magically transformed into one.

Sexual predators and failed male athletes soon enough discovered these loopholes that would let them invade female safe spaces and sports teams.

I never considered myself a feminist, but the world has become a more dangerous place for women today than at any time in my life. Rabid trans activists now physically attack women who protest against the loss of their hard-earned rights.

Christians, too, are increasingly under fire for their bigoted binary beliefs because they insist that “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) Recently, an armed “trans man” walked into a Christian elementary school and shot to death three nine-year-old students and three teachers. Trans activists (and the Biden administration!) sided with the shooter.

I’m ashamed of what I did and said back then… just so other people would smile at me and call me “tolerant” and “accepting” and (not the least) a “cool mom.”

Granted, Megyn Kelly had much more exposure and power of persuasion than I. I was just one little cog in the machine, but I too contributed in my own, tiny way to the horrors we see going on right now.

And there’s no doubt in my mind that this is just the beginning. We only have to look across the pond to Britain, where you can now go to jail for hate speech when you “misgender” anyone or dare to say that “men can’t be women.” Let alone the threats of violence and death from the trans community itself.

Catholics have been largely silent in this conversation, but we need to start standing up for God and His truth. Staying silent will just allow this evil to perpetuate and grow. If you have any doubts whether or not to speak out against gender ideology, consider that as soon as “trans rights” are enshrined in federal law, biological men will be able to enter convents… and not long after, we will hear about raped and impregnated nuns.

Stand up for the truth. Speak out against gender ideology. Take back God’s rainbow. Celebrate Sacred Heart of Jesus month. And pray, pray, pray that God may loosen Satan’s grip on our culture.

Isn’t that what Christ meant when He asked us to pick up our cross and follow Him?

The author is a former Lamoille County resident and candidate for the Legislature. She now lives in Ohio and publishes the Substack blog, Diary of a Stumbling Saint.