It used to be that once a National Institutes of Health grant award hit “status 19,” the money was about to go out the door.
That’s not the case anymore. The Trump administration has enacted an unprecedented political review process, pushing hundreds of awards into limbo. Status 19 — an administrative code describing awards with senior leadership sign-off — is being used as the holding cell.
Current and former career staff say this extra review by senior leaders is occurring after grants have undergone peer review, been approved by multiple offices in NIH, and screened for red-flag words around race, gender or other behavioral and social sciences. The extra political reviews are required not only for newly funded grants but also for annual payment installments for previously awarded projects.
As a result, some grants are lingering in status 19 for weeks or even months, gumming up the works as grant officers try to get awards out the door ahead of the new fiscal year starting in October. Flagged grants reviewed by NOTUS had to do with maternal health, contraceptive use, aging, dementia and opioid abuse.
“The notion that Francis Collins or Mike Lauer would ever have reviewed individual grants like this is so beyond the realm of comprehension,” a senior career staffer said, referring to the former directors of NIH and its Office of Extramural Research. “It’s laughable to me.”
A second senior NIH official called status 19 a “graveyard for grants.” The NIH staffers were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
As one of the largest grant funders in the federal government, NIH’s process is a prime example of how the Trump administration is implementing more political oversight of grants across a wide swath of agencies, even as its efforts to formalize those reviews face pushback.
Senate Republicans voted to temporarily block a White House regulation to formalize political review, which has already led to delays in posting and awarding grants at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Department of Interior and other agencies.
Researchers, patient advocates and biotech companies are outraged by the proposed regulation, which the White House is seeking to implement by Oct. 1 but could be blocked until December if the House also approves a delay.
Senior NIH leaders sent around a new agency review flowchart in May outlining additional steps once an award hits status 19. The flowchart, viewed by NOTUS, mandates a review by the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) and an HHS counselor before grantees are given a notice of award. There are no political appointees at OER, but its director reports to NIH Director and Trump appointee Jay Bhattacharya.
As a result of the extra reviews, the number of grants sitting for weeks in status 19 have surged. Around 8% of new grant awards are sitting in status 19 for anywhere from two to seven weeks, according to internal data shared with NOTUS.
In past years, around 11% of first-time awards had been released to the recipients within a week. This year, it’s 2%.
The delays are even more pronounced for annual payment installments for ongoing grants. The vast majority previously left status 19 within three days; now it takes 53 days to get 90% of payments out the door.
Lauer, who served as NIH’s extramural research director from 2015 to February 2025, said he couldn’t recall a time when a political appointee — including the NIH director — halted awarding of a research grant after it had gone through the review and approval process.
“Status 19 was not something I thought about,” Lauer told NOTUS.
NIH career staff stress that by the time grant awards reach status 19, they have been through dozens of editing and review steps. They’ve undergone peer review and a second look by an advisory council. Grant officers have gone through a checklist, including confirming that women and racial minorities have been appropriately included, something required by statute.
In grants reviewed by NOTUS, HHS or EOR staff flagged words including “diverse,” “equity,” “structural” and “underrepresented” and asked for clarification about what the researchers meant by them. In one project, a staffer wrote that the word “structural” could include concepts that are inconsistent with NIH priorities.
They asked for more clarification in projects that focused on health disparities or racial groups. Officials wrote that focusing on specific racial groups required more justification. In one project that expressed support for scholars and researchers from a variety of backgrounds, an official responded that the language could raise legal concerns if interpreted as targeting people based on demographics.
In multiple flagged grants, officials expressed concerns that they weren’t worth funding because their only practical use might be to support the writing of new laws.
HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard disputed the notion that status 19 is being used to hold up grants under extra political reviews. She said grants can remain in status 19 for five to 10 days while they are given final review by the Office of Extramural Research.
“There is no political appointee review stage in the NIH grant review process,” Hilliard said in a statement. “OER’s review is a longstanding part of NIH’s grant review process.”
Lauer said releasing grant money might face occasional delays, but it was almost always because Congress had failed to pass a budget for NIH, leading to uncertainty about how much total grant funding would be available.
Trump appointees are also conducting extra layers of review to the notices posted by the government to let researchers know money is available for specific projects or programs. Researchers say they’ve seen more delays in posting those notices — another obstacle in getting grant funding out the door.
“It’s this black box of HHS review,” said Colleen Kelley, an associate dean for research at Emory University.
In addition to trying to re-scrawl his name on the Kennedy Center facade by adding “Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump,” Trump's trying to rename the physical site “the President Donald J. Trump Plaza.” Opposing attys' statement below. (Wash Litig Grp & @DDFund_) pic.twitter.com/JMEoaKjJ0x
Orange Man is so in need of affirmation that he will stop at nothing to slap his name on any edifice in DC. Sad, pathetic and illegal. Astounding what can happen to a person whose Daddy didn’t hug him enough. http://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/a…
Greenland authorities have forced a US oil company connected to Donald Trump to postpone drilling wells in the Arctic territory, defying claims by the US president’s envoy that Americans could be extracting crude by next year. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a…
The reports from the USS Abraham Lincoln about multiple sailors attempting to jump into the sea are disturbing. Long deployments are hard. They are a lot harder when the mission isn’t well defined and there is no end in sight. Here is some information on how to get help:… https://t.co/06a8Nu1ckx
The Department of the Navy must allow a bipartisan Congressional Delegation to visit the USS Lincoln to conduct oversight investigation into this horrible situation. CODELs have visited war zones to inspect the conditions of our troops. There is no reason to be denied access. https://t.co/l1OwrXwJo1
NEW: The USS Abraham Lincoln was supposed to come home in May — instead, under Trump's Navy, its sailors are grinding through a ninth month at sea with no end date, and the crew is so broken that multiple have attempted suicide. This should be a national scandal.
The U.S. has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures. Case in point: The war on Iran. Now, an even bigger miscalculation on the Strait of Hormuz.
Worse than fake news is fake intelligence. Be careful.
Allah is Great, Greater than ANY power on Earth. In Allah we trust.
EXCLUSIVE: The wife of the USS Lincoln sailor who jumped overboard last week says she wasn't notified about the incident until four days after & said her husband repeatedly expressed concerns over his mental health but was "brushed off." w/@PriyaReportinghttps://t.co/jJlmtDHHNC
".. deployed for more than 250 days and it has not made a port call in 200 days, setting a record for consecutive days at sea .."@wsj.com http://www.wsj.com/politics/nat…
NEW: The U.S. military has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones during the war with Iran, or roughly 25 percent of its fleet, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The high-demand drones cost between $30 million and $50 million a piece. w/ @noahjrobertson…
Q: A lot of people around here can't afford to fly. Can you say something about gas prices being a dollar more than they were a year ago?SEAN DUFFY: No one complained about Joe Biden's inflation, which was wildQ: Can you talk about gas prices?
Florida allows voucher schools to cite their faith as a reason to deny admission to gay students. But the AG says the same schools can't cite their faith as a reason to deny admission to anti-vaxxers. What a selective version of faith and “freedom.”https://t.co/tdSfAUJwhi
The “covered up” data was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in September 2021, where it has sat, publicly, for five years. It shows vaccinated women miscarried at the same rate as everyone else, about 1 in 8. The 82% figure comes from a denominator error: it counts… https://t.co/HtVOF5dDkR
Shame on you @tedcruz. This is a bald faced lie. You are lying. You are purposely lying. You are purposely spreading malicious & dangerous disinformation. How the fuck do you live with yourself? Shame on you. https://t.co/1s040cuCAZ
🚨BREAKING: A Nebraska court Wednesday rejected the RNC’s lawsuit seeking to block certain U.S. citizens abroad from voting in the state, handing the national GOP another major loss in its escalating legal campaign against overseas voters. https://t.co/4nHl5KtzSE
— Sara McGee for Texas HD 132 (@SaraForTexLege) August 12, 2026
BREAKING WaPo:Republican Rep. Max Miller's ex-wife has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Miller and his attorney — alleging that they "recklessly published" a nude image of Miller's 2-year-old daughter online.
BASH: It sounds like you're saying you're not going to return Max Miller's donations because you believe himLAWLER: 😮 Look, this is a private family matter. Max has also made allegations against his ex-wife. Nothing has been corroborated here. Do you have information that proves the allegations?
Watching the media and Democrats fall all over themselves defending Graham Platner is truly next level.
After all the sanctimonious lectures about everything, it turns out, they don’t actually care about Nazi affiliations or sexual abuse and harassment. pic.twitter.com/pV9FrBbO0x
CNN contributor Scott Jennings just falsely accused Hasan Piker of supporting lynchings using out-of-context clips in an attempt to attack Abdul El-Sayed's campaign. Defamation like this is highly unlawful and can result in millions of dollars in damages if Piker sues. pic.twitter.com/7mqYoacwGm
This is beyond insane, even for TX: Fort Worth police just ARRESTED a man for saying "bullshit" while speaking at last week's Tarrant County meeting opposing a plan to cut nearly 50% of Election Day voting locations. He's charged with disrupting a meeting, @startelegram reports.
I’m very disappointed that SacAnime has disinvited me from a Halo 25 reunion at their conference next month. If you thought we defeated Cancel Culture in 2024, guess again! pic.twitter.com/DSEWcIEjDA
Its as simple as just not being an asshole dude. You're not entitled to be at an event when you speak out against the rights of the people organizing it.
CNBC: Do you regret voting for RFK Jr?BILL CASSIDY: If you want to tell me that somebody didn't tell me the truth, and I should've seen in the future they were not gonna tell the truth, you can say, 'Bill you should've seen into the future'
KILMEADE: DHS plans to spend $20 million on electric shock gloves to aid federal agents. How would that work?HOMAN: It's another device to help someone be compliant when they're not. You can't have the first thing you go for be lethal force.
This isn't going to become some anomalous method of arresting people. They will be shocking people like this as a matter of course. pic.twitter.com/U9SuvaMTvu
Pastor David Ritchie is charged with solicitation of prostitution. He is one of eight men arrested during an undercover operation. https://bit.ly/4xs0mDH
BREAKING NYT:A federal judge in Boston just dismissed an antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard University — dealing a blow to the Trump admin's efforts to force the university into a settlement.
The Trump administration is abandoning controversial Biden-era plans to help developers build power lines in areas that badly need increased transmission infrastructure.
Recently, Ron agreed with me to buy the entire Columbo library. It was only $30, and yet Ron and I always check with each other on such personal things. But Ron knows such things are more important to me than him.
Today I made supper so he could keep installing the ceiling lights and fans in my new office. So I was also doing posting for tomorrow. But after I made dinner and cleaned up, I came back to the office. But I cannot concentrate at all. Ron has tried to help me.
Every time I try to focus on the news, I get my mind blocked. Yet when I look at the other computer monitor, I see a video I am playing; it is comforting. Not sure why, but it is. I guess I will watch Columbo and then go to bed. I hope I can sleep OK tonight. Hugs
I had a really bad night where I was tearing my skin on my butt and thrashing around. Ron tried twice to wake me and once when he did it I was so deep in my memories of abuse that I tried to protect myself from him. Once I was awake and knew what he had tried to do for me I couldn’t go back to sleep. I tossed and turned until I got up.
But then I did something that most people won’t understand, and in truth I don’t either. I suffered from the memories of my past and then when I woke up and went to my office to then go online to the Male Survivor site. There I read more stories of abuse like mine. Not all abuse stories have the physical abuse that mine did but the rest is still abuse I understand. Still the reading of their abuse so mirrowed mine caused me even more distress and upset.
I sat at my desk this morning and just cried. No video on the other computer, no reading anything on the other computer. Just sitting here remembering the assaults, the pain of having a cock forced into my rectrum unwanted and not lubed, being forced to take a cock into my mouth with their hands firmly grasping my head so I had to take more of their dick than I could breathe with in my mouth. I apologize for being so graphic, but either I rejoin the survivors site and go down that rabbit hole, or just try to gently share the childhood I had here. To tell the truth even now I am rocked and my stomach is upset over what I remember.
I know those who were abused either physically, emotionally, or even sexually understand what I am trying to say. The memories never go away; they fade and for a while you can ignore them. But then like what happened to me the last two nights I had nightmares of my childhood in complete color and detail. I not only remembered the events in my dreams; I felt every aspect of it on my body, and then the worst part. Something I have not shared yet. Ron woke me saying Scottie, no one is hitting you now. My body did not agree with him.
Some of my abusers would force me to say back to them things they wanted to hear me say. You like this don’t you! Thank me for fucking you! You caused me to beat you and now say you’re sorry for doing that. So many more. I struggle with the memories of one hellspawn sibling male holding my little balls in his hand and squessing until I agreed to drink his pee just to stop him hurting me. For the two male siblings and their father there was no understanding or sympathy. They wanted a couple of things, my humiliation and their sexual satisfaction. They demanded I admit I was not equal to them and that they could abuse me with no consequences.
So I had had many months without much issues rocking my calm. But the last three nights have given me nightmares, and Ron has had to wake me because I was trying hard to scream out. I am a bit scared to go back to bed because as soon as I sleep the memories will return. I do not want or need to relive that time of my life. Anyway I will go back to listening to the election results. But I am worried this will be another even worse night for me. How do I avoid the pain I know is coming? Damn now I am scared to go to bed. Hugs
If you read the law it lets anyone claim to be offended by any media and that it doesn’t need to be declared obscene to be labeled obscene. Why is that? Because to a small group of very vocal haters just the existence of LGBTQ+ people is obscene. It offends their god so it offends them. But don’t try to claim the Bible is obscene or pushes offensive stuff it has special carve outs that make all the icky bad parts OK. I hope this will be appealed to the full appeals court as this attempt to errase an entire population of people based on bigotry must not be allowed to stand. I also just read where the education department under the hypermaga education secretary will not be enforcing or even recording the bullying and abuse of the LGBTQ+ kids at school. Her view is let the little fagots fend for themselves it seems. Remember she and her husband turned a blind eye to the many young boys being sexually assaulted by the wrestlers in their group.
Also the majority of the three judges panel said that the three patrons did not have standing to object because no books had been banned yet. They seem to have a wait and see if the victim is stabbed before taking the knife from the threatening person. That is stupid. Everyone knows what the law is intended to do and the writers of the law admit that openly. It seems the tRump appointed judges want to let attacks on the librarians and on the books that mention gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, and questioning kids / people be removed as soon as possible knowing it is harder to put them back than to ban them in the first place. Hugs.
The “social section” in Crawford County Library’s Van Buren branch (Screenshot from court documents)
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Arkansas’ 2023 law restricting access to library materials can go into effect, three years after a judge blocked two sections of the law on First Amendment grounds.
The three-judge panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled that the 18 plaintiffs had no standing to challenge one section of Act 372 and failed to prove that the other section was unconstitutionally vague.
The two sections create criminal liability for librarians who distribute content that some consider “obscene” or “harmful to minors,” and give city and county governing bodies the final say over library content.
Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin praised the ruling, saying it “allows Arkansas to move forward in enforcing a law that protects children from obscene materials while increasing accountability for public-library curation decisions.”
The plaintiffs challenging the law include libraries, bookstores, advocacy groups and individual library patrons. Their lead attorney, John Adams, said in a statement that the legal team is “evaluating all available legal options, including further review by the courts,” after Thursday’s ruling.
“Libraries and bookstores should be places where people can freely explore ideas — not where booksellers and librarians face criminal liability for selling, checking out, or even just shelving constitutionally protected books,” Adams said. “The freedom to read is fundamental to a free society and has always been protected by the First Amendment.”
Griffin said Act 372 was meant to “to address legitimate concerns about minors’ access to obscene materials and to establish a process for reviewing challenged content.”
School and public libraries already had content challenge policies before Act 372. The law stalled in the Legislature in 2023 before it was amended to say library materials would be relocated to an area inaccessible to minors, not removed from the premises, if elected officials find them to be “obscene.”
Section 5 of Act 372 allows city and county governing bodies to relocate challenged material if a challenger disagrees with a library panel’s decision to keep it in its original section.
Another section of the law that gave school boards the same authority over school library materials had not been challenged.
Adams told the appeals court in June that Crawford County, a defendant in the case, showed what the law’s restrictions would look like in practice. The county’s five library branches separated LGBTQ+ children’s books from the rest of the collection after public outcry, and county officials cited Act 372 as a reason to maintain these “social sections,” even before the legislation became law.
Crawford County lost a separate federal lawsuit in 2024 after three parents alleged that the “social sections” violated the First Amendment.
The three library patrons who sued over the state law do not have standing because Section 5’s book challenge and relocation policies do not harm the plaintiffs, the appeals court panel said Thursday.
“Plaintiffs are speculating libraries might decide to segregate certain books as part of their curation policies, which they have not yet adopted, or in response to challenges, which have not yet been filed,” the panel wrote.
The librarian and bookstore plaintiffs have standing to challenge the other section of the law because they would be at risk of prosecution for noncompliance, according to the ruling, but the three judges disagreed with Adams’ claim that Section 1 of Act 372 was too vague.
This section makes “furnishing a harmful item to a minor” a Class A misdemeanor. Conviction would lead to a maximum prison sentence of one year.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks wrote that the law’s lack of a definition for terms like “furnishing” and “harmful” could lead to violations of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
An unchallenged provision of Act 372 removes schools and public libraries from the part of Arkansas state code that previously exempted them from prosecution for disseminating obscene content. Another unchallenged provision made school and public library employees liable for a Class D felony if they “knowingly” distribute obscene material or inform others of how to obtain it. A Class D felony conviction carries a maximum prison sentence of six years.
However, the language of Section 1 “limit[s] its application to situations when a person knowingly furnishes an item to a minor knowing of the item’s harmful character” and therefore is not too vague, the appeals court ruled.
Chief Judge Steven Colloton wrote in a concurring opinion Thursday that he understood the plaintiffs’ vagueness claim but disagreed with it “because third-party library patrons have no constitutional right to receive unfettered access to books of their choice at taxpayer expense.”
Colloton was appointed to the court in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush and has been chief judge since 2024. President Donald Trump appointed the panel’s other two judges, Ralph Erickson and L. Steven Grasz, in 2017.
Erickson was on the three-judge panel in April that allowed a 2023 Iowa law to go into effect, requiring the removal of books containing “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act” from Iowa public school libraries.
The removal of the injunction on Act 372 comes as the Arkansas Department of Education has been considering requiring public libraries to restrict children’s access to “sexually explicit materials” in order to receive state funding.
Dozens of Arkansans told the education department in June that they oppose requiring libraries to ensure patrons age 16 or younger cannot check out materials that depict or describe sexual contact and behavior.
The Arkansas State Library Board will meet Aug. 14 to consider sending the rules to a legislative panel for further approval. Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed all six board members.
Author Info
Tess Vrbin
Tess Vrbin came to the Advocate from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where she reported on low-income housing and tenants’ rights, and won awards for her coverage of 2021 flooding and tornado damage in rural Arkansas. She previously covered local government for The Commercial Dispatch in Mississippi and state government for the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri.
Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
I had my allergy shots this morning. I’m in agony right now. Not from the shots, but from the pain in my back muscles as they spaum. Every since I have had the operation on my lower back to reduce the pain in my right leg, the pain in my back from the rest of the back muscles spasuming is out of control. When I saw the surgeon this week, he looked and noticed how badly swollen the mucles were and agreed that I needed immediate relief from the situation I was in. He put in for mucle relaxing trigger point injections to relax the mucles. But other than lying down and taking muscle relaxers, there is little I can do at this point. I do have a hot tub, but if I push Ron to open it and get it ready to work, he will have to stop the work on the rest of the projects, including my new office, which I really need finished. So I suffer and often go to bed.
This video is a great way to talk about how to deal with Christian nationalist bigotry and the forcing of Christian religion on others who have different beliefs. In fact I read a post while waiting for my shots about a new trend of Christian evangelicals going on airplanes and forcing those in the plane to listen to sermons and preach about the Christian god. I don’t get this, but I experienced something similar in the military, where a sect of Christians would try to cornor me every time I sat down for a meal in the chow hall to eat they would swarm my table demanding I listen to them talk about their god. It did not make me feel better about their faith nor did it make me less gay, which was their real goal. In fact when I returned the gesture to talk to them about my beliefs, they got really offended. Strange how they think pushing their religion goes only one way in their minds. The thing is they know religion is a protected class where sexual orientation is not, but some friends and I came up with a good way to discourage them. We would listen to their spiel if they listened to ours first. We then spun them a made up religion on the house of Approditie, a religion based on having sex and being body worshippers. They got so grossed out over having to discuss the sex and nudity that they stopped pushing their shit on me. I wonder if it would work today on the religions and indiscretions you hear about in the news. Hugs.
More hate and bigotry enacted against all the medical safety data available. Guess I am just not being understanding today because these laws are not only not needed but also very harmful. They cause a lot more problems than the pretended harm they claim to solve. It is the attempt to regulate and restrict sexual / gender standards into the laws. It just causes kids and people problems for no reason and promotes anger / bigotry against a small minority of people. Hugs
The United Kingdom’s Department of Education has published its updated guidance for “Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026” (KCSIE) and it will take effect on September 1. However, the guidance is likely to put trans and gender-non-conforming children at greater risk.
“We criticise numerous aspects of the guidance, especially as to how schools should approach requests related to ‘social transition,’” The Good Law Project wrote in a statement responding to the draft guidance earlier this year. “We also emphasise its failure to properly explain how schools should accommodate the needs of trans pupils in accessing various aspects of school life, such as toilets, changing facilities, and sports.”
Last year, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled that, for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act, the legal definition of “woman” is based on “biological sex.” In the aftermath, the Equality and Human Rights Commission released temporary guidance on barring trans people from single-sex spaces. They’ve now released their finalized plan, which says that businesses and institutions should prevent trans people using a single-sex spaces, and that if they allow trans people to use them, they will no longer be considered single-sex spaces.
The aggressive new schools guidance set out in KCSIE is set to comply with the EHRC’s updated policies around single-sex spaces, ruling that trans and gender-questioning children cannot use spaces aligned with their gender identity, even if they have socially transitioned.
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Email Email Email
Email *
Frequency *
Daily Brief
Week in Review
Week in Good News
———————————————————————————————————————–
“Schools must not allow children into toilets designated for the opposite biological sex,” the guidance reads. “This includes where schools are responding to a request to support any degree of social transition for children who are questioning their gender.”
The same policy is applied to changing rooms for those over 11 years old, nor should the students “share overnight accommodation with a child of the opposite biological sex,” it states.
The guidance allows for single-use restrooms “if a gender-questioning child does not want to use the toilet designated for their biological sex.” However, there is no actual requirement for this, but only the suggestion that “schools and colleges should consider whether they can provide an alternative toilet facility—for example self-contained individual toilets—without compromising the provision of single-sex facilities.”
When it comes to all of these arrangements, the guidance clearly states, “These alternative arrangements should not compromise the safety, comfort, privacy or dignity of the child, or of any other children.”
However, such arrangements in their own right will challenge the safety and dignity of trans children. One plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s bathroom bill died by suicide earlier this year. Before her death she said of similar provisions, “It is scary having to look around before to see if anyone will see me going into the single-user restroom, as I worry about people gossiping and speculating about me being transgender.”
When it comes to social transition at school, the guidance advises against staff and teachers supporting it, citing concerns raised in the controversial Cass Review. The guidance sets out extensive hurdles before any member of staff at a school or colleges can be supportive of a social transition.
The guidance establishes that “parents and carers should be actively involved and their views treated with importance.” That rule alone amounts to a forced outing policy that could put trans children at risk of harm if their family are not supportive. While the guidance goes on to carve out an exception for “rare circumstances” where involving parents and carers could pose a “greater risk,” such a policy would require a lot of trust and a careful hand from school administrators who are inexperienced with such matters.
The possibility of the school deciding not to allow the social transition is not only laid out but encouraged. The guidance notes that “when considering a child’s request for support with social transition will be to consider what is in the best interests of the child and other children, and a decision relating to social transition may not be the same as a child’s wishes.” They also note that, for younger children, support for a social transition should be “agreed very rarely.”
More of the choice is taken away from trans children and their families with the note that for “pre-pubertal children” clinical involvement should be part of the decision-making process and that “should include advising on the risks and benefits of social transition as a planned intervention, referencing best available evidence. This is not a role that can be undertaken by staff without appropriate clinical training.”
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
This is what all the medical data and medical science shows which is why laws were passed to promote transgender acceptance. Then some people decided it was an insult to their god, some decided that they needed everyone to be the same as they are in life, and politicians realized it was a way to distract and get people to vote for them. There is no medical reason, no safety reason, and no social reason for hate towards trans people and other LGBTQ+. To be so dismissive of the needs of other people who cause you no harm is crazy and I do not understand the motivation of the bigots. Hugs
Good Law Project claims U.K. health secretary Wes Streeting’s department fought to block freedom of information requests for data on trans youth suicides.
John Russell (He/Him)February 12, 2026, 3:30 pm EST· Updated on February 13, 2026
The U.K. government appears to have covered up a dramatic rise in transgender youth suicides, according to data obtained by U.K.-based government accountability non-profit the Good Law Project.
As Erin in the Morning reports, data the non-profit obtained from the National Health Service (NHS)-funded National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) via a Freedom of Information request sharply contrasts with the government’s official report on trans youth suicides in the wake of the 2020 Bell v. Tavistock ruling.
As the Good Law Project notes, following the U.K. High Court of Justice’s initial ruling in Tavistock, which found that minors under 16 could not legally consent to receive puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria, the National Health Service (NHS) substantially limited access to gender-affirming care for minors. Those limits reportedly remained in place even after the Tavistock ruling was overturned in 2021.
The U.K. government commissioned its 2024 Appleby Report after the Good Law Project reported that two whistleblowers with the Tavistock gender clinic alerted the organization to a significant rise in suicides among young people on the NHS’s waitlist for appointments to begin gender-affirming care in the wake of the Tavistock case.
————————————————————————————————————————
Insights for the LGBTQ+ community
Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Frequency Email *
Email *
Frequency *
Daily Brief
Week in Review
Week in Good News
——————————————————————————————————————–
According to Good Law Project, the Appleby Report identified only 12 suicide deaths among current or former Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) patients at the Tavistock clinic between 2018 and 2024. However, as Erin in the Morning notes, the report disregarded young people who were unable to access GIDS care due to long wait times, which, post-Tavistock, now last an average 25 years.
At the same time, Good Law Project submitted a Freedom of Information request with the NCMD, and has only just published the data it received.
“Good Law Project can confirm that in 2021–2022 suicides of trans children in England surged to 22, a marked increase from 5 and 4 the previous two years,” the organization wrote in a February 7 release. “This spike follows the decision by NHS England to pull down the shutters on gender-affirming healthcare for young trans people” following the Tavistock case.
In total, the NCMD data show 46 transgender children in the U.K. died by suicide between 2019 and 2025. In addition to the nine accounted for between 2019–2021 and the alarming spike to 22 between 2021–2022, the data also show 10 suicide deaths between 2022–2023. And, according to Good Law Project, NCMD added that “the numbers reported in more recent years will likely be underestimated, due to a higher proportion of child death reviews that have not yet been completed.”
Good Law Project said it was “appalled” that U.K. health secretary Wes Streeting “commissioned and published a report to reassure the public that there was no significant rise in suicide rates, when 22 children took their own lives in a single year: 2021-22.” The Appleby report, they said, “denied the reality of trans deaths, as Streeting’s ban on puberty blockers denied the reality of trans lives.”
The nonprofit claims that Streeting department “fought tooth and nail” to block its freedom of information requests.
“To silence those raising the alarm on rising trans suicides as ‘dangerous’ while ramping up the policies correlating with that rise is an act of grave moral wickedness,” the group said.
Trans journalist Erin Reed said of these findings, “More alarming is what appears to be an explicit attempt to cover up trans youth suicide deaths. Those who seek to restrict gender-affirming care also seek to restrict any information showing those restrictions may lead to harm. Among the far right, claims have emerged that transgender youth are in no danger of suicide from the withdrawal of gender-affirming care, but this could not be further from the truth.”
Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
Again so much hate and anger towards people who do him no harm. A desire and a demand that he gets to rule how others live. Such self important Christian love. No hate like some Christians love for the right to tell others what God thinks. It is strange that their god always agrees with them, never that they need to change or grow, just that others must live by the church doctrines of the hater. Hate who they hate and the world is a paradise they believe. Notice the pastor is OK with a man penatrating and using his wife in any way he wants, anally or orally. Only sex between men in any form is to be illegal. It seems very selfish to me. Why is the act OK if he does it with his wife but I can’t do it with my husband Hugs
In his first interview with an LGBTQ publication, Pastor Doug Wilson reveals that as many as 20 people in the government align with his church’s ideology.
This story includes references to sexual abuse. Viewer/reader discretion is advised.
In February, Doug Wilson made headlines after giving a sermon at the Pentagon as part of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s monthly Christian worship service. Wilson, the lead pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, holds a number of controversial views: He believes the U.S. should become a Christian theocracy, married women shouldn’t have the right to vote and gay sex should be illegal.
In his first interview with an LGBTQ publication, Wilson talks about his connections to Hegseth and others in the Trump administration. He estimates that 10 to 20 people in the government are aligned with his radical ideology. He explains that he thinks trans people are “sad,” certain elements of his idea of “homosexual behavior” should be punishable by execution and in certain cases of marital rape, both parties should be disciplined.
“UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton” is a new podcast by Uncloseted Media, an investigative LGBTQ-focused nonprofit news publication. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. YouTube // Spotify // Apple
Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:
Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone. Welcome back to UNCLOSETED with me, Spencer Macnaughton. Today, I’m speaking with Doug Wilson, the lead pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and an increasingly prominent figure in conservative Christianity. Wilson has recently attracted national attention for his connection to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as his controversial beliefs, which many say align with Christian nationalism, and include denying married women the right to vote and banning gay sex nationwide. Here, he sits down with Uncloseted for his first ever interview with an LGBTQ news outlet. Pastor Wilson, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.
Doug Wilson: You’re most welcome. Thanks for inviting me.
Embedded with Hegseth and the Trump Administration
SM:Great. So first, you’ve made a lot of headlines this year in particular because in February, you were a guest pastor for the Pentagon’s newly instituted monthly Christian worship service, where you prayed alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth closed the prayer by putting his hand on your shoulder. That’s pretty, kind of, major to get that high up in the federal government. How did you develop your relationship with Hegseth and subsequently get invited to this very high-level prayer?
DW:I’ll give you a telescope version of that. Before Pete Hegseth was the secretary of war, he was with Fox News. He was involved in making a documentary on the state of education in America and met a friend of mine, David Goodwin, who is the CEO of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, which is an organization I founded. He was so impressed by that kind of education that he moved to Tennessee to enroll his kids in a school like this, but he was still working for Fox. So he’d fly into Tennessee on Sundays, and the only church that was open in the afternoon was a CREC church, which is the denomination that I’m in. And after he was appointed as secretary of war, He moved to D.C., and I was in the Nashville area and filled the pulpit at that church, Pilgrim Hill Church. And as it happened, the Hegseths were back in Nashville. I met him there at church and we visited for a few minutes. And then we planted a church service in Washington, D.C., a little over a year ago, so he’s been coming to that church service. I’ve met him a couple of times there in D.C., and of course, I met with him when he invited me to the Pentagon. But that’s the extent of our meetings, like three times, maybe four.
SM: There’s reports that he considers you his spiritual adviser. What does that mean exactly?
DW: I’m not a policy adviser. But it would be the sort of thing where, if he were in some sort of newspaper conflagration over something or other, I’m functioning currently in a pastoral role. As it happens, this coming Sunday, the Washington, D.C., church service is going to be installing a pastor there. So for the first year or so, our church here in Moscow was supplying, sending and recruiting people to come and preach there, but they will have a full-time pastor starting this next Sunday.
SM: Wow. And you’ve spoken about how, you know, although President Donald Trump is not an evangelical by any stretch, you said, quote, “his administration is full of them.” So how many folks in his administration do you reckon are aligned with your church and might attend the church service that you guys are putting on in D.C.?
DW:I do know that if Kamala had been elected, the White House would have been pretty evangelical-free. She would not have been hiring people like me. But the Trump administration just has quite a few conservative Christians working there. And in our D.C. church service, there are a number of people that are either working for the government, you know, they’re assigned to the Pentagon, or they have roles in the administration.
SM:More than 10, more than 20? Roughly, how many would you say?
DW:Boy, I would say between 10 and 20.
SM: Wow, in the actual administration?
DW:I would say between 10 and 20 in the government.
SM: In the government, got it. And who else in addition to Hegseth would be part of that?
DW:Sure, no major players at the cabinet level or anything like that. And as for the people who are the next tier or two tiers down from that, I’d rather not say because I don’t want to ruin their day.
SM:You think it would ruin their day if you said who they are?
DW:Yeah, basically. For example, I did an interview with NPR. When the NPR video segment dropped, our church secretaries [had] to not answer the phone for three days.
SM:Wow. Why?
DW:Because they don’t want to be vilified.
Back in the Closet, Boys
SM:Understood. So yes, obviously, we’re an LGBTQ publication. Is this the first LGBTQ publication you’ve done an interview with?
DW:I believe that is… I think that’s fair, yes.
SM:Cool. So obviously we’re going to focus on some of the things you’ve said in that realm, right?
DW:Right.
SM:And one of the things you’ve said is that there should be anti-sodomy laws and other prohibition on sexual behavior in all 50 states. So sodomy obviously gets thrown around as a buzzword. What do you mean exactly by that when you said it should be illegalized? Are we talking about anal intercourse between two men or what exactly do we mean by sodomy?
DW: Right. Let me make a distinction and then back up and then answer your question. The distinction is there’s a difference between politics, which is the art of the possible: What proposals am I proposing right now? And secondly, what is my sketch of an ideal Christian republic 250 years from now? Those are two separate things.
SM:Even if it’s 250 years from now, what specifically do you mean by that? Like what becomes illegal when it comes to sodomy laws?
DW:OK. I would regard sodomy as male-to-male intercourse, anal intercourse or oral intercourse.
SM:Would hand jobs count or just anal and oral?
DW: No, between two men, between two men.
SM:Hand jobs as well.
DW:Hand jobs, oral sex and anal intercourse—
SM:Got it.
DW:—would be sodomy. In the old order, the legal definitions of sodomy would have included oral foreplay between a married heterosexual couple, right? So, I think that there were definitions of sodomy that went beyond scripture.
SM:So you’re OK with heterosexual people in oral foreplay or those sorts of things if they’re married?
DW:Yeah.
SM:And then what about women-on-women lovers? Like is oral sex OK for them under these laws or no?
DW:Well, “OK” is too loosey.
SM:Yeah, but in your ideal world 250 years from now, would that be illegal across all 50 states?
DW:No, and this is going to be interesting, because I’m a Bible guy. If you go through the Law of Moses, you won’t find any legal prescription of lesbianism. This brings us up against the difference between a sin and a crime, right? There are things that are manifestly sinful for every Bible-believing Christian, which I believe ought not to be criminal. You don’t have any penalty in the Old Testament attached to lesbian behavior. It would have been considered a sin, a form of sexual immorality, but not criminal.
SM: Got it. So then in your ideal world, gay men engaging in sexual behavior would be illegal under sodomy laws across all 50 states. You’ve mentioned, though, that you wouldn’t want it to be too heavily enforced because you don’t want to create a, quote, “sexual Gestapo.” So how exactly would this be enforced?
DW: Well, I would say that the main enforcement mechanism would be social expectations and a withholding of societal approval. It would be sort of “back in the closet, boys,” not because of fear of legal retribution, but because this is simply not done.
SM:But that’s different than what you’ve said in the past. You said sodomy laws, right? So would it be illegal, or are you kind of walking back?
DW:No, I’m not walking it back. I think it ought to be that society needs to express its disapproval of this behavior in law.
SM:So then if it’s a law, what’s the punishment if somebody makes that act, which would be illegal? What would the punishment be?
DW: So the punishment would vary. I’m reluctant to give the government excess powers of invading private homes.
SM:OK, so just theoretically, I get caught having sex with my boyfriend, what happens to me? What is the punishment?
DW:In the 1980s, there was a movement called Christian Reconstruction. And the Christian Reconstructionists wanted to take the Old Testament law, sort of with a grappling hook, and bring it over and drop it down on modern society. And that would mean the maximum penalty there for homosexual behavior would be execution. And so there were debates among the Reconstructionists of: “Do we have to stone the homosexuals?” And there were some people saying, “Well, firing squads are OK because they’re throwing very tiny stones at a high rate of speed,” but they were talking about execution. In that debate back then, I pointed out that King Asa and King Jehoshaphat in the Old Testament closed the bathhouses, and they exiled the sodomites from the land. And their behavior is praised in the text. That told me that execution, although a lawful penalty for homosexual behavior, was not the minimum penalty; it was the maximum penalty.
SM: And do you believe that still, that in your eyes the maximum penalty for homosexual behavior in an ideal world, in Pastor Wilson’s ideal world, would be execution?
DW: Yeah.
SM: You do?
DW: Yeah, if you ask me: “Could you ever envision a homosexual crime of any nature being visited with the death penalty?” Yes, I could.
SM:You, in other words, want to create a law where—a real law, in this country eventually—where the maximum penalty for me having sex with my boyfriend would be my execution? I just want to make sure that’s clear.
DW:No, no, no. That’s why I wanted to finish this scenario. I do want to create a society where the maximum penalty for a Roman Catholic priest molesting or raping an altar boy is solved and addressed with a tall tree and a short rope.
SM:Right, that’s pedophilia though, which is of course different than homosexuality.
DW:Well, it’s a species of homosexual behavior. So let’s say it’s a Roman Catholic priest and a 15-year-old boy. Or there’s all kinds of variations of human behavior. But there are homosexual crimes that are egregious enough that I would want to execute the person for.
SM:So you see pedophilia as an element of homosexuality, is that right?
DW:Yeah, if we’re talking about the alphabet people. Right?
SM:You’re referencing LGBTQ community?
DW:LGBTQ+. What’s under the plus?
SM:Not pedophilia. Would you consider adding a “P”? Do you think a P is meant into that umbrella of LGBTQ?
DW:Absolutely.
SM:You do? Because you conflate lesbians and gay people with, like, kind of akin to pedophiles. People who rape children?
DW:I don’t think that I’m making that association. I think the LGBTQ+ acronym, that whole chain, is sort of a sexual alliance of people who are defying traditional biblical norms. And pedophilia is one of those things that defies those norms.
SM:Do you see two men having sex as equally sinful as a man raping a girl?
DW:Yeah, they’re both violations of God’s law.
Conversion Therapy
SM:Obviously, if you’re seeing both of these as sinful, pedophilia and homosexuality, this is a very big concern for you, I would imagine, in society, right? So I wanted to ask, you know, in March, I’m sure you’ve been following this, the Supreme Court overturned Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy. And you’ve called Canada’s conversion therapy ban a, quote, “wretched and misbegotten law.”
DW:I did.
SM:In your church, right, as the lead pastor, if somebody comes to you saying, “I’m attracted to the same sex,” should they be allowed to go through conversion therapy? And if so, what is the most effective form of conversion therapy in your eyes?
DW:I’m a pastor of hundreds of people, and I’m a pastor to people whose sexual temptations are homosexual. I’ve counseled people in that position and have seen them arrive at victory over those temptations.
SM:I see it based on the science and, you know, methodologically sound evidence-based research, it is a discredited practice, but I want to know from your perspective, what works?
DW:So what works is Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ forgives sin, and Jesus Christ empowers us to overcome sin.
SM:In layman’s terms, if you can, right? Are you just saying pray? Or is there more to it? Like what else—do you give them assignments? Do you give them homework? Are there things they need to do? Or is it simply just pray, pray, pray, pray, pray?
DW:Yeah, it would be easy to sort of dismiss what I’m saying as sort of “pray the gay away.” So when I’m counseling someone who is struggling with this and wants out, one of the places I start is with that person’s relationship with his father, that person’s relationship with his mother, that person’s upbringing. “Do you have a healthy relationship with your father? Do you hate your mother?” You know, it’s not like, “What do you do when you’re horny?” If you just start there, you’re healing the wound lightly, basically.
SM:Have you ever experienced same-sex attraction?
DW:Uh, no.
SM:Never?
DW: No.
SM:No. Got it. And so when they come, right, if say somebody comes to you and says, “Pastor Wilson, Pastor Wilson, I am experiencing this and I love your church, but I’m happy, I have a boyfriend.” Do they stay in the church, or what happens?
DW: Such a person would not be allowed to become a member. But such a person would be welcome to attend as often as they wanted. You’re welcome to attend, but if you were a member, there’s a commitment to becoming a member and that commitment means living as a Christian is obligated by the Bible to live.
The Path to Ending Obergefell
SM: Got it. And OK, so Obergefell, yes, I know you wanted to talk about that, because you said in the here and now, that’s something that you would want overturned.
DW:One of the reasons I would go to Obergefell as one of the action points is I think that that is actually a possibility. Just like Roe was overturned, I think Obergefell could be overturned and it might be a matter of as few as two Supreme Court justices.
SM:When you’re in D.C. or when you’re helping with prayer with Hegseth or other folks in the administration, are there rumblings that there’s a possibility that that’s within reach?
DW:Yeah, I’ve not had any conversations like that with administration officials, but I have certainly written a lot about it and I know that I’m read by people in powerful places.
SM:Of course, because if they align with you ideologically, then they must want that too, I would imagine, if they share the same belief systems as you, no?
DW:I’m not plotting with administration officials to make a move on Obergefell, but I am very vocal about it. So I think repealing Obergefell is an attainable goal in our current climate.
SM: When it comes to the legal issue behind it. What would be the kind of roadmap to overturn it?
DW:I think there’d have to be an increased number of conservative Christians in the Senate. You would have to have trained, capable judges who were evangelical Christians, who had been operating at lower courts, who were in a position to be nominated to that position and survive the character assassination battle, you know? Before, Senate confirmations, hearings were all about abortion. I think the next ones will be about Obergefell.
SM:You do?
DW: Yeah, I do. I think that that is going to be the issue. And so if you have more Christians in the Senate, if you have Christian men nominated, and the Senate has the kind of people who don’t fold under pressure, then it is a doable thing.
Trans People Are ‘Sad’
SM:Mm-hmm. All an interesting perspective. You’ve spoken less about transgender people.
DW:Yeah.
SM:I wanna know your thoughts. In your ideal world, what would happen to people who are trans? Do they have a place in society? What’s your view?
DW:Yeah, this is… no way to talk about it without talking about it. I think transgenderism is simply sad. I don’t think that it should be elevated to a category given equal carved-out rights. I think this should be treated with love and compassion and help, counseling.
SM:About 1% of the population identifies as trans and the vast majority of those people, once they get past stigma, live their lives healthily and happily, so I’m unclear what your issue is with it.
DW: The man is the image and glory of God, and the woman is the glory of the man. I believe God created us in such a way as to reflect his glory. And the transsexual movement, I think, is a movement away from that glory. And so when I see people who are… just… well…
SM:You can be candid. Be candid.
DW: I don’t want to give offense.
SM:You won’t offend, go ahead.
DW:So when I see people who are tatted up and pierced, dog collar, it’s hard for me to not see self-loathing.
SM:But what connection do those folks have to trans folks? I mean, that’s a different kind of, you know, I have a lot of trans friends, none of them are wearing those things.
DW:Well, I’m glad you’re more fortunate.
SM:Do you have a lot of trans friends who do wear those things?
DW:No, I have, I encounter people out in the community, and I have a pastor’s eye, right? And one of the things I can identify and see and greatly sympathize with is people who are miserable and they’re trying to… “Maybe this’ll work. Maybe this will give me a sense of who I really am.”
SM: Do you think trans people are dangerous? I mean, Trump recently included radical transgender folks in his counter-terrorism strategy. Do you have concern there?
DW:We’ve seen many instances of transsexual violence over the last few years. That doesn’t mean that all transsexuals are violent, but a disproportionate number of the violent episodes are coming from transsexual individuals.
SM:And I think a lot of the data that actually shows when you look at things like school shootings, the disproportionate number of cisgender people are perpetrating those, actually white cisgender men are the most common and disproportionately more likely even when you break it down per percentage of the population.
Disempowering Women
SM: Obviously we’re an LGBTQ publication, but we do stories on women too, right? And you’ve been in the news for your belief systems around women. I wanna know just more generally, what role do women have in society for you? In your world, should they be allowed to be anything they want? Doctors? Lawyers? Should they be allowed to serve in the military? How do they place in society in your view?
DW:Yeah, I don’t think there should be any legal barrier to women getting a medical degree, getting a law degree. But I don’t think there should be a legal barrier to women being in the military.
SM:Can they be in combat?
DW:No, that’s the one place I would limit them. I’d say women should be kept away from combat roles. I don’t think women ought to be put in front lines.
SM:Why not?
DW:Because I served on a submarine, a couple of submarines, and I just can’t get inside the head of the person who thought that was a good idea.
SM:Why? Just you don’t think women are as capable in that area?
DW:No, I think that if you have women on board a submarine, and we went to sea a couple of times, submerged for two and a half months, you’ve got 130 people locked up in this steel tube under the water for two and a half months. You put three women on board. That’s like, “Why shouldn’t I throw catnip into the pack of cats?”
SM:Well, there’s going to be gay people in the submarine too.
DW:Yeah. That’s another problem.
SM: And tell me, I have read a few things like, “Women should submit to men, obey their husband, obey their father.” What exact role do women have as it relates to their relationship with men? Men should be the head of the household? Clear up what you mean by women’s role in that dynamic.
DW:The Bible requires women, “A woman should submit,” Paul says, “to her own husband.” And what that means, my wife is submissive to me, but what that means is she doesn’t have to submit to all the other men.
SM: Say a wife and a husband are together and the wife says, “I want to go to med school and become a doctor.” And the husband says, “Nope, I want you to stay home and be with the kids.” Should she stay home?
DW: Yeah.
SM: She should. OK. Because she submits to the husband?
DW: Because she submits to the husband. Let’s say this is a counseling case for us, and the wife wants to do something and the husband has said, “No, I really don’t want you to do that.” We would say, “You married him and you vowed before God and witnesses that you would follow and obey him. And this is one of those cases where he’s made a decision and it’s a lawful decision and you should submit to it.”
Sexual Abuse
SM:When it comes to sex, right? Like, say the man says, “I want to make another baby with you tonight.” And the woman says, “No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to do this right now.” Should he still do it if he wants to? Should she still submit if she doesn’t want to have sex that night?
DW:No, I would say, basically, marital rape is wrong. So if he forces himself on her and rapes her, then I believe that that’s a sin.
SM:If he raped her, how would he be disciplined? Would you call authorities or would you deal with it internally?
DW:It would depend on the nature of it. It would, you know, it would depend on, a violent rape? Yes.
SM:You would call the police?
DW:What’s that?
SM:You would call the police?
DW:Yeah.
SM:What does a nonviolent rape look like?
DW: Oh, let’s say she just says, “I really don’t want to. I’m not into this. I don’t want to, please don’t treat me this way.” But he says “Too bad.” You know, he’s just being a boar. He’s being awful. And someone like that should be disciplined by the church, but there was no crime.
SM: And what line is there, like, she should just “give in,” right? Is she allowed to say no to the husband? Or should she just submit?
DW: Here’s why it’s a gray area.
SM:And it’s a gray area in terms of, you might not consider it a violent rape. For many people, it is not a gray area, no means no. And I think that’s the kind of understanding we have societally at this point in America, but perhaps, is it a gray area for you, I guess, is what I’m trying to ask.
DW: No, let’s say she’s had an absolute horrendous day, is fried, just is exhausted and she says, “Honey, I really, please, please no.” Does she have the right to do that? Absolutely, yes, she has the right to do that. Does she have the right to cut him off for six months? No.
SM:She doesn’t?
DW:No. So if she says, if that situation came to us, and the husband said, “Here’s the thing, we’ve been married for five years and we’ve not had sex for the last six months, and she just won’t.” Right? In this situation, she’s got the problem. And we’d address it like, “Look, we have to talk, you’re married, you need to act like you’re married.”
SM: So in month six, if she is in a space where she doesn’t want to have sex, and he rapes her, is that justified because she, in your view, has held out for too long?
DW: It’s not justified, but neither is her behavior justified. So that would, basically what you’d have there is a marital mess. And both of them sinning against each other.
SM:And when something like that happens, what’s the discipline you give to both the man and the woman in that case?
DW: We would say we want you to start coming in for weekly counseling, and we want you to agree that the end goal of this counseling is for you to be back together as husband and wife, living together, having sexual relations, the way a normal couple would.
SM:OK, got it. And there have been numerous accusations of sexual abuse at your church. And I’ll read them, I wanna let you respond, but when 14-year-old Natalie Greenfield reported sexual abuse by Jamin Wight to the police, there are allegations that you pushed for him to get lenient treatment. And you’ve officiated the marriage of Steven Sitler, who was arrested for sexual contact with a minor and later admitted to being sexually stimulated by his baby. When a man commits a rape in your church, like this, what happens? Walk me through exactly what happens, because obviously this is a pervasive issue in conservative Christian churches across the United States, and there have been these reports at your church. So what happens when you find out a man has committed a rape?
DW:Oh, what you do is call the cops.
SM:How many times have you called the cops, would you say, for issues of sexual abuse or rape?
DW:Oh. Maybe five?
SM:And how many times would you say a woman has said no, whether it’s that six month thing or some other thing, where you deal with it internally?
DW:No, the one accusation that’s out there about marital rape is an accusation that is coming from a stone-cold liar.
SM:So, you deny those allegations that have been…
DW:Yeah, I deny that we’ve ever sanctioned marital rape. That’s just flatly false.
SM:How many instances have there been when a woman has alleged or a child has alleged that they’re experiencing some form of sexual assault or S.A. where you deal with it internally?
DW:I can’t think of any.
SM:None?
DW:No, if you’re talking about a self-report of, if a child told me that “I’m being molested,” I wouldn’t ever sit on that.
SM:OK, and have you heard reports from other people where they say a child’s been molested and you didn’t sit on that?
DW:Yeah, so I’m going to make up an example, OK?
SM:Oh, no, no. No, I’m just curious. Like, have there been other bystanders or people in the church who have told you this child may be being molested, where you haven’t reported it?
DW:Oh no, what you want to do is follow up on it. You want to check and you know, is there something to this? Is the person reporting to you a rumor or something that they, “I saw them in the grocery store and the girl looked unhappy.” Is there anything to it? If there’s anything to it, you pursue it. You should be all over it.
SM:But are there instances where people have suggested this could be happening?
DW:And then we did nothing? No.
SM: Yeah. No?
DW: No.
SM: No. OK.
DW: Basically, we have an aggressive stance toward this thing. Reports to the contrary, notwithstanding. This is an area where we are lied about routinely.
SM:You have you mentioned the reputation that your church has of, you know, sexual assault or child molestation? Why do you think that exists?
DW:Well, because we’re the size of a small town. And these accusations have come up over the course of like 30 years. I would put a…
SM:But a lot of small towns don’t have accusations associated with them like that.
DW:Let’s put it this way. I saw a bumper sticker once in my grandma’s hometown in Nebraska. “You don’t see much in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it.” The human race is messed up and sexual misbehavior is a big part of that mess.
SM:Why do you think it disproportionately happens in conservative Christian communities?
DW:I think that’s false. I don’t think it disproportionately happens.
SM: You don’t?
DW: I don’t.
SM:So the statistics are just kind of false?
DW: Yeah. Yeah.
SM: One of my last questions, and thank you so much for your time—
DW: You’re welcome.
SM:—is, you know, I’m obviously an openly gay man. I have a boyfriend, we have sex, right? I don’t believe I’m gonna change at all as time goes on. In your view, where am I going? What happens to me?
DW:So, as an evangelical Christian, I believe that the only way to salvation is through Jesus Christ, through looking to him in his death, burial and resurrection. And the sin that you’re committing is homosexual sin. And so I believe that you are spiritually lost, excluded from heaven, and I believe they’re only ultimately two destinations: heaven and hell. So to be fair and perfectly honest and not trying to be rude, but I think you’re lost.
SM:And I’m going to hell.
DW:Apart from repentance, right.
SM:Got it. In a society that gives men so much power, do you ever get concerned that giving men power over women, does it not put them at greater risk of being abused? What happens when there’s no stop gaps and you have powerful men at the top who aren’t helping women who are struggling? Because that does happen a lot.
DW:If you have a patriarchal society, then you are creating the possibility that certain powerful men will abuse their position. Right, that’s true.
SM:Of course, yeah.
DW:OK, so I’m not disputing that. What I would argue is the way you deal with that, the most effective way to deal with that, how do you guard against evil men, predatory men? Well, you need good men to be protectors. So, I believe that fathers and brothers and pastors and elders should be a line of protection around their women.
SM:Obviously that doesn’t happen in a lot of instances. So if women don’t have their own voice and don’t have an outlet, what’s their recourse if the man who’s in charge of protecting them has failed? Like what should they do?
DW:Right.
SM:If they’re in one of these insular communities where the men in charge thinks it’s OK to abuse them.
DW:That’s a terrible dilemma. And I’ve seen it, right? I’ve seen women who need protection from their protector. I have seen that. But you don’t fix the problem by making women dependent upon a federal agency. Now what happens when they need-
SM:What if you just gave women more power and didn’t have it where they have to submit to the men?
DW: Who gives them the power?
SM:I mean a lot of spaces in society see men and women as equal and don’t ask them to submit to their husbands in this way.
DW:Yeah, but they do ask them to submit to them, right? In other words, you have structures in society. And these structures in society, if they say we’re going to stipulate that men and women are equal here, that’s just a statement, that’s just a proposition, that’s just words unless you police it. And somebody’s got to be the police.
SM:But the police should never be women.
DW:Yeah, because they won’t be able to do the job. Problem is, those women are going to be defeated. Men are aggressive, stronger than women. If it came to it, they wouldn’t, they’d be able to… It won’t be an effective defense so if you had… Let’s say we elected a woman president and she said, “As my first act I want the entire Secret Service detail that accompanies me all time, I’m the first woman president, I want all the Secret Service detail to be women also.” The assassins are going to say, you know, “Good job. Ha! Just made myday.”
SM:Yeah, we’ve been on for an hour and 15. So grateful for your time.
DW: You’re welcome.
SM: And we’re an objective news publication. And I think I can objectively say that I believe you’re homophobic, transphobic and sexist. Why should I think anything differently after this phone call?
DW: If your worldview is correct, then absolutely, that’s what I am. I don’t regard myself as homophobic by the standards of scripture at all. According to the standards of the sexual revolution, yeah, I’m homophobic and transphobic. You’ve never met anybody worse.
SM: I think that’s a perfect place to leave it. Pastor Doug Wilson, I really do appreciate you coming on and speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.
DW: Right, thanks for having me.
SM: And if you liked that episode and want more of our journalism, go to unclosetedmedia.com or find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Additional reporting by Sophie Holland and Bella Sayegh.
If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:
Why do these haters hate so much towards the LGBTQ+ people? We never hurt them, but they claim we hurt their god. But if that is true then can’t their all powerful god fix such an offense? Unless he made the LGBTQ+ people as he wanted them to be.
I want to point out the total switch and bait these haters use. Read the article to see the hate and refusal to accept anyone not straight and cis. Here is a quote from this person; notice how he frames it just to incite outrage.
Forcing local schools to permit a teenage boy who ‘identifies’ as a girl to use changing rooms, locker rooms, and bathrooms with five-year-old girls.”
See the bait and switch? A teen boy is somehow threatening your little 5 yr old girl. Oh the humaity.
Congressman Brian Babin, R-Texas, Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, speaks about the introduction of the Birthright Citizenship Act at a press conference on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. | Jack Gruber / USA TODAY NETWORK
A Republican member of Congress went to an event hosted by a hate group and, during a prayer, thanked God for sending Donald Trump to stop children from being led “down the path of homosexuality and perversion.”
“Lord, we beseeched thee,” prayed Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) at the Family Research Council’s (FRC) National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance event at the Museum of the Bible in D.C. on February 4. The FRC is classified as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Our prayers were answered in getting us a new president and taking a different direction in our country than we had seen for the previous four years,” he continued. “Apostasy, blasphemy, taking our children down the path of homosexuality and perversion. Open borders. Criminals running rampant in our streets.”
“Lord, we have new leadership, and we thank you for that. But Lord, we know that government is not going to save our country. It’s going to be the American people returning to the path that you have set out for us and our Founding Fathers.”
Babin has consistently gotten a score of “0” on HRC’s Congressional Scorecard for the past several sessions of Congress, showing his solid opposition to LGBTQ+ equality.
In 2022, Babin was one of several Congressional Republicans who introduced a federal bill in the House to ban schools, libraries, hospitals, government entities, or other organizations from “hosting or promoting any program, event, or literature involving sexually-oriented material.” The bill defined “sexually-oriented material” to include anything that discusses LGBTQ+ people.
In 2015, Babin was outraged that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing same-sex couples to marry in its Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
“As a strong supporter of traditional marriage and a firm believer in state sovereignty, I am deeply disappointed that five members of the U.S. Supreme Court have over-ruled tens of millions of Americans – including millions in the State of Texas – who have voted to enact state statutes and state Constitutional amendments to define marriage as between one man and one woman,” he said at the time.
“Traditional marriage has been under assault as courts and some state legislatures have sought to both redefine marriage as something other than between one man and one woman and to penalize and discriminate against those who have religious and conscience convictions against the redefinition of marriage,” he continued.
In 2016, he introduced a bill to roll back Obama-era protections for transgender students, saying that those protections were “throwing common sense and decency out the window and forcing local schools to permit a teenage boy who ‘identifies’ as a girl to use changing rooms, locker rooms, and bathrooms with five-year-old girls.”
The Obama-era protections did not allow for boys to use girls’ facilities. Instead, they were recommendations about how schools could accommodate transgender students, which included allowing them to use facilities associated with their gender identity.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
Scottie's Playtime 