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Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, the case challenging the right of individual states to ban “gender-affirming” medical care for children.

As Breccan Thies reported for The Federalist, the lame-duck Biden administration used those arguments to spew “numerous lies about gender transition drugs and interventions … to have the Supreme Court strike down Tennessee’s ban on the interventions.”

In its coverage of the arguments, the mainstream media did its usual job of carrying water for the left’s radical sexual agenda. On Thursday, The Washington Post offered a sympathetic account of one confused Nashville teen known only as L.W. The Post describes how L.W. and “her” parents came to hear Wednesday’s argument at the Supreme Court, with L.W.’s father – Brian Williams – buying a new suit for the occasion.

In her preteen years… (L.W.) felt as if she were underwater. She looked around and everyone else seemed to be a fish. They knew how to swim, how to breathe, but she did not. Every day, she felt like she was drowning.

She never felt like that anymore. Hormones had made her feel confident and at peace, even in this courtroom where several of the justices kept calling trans girls “boys.”

I am blessed to be the father of six grown children. My four sons and two daughters are now happy, healthy, thriving adults. That process of growing up was not always easy.  I watched each of them go through the often-difficult pre-teen years. Puberty, even in a healthy and morally upright nation (which ours is not) is challenging. It is absolutely normal for a kid to feel like everyone else knows how to do something you don’t know how to do. In those painful moments, kids need moms and dads who will guide them, reassure them, and lead them to understand a divine plan for their lives. What they don’t need is a father who will happily pump his kid full of hormones. What they don’t need is a father who will allow doctors to surgically alter his child’s growing body.

Good fathers know better than to encourage a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Reading the story of L.W. and “her” parents, a familiar question came into my mind: “Where are all the dads?”

Riley Gaines posed that exact query in a speech in Wisconsin in 2023. The former University of Kentucky star swimmer detailed her experiences competing against a 6’1” biological man and how that obscene injustice led her to the bold and prophetic activism for which she is now known. Gaines made the point that while it’s important for young athletes to take the lead in fighting to preserve women’s sports, those girls desperately need the encouragement and steadfast support of their fathers.

Since 2020, as the Woke Agenda has metastasized and become ever more aggressive, the most public parental pushback has been from mothers. Florida-based “Moms for Liberty” has done incredible work in exposing the trans agenda and fighting for both the rights of parents and the basic human dignity of young women. The so-called “mama bears” have shown up to school board meetings (and sometimes, won school board seats). I applaud their efforts. As a father, though, I’m haunted by Riley’s question. “Where are all the dads?”

It is a scandal that more fathers have not stood up and spoken out against the trans insanity. I know plenty of men who say they would do anything for their kids. These dads would be enraged if a mentally ill boy or man insisted on sharing a locker room with their daughters. Just the thought of some creep leering at their child, or gleefully exposing himself to her, fills them with righteous anger. Yet when it’s not their own daughter who is losing out on a medal, or risking injury in a competition, or exposed to male genitalia in the locker room, too many of these men stay silent.

Silence is only one grave paternal error. Other dads like Brian Williams have done something arguably worse. They have indulged their teens’ mental distress and refused to protect their children from the lies of the transgender movement. They have co-signed (literally) for the surgical interventions that distort and destroy a divine design. Perhaps worst of all, they have failed to do a father’s primary job: to teach their children of God’s loving plan for their lives.

The truth is that in 2024, a dad like Brian Williams will pay no earthly price for indulging his child’s mental illness. He will be celebrated and supported, and if he is fired from his job (at a lumber company) the Justice Department will surely rush to his defense. As fathers, we are called to count the cost of our service to God and to our families. In a culture still dominated by the woke left, the cost to a father who opposes the trans agenda is far greater. That cost can be professional, reputational, and above all, emotional. Just ask Elon Musk himself, whose son has “transitioned” and been encouraged to cut off all ties with his father.

I cannot know the state of Brian Williams’ soul, but as a Christian, a conservative, and a dad, I fear for it. The spiritual price of indulging trans madness is far higher than any that can be exacted by the woke left.

Riley Gaines has declared that the battle against men in women’s sports is not an obscure issue affecting a small handful of athletes. It is, as she says, a struggle between good and evil. This is spiritual warfare, with locker rooms, swimming pools, soccer fields, and volleyball courts across the country marking the latest battlefields in a tactical foray by demonic powers. In a very real sense, it’s a simple test for American fathers. If we cannot stand up for our daughters to protect them from the literal perversion of being forced to undress alongside men, then surely, we cannot stand up for anything.

On Wednesday, as the lawyers made their arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, we listened to the sounds of that spiritual warfare. From Biden’s own solicitor general, we heard an impassioned but perverse defense of the right of parents to choose to mutilate their children. And in the corporate press, we were treated to fawning stories recounting the immense bravery and supposed compassion of the parents of these desperately unhappy and confused teens. We were encouraged to see the fathers who had failed a fundamental spiritual test as heroes.

When our child comes to us despairing and unsure why it is that they feel so alone and so different, we must stand up for the truth. The most loving thing we can do as fathers is tell our children that God made no error in choosing their sex. The most loving thing we can do is affirm God’s plan for their lives and reassure them that we will help them navigate this troubled, bewildering, and very temporary season.

We must have the courage to stand up for science, reason, and eternal truth. We must have the bravery to choose our children’s long-term fulfillment over their transitory impulses.

It makes me sad and angry that too few dads have that courage.

Fritz S. Steiger is a Christian, entreprenuer, thought leader, change agent, and co-founder of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Children First America. He is the author of a forthcoming memoir entitled Divine Disruption: Restoring Providence to America.