January Littlejohn, a mother and one of President Donald Trump’s guests at his address to Congress on Tuesday night, shared a special message to the president in an interview with Fox News Digital.
During his address, Trump recognized Littlejohn and thanked her for advocating against transgender ideology, which he called a ‘form of child abuse.’
‘My administration is also working to protect our children from toxic ideologies in our schools,’ said Trump. ‘A few years ago, January Littlejohn and her husband discovered that their daughter’s school had secretly socially transitioned their 13-year-old little girl. Teachers and administrators conspired to deceive January and her husband while encouraging her daughter to use a new name and pronouns, they-them pronouns actually, all without telling January.’
Trump touted his recent signing of an executive order that he said bans public schools from ‘indoctrinating our children with transgender ideology.’
During his address, the president urged Congress to pass a bill ‘permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body.’
‘This is a big lie and our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you,’ said Trump.
Littlejohn told Fox News Digital that she was ‘extremely grateful’ to the president but that the fight is far from over.
Regarding Trump, Littlejohn said, ‘I would just like to thank him and continue to speak truth that there are two sexes, male or female, and no matter what one does to their body, that can never change. Sex is binary.’
‘It’s really important that parents understand how destructive in nature social transition of children is,’ she said. ‘It’s the first step toward medical intervention, and it makes the child less likely to desist.’
She explained her daughter as a 13-year-old in middle school and some friends became fixated on their gender identity.
‘The school took it upon themselves to intervene and socially transition my child. And this goes way beyond name and pronouns. They sit the child down, and in our case it was behind closed doors with three adults that consisted of the school counselor, the assistant principal and a social worker I had never met, and they did an official ‘gender support plan.’’
Littlejohn said that in this session, the school staff asked her daughter what bathroom and locker rooms she wanted to use, which sex she wanted to room with during overnight trips and whether she wanted her parents to be notified or not.
‘They put the burden on her as to whether or not my parental rights would be honored by deciding she was the sole decision maker as to whether or not my husband and I would be notified of the meeting,’ she explained.
Littlejohn said that when she made inquiries about the session to the school she was told ‘they could not give me any information about that meeting’ and ‘that my daughter was now protected by a nondiscrimination law.’
Today, Littlejohn says her daughter has worked through her gender confusion. But she said the school’s actions created a ‘huge wedge between us and our daughter’ that ‘took many years to repair.’
‘If you give these children the gift of time, if you allow them to go through their natural puberty, the vast majority of these kids will resolve their distress naturally, just like my daughter did,’ she said. ‘My daughter is a shining example of that, although she still does grieve the time that she lost, years that she lost, dedicated to the lie of this ideology to become something that she could never become. So that part is really tragic.’
Despite all this, Littlejohn said she was ‘humbled and honored’ to be invited to attend the address as the president’s guest.
‘I felt the weight of not just representing my family and what we’ve been through but of all families who have been harmed by this gender identity ideology,’ she said. ‘And it’s still happening. I get phone calls weekly from parents whose children are being seduced by the false idea that they were born in the wrong body.’
Though she said the experience left her feeling ‘filled with such hope,’ she said, ‘executive orders alone will not change this, because this ideology has infected every institution, including our schools.’
‘There are still 21,000 school districts across our country that have these secret social transition plans. And it’s really sad … because these children, this identity crisis is being forced on them. It’s creating confusion where no previous confusion would have existed,’ she said. ‘But the bottom line is, is we have truth and reality on our side. And I’m very grateful that we are moving in the right direction.’