How far would you go to rescue a child from danger? What if it were your child? What if your child was being harmed by an ideology that taught her to hate her body and question who she was?
While parents are pressured to believe that they must affirm their child’s gender confusion, threatened with legal action, and even told they will be responsible for their child’s self-harm, Erin Friday refused to give up on her 11-year-old daughter when she began to struggle with her identity as female.
Recently, Erin told the remarkable story to Virginia Allen on The Daily Signal Podcast.
It really started for my daughter in seventh grade when she went to her comprehensive sex-ed class at her public school. And unbeknownst to me, a third party comes in and teaches these kids four, five hours—so an hour each day. And one hour was dedicated to gender identity, with the “genderbread man” and all of the pictorials of, you could have a female body and a male brain. And so the seed was planted after that class. And in fact, all of her friends, there were five, sat in my front yard saying what their new labels were.
Erin was, in her words, “gobsmacked.” Having frequently volunteered at her daughter’s school, she found that teachers were committed to pushing radical transgender ideology on students, including her daughter. She soon discovered that male pronouns were being used for her daughter at school and that her daughter was being pitted against her family and parents by teachers.
Alarmed, Erin hired a psychologist.
I was clueless that we should have vetted her, or we should have understood whether she’s an affirming psychologist or not. … She quickly told us that we needed to call [our daughter] by the male name and male pronoun or she would commit suicide. She cited a study that said 41% chance of kids committing suicide. She didn’t read the study. I know that because I queried her about the study after I read it, and it was clear she’s just taking a headline and regurgitating it.
It was at this point that Erin chose instead to take clear and courageous action.
Not that I wasn’t loving towards her, but I decided that I was going to set boundaries, and I was going to hold the line on those boundaries, and they were not going to be crossed. I took the phone, so that was key. And a lot of parents will say they can’t do that. You can and you must, if you want to get your child out of this. And your child will hate you, and you have to be strong enough. Your love for your child has to be strong enough to take their vitriol. And it’s very, very hard. I spent many nights crying myself to sleep. Some days, I didn’t get out of bed.
But you still have to do it, because now there’s not a day that doesn’t go by that my daughter doesn’t say that she loves me. So, you can take the hate because you know what the end is going to be. Hopefully. And even if my daughter didn’t come back to have a relationship with me, which I knew she would, but even if she didn’t, I saved her from being a lifelong medical patient, so I would do it again.
The road was long and hard, but her story should inspire other parents who face what seems like an impossible choice.
People are told that they’re going to lose their jobs, and maybe that does happen, but there’s other jobs to be had. Me personally, if I can’t stand up for children, I have no morals. So, I will stand up for children 100 out of 100 times.
The movement is growing, and so, more and more parents are standing up. And what parents are also finding is that they’re not losing their jobs from standing up. So, more people stand up, more people call in now against these bills. And you need to create a crowd of courageous people because they can’t cancel us all. And we can’t ever defeat this unless we have the numbers. So, everyone who is against this needs to do something to stop it.
Please, listen to the complete interview with Erin Friday, hosted by Virginia Allen at The Daily Signal Podcast. You can also learn about the nonprofit Our Duty, started by Erin Friday to connect and mobilize like-minded parents.
May Erin’s courage and faithfulness be contagious. May parents who don’t know what to do learn from her story. May God raise up His people to stand with her against the grave evil that threatens our children.
This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to colsoncenter.org.
Publication date: February 6, 2023
Photo courtesy: Pixabay
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.