The Washington Free Beacon published a lengthy story by Aaron Sibarium which takes a close look at a group which uses its influence to push its trans agenda on US hospitals. The story opens by pointing to some specific training which was offered at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. The mandatory training told staff that children could be, among other things, gender fluid meaning their gender identity could change based on their “mood.”

A nurse who left Children’s National in early 2022 told the WFB she became increasingly uncomfortable with. “I kept finding myself in situations I wasn’t comfortable with ethically,” she said. The rest of the piece explains how the group Human Rights Campaign used it’s Healthcare Equality Index to push hospitals like Children’s National in this direction.

Meet the Healthcare Equality Index, the Human Rights Campaign’s scorecard for hospitals that purports to measure the “equity and inclusion of their LGBTQ+ patients.” The index, which uses a 100 point scale, is funded by Pfizer and PhRMA, the trade association that lobbies on behalf of large pharmaceutical companies. And, Rempe noticed, it awards points for all of the policies Children’s National implemented.

To earn a perfect score, hospitals must display LGBT symbols, solicit and use patients’ preferred pronouns, and conduct trainings on LGBT issues approved by the Human Rights Campaign, according to the scoring criteria. They must also provide the same treatments for gender dysphoria that they provide for other medical conditions—meaning a hospital that uses puberty blockers to treat precocious puberty cannot withhold the drugs from children who say they’re transgender. And though the index does not mention medical conscience exemptions explicitly, it does penalize hospitals for allowing “discriminatory treatment that is in conflict with their non-discrimination policy.”

Over 2,200 health systems, including dozens of children’s hospitals, have been rated by the index. In 2022, Children’s National earned a perfect score.

Simply put, it’s not possible to score high on this index if you oppose any element of the gender-affirming care standard.

Last year, for example, the Human Rights Campaign deducted points from two Texas hospitals, UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Health in Dallas, because they stopped using puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria but continued to use them to treat precocious puberty—the blockers’ original purpose.

That “amounts to discrimination against transgender youth,” the Human Rights Campaign argued in a press release.

In theory, the index is just a rating with no legal implications but in practice hospitals that score below 100 can find themselves the targets of outside groups like the ACLU and Lambda Legal. Hospitals who want to achieve a perfect score can either provide their own training (which has to be submitted for review) or rely on a pre-approved list of training modules.

One training, offered by Howard Brown Health, teaches participants to “dismantle the gender binary” and “define misgendering as trauma,” according to a description of the training on the Human Rights Campaign’s website, while another discusses “frameworks of care such as intersectionality and anti-oppression.”

A running theme in the trainings is that transgender people’s high rates of mental illness are due solely to a lack of acceptance. This view, known as the minority stress theory, underpins many of the arguments in favor of on-demand gender affirmation. The training at Children’s National went so far as to suggest that using patients’ preferred pronouns reduces their risk of suicide, echoing the idea that social transition can be “lifesaving.”

So while Europe and Scandinavia have been taking a step back and looking more closely at gender-affirming-care for kids, US hospitals have been falling into line with whatever Human Rights Campaign decides is appropriate.