Austin Ruse
(ZENIT News / New York, 03.26.2025).- The U.S. Mission to the United Nations sponsored an event on the dangers of gender ideology. The event was co-sponsored by C-Fam, publisher of the Friday Fax, and the Heritage Foundation. The panel was significant because it was the first ever U.S. event against gender ideology at the UN.
“It is an honor to address this important gathering today on the critical issue of protecting women and families from the impact of gender ideology,” said the acting U.S. Representative to the Economic and Social Council, Jonathan Shrier. The career diplomat oversees the U.S. Mission’s work on social issues while Trump’s nominee as UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, awaits to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
In an official statement, Shrier emphasized that the Trump administration is committed to protecting “the great American values of family, truth, well-being, and freedom” and opposing policies that “seek to erase the category of sex and the unique characteristics that define women as female and men as male” including by “preserving the integrity of women’s spaces, from our schools to our sports, and ensuring that biological males do not infringe upon the rights of women and girls.”
He also said the U.S. will oppose “the promotion of gender ideology in educational settings.” Shrier described ongoing “tough negotiations” on gender ideology at the United Nation and pledged to vote against resolutions “if necessary, to advance President Trump’s America First foreign policy.”
Following the U.S. Statement, Jay Richards, Ph.D., of the Heritage Foundation described gender ideology as an unprecedented movement in human history that denies the category of sex as an “observable” characteristic. The Heritage Foundation also co-sponsored the event, which took place during the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women, the largest feminist gathering at UN headquarters in New York.
Detransitioner Maia Poet said she was shaken into confronting the reality of her womanhood by the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel. She lived as a boy from the age of 12 despite opposition from her parents. When the sirens started blaring during the attacks on October 7, 2023, Maia said she found herself with having to choose between binding her breasts or making it to safety. Now a passionate advocate to protect young people from harmful trans ideology Maia said, “What started as a medical experiment confined to a few European Hospitals nearly a century ago has morphed into a widespread ideological assault on reality.”
Erin Friday, a mother who successfully fought to rescue her daughter from transgender ideology, described how her daughter was drawn into the transgender movement by the public school system and the challenges she faced through her ordeal. Friday, president of a parent advocacy group “Our Duty”, said she discovered how her daughter had been exposed to transgender ideology and then affirmed by teachers without her ever knowing about it.
Stefano Gennarini, C-Fam’s Executive Vice President for Legal Studies spoke of the obligations of States to respect and uphold parental rights. He said parental rights must be an integral part of all international programs involving children. “This will be essential to eradicate gender ideology for good and to protect children from new and emerging threats,” he said.
Gennarini described how international human rights law assigns parents the “primary responsibility” of the development and wellbeing of their children and recognizes their right to direct the education of their children. This reflects international law’s special protections of the natural family as a pre-juridical entity, according to Gennarini. He explained that this is deliberate “to counter the possibility that state-run education systems may be used once again to control entire populations and indoctrinate them, pitting children against parents, and even denouncing them when they were not loyal to government-backed ideologies, as was the case under the Nazi and Communist regimes.”
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