In a powerful new episode on BrokenTruth.TV, investigative journalist Christine Dolan sits down with longtime gay rights activist, attorney, Army veteran, and co-author Jeff Cleghorn to discuss their book “Urban Legends” and the radical shift that has turned former allies into critics of what they call the pseudoscientific targeting of children.
The conversation cuts to the heart of one of the most contentious cultural battles of our time: how the original gay rights movement — focused on dignity, assimilation, and equal rights for same-sex attracted adults — was overtaken by a new ideology that prioritizes “queer” theory and the medicalization of gender-nonconforming minors.
The Old Guard vs. the New Activism
Cleghorn, who began his activism in 1993 and served on boards including Georgia Equality and Lambda Legal, describes the dramatic change after major victories like the 2015 Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling.
“Basically, everything on the gay rights movement drop-down menu was accomplished, and rather quickly,” he tells Dolan. “But thereafter, the organizations that we as gay men and lesbian women had built… those organizations were thereafter hijacked by this extremist line of queer thinking.”
What was once a push for adults to live freely and assimilate became, in Cleghorn’s view, an aggressive campaign to proselytize to children through schools, libraries, children’s books, media, and medical clinics.
He emphasizes the timeline: notions of “trans children,” preferred pronouns for kids, and social/medical transition for minors were virtually nonexistent in the 1990s and 2000s. The explosion of pediatric gender clinics — from a handful to hundreds, including dozens specifically for children — occurred largely in the last 10–15 years.
Transgenderism as Ideology, Not Medicine
Cleghorn is blunt: transgenderism is an ideology asserting that biological sex can be changed — that a man can become a woman or vice versa, including claims that women can have penises or men can breastfeed. He calls these beliefs “irrational, illogical, and contradictory.”
He distinguishes two main categories rooted in diagnostic manuals:
Gender dysphoria (rare, often resolves naturally after puberty in many cases).
Transvestic disorder (significantly larger group, mostly heterosexual males with a sexual fetish involving dressing as or imagining themselves as women).
The latter group, he argues, drives much of the push for access to female-only spaces, as it provides sexual arousal.
Cleghorn stresses that gender-nonconforming children — the “sissy little boy who likes dolls” or the “tom girl who plays in the dirt” — have always existed as normal variations of human development. Today, for the first time in history, society is told these children are “sick” and require medical intervention: puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.
Data from multiple countries, he notes, shows that many such children, if left alone, grow up to be same-sex attracted adults. Medicalizing them, in his words, amounts to a form of conversion therapy aimed at preventing gay outcomes while creating lifelong medical patients.
The Medical Fraud and WPATH
A central theme connecting the book’s chapters on COVID and transgender issues is medical trafficking and institutional fraud.
Cleghorn highlights the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) as a key player — an activist organization masquerading as a medical body. He points to recent actions by the Federal Trade Commission and several states filing consumer fraud lawsuits against WPATH, alleging it created a “fake medical paradigm” that misleads parents and providers for profit, with no proven long-term benefit to patients.
Systematic evidence reviews in the UK, Sweden, Norway, and a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review have reached similar conclusions: the evidence base for pediatric gender medicine is weak, shallow, and lacking credible long-term data showing improved physical or psychological outcomes. Some studies show dramatically elevated suicide rates post-transition.
Whistleblower Jamie Reed and Real-World Harm
Cleghorn introduced Dolan to Jamie Reed, the first major U.S. pediatric gender clinic whistleblower. Reed, a lesbian and self-described progressive who worked at Washington University’s Transgender Center in St. Louis, initially wanted to help “trans kids.” After years inside the system, she concluded the clinic was harming children through rushed interventions, manipulation of parents (including suicide threats if they didn’t affirm), and inadequate mental health screening.
Reed has since testified across the country and founded the LGB Courage Coalition to protect sex-nonconforming children. Her sworn affidavit is referenced in Cleghorn’s chapter.
Parallels to COVID and the Profit Motive
Dolan and Cleghorn draw direct parallels between the two topics in “Urban Legends”: both involve coercion, lies, defrauding the public, and massive financial incentives for the medical-industrial complex. Post-Obamacare rules on “gender identity” helped fuel the clinic boom. Greedy providers, hospitals, and activist organizations profited while evidence of harm mounted.
Cleghorn notes the mainstream media’s role in institutional capture — continuing to portray the issue as “settled science” despite growing international pushback and domestic lawsuits.
Courage to Speak Out
Both Dolan and Cleghorn acknowledge they expect attacks for their views. Cleghorn, now retired, says he can no longer be “canceled” in the traditional sense and is ready for the fight. He frames opposition not as bigotry but as basic child safeguarding.
“Targeting kids… There’s no reason to sit on the bench,” Dolan states.
Cleghorn’s contribution to the book — the chapter “Transgender 101: The Fraud Seducing America’s Children” — distills these arguments into an accessible explanation for readers confused by the rapid cultural shift.
Listen and Read
The full interview is a must-listen for anyone seeking clarity on how we arrived at this moment — from the successes of the original gay rights movement to the current medical and ideological battles over children’s bodies and minds.
“Urban Legends” by Christine Dolan and contributors including Jeff Cleghorn offers a detailed examination of what the authors describe as parallel pseudoscientific frauds in the COVID era and the transgender movement.
Tune in to the complete conversation on BrokenTruth.TV and pick up the book to read Cleghorn’s chapter in full. In an age of institutional capture and suppressed debate, these voices represent a growing chorus demanding evidence, accountability, and protection for the most vulnerable.
The truth, as they argue, is neither irrational nor optional.
