In recent years, governments and social institutions have embraced a single narrative: transgender- and nonbinary-identifying youths must be automatically and fully affirmed — no questions asked.

This ideology now permits biological males to compete in girls’ and women’s sports. But as trans and nonbinary identification begins reverting toward generational norms, the tides are turning.

As The Gazette reported last week, several school districts and charter schools — led by Colorado Springs District 49 — reached a settlement with the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) over its equity code, which “recognizes the right of transgender student-athletes to participate… free from unlawful discrimination.”

Under the agreement, districts may keep their biological-sex policies for sports and facilities while remaining in CHSAA-sanctioned athletics. CHSAA had previously deemed such policies “gross misconduct” or “unsportsmanlike conduct,” even threatening sanctions for forfeiting against a transgender athlete.

Now, forfeits will remain losses but won’t trigger penalties. That’s good — because let’s be real: neither school districts nor CHSAA are qualified to diagnose gender dysphoria.

The lawsuit will proceed against two other defendants, the Attorney General’s Office and Colorado Civil Rights Division.

Meanwhile, the coalition Protect Kids Colorado has advanced Initiative #109 — the “Protect Women and Girls Sports Act” — for next year’s ballot. It would require school athletic teams to be designated by biological sex and bar male students from playing on girls’ teams.

Initiative 109 would require K-12 and collegiate athletic teams to be designated male, female or coed while allowing girls to play on boys’ teams if no girls’ team exists — and ensuring federal protections for students with intersex conditions.

These developments arrive as data shows trans and nonbinary identification is “in free fall” among young people, according to Professors Eric Kaufmann and Jean Twenge.

An October report from the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Heterodox Social Science found trans/nonbinary identification “peaked in 2023 and has halved in the two years since,” according to author Kaufmann.

“(T)he data suggest that trans was a social contagion that rose and fell,” he wrote in Skeptic, arguing health practitioners often allowed “ideology to trump their responsibility to safeguard their patients from a fad, and to do no harm.”

Twenge, a San Diego State psychology professor, reviewed nationally representative datasets that corroborated Kaufmann’s findings. Trans identification among 18- to 22-year-olds was “cut nearly in half from 2022 to 2024,” she found, while nonbinary identification “dropped by more than half between 2023 and 2024.” Americans born in the early 2000s showed the highest rates, then “abruptly plummet(ing)” among those born mid-decade.

These rapid swings raise a difficult truth: When policy outruns data, kids bear the consequences.

Dr. Erica Anderson, a transgender clinical psychologist, warned about this in 2022. She told the LA Times that many youths arrived at clinics with parents saying, “This just doesn’t make sense.” Anderson observed pandemic isolation fueled heavy social media use that influenced young people’s perceptions of gender identity, names and pronouns.

Diagnoses of gender dysphoria tripled among American children between 2017 and 2021. As journalist Pamela Paul documented in The New York Times, many teens discovered transgender influencers online, transitioned — and later detransitioned after realizing their error.

Since 2021, state laws and district policies have increasingly enforced gender-affirming ideology — including rules like CHSAA’s that impose ideological mandates on schools.

In May 2024, the Colorado Medical Society nearly approved a policy opposing gender-affirming surgeries and puberty blockers for minors — until medical students, mobilized by a single professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, overrode practicing physicians. The proposal failed.

“Evidence must guide our empathy if we want to actually help kids,” the policy’s sponsor, Dr. Travis Morrell, told me, citing serious medical risks to hormone therapies.

Last year’s HB24-1039 passed by Colorado’s legislature requires schools to adopt students’ chosen names and pronouns, even over parental objection and without requiring parental notification. Such laws drive wedges between children and families while sidestepping research showing gender dysphoria often co-occurs with other mental-health challenges — even as multiple studies, particularly from Europe, challenge the claim that affirming chosen names and pronouns alone reduces suicide risk.

Parental disagreement doesn’t equal ill intent, nor does teenage reluctance to confide in parents signal abuse. “Those who say, ‘Just ignore the parents or work around them’ (are) undermining the life of this child who desperately needs support,” Anderson told Quillette, noting trans-identifying teens often face multiple underlying issues.

Yet, Colorado law chills therapeutic approaches and pushes these conversations underground. Some clinicians already refuse to treat minors with gender dysphoria.

“When somebody comes into the ER with a fever, you start looking for the reason why. If free to do so, I would approach gender dysphoria the same way,” one veteran therapist told me, speaking anonymously. She cited common underlying issues like autism, PTSD and bipolar disorders.

The U.S. Supreme Court is now reviewing the constitutionality of Colorado’s ban on counseling minors in ways that “attempts or purports to change” gender ideology.

Of course, none of this means that trans- or nonbinary-identifying students are necessarily reacting to societal pressures. But it underscores one crucial point: We shouldn’t rewrite laws or institutional norms based on fast-moving cultural trends.

The push to allow biological males into women’s sports springs from that same false urgency. Girls and women should never be forced to compete against — or risk injury from — male athletes with biological advantages any more than parents should be sidelined from decisions about their child’s wellbeing.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.