Parents all over the United States received the label of domestic terrorists when they decided to criticize subject material revolving around gender identity being taught to their children. Many Democrats and liberals lashed out at the concerned parents, suggesting their claims were somehow homophobic. But the data coming out of the largest school district in Maryland paints an entirely different picture as it showed a staggering 582% increase in students now considered to be gender non-conforming. And that data isn’t over the span of a decade, but only the span of two years.

**Let’s Connect! Join Our Community**

Over the last few years, the Montgomery County Public Schools gathered data from school counselors who speak with individual children who approach them about gender identity. Surprisingly, the school district has a form that includes a safety and confidentiality plan. Given that the form is only filled out when a student discusses the sensitive topic, the massive increase has set off alarms to many parents. What makes the data even more shocking is the fact that it is not available to parents. An educator, Elicia Eberhart-Bliss, shared an image showing the data on Twitter as she attended the “Pride ALLiance” meeting in the district.

Looking at the data, in the 2019-2020 school year, 12 high schoolers, 19 middle schoolers, and four elementary students shared their gender identity with their counselors. That comes out to be 35 students in total. Just one year later, in 2021-2022, that number jumped to 239, with 129 of them being middle schoolers, 18 in elementary, and 92 in high school. That data was collected from 84 schools. Twenty of them were elementary. Counselors suggested that 423 students helped fill out the form above, and of those, 45% identified as non-binary.

Critics of the data, like Bethany Mandel, attacked it as not being inaccurate but as a frightening statistic showing the surge in gender-confused children in the state. “This isn’t data that the outside world has seen before; it was accidentally shared and is incredibly illuminating. There is a clear explosion of gender-confused children year-over-year, and it’s clear the majority of those are legitimately children, middle school and below. This isn’t just a Montgomery County problem, it’s nationwide; we were just able to get a glimpse of the data here.”

Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright didn’t focus much on the data but on the term transgender and how it is synonymous with non-binary. Wright claimed that a female playing with trucks and cars is now considered transgender, although they show no signs of gender dysphoria. “It is urgent that we all fully understand that the definition of transgenderism used by our most highly regarded scientific, medical, and human rights institutions now literally encompasses common gender nonconformity, and this is the main reason so many children are now claiming to be transgender.”