Chapter 1: What challenges do families face in supporting a trans child in today's political climate?
This is Andrew Ross Sorkin, the founder of Dealbook. Every year, I interview some of the world's most influential leaders across politics, culture, and business at the Dealbook Summit, a live event in New York City. On this year's podcast, you'll hear my unfiltered conversations with Gavin Newsom, the CEO of Palantir and Anthropic, and Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk.
Listen to Dealbook Summit wherever you get your podcasts. My name is . I live in Tennessee.
I've got four kids, and my wife and I decided a few months ago that we needed to pack up and move. We actually feel like asylum seekers in our own country. Our hope is that in Connecticut, the powers that be will be able to protect us.
We're leaving...
Chapter 2: How do parents navigate the fear of government targeting while supporting their trans child?
All our friends behind, we've been here for 13 years. All our family lives in the South. We'll be 1,000 miles away.
I don't know, the whole thing is heartbreaking. My wife cried a bunch this morning because we're going to do a big farewell party this afternoon and do a little country boil and say our goodbyes. All the best. From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitrow. This is The Daily.
Since coming into office, President Trump has thrown the full weight of the federal government behind denying the very idea of transgender identity and pushing to prevent trans minors from getting gender-affirming medical treatments. In the middle of all that are families scrambling to figure out how to best support their children without becoming targets of the government.
Chapter 3: What experiences led to the family's decision to move from Tennessee to Connecticut?
Today, we talk to one of those families. It's Friday, November 21st. I'm guessing that their house is this one with the trans flag. A few months ago, we went to Connecticut to visit the dad who'd reached out to us. Hello? Hey! Hi! He and his wife greeted us at the door and showed us to their living room.
Well, should we get set up? Do we want to find a place we can all sit down?
Chapter 4: How did Allie's parents first recognize her gender identity?
They asked us not to use their names because they were afraid of being targeted. They said they never expected to find themselves living in Connecticut. They both grew up in South Carolina, both raised in church every Sunday kind of families. While they were in college, they ended up at the same conference. He joined my group. He came in late and joined my group.
And then we met as a small group and we were talking about issues. And he kept talking about, well, I wonder what women think about this. And I was like, oh, wow. Like, who is this guy?
Chapter 5: What steps did the family take to find gender-affirming care for Allie?
He kept saying all this stuff, you know, about like feminism and women. And I thought, wow, this is something different.
And that's just how I talked all the time. It had nothing to do with the fact that I really thought she was something special. I was just going around in groups and saying, what do women think about this?
They hit it off, started dating, got married, had kids. They moved to Florida and became ministers. Things were good. One problem, and this was a very specific problem, was that they were ministers at different churches, making them what's referred to, apparently, as a two-church family.
We had been serving two separate congregations, and it just was too hard to be a two-church family, like running back and forth between all the
Chapter 6: How did changing political environments impact Allie's access to healthcare?
meetings and the churches and like we never really spent any of the kind of sacred holidays together. And so we... In 2013, they found their solution in Tennessee at a church where they could both work. By then, they had four children and they moved the whole family to a house on a cul-de-sac. The moment where I was like, oh, we're home, was there were fireflies.
And our kids had not seen fireflies. And so we all went outside and we called fireflies and that sort of thing. And of course, the nostalgia, having grown up in the South, to then see my kids doing that, it was like, yeah, very much an indicator that this was home for them. The whole time we lived there, I kept saying, this is our forever him. This is our forever him.
In Tennessee, they were doing the thing all parents do, trying to get to know their kids as they turn from who they might be to who they are.
Chapter 7: What did the family learn about community and support after moving?
But with their third child, that was harder. They've asked us to call her Allie. Allie had been born a biological boy, and from the start, she felt different from their other children, harder to reach. I think she was the one child. I always felt like that I didn't know her. What do you mean by that? That you didn't know her?
I don't... It's just sometimes you think about your kids and you're like, oh, I know what this woman would want. Like, silly things like birthday gifts or like, I know what they would think about this show or I know... I wonder what they would say if I asked them, you know, what they wanted to do with their life. And...
Chapter 8: How is Allie doing now, and what has changed since their move?
She was just a little out of grasp of being able to nail down who she was. And not in a bad way, but just a yearning as a parent. I just mentally remember thinking, I need to get to know her more. From early on, Allie seemed to her parents an effeminate boy. She loved all things purple and used to dress up in her sister's ballet outfits.
Once, when her dad kicked her a soccer ball, she performed a plie. But she was still a little kid, and her parents didn't really know what to make of it all, if anything. I mean, I don't think we were equipped to know what we were experiencing. So I think very early on, We thought, oh, this one might be gay.
Was there a moment that you remember kind of starting to realize, huh, this might not be a sexuality thing? We might be looking at something that's more connected to gender? Not me. I was really slow on the uptake. Yeah, me too. As Allie got older, though, this difference became harder to ignore. Particularly, they both say, during this one family trip they took in 2022.
And then we went to Spain. Oh, okay. I was wondering if you went. Yeah, we went to Spain. And I think we were maybe in different places a little bit at this point. And we went into this shop. And then Ali found these headbands and they were made out of metal and they were flowers and they were really pretty. They were very expensive.
And we had given them maybe like 50 euros each to have us spending money on the trip. And I just said, that's a lot of money. And so we walked out and then as we left, she's like, I really want to get those. And I thought, okay. And you, um, I think you were a little more hesitant, like, let's just go. What is she going to do?
And so I remember us having this conversation, like, what does she want with a headband? And I was like, I think. Do you remember that conversation? I do. Yes. So she wanted some tiara flowery looking thing.
And we're traveling in a different country and she,
I wasn't there yet and I was scared for her.
Whenever she wore something that presented more feminine to school, I was always like, I was afraid that someone would physically assault her.
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