Some of you may have heard of Abigail Shrier, the Wall Street Journal columnist and author of one of last year’s most controversial books, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.” It discusses the stunning surge in the number of teen-aged girls who are declaring that they are transgender.

The book has done quite well, despite a temporary ban on Amazon.com, and Shrier has become quite the crusader in spreading the message that no one under 18 should try transitioning to an opposite gender without stiff challenges from clinicians. After all, puberty blockers, testosterone treatments and mastectomies are, well, irreversible.

She’s branched out into related subjects. In November, she reported a sensational story: “How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids” on her Substack newsletter, The Truth Fairy. Reaction was swift. More on that in a moment. And by the way, there is a clear religion hook in this story, which is why it is relevant to religion-beat reporters and GetReligion readers, in general.

Shrier’s original story story, which is a must-read no matter what side of the trans debate you’re on, reports on a California Teachers Association conference in October where two presenters bluntly described how they could spy on students’ Google searches and listen in on their conversations to recruit kids into LGBTQ-friendly clubs. They also had tips on how to get LGBTQ material into morning announcements in schools, while making sure parents that don’t know anything about what is happening.

We’re talking middle-schoolers here, not 18-year-olds.

Shrier had the advantage of being sent audio files of the entire conference, so much of her material was verbatim remarks by the presenters. In a recent story, The San Francisco Chronicle offered its version of the event.

Now, tell me, does this headline take a stance or not? It read: “Two California teachers were secretly recorded speaking about LGBTQ student outreach. Now they’re fighting for their jobs.”

Note: The Chronicle’s website only lets you have one free read, so cut and paste crucial pieces of this report if you must. It began:

Over the fall, a pair of middle school teachers from the Salinas Valley traveled to Palm Springs for the California Teachers Association’s (CTA) annual LGBTQ+ Issues Conference. There, on a Saturday afternoon, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki spoke to a few dozen people about a subject they knew well: the difficulty of running a GSA, or gay-straight alliance, in a socially conservative community.

Speaking about recruiting students, Baraki said, “When we were doing our virtual learning — we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing schoolwork. One of them was Googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.”

Then a writer got ahold of a recording of the meeting -– this was a public event for teachers. Then the Spreckels Union School District closed down the gay-friendly club these teachers had started, then put them on administrative leave while the district investigated.

You have to read the Chronicle article to see the flag-waving it engages in on behalf of these teachers who, they insist, had only made some of their remarks tongue-in-cheek. Maybe these remarks about teachers “stalking” students didn’t freak out these journalists, but they left me rattled.

On Dec. 31, Shrier struck back on “The Truth Fairy,” her Substack newsletter that, fortunately, I recently decided to follow ($5/month if you want to know). This is the same venue in which she broke the original story. She said.

Despite the Chronicle’s repeated insinuation that there is something nefarious about a journalist’s reporting on remarks made at a widely-attended conference (“secretly recorded” and “surreptitious recording”) — the lecture was the furthest thing from a private conversation.

She heard from parents at the school where these women taught; parents who knew what the teachers were up to and had been complaining about it for some time. Someone else leaked to her a similar presentation –- again via the CTA -– about how to broach the subject of gender fluidity in classes for elementary school students. (Note: I just finished five years of part-time subbing — mainly for elementary school students — and the thought of introducing some of this stuff to anyone under fifth grade is crazy.)

Finally, Shrier brought up some important religion hooks in this story. First a bit of an intro.

As for the claim that this is a “conservative issue” — no, it really isn’t. Parents across the political spectrum oppose activist teachers having secret discussions with their elementary and middle school children about sexuality and gender. Far from this being a “divisive” culture-war topic, it’s close to a consensus. Conservative parents and liberal parents — and for that matter, straight and gay parents — tend to speak with one voice here: They do not want activist teachers shaping their elementary school children’s ideas of gender or sexuality without their knowledge, permission, or oversight. …

Religion provides a useful analogy. Public schools should support religious kids, employ teachers of all faiths, and nobody ought to insist that a teacher need deny her religious affiliation to her students. But we’d never allow a religious teacher — LDS, Evangelical Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Scientologist — secretly to hold meetings with middle school kids they believed would be receptive to their message without the parents’ permission.

There are religious protections in place for students who wish to start a religious club in school, but all this is done aboveboard.

The bottom line: Imagine the news coverage if evangelical teachers were studying the online life of their students looking for chances to evangelize them. Positive or negative headlines?

Nor would we countenance deceitful recruitment strategies. This has nothing to do with being “anti-religious” and everything to do with the refusal to allow a realm of secrecy to exist between teachers and young students on matters as private and personal to families as faith.

Sexuality and gender are every bit as intimate and value-laden as religion.

For reporters writing about this topic, Shrier’s point is well taken.

What would parents say if their kids were being recruited into a religious groups without their knowledge? We know the answer. So the next time you write about teachers recruiting kids for anything sexually related, consider digging out factual material linked to this analogy.

With religion, the rules of engagement have been established via many court cases. Not so with efforts to involve under-age kids in gay or trans exploration. The recruitment is out there; one of my friends in Portland (Oregon) saw her two granddaughters sucked into this trend via their public school. One has decided to transition to become a boy; the other is now describing herself as gender-fluid. One of the two girls is autistic, which brings up huge ethical questions in that larger percentages of autistic kids are gay or transgender.

After reading Shrier’s research, I wonder if these kids naturally discovered they were that way or were they recruited or led in that direction — and didn’t have the mental capacity to say no.

There are a ton of newsy questions here, since many parents and religious leaders are asking where coercion ends and consent begins.