Fox News Falls Into the Pride Month Trap

Fox News recently featured the story of Ryland Whittington. Whittington looks like a typical American teenage boy, and in Fox News’ video, you see Whittington tossing the football with Dad and dressing like a stylish teenage boy. The problem with all of it is that Whittington isn’t a boy — Whittington is a girl who identifies as a boy, and her parents have gone along with the charade.

According to the Whittington family, Ryland indicated that she was really a boy before she could even speak.

“I could see it. It wasn’t him trying to be a brat. It was like painful. It was painful for him to have to wear feminine clothing and for us constantly telling him that you are a girl,” Hillary Whittington said.

This isn’t the first time that the Whittingtons, who live in San Diego, have made the news. In 2016, the UK newspaper the Telegraph published a piece on the “conservative Christian family whose baby daughter wanted to be a boy.”

“The hardest thing for me to read is that we’re liberal, agenda-pushing parents, or pushovers who’d let our kids do anything,” Ryland’s dad Jeff told the Telegraph‘s Anna Hart.

Hillary Whittington spoke to Fox News about the family’s faith, telling reporter Bryan Llenas that “For me it’s just a deep spiritual belief that if you believe in God and He created us the way He wanted us, well then yes, He created Ryland just the way he is.”

Hillary Whittington wrote a book about the family’s journey, also in 2016. Two years before that, the family posted a YouTube video about Ryland that has over 8 million views as of June 2022.

They’ve paraded Ryland before the media and advocacy groups as well. At age six, Ryland spoke to the Harvey Milk Foundation, telling eventgoers, “I am a cool kid. And I am the happiest I have ever been in my whole life.” Last year, she spoke in support of transgender athletes at the behest of California’s attorney general.

They even appeared in a Pride Month video on the NHL’s Twitter feed last year, decked out in rainbow gear.

Living as your authentic self is the best way to live.

Ryland Whittington, a California-based hockey player, and his family share WHY PRIDE MATTERS to them. #NHLPride #HockeyIsForEveryone pic.twitter.com/yzZeEPgUm8

— NHL (@NHL) June 22, 2021

Sorry, but draping the whole family in Pride paraphenalia is the part where I’m having a hard time buying the whole “conservative Christian” description of the Whittingtons.

But the strangest thing about all of it is that Fox News told the Whittingtons’ story as if it were some awe-inspiring account. At the end of the video, Llenas told Dana Perino:

What extraordinary courage displayed by Ryland, his sister Brinley, father, Jeff and mom, Hillary. I want to thank the Whittington family for speaking to us. It’s not easy, particularly at a time when transgender issues have been politicized. People are afraid of what they don’t understand, Dana. This family hopes their story will lead to more understanding, more acceptance, and ultimately, more love.

(For what it’s worth, Ryland already had a genuinely inspiring story. Born deaf, she hears and speaks clearly thanks to cochlear implants.)

The most shocking part is that it’s not CNN, MSNBC, or one of the broadcast networks hyping Pride Month. It’s Fox News, for crying out loud. And conservatives have expressed their disappointment.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer when my conservative news outlets don’t encourage parents to trans their little children. pic.twitter.com/1U84xx3ww3

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) June 10, 2022

The most brazen thing about @FoxNews deciding to push the transgender propaganda is they didn’t do it back when the mom said the baby was trans, or when the baby was a toddler. They waited until the kid was older to try to normalize it for its viewers. It’s propaganda Fox pushed.

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) June 11, 2022

I’m stunned that Fox News ran a segment celebrating a girl whose parents “transitioned” her into a boy when she was 5 because she apparently told them she was a boy “before [she] could talk.” Absolutely maddening & heartbreaking. https://t.co/T8k1QQS6uH pic.twitter.com/kCvacbtY3X

— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) June 10, 2022

This would be absolute despicable insane lunacy if I saw it on CNN or MSNBC. To see it on Fox News is a complete betrayal of anything remotely resembling conservatism or decency. https://t.co/GByzfB2F5c

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 10, 2022

The report is absolute, horrifying propaganda. We’ve got Mom citing her “Christian faith” to justify the perversion of biological identity. We’ve got the radical gender theory activist Trevor Project stats claiming that childhood transition is the only way to prevent suicide.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 10, 2022

“Seven million people saw a viral YouTube video of a transgender teenager and none other than Fox News just gave the delusion another platform to spread on,” writes Tierin-Rose Mandelburg at NewsBusters. It’s a real shame that a story like this went viral on Fox News of all outlets.

Pride Month is in our faces all the time, everywhere we go. Conservatives have counted on Fox News to talk about the events of the day without the leftward slant that so much of the rest of the media throws at us. This time, Fox News is as as guilty as everyone else when it comes to pushing Pride Month on Americans.

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