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Europe Follows the United States

Where Kaltiala Appears, Familiar American Actors Follow

I hope this page provides some insight into how the American anti-LGBT influence network has also reached Western Europe with relatively little attention. SEGM has been particularly eager to highlight the presence of cisgender gay people within its activities, despite the fact that the organization was created in the late 2010s to support Christian conservative legal strategies in U.S. courts. Note that Michelle Cretella, who opposes the rights of same-sex couples, appears both here and in the Poland section. A comprehensive overview of these organizations in Europe would be much broader than this page. Here I have limited the scope to references involving Finland, which just happen to overlap heavily with these networks.

Note: The majority of links are PDF documents, some of them hundreds of pages long.
A separate page on appearances across Europe at the invitation of American organizations is planned.

Italy

Various "family values" organizations have had their material submitted to hearings in the Italian Parliament. At least one of these actors has collaborated with SEGM's Lisa Marchiano. The same networks have also translated material from Genspect and the exploratory therapy movement into Italian. These materials include, among other things, advice to cut ties with supportive friends and family if a child says they are transgender. Italian parliamentary materials reference Kaltiala, the Cass Review, SEGM, detransition narratives, and the Finnish/Nordic policy changes.

France

A report by the Les Républicains parliamentary group in the French Senate constructs a narrative around an international network warning about the dangers of "trans identification." The report features, among others, Riittakerttu Kaltiala, Kenneth Zucker, and Lisa Littman. It is directly connected to a SEGM conference in Paris, where political actors were invited, including several from across the Atlantic. The Lacanian psychoanalysts and essayists of Observatoire la Petite Sirène (OPS) organized a joint event with SEGM promoting what they described as evidence-based science. One speaker described transgender identity as a communist mass delusion. The Paris conference program included a session titled "The Situation in 2024: Countries That Have Not Yet Changed Course." In this context, Kaltiala and Finland were again presented as pioneers.

Bulgaria

A "scientific report" submitted to the Bulgarian Constitutional Court invokes Finland, the Cass Review, and Nordic restrictions on transgender healthcare as arguments against such care. Earlier, Bulgaria constitutionally prohibited legal gender recognition, a development that received surprisingly little international attention. Finland is presented as an example of a country that supposedly "retreated" from affirmative care.

Germany

Materials submitted to hearings in the Bundestag rely on a source network very similar to those seen in France and Italy. Kaltiala, Littman, Zucker, SEGM, the Cass Review, and detransition narratives appear repeatedly in the same documents.

Poland

The ultra-conservative Ordo Iuris organization uses Finland as an argument against what it calls "gender ideology." Its materials rely on PALKO, the Cass Review, and SEGM in ways that often simplify or distort the content of Finnish research and healthcare policy.

Michelle Cretella, president of the American ACPeds organization, wrote the foreword to standards published by a Christian medical association. These standards cite Kaltiala's essay published in an anti-woke outlet as a scientific authority.

Czech Republic

Finnish scientific credibility is imported into a Czech culture-war context. The material repeats the claim often associated with Kaltiala that "four out of five children grow out of gender dysphoria." However, a recent literature review published in a respected academic journal examined the sources behind this claim and described them as so weak that drawing healthcare policy conclusions from them would require either scientific illiteracy or deliberate selectivity.

Portugal

The language used in Portuguese parliamentary materials is more technocratic, but the structure of the argument closely resembles that found elsewhere. The Cass Review, PALKO, Sweden, and Finland are used to construct a narrative that Europe is moving away from the affirmative model. Finland is presented as a country that supposedly "discovered the harms" of transgender healthcare, despite the fact that Finnish follow-up studies generally found positive outcomes.