Last week, a British journalist unearthed a document laying out the transgender movement’s secretive strategy to seize control of governments, undermine parental rights, and target children for dangerous experimental drugs that lead to sterilization and genital mutilation. The document lays out a three-pronged strategy to victimize children when they are far too young to understand the ramifications of any hormone “treatment” or surgery.

As the Spectator‘s James Kirkup revealed, transgender activists attack parental rights by getting ahead of the government agenda, tying their issue to more popular movements to create a “veil of protection,” and working in secret to “keep press coverage to a minimum.” In this way, they use their status as a minority to manipulate the government into enacting policies that would be opposed by the majority.

Dentons, which claims to be the world’s biggest law firm, crafted the report, working with Thomson Reuters Foundation and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organization (IGLYO). Both Dentons and the Thomson Reuters Foundation claim the document does not necessarily represent their views, but they helped draft it, nonetheless.

“Only Adults? Good Practices in Legal Gender Recognition for Youth” warns that parental rights can damage children’s self-expression. “It is recognised that the requirement for parental consent or the consent of a legal guardian can be restrictive and problematic for minors,” the document argues.

In this foundational assumption, IGLYO reveals its aim: to circumvent parental consent when it comes to transgender identity. “Restricting” a child’s capacity for self-harm is an essential part of good parenting, and parents should have the right to protect their children from decisions that will damage them for the rest of their lives. No good father will allow his anorexic daughter to get liposuction, and no good mother will allow her son to cut off his arm or leg because he has body integrity disorder or identifies as an amputee.

Yet when it comes to transgender identity — which can push children toward “treatments” that actually introduce a disease to healthy bodies — the document urges the government to subvert parental rights.

“For example, states should take action against parents who are obstructing the free development of a young trans person’s identity in refusing to give parental authorisation when required,” the document reads. Yes, this activist handbook drafted by an international law firm and backed by one of the world’s largest charitable foundations directly aims to subvert parental rights through the power of the state.

Interestingly, the handbook pays lip service to politics and culture but takes direct aim at government policies. “While cultural and political factors play a key role in the approach to be taken, there are certain techniques that emerge as being effective in progressing trans rights in the ‘good practice’ countries,” it states.

Kirkup zeroed in on three of the handbook’s pieces of advice.

“Get ahead of the government agenda,” the document advises. “In many of the NGO advocacy campaigns that we studied, there were clear benefits where NGOs managed to get ahead of the government and publish progressive legislative proposals before the government had time to develop their own.”

Activist groups should effectively direct any reform, the handbook encourages. “NGOs need to intervene early in the legislative process and ideally before it has even started. This will give them far greater ability to shape the government agenda and the ultimate proposal than if they intervene after the government has already started to develop its own proposals.”

Powerful activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign draft model legislation and regulations, pushing them on political leaders and government agencies. When then-Gov. Pat McCrory signed House Bill 2, reserving public restrooms on the basis of biological sex, five LGBT groups sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Shortly thereafter, Lynch’s deputy, Vanita Gupta, sent a letter threatening to revoke North Carolina’s federal funding for education unless it ceased its “discrimination” immediately.

LGBT activist groups had circumvented the culture and politics, going straight for government policy — and the Obama administration leapt at the opportunity to condemn a Republican governor.

The handbook also encourages transgender activists to “tie your campaign to more popular reform.” Activists suggest tying the subversion of parental rights to the campaign for same-sex marriage.

“In Ireland, Denmark and Norway, changes to the law on legal gender recognition were put through at the same time as other more popular reforms such as marriage equality legislation,” the document notes. “This provided a veil of protection, particularly in Ireland, where marriage equality was strongly supported, but gender identity remained a more difficult issue to win public support for.”

Kirkup highlighted the phrases “veil of protection” and “difficult to win public support for.” Transgender activists know their advocacy is unpopular, so they tie it to same-sex marriage. Many feminists — especially lesbians — have rightly balked at this. Women who oppose opening up their bathrooms, changing rooms, sexual abuse shelters, and prisons to biological men have rightly argued that it is not possible to distinguish between a man who truly identifies as female and a man who masquerades as transgender in order to spy on, assault, or even rape women in sex-segregated spaces.

While Kirkup did not emphasize these points, the handbook also encourages the use of “human rights arguments” to spin the narrative, and urges activists to “de-medicalise the campaign.” What does “de-medicalising” entail? According to the document, it “involves separating the legal gender recognition process from the public association with medical treatment or diagnoses.” In other words, activists want the legal recognition that males are “women” even if they do not undergo hormone therapy or genital mutilation.

While medical “treatments” are often scarring and usually irreversible, transgender activists are not trying to protect people from these procedures so much as trying to muddy the waters on definitions. They want legal recognition of transgender identity regardless of anatomy — the very thing lesbian feminists warn against.

Activists seem to think that public support for transgender identity will curb the devastating suicide rates among people who suffer from gender confusion. Yet by advocating legal recognition without requiring any medical changes, they are opening the doors for abuse by provocateurs like Jessica Yaniv, a biological male who tried — and failed — to weaponize human rights laws to force women to wax his genitals.

Perhaps for these reasons, the handbook also encourages activists to “avoid excessive press coverage and exposure.”

“Another technique which has been used to great effect is the limitation of press coverage and exposure. In certain countries, like the UK, information on legal gender recognition reforms has been misinterpreted in the mainstream media, and opposition has arisen as a result,” the document warns. “Against this background, many believe that public campaigning has been detrimental to progress, as much of the general public is not well informed about trans issues, and therefore misinterpretation can arise.”

“In Ireland, activists have directly lobbied individual politicians and tried to keep press coverage to a minimum in order to avoid this issue.”

As Kirkup noted, this secretiveness is extremely revealing. “Actually convincing people that this stuff is a good idea doesn’t feature much in the report, which runs to 65 pages.”

Sure, the handbook is a tool for activists who are already on board with the mission. Even so, a reasonable observer might expect Dentons and Thomson Reuters to be at least partially concerned with convincing people on the merits, rather than attempting to foist transgender activism on an unconvinced populace.

Tragically, these attempts to circumvent the political and cultural debate are a central facet of transgender activism. Endocrinologists like Dr. Michael Laidlaw witnessed the transgender takeover of medical establishments, resulting in the perverse situation of pumping kids with hormones that introduce disease into otherwise healthy bodies. The very same disease many endocrinologists treat — hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, which involves the brain failing to send the right signals for proper hormone development — is being fostered in children by experimental drugs.

These issues have come to a head in the case of James Younger, the 7-year-old Texas boy whose mother claims he is a girl. As the handbook warned, more coverage of the case has bolstered the argument against transgender experimentation, as the boy’s father has warned that the mother would subject the boy to dangerous drugs — and eventually genital mutilation. States are considering legislation to protect children in these cases, and that effort is likely to expand next year.

The secretive strategies in this handbook are particularly revealing. If Americans want to stand up for parental rights and the protection of children, perhaps the best strategy is to shine a light on transgender activism and to note that it is separate from and more pernicious than same-sex marriage.

Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.