Gender And Identity

Would a proposed Florida bill make a transgender student athlete "drop her pants" to prove she's a girl before playing on a Florida school sports team? No, that's not true. Both versions of the bill in Florida (a state House bill and a state Senate version) provide for either genetic testing or testing of a child's endogenously produced testosterone levels…

Did a woman named Titania McGrath post a tweet demanding that dog owners stop using gendered terms like "good boy" and "good girl"? No, that's not true: The @TitaniaMcGrath account is a satirical jab at "wokeness." McGrath is a fictional character made up by comedian and columnist Andrew Doyle. All kinds of people have been fooled by the account: They…

Did Jerry Nadler say "God has no authority in the House of Representatives"? No, that's not true: Video from the debate during which the New York representative supposedly said that shows he didn't utter the phrase. Lead Stories rates the claim false because, regardless of meaning, the claim is at odds with the publicly available transcript and recording, which clearly…

Is "Big Tech" letting child porn distributors freely operate while restricting people who post content that companies like Amazon and Facebook consider to be dangerous falsehoods? No, that's not how it works: No one owns the internet, which is a network of connected computers on which the World Wide Web operates via a common programming code that allows users to…

Does the recent legislation that funds aid to Americans economically hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic also provide tax dollars for "gender studies" in Pakistan? No, that's not true: Though they were voted on as one package, the COVID relief measures were part of a separate bill that was then bundled together with others to streamline end-of-the-year votes in Congress. The…

Did former Vice President and presidential hopeful Joe Biden say American culture is European, and not imported from an African or Asian nation? No, that's not entirely true: clips from a speech Biden gave in New Hampshire on December 30, 2019, were selectively edited to suggest that Biden rejects the influence of other cultures on American society. The real story…

Does a Texas school district mandate teaching kids how to have anal sex? No, that's not true: When the Austin Independent School District's board approved an update of its sex education curriculum on October 29, 2019, it gave every parent the power to opt their children out of any or all of the classes, which did not include any lessons…

Does President Trump want to make mocking Jesus Christ a hate crime? No, that's not true: in reality Trump has no plans to introduce such blatantly unconstitutional legislation, the story was published by a liberal satire website that tries to mislead Trump supporters and Republicans into sharing made up stories that are clearly marked as satire when you actually click…

Does Facebook support openly calling for assassination of Republicans that defeat Democrats? No, that's not true: a meme making that claim uses an image that has been found to be a forgery by fact checkers working with Facebook at the time it was originally posted. The banner in the original photo the meme was based on read "Trump makes America…

Did Muslim boys of Somali heritage attack a toddler at a British play center, leaving 15 bite marks on her face and did the London media "black out" coverage of the incident? The answer is a little complicated: A 17-month-old girl was repeatedly bitten by another toddler at a play center in Leeds on November 2, 2018, and the mother…