Walt Heyer, who identified as a woman for eight years before detransitioning roughly 40 years ago, says he doesn’t buy recent reports of a sharp decline in teens identifying as gay or bisexual. Heyer, now a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive video interview that social media and peer pressure may be distorting the picture.
“I don’t really believe that there’s a big dramatic free fall,” Heyer said.
The remarks follow a Washington Post report citing CDC data showing the share of ninth grade girls identifying as lesbian or bisexual fell from 30% in 2021 to 17% in 2025. Girls identifying specifically as bisexual dropped from 26% to 13% over the same span. Identification rates among boys have stayed largely flat over the past decade, while the surge in girls identifying as lesbian or bisexual after the COVID-19 pandemic has now begun to recede, according to the Post.
Heyer, author of “Trans Life Survivors” and “Paper Genders” and someone who has spent years working with people questioning their gender identities, argued the numbers may reflect social pressure rather than a genuine shift.
“I think what’s happening is that, because of social media, there’s a lot more influence on people who may not want to fall into that classification on a social media level and will withhold the fact that they are gay or bisexual but really don’t want to openly admit it,” he said.
He pointed to direct experience with students navigating that pressure from both directions. “I’ve had actual people in school saying that they’re bullied into identifying one way, or they’re bullying and bullied to not identify that way,” Heyer said.
Heyer said he’s skeptical of the self-reported data more broadly. “What’s interesting about that is that many kids are sort of coerced by their peers to say things one way or the other, so I’ve been very skeptical about what the kids are saying, whether they’re gay or bisexual,” he said.
On gender identity specifically, Heyer was blunt about his own experience going through hormones and surgeries. “I think that what I’ve really discovered is that we know now and have evidence, factual evidence, that nobody has ever changed their gender,” he said. “So far in all world history, nobody has actually biologically changed their gender. This is a cosmetic social appearance. It is not a biological change.”
He went further, framing the terminology itself as a rejection of faith. “This is the way young people and adults reject God and say God doesn’t exist by taking these labels on,” Heyer said.
He’s urging researchers not to rush to conclusions about the CDC figures. “I just think it’s important for us to be much more thorough and go to other areas before we come to some conclusion that there’s a giant, giant drop in these identities,” Heyer said. “I don’t think we’re there yet.”
