Brandon Boulware’s Story

A lifelong Missourian, business lawyer, Christian, and the son of a Methodist minister, Brandon is also the father of four children, one of whom was born a boy but believes she’s meant to live as a girl. When he learned this, Brandon did what many well-meaning parents do: he tried to change it. Fix it.

He believed he was protecting his child by forcing gender-specific lifestyle habits, like clothes and after-school activities and sports. Brandon did it, he says, to prevent teasing, and, if he's being honest, to protect himself from inevitable questions about why his son didn't look and act like other boys.

"My child was miserable," Brandon says. "I cannot overstate that. She was absolutely miserable, especially at school. No confidence, no friends, no laughter. I can honestly say this: I had a child who did not smile."

For years, Brandon and his wife kept at it. Years of trying to make their child fit the way she was born. Years of watching her withdraw further into herself, losing joy, confidence, and connection.

The Moment Everything Changed

Brandon remembers the exact moment he realized what they were doing to their daughter. He'd come home from work one day to find his childdaughter and her brother playing in the front yard. She had snuck on one of her older sister's play dresses. The siblings wanted to go across the street to play with neighbor kids.

It was almost dinnertime, so Brandon said no, they needed to come inside.

Then his daughter asked him a question that would change everything: "If I go inside and put on boy clothes, can I then go across the street and play?"

"And it's then that it hit me," Brandon said, his voice thick with emotion during his testimony. "My daughter was equating being good with being someone else. I was teaching her to deny who she is. As a parent, the one thing we cannot do, the one thing, is silence our child's spirit."

On that day, Brandon and his wife stopped silencing their daughter's spirit.

The Transformation Was Immediate

They started allowing their daughter to grow her hair out and wear whatever clothes she wanted. The change was instantaneous.

"She was a different child," Brandon told lawmakers. "And I mean it was immediate. It was a total transformation. I now have a confident, a smiling, a happy daughter. She plays on the girls' volleyball team. She has friendships. She's a kid."

Brandon's daughter didn't choose to be a girl, he emphasized. She's been this way a girl from day one. "God made her that way," he said with conviction. "And the God I believe in does not make mistakes."

The kids Brandon had feared would tease his daughter? They embraced her instead. Because here's something many parents don't realize until they see it for themselves: for kids, this is rarely a problem.

"In so many ways, this legislation is a solution in search of a problem," Brandon told the committee. "Supporters like to present the situation like there are these hulking men out there playing on girls' teams, trampling girls on the fields. Folks, that's not the real world. That's not happening."

What Conversion Therapy Would Have Stolen

Brandon came to the Missouri Capitol that day to speak against House Joint Resolution 53, which would have forced transgender students to play only on teams corresponding to the gender on their birth certificates. But his testimony spoke to something much larger: the real-world impact of any effort, whether through legislation, "therapy," or well-meaning but misguided parenting, to force a child to be someone they're not.

"I need you to understand that this language, if it becomes law, will have real effects on real people," Brandon pleaded. "It will affect my daughter. It will mean she cannot play on the girls' volleyball team or dance squad or tennis team. It will mean she will not have the opportunity that all of us had—to be part of a team, to be part of something bigger, greater than ourselves."

The practices commonly known as "conversion therapy," sometimes repackaged as "exploratory therapy" or "therapy first,” would have told Brandon to keep doing exactly what he was doing for all those years his daughter didn't smile. They would have encouraged him to continue silencing his child's spirit, all while charging his family thousands of dollars for the privilege.

These programs prey on the exact fear and confusion Brandon felt. They promise desperate parents that they can "fix" their children, return them to "normal," make the hard questions go away. But as Brandon discovered, and as countless other Christian parents have learned too late, the only thing these practices fix is the profit margins of those who peddle false hope.

The Cost of Trying to Change Our Children

Brandon's years of forcing his daughter to deny herself didn't cost him money, but they cost something far more valuable: years of his daughter's childhood, years of joy and confidence and friendships that she can never get back. Years when a child who should have been smiling, didn't.

Now imagine if Brandon had been convinced to send his daughter to "conversion therapy" or enrolled her in "exploratory therapy" programs that promised to address the "root causes" of her identity. Imagine the additional years of misery, the mounting therapy bills, the deepening trauma of being told by supposed experts that something is fundamentally wrong with who you are.

Research shows that exposure to these change efforts is linked to depression, PTSD, and thoughts of suicide. Young people who experience them are substantially more likely to attempt to take their own lives compared to their peers who haven't been subjected to these practices.

Brandon's story could have ended very differently. And for too many families, families like the Lennons in Alaska, families like Linda Robertson's and Joyce Calvo's, it does end differently. These parents, in sworn statements to the U.S. Supreme Court, described being reassured by counselors that conversion programs would "bring their children back." Instead, they wrote, "our children are gone, and so are we."

What Faith Would Choose

Paulette Trimmer, whose son barely survived her conversion therapy experience, put it perfectly: "We thought we were choosing faith. But faith would have chosen love."

Brandon Boulware chose love. When he stopped trying to change his daughter and started accepting who God made her to be, he got his daughter back, smiling, confident, and whole.

"I'm honored to be his dad," another father said in a similar situation. "I didn't know what to do, but I knew I loved him unconditionally."

That's the real choice facing Christian parents: not between faith and their children, but between love and fear. Between trusting the God who created our children exactly as they are, and trusting strangers who promise, for a price, to make our children into someone else.

The Better Path Forward

Brandon's journey from trying to suppress his daughter's identity to celebrating it offers a roadmap for other parents struggling with similar questions:

Listen to your child. Brandon spent years ignoring what his daughter was trying to tell him, listening instead to his own fears and assumptions. The transformation began when he finally heard what she'd been saying all along.

Watch for the signs of harm. A child with no confidence, no friends, no joy, who doesn't smile, these are warning signs that what you're doing isn't working, no matter how much you believe it's "for their own good."

Trust your instincts over outsiders. Brandon went against the advice of teachers and therapists who saw what he couldn't see at the time. When your child is suffering, the experts trying to help you see that suffering aren't your enemy, they're your allies.

Give your child room to be themselves. The moment Brandon and his wife stopped enforcing rigid rules about clothes, hair, and activities, their daughter bloomed. Sometimes the most powerful thing a parent can do is simply stop standing in the way.

Remember that love isn't the same as approval of every choice, but it does mean accepting who your child fundamentally is. You can have boundaries, concerns, and questions while still affirming your child's core identity. Brandon's faith didn't require him to force his daughter to be someone she wasn't, it required him to love her as God made her.

Brandon Boulware's testimony went viral not because he said something radical, but because he said something true: our children need our love, not our efforts to change them. Every day we spend trying to force them to be someone else is a day they spend not smiling, and childhood is too short to waste any of those days.

If you're a parent struggling with similar questions, remember Brandon's turning point: the moment his daughter asked if she could play with friends if she put on boy clothes. If your child is learning to equate "being good" with "being someone else," it's time to ask whether you're parenting from love or from fear.

The God Brandon believes in doesn't make mistakes. Trust that, trust your child, and trust that choosing love over fear is always the right path, even when the journey is hard.