Last week, The New York Times ran a piece by Jack Turban, a research fellow at
the Yale School of Medicine. Turban says
that doctors should begin applying puberty blockers to children who identify as
transgender … as early as possible. That’s
because, according to him, “it has become clear that if we support these
children in their transgender identities instead of trying to change them, they
thrive instead of struggling with anxiety and depression.”
Turban uses as his example one
14-year-old girl named Hannah – who was born a boy named Jonah. Turban said: “Hannah is using a
puberty-blocking implant and getting ready to embark on the path of developing
a female body by starting estrogen. Ten years
ago most doctors would have called this malpractice. New data has now made it the protocol for thousands
of American children.”
Really? The reality is: 10-years ago, doctors weren’t
embracing political correctness as having a place in medicine. Turban, you see, claims that by transforming
children’s bodies younger, we will help them avoid societal stigma, and that it’s
that stigma that’s responsible for the shockingly high rates of suicide and depression
associated with gender dysphoria. But
there’s no hard data to support that notion.
A study from professors at the
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute at the
UCLA School of Law, for example, found that 46% of transgender men and 42% of
transgender women (in the study) had attempted suicide. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it is due
to discrimination. The study does show high
levels of discrimination against transgender people; but it also shows that the
suicide rate among transgender women who say people identify them as transgender
regularly is 45%. How about those who
are able to pass for the gender to which they claim membership? Their suicide rate is still 40%. How about the suicide rate among those
transgender individuals who have had hormone treatment? It’s 45%. Surgery doesn’t militate against suicide either.
Listen: Turban has an agenda. And so, he cites one study of 63-transgender
children, which found that if they were allowed to “socially transition” – if people
treated them as their preferred sex – then then they had indistinguishable
levels of anxiety and depression from that of their peers.
Here’s the problem: This study
concerns children, who have not yet experienced the rigors of sex drive and
sexual dynamics; it also ignores the small sample size and the fact that a
reported 8-in-10 children who experience gender confusion grow out of it. But Turban’s notion ignores the 8 children
out of 10 in order to preserve Hannah’s peace of mind – even if Hannah might have
grown out of her symptoms herself … thereby lowering the risk of suicide over
time.
This is science with an agenda. I’ll grant you that adults should be free to
make decisions about their sexuality and their bodies; but children should not
be subjected to the whims of politically driven adults when it comes to massive
bodily mutilation that impairs function for a lifetime … all before the child has
experienced puberty. And society should
not be obligated to obey the nonsensical gender theory of the radical left – which
seeks to confuse as many children as possible … in the name of an
anti-biological program beholding to a political agenda.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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