We learned this week that the love of money is the root of all evil. Well, we learned that in Scripture. This week purportedly conservative Christian governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson just reminded us of it when he sold out children to corporate interests.

For those still basking blithely in the afterglow of America’s once shining light or are socially distancing under a rock, the Arkansas legislature sent a bill to Hutchinson that would 1. prohibit doctors from the risky and experimental use of puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones—some of the effects of which are permanent—for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors, 2. prohibit surgeons from performing mutilating, irreversible cosmetic procedures on minors. and 3. prohibit the use of public funds, including Medicaid, for any of those barbaric, snake oil “treatments.”

The purportedly conservative, purportedly Christian Hutchinson vetoed this commonsense bill to protect children from procedures that are devastating young healthy bodies.

Hutchinson might reflect for a moment on who exactly is cheering his decision. Hint: It’s not conservatives. Oh, no, it’s the “trans”-cult; the “entertainment” industry; the medical industrial complex; the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party (i.e., CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NYTimes, and Washington Post); soulless corporate America; BLM; the ACLU; and the Human Rights Campaign.

Word to Hutchinson: If all the good guys are criticizing you and all the bad guys are cheering you, maybe you made a disastrous decision.

On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, Hutchinson defended his decision by appealing to conservative small government commitments—the last refuge of conservative scoundrels who want to embrace “progressive” positions on “social issues.” He also said, the bill “goes too far” because it would stop minors who are already being experimented on from continuing with dangerous “treatments” to conceal their biological sex.

Of course, small or limited government doesn’t mean no government. Nor does it mean abandoning children to the “trans”-cult and the godless profiteers who line their pockets with the lucre gained by chemically sterilizing children and lopping off parts of their sexual anatomy.

Many people, stunned by Hutchinson’s decision and not duped by his small government rationalization, look to corporate pressure as the real reason for Hutchinson’s alignment with the dark side.

In March Hutchinson appeared on another Fox News show and was asked about corporate “pushback” against legislation that promotes sexual sanity. Hutchinson responded,

We’re the home of some major global corporations here in Arkansas, they’re certainly worried about the image of our state.

Immediately after Hutchinson’s veto, left-leaning Tom Walton, whose family owns Walmart, issued this public pat-on-the-back to Hutchinson:

We are alarmed by the string of policy targeting LGBTQ people in Arkansas. This trend is harmful and sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state. We support Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s recent veto of discriminatory policy and implore government, business and community leaders to consider the impact of existing and future policy that limits basic freedoms and does not promote inclusiveness in our communities and economy.

Our Founding Fathers would be surprised to learn that our “basic freedoms” include the freedom of children to stop puberty, take cross-sex hormones, and have healthy body parts cut off.

According to the Institute of Southern Studies,

Steuart Walton has been a generous donor to the Arkansas Republican Party as well as to Hutchinson’s campaign.

And Tucker Carlson reported that he “spoke with a source” who said that when the term-limited Hutchinson leaves office in 2022, “he would very much like a board seat” at Walmart.

There are some curious omissions in Hutchinson’s public statements on Fox News about the bill he vetoed.

For example, Hutchinson pointed to the depression and high rates of suicide among gender dysphoric minors. He implied that depression arises from gender dysphoria and can be alleviated by cross-sex hormone-doping. He didn’t seem to know that both depression and gender dysphoria could be symptoms of some other underlying problem. And he didn’t address studies showing that cross-sex hormone-doping can increase suicidal ideation or that suicidal ideation increases after “gender confirmation” butchery.

Hutchinson didn’t address the shocking increase in the number of adolescent girls now identifying as boys. Before the “trans”-cult stopped its slow titration of their ideological poison into the body politic, gender dysphoria affected a minuscule portion of the population and affected mostly boys, beginning between the ages of 3-5. Upwards of 80 percent of those boys eventually desisted from identifying as girls.

Now with the secular world promoting opposite-sex impersonation, particularly via social media, there is an explosion in the number of adolescent girls and young women suddenly identifying as male. As psychologists and sociologists know, girls are much more vulnerable to social contagions, like anorexia, bulimia, cutting, and now cross-sex identification.

Hutchinson didn’t mention the politicization of the professional medical and mental health communities. For example, while “trans”-cultists and their ideological allies like to tout the American Academy of Pediatrics’ endorsement of the medical “transing” of children, they don’t like to mention that the pro-“transing” policy was created and voted on by fewer than 50 members of the now-67,000-member academy.

Hutchinson didn’t mention the increasing number of young women who “detransition” and deeply regret having taken testosterone and/or having had their healthy breasts cut off. These young women with permanently male voices and scarred chests that will never nurse a baby feel betrayed by the medical and mental health communities.

Hutchinson didn’t talk about the health risks from the experimental use of puberty blockers and hormones never tested for long-term cross-sex use, risks that include infertility; liver dysfunction; coronary artery disease; cancer; strokes; osteoporosis; and the development of gallstones, blood clots, hypertension, and pituitary gland tumors.

Hutchinson never talked about the ethics of turning healthy children into lifelong medical patients (You know who likes that? Endocrinologists and pharmaceutical companies, that’s who).

Someone should ask Hutchinson whether his limited government principles would lead him to oppose bans on limb amputations for those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder—a condition in which the sufferer experiences a mismatch between his bodily wholeness and his internal sense of himself as an amputee.

And what about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which was banned by the Stop FGM Act of 2020 and signed into law by former President Donald Trump? Would small government Hutchinson oppose a ban on the excision of female genitalia from a 14-year-old girl who, for religious or cultural reasons, wants her genitalia mutilated?

While leftists, practiced at the art of deception and the skill of Newspeak, describe the slicing off of female genitalia as “mutilation,” they describe the slicing off of breasts as “gender affirmation care.”

Since girls as young as 13 are having double mastectomies, a 2015 article by Derrick Diaz and published in the DePaul University Journal of Healthcare Law about cosmetic surgery for minors may offer some helpful insights:

Minors should not have access to cosmetic surgery unless found by a court to be medically necessary. … [I]f medical necessity has not been shown, then the service should be prohibited the same as any regulated service or product prohibited to minors.

…

[A] medical necessity determination can be made through a four-pronged analysis. First, does the impairment hinder a minor’s normal physical function; and, is the proposed surgery intended to treat a present or future clinically verifiable disease, deformity, or injury? Second, is the physical anomaly (1) objectively tangible, and (2) unusual or relatively common? Third, what is the state of the minor applicant’s psychological health? Fourth, would a reasonable minor in the applicant’s position be hindered from normal functioning by the condition (e.g., avoiding normal childhood/adolescent activities)?

…

[R]egardless of whether continued [legislative] noninterference is sound policy generally speaking, it is absolutely not so with regard to minors, as states have statutory mandates to protect their health and welfare. When it comes to cosmetic surgery on minors, states must have an intervening hand in preventing the potentially harmful effects of caveat emptor.

“Trans”-cultists and their allies try to get around this position by arguing that amputating the healthy, natural breasts of gender-dysphoric minor girls is “medically necessary.” But it’s not, and leftists have no conclusive, researched-based proof that it is.

On March 30, just days before his surprising veto, Hutchinson met with two “trans”-cultists—both men who pretend to be women, including “Evelyn” Rios Stafford, a justice of the peace in Arkansas, who pleaded with Hutchinson to veto the bill.

Did Hutchinson talk to any parents of teen daughters who suddenly started identifying as boys?

Did he talk to any young “detransitioned” women who grieve over their damaged bodies and the betrayal of adults who didn’t stop them?

Did he talk to any of the members of the American College of Pediatricians who oppose experimentation on the healthy bodies of children?

Did he consult with Abigail Shrier, the Wall Street Journal writer who wrote the book Irreversible Damage about the harm being done to adolescent girls?

Has he read any of the articles by historically leftist Jennifer Bilek who has been exposing the “money behind the rapidly growing juggernaut of transgenderism in American culture and beyond,” which she argues, “all leads back to the pharmaceutical and tech giants that now interface with LGBT NGOs which are driving the normalization of a biology-denying ideology.”

There is some good news emerging from Arkansas. The Arkansas legislature overrode Hutchinson’s unconscionable veto.

If Hutchinson’s relationship with God and truth are his first priorities—which they should be—then he should publicly confess his sinful decision and repent. Something tells me, however, that confession and repentance aren’t on his agenda.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Gov. Hutchinson via his official webpage. You can also call the governor’s office during normal business hours to give him and his administration feedback: (501) 682-2345

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Asa-Hutchinson-Sells-Out-Gender-Dysphoric-Children.mp3

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To be clear from the outset of this article, when I refer to the evil of “trans”-cultism, I am referring to its beliefs and practices—not to people suffering from gender dysphoria or confused by the cultural lies they encounter daily.

Everyone is harmed by “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices—girls, women, boys, and men. Those in bondage to the cult and those outside of the cult are harmed. Adults in bondage to confusion and sexual fetishes are eradicating all sex-segregated private spaces; undermining First Amendment protections of assembly, speech, and religious free exercise; corrupting every cultural institution, including education, medicine, religion, sports, and the arts; putting girls and women at risk of assault by men who pretend to be “trans”; and sowing confusion among children, teens, and young adults.

As with all forms of evil, the most vulnerable—those least able to protect themselves—suffer most. The “trans”-cult allied with a host of profiteers, including semi-celebrity butchers who self-identify as doctors, are experimenting on the bodies of children and young adults with ghastly, barbaric results. No one should avert their gaze from the evidence of this butchery.

Surgeons like Florida’s Dr. Giancarlo McEvenue make big bucks using their skills to disfigure confused, suffering young women, like this young woman:

Here’s the shameless, narcissist Dr. McEvenue gleefully posing for photos with the ghastly evidence of his crime:

For young women, these surgical snake-oil profiteers lop off healthy breasts; remove vaginas, uteruses, and ovaries. They fashion fake penises—also called “phalloplasty”—out of skin peeled off the forearms, thighs, or backs of young women, which leaves permanent sizable scars. These “neo-penises” will never function sexually without mechanical aids.

“Trans”-positive Genderkit UK includes this warning:

Phalloplasty is a complex surgical procedure with significant risks that you must understand before it is carried out. Phalloplasty usually causes significant scarring due to skin grafting (usually on the lower arm). Complications are also common in this operation, particularly problems with urinating which may require surgical correction, including urethral strictures and fistulae (urethra closing up so you cannot urinate). 

These Mengelian butchers castrate young men, using scrotums to create fake vulvas, and scooping the inside tissue out of penises which they turn inside out to create fake vaginas through a new opening they dig out between rectums and urethras. Male bodies will forever view these openings as the wounds they are and try to close them up, so men must manually open them through the weekly insertion of silicone dilators.

Surgeons have another option for the creation of a fake vagina. They can go in through the abdomen and pull some of the abdominal lining down through the new hole they have excavated between rectum and urethra, thereby creating a fake vagina with intestinal lining.

Oh, but they’re not done. As it turns out, men’s and women’s bodies are very different. So, surgeons remodel men’s chests, chins, Adam’s apples, vocal cords, foreheads, and facial orbital bones in a quest to create believable flesh and bone costumes that can deceive women whose private spaces they hope to invade and even potential romantic partners.

In days gone by, these mutilating surgeries were called “sex change” surgeries, but then “trans”-cultists were forced to acknowledge that a person’s sex can never change. So, like all propagandists, they reached deep into their magic sophistry hat and pulled out “gender confirmation” surgery.

But now there’s a new problem. “Trans”-cultists have been claiming that “gender” is wholly distinct from biological sex. In Transtopia, “gender” is the aggregate of arbitrary socially constructed and imposed roles, conventions, behaviors, and expectations associated with males or females. So, how can surgeons confirm “gender”? Does lopping off healthy, properly functioning body parts confirm arbitrary, socially constructed and imposed conventions? And if those conventions are arbitrary, socially constructed and oppressively imposed, why would surgeons want to confirm such oppression?

Perhaps by “gender confirmation,” our ontological tricksters mean “gender identity confirmation.” “Gender identity” is the rhetorical cloak thrown over the disordered subjective desire to be or delusional belief that one is the sex one is not—disordered desires or delusional beliefs often shaped by external forces, like trauma and social media. No matter the cause, should surgeons use mutilating surgeries as a treatment for disordered desires or delusional beliefs?

Those with a condition called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) experience incongruity between their subjective, internal sense of themselves as amputees and their objectively whole bodies. Some even engage in self-harm to rid themselves of the body part they detest. In a Healthline article on BIID, well-known bioethicist Arthur Caplan says,

“I think doctors and psychologists cannot set up to maim somebody or harm them. You’ve got to try to get them to treatment, I don’t care whether they appear competent or not,” he said.

A doctor who carried out a theoretically unnecessary amputation in order to prevent his or her patient from doing it themselves with potentially fatal results would fall outside of the widely accepted scope of medically ethical practice, Caplan said.

“There are a lot of conditions like anorexia where there’s a core of people who just don’t respond [to treatment],” he said “You don’t give up, you keep trying. That’s all you can do. You don’t indulge it.”

And yet an entire lucrative “trans” industrial complex has emerged composed of all sorts of morally deficient collaborators to indulge the disordered desires of cross-sex identifying persons.

Surgeons, endocrinologists, pharmaceutical companies that sell puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones, hospitals with “gender” clinics, academicians who research and promote “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices, counselors, diversity and inclusion “educators,” and entrepreneurs who make accessories to enable girls and boys to conceal their sexual anatomy all profit handsomely from “trans”-cultism and, therefore, are incentivized to keep bodily confusion and  despair alive.

It is unlikely that this “trans” scourge will end soon. Not only are countless men and women profiting from harming young people, but sexual deviants with billions of dollars are promoting the “trans” movement. As they pursue their unholy quest to “trans”-form America, their venomous tentacles reach deeply into medicine, academia, and politics.

Organizations like the Tawani Foundation founded by “Jennifer” Pritzker—a man who pretends to be a woman—the Arcus Foundation founded by homosexual Jon Stryker; and the Gill Foundation, founded by homosexual Tim Gill are using their buckets of ducats to promote the morally disordered and intellectually incoherent “trans” ideology.

The “LGBTQ” activist organization, the Human Rights Campaign, estimates that there are now over 50 clinical “care” programs in the United States for “gender-expansive children and adolescents.” Young women and men who can’t afford disfiguring surgeries can apply for grants or beg for money via GoFundMe. There is no shortage of people who will pay to disfigure others in the service of an alchemical superstition.

And some say Satan isn’t real🙄.

Every conservative and every theologically orthodox Christian must come to grips with “trans”-cultism. It is an evil in our midst that is harming everyone, and many Christians are failing to respond as Christ-followers should. Reasons for that failure are confusion, cowardice, and lack of information. Many Christians do not know enough to grasp fully how evil and destructive the “trans”-cult is. I hope this article may in some small way contribute to the awakening that must happen.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Butchering-Bodies-of-Suffering-Young-People.mp3

Please support the work and ministry of IFI.  

Your tax-deductible donation is greatly appreciated!

The radical “Equality” Act—the pet project of sex-eradicationists (also known as “trans”-cultists)—is now in the U.S. Senate. The act would force the federal government to treat the nonsensical notion that spirit humans can be “trapped” in the wrong material bodies as if those disordered feelings constitute a reality equivalent to biological sex and one about which no one may make judgments. In other words, the Equality Act would enshrine in federal law a Gnostic superstition.

In addition, when the purported rights of cross-sex impersonators clash with First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion, the Equality Act says cross-sex impersonation wins. Buh-bye Christian colleges whose students get federal aid. Buh-bye Christian adoption agencies that partner with the government. Buh-bye religious liberty. It was nice knowing you these past glorious 230 years.

If passed, “trans”-cultists will be well over halfway to their goal of eradicating all public recognition of biological sex. There are many reasons we have arrived at this insane, reality-denying, wrong-side-of-history moment, including the fact that citizens are not demanding their elected leaders dialogue on and debate the sandy foundation on which the “trans” cult is built. In the hope that sane people on the political right and left will start demanding such conversations, here is a list of questions that every lawmaker, school administrator, and school board member should have to answer:

1.) If sex and “gender” are two wholly different and unrelated things, with sex being an immutable objective phenomenon and “gender” being a subjective, internal, and sometimes fluid phenomenon, why should restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, nursing home rooms, and semi-private hospital rooms correspond to “gender identity” as opposed to biological sex which is both objective and stable?

2.) Why is it legitimate for girls to oppose sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male peers who accept their sex (what the left calls “cisgender” boys) but not legitimate for girls to oppose sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male peers who reject their sex? Why should a boy’s subjective feelings about his objective sex affect girls’ feelings or beliefs about undressing or going to the bathroom in front of or near him?

3.) Either biological sex has meaning relative to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when undressing or engaging in intimate personal acts, or it has no meaning relative to modesty and privacy. If biological sex has no meaning relative to modesty and privacy, why do we have any sex-segregated restrooms or locker rooms anywhere? Why not make all of them co-ed for everyone? If, however, the desire of humans to be segregated from unrelated persons of the opposite sex when undressing, showering, or going to the bathroom is natural, understandable, reasonable, and good, why should some opposite-sex persons be allowed to violate those spaces just because they don’t like their sex?

4.) If cross-sex identifying students should not be required to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, why should other students be required to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share? Why should gender-dysphoric boys (or men) be able to use restrooms with only women, but actual biological females are prohibited from being able to use restrooms with only women?

5,) If anatomy is irrelevant to both “gender identity” and privacy, should boys who identify as girls be allowed to shower with objectively female peers or undress in open areas of girls’ locker rooms? If not, why not? If it’s unjustly discriminatory to prohibit gender-dysphoric boys from using girls’ locker rooms—as leftists claim it is–then is it unjustly discriminatory to prohibit gender-dysphoric boys from showering with girls or changing out in the open in girls’ locker rooms as some schools do?

6.) Female teachers and coaches are allowed in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms. Should objectively male teachers and coaches who “identify” as female be allowed in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms as well? If not, why not?

7.) Will school administrations allow those who identify as gender-fluid to choose daily which restrooms and locker rooms they will use? If not, why not?

8.) Should other subjective, internal feelings be reflected in policy and practice? For example, should those who identify as amputees (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder) be allowed to use wheelchairs and handicapped parking spots at school? Should they be allowed to leave class early to have more time to get from one class to another?

9.) Is it unnatural or pathological for girls or boys to object to engaging in excretory functions in a stall next to an unrelated person of the opposite sex doing likewise? If not, should schools respect and honor those feelings through policy that prohibits co-ed restrooms?

10.) Those who identify as “trans” claim their biological sex as revealed in anatomy is unrelated and irrelevant to their “gender identity” (which is a subjective, internal feeling) and that anatomy doesn’t matter when it comes to restrooms, changing areas, and showers. They further claim they want to use restrooms with only those whose “gender identity” they share. So, why do boys who identify as girls demand to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? How do they know the males using the boys’ restrooms do not “identify” as girls, and how can they be sure that the females using the girls’ restrooms do “identify” as girls? Is it possible that boys who identify as girls are basing their restroom/locker room choices on biological sex (i.e., the female sex) as revealed in anatomy? If so, why are they permitted to do so but objectively female students are not?

11.) If it’s not hateful for gender-dysphoric biological boys to say they want to share private facilities with only biological females, why is it hateful for biological females to say they want to share restrooms and locker rooms with only biological females?

12.) Why is it hateful to believe that locker rooms and restrooms should correspond to one’s objective sex but loving to believe they should correspond to subjective feelings about one’s sex?

13.) Do children and adults have an inalienable and intrinsic right not to share restrooms and locker rooms with persons of the opposite sex?

14.) If restroom stalls and separate changing areas provide sufficient privacy to allow students to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share, then why don’t restroom stalls and separate changing areas provide sufficient privacy for a gender-dysphoric student to share facilities with those whose “gender identity” they (presumably) don’t share but whose sex they do share?

15.) Leftists argue that the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 actually includes “gender identity,” thereby prohibiting discrimination based on “gender identity” in restrooms and locker rooms. If gender-dysphoric boys or men are permitted in girls’ or women’s restrooms and locker rooms based on this reinterpretation, on what basis could other boys or men be prohibited from using women’s restrooms? “Cisgender” boys or men couldn’t be prohibited from using girls’ or women’s restrooms based on their male sex because other objectively male persons (i.e., those who are male but “identify” as women) would already have been allowed in. And wouldn’t prohibiting “cisgender” boys or men from using women’s restrooms based on their “identification” as males constitute discrimination based on “gender identity”?

16.) Leftists argue that separate restrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls are equivalent to separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites. Others would counter that while there are no substantive ontological differences between whites and blacks and that there are no differences that bear on drinking water at fountains, there are substantive differences between men and women. In fact, even homosexuals acknowledge that men and women are fundamentally and significantly different when they say they are romantically and erotically attracted to only persons of their same sex. Further, conservatives argue that the differences between men and women bear directly on the use of spaces in which private activities related to physical embodiment are engaged in. It is these important differences related to physical embodiment as male or female that account for the very existence of separate restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, and semi-private hospital rooms for men and women everywhere. If, however, separate restrooms and locker rooms for men and women are akin to separate drinking fountains for blacks and white as Leftists claim they are, are Leftists in favor of banning them everywhere?

17.) If separate restrooms and locker rooms for gender-dysphoric boys and girls are equivalent to separate restrooms and locker rooms for blacks and whites—as former Attorney General Loretta Lynch once claimed—then why aren’t separate restrooms and locker rooms for “cisgender” boys and girls equivalent to racism? Why aren’t separate restrooms and locker rooms for gender-dysphoric boys and “cisboys” equivalent to racism?

18.) When sex-segregation abolitionists accuse parents who oppose co-ed restrooms and locker rooms of being hateful, intolerant, bigoted, ignorant, heartless bullies, do they also smear children who object to sharing restrooms and locker rooms with peers of the opposite sex?

19.) Do school administrators, teachers, and community members think that Muslims and Orthodox Jews who don’t want their daughters sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male students (or vice versa) are ignorant, bigoted, hateful, and unjustly discriminatory?

20.) Pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex—not subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex. So, if staff members, teachers, administrators, or students view the use of opposite-sex pronouns to refer to gender-dysphoric students as lying and for ethical, and/or religious reasons they object to lying, should schools accommodate their objections? Or, should schools—which are arms of the government—compel employees to lie?

21.) Liberal sex and gender researchers Michael Bailey at Northwestern University and Dr. Eric Vilain at UCLA write that 80% of gender-dysphoric boys—and most gender-dysphoric persons are male—will accept their real sex by adulthood. They claim that “it looks like parental acquiescence leads to persistence.” In other words, if parents accommodate their children’s efforts to pretend to be the opposite sex, their children are more likely to persist in their rejection of their sex. Are schools that allow gender-dysphoric minors to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms complicit in helping students persist in their rejection of their sex?

22.) If there is a mismatch between a person’s sex and his feelings about his sex, how can “progressives” be certain that the error resides in the healthy body rather than the mind? If a person has normal, unambiguous, healthy, fully functioning male anatomy but desires to be—or believes he is—female, might this not be an error or disorder of his mind?

23.) If a man “identifies” as “bi-gender” and has appended faux-breasts to his chest while retaining his penis and testes, as many cross-sex identifiers do, should he be to walk about unclothed in women’s locker rooms?

24.) Progressives routinely ask opponents of co-ed restrooms and locker rooms whether single-sex restrooms and locker rooms will require “genitalia police” to determine whether those seeking ingress are in reality the sex that corresponds to the spaces they seek to use. Well, will co-ed restrooms and locker rooms require “gender-identity” police to determine whether those seeking ingress are either the sex that corresponds to the spaces they seek to use or have proof that they have been diagnosed as gender-dysphoric? If not, how will we know if the persons seeking access to women’s restrooms are gender-dysphoric men masquerading as women or are male predators masquerading as gender-dysphoric men?

25.) Some argue that men masquerading as women have been successfully using women’s private spaces for years without women knowing and hence no harm, no foul. This suggests that if women’s privacy is invaded by men but they—the women—are unaware of the invasion, no harm has been done. By that logic, if voyeurs (not to be confused with men who “identify” as women) are able to secretly view women without women’s knowledge, have women been harmed or not?

26.) What is “gender identity”? If it’s defined as subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex, or one’s maleness or femaleness, on what basis do “trans”-identifying children determine their “gender identity”? Do they base their belief that they are the sex they aren’t or their desire to be the sex they aren’t on sex stereotypes, like which toys they play with? If so, is it “arbitrary, socially imposed” sex stereotypes that determine maleness or femaleness, or do biology and anatomy determine maleness or femaleness?

27.) When law enforcement agencies collect and disseminate information on crime, should crimes committed by biological men who pretend to be women be recorded as acts committed by men or by women?

28.) Should government contracts allocated for women business-owners be awarded to biological women only or also to biological men who “identify” as women?

29.) How will biomedical research into health issues that affect primarily women or primarily men be affected when the recognition of sexual differentiation is prohibited?

My hope is that these questions might help jumpstart a spirited conversation and perhaps help eradicate the pernicious and absurd “trans” ideology.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Questions-for-Sex-Eradicationists.mp3

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Yesterday I commented under an article on The Hill on Merriam-Webster Dictionary adding “they” as a pronoun for “gender nonbinary” persons, an article that also referred to British singer Sam Smith‘s announcement that he’s “nonbinary.” Like Merriam-Webster, the Chicago Tribune has bought hook, line, and sinker the “trans” language rules. Writing about the singular man Sam Smith, the Trib wrote this embarrassing sentence:

Smith said they were excited and privileged for the support, adding that they’ve been “very nervous” about the announcement because they ”care too much about what people think.”

Someone responded to my Hill comment, and here’s the short confab I had with “NukeNado” about this nonsense:

Laurie: The “trans” community doesn’t have the right to unilaterally restructure English grammar in the service of their science-denying ideology. While “trans”-identifying persons may believe that each person creates his or her own “reality,” others believe real material phenomena exist, can be known, and matter. My reality includes the real phenomena in the world, like the fact that Sam Smith is a singular person and a man. And my reality excludes lying.

Just when you thought civilized first-world countries had deposited mythology and science-denying irrationality in the dustbin of history, the “trans” cult emerged seeking to force science-loving Americans to embrace the solipsistic, “trans”-centric worldview in which biological sex has neither reality nor meaning. Worse, you have ostensibly non-mentally ill school leaders capitulating to the “trans” cult’s absurd and offensive demands—people like Township High School District 211 superintendent Dr. Daniel Cates. Cates wants District 211—the largest high school district in Illinois with 12,000 students and five high schools—to sexually integrate locker rooms.

Cates wants to allow students who pretend to be the sex they aren’t to have unrestricted access to opposite-sex locker rooms. If Cates gets his druthers, whatever girls are permitted to do in girls’ locker rooms, boys who pretend to be girls will be permitted to do also. If girls are permitted to partially undress or wholly undress openly in girls’ locker rooms, then boys who pretend to be girls will be allowed to do so as well. Presumably, if girls are permitted to shower nude, so too will pretend-girls (aka boys) be allowed to shower nude.

Prior requirements that these boys change in private changing areas will be rescinded. In an email sent to parents on Thursday, Sept. 12, Cates referred to boys and girls in tortured, hilarious, politically correct language, calling them “adolescents with different anatomy.” I kid you not. He said that.

Cates is jim-dandy with girls and boys undressing together in locker rooms. How do I know Cates—who should be fired—is jim-dandy with co-ed locker rooms? I know because he said this in his pro-“trans” email:

[U]nderstanding and acceptance of transgender identity have advanced—societally and in our immediate communities—for the better. In our district and countless others, students, families and staff honor, respect and celebrate all manifestations of the human condition. (emphasis added)

Did an educated man really say that? Does he celebrate all manifestations of the human condition? How about racism, disease, intergenerational love, Genetic Sexual Attraction, polyamory, infantilism, sadomasochism, and zoophilia?

How does Cates demonstrate respect for those who believe “adolescents with different anatomy” should not undress or engage in bodily functions in the presence of peers of the opposite sex? How does he communicate his respect for those who believe the sexual integration of locker rooms undermines the belief that modesty derives from anatomical differentiation?

Cates has explicitly and unequivocally announced that the district has embraced a radical set of Leftist ideological assumptions created and advanced by the “trans” cult, without providing a persuasive reason why private space usage should correspond to subjective and often fluid “gender identity” as opposed to objective immutable biological sex. Nor has he shared his view on which locker rooms “gender fluid” students use.

Someone should ask Cates this question: Is it legitimate, valid, sound, reasonable, and good for girls not to want to share private spaces with opposite-sex persons? If it is, then what difference should it make to girls if opposite-sex persons wish they were girls? If it’s not legitimate, valid, sound, reasonable, or good, then why have any sex-segregated private spaces?

“Progressives” often ask snottily, “So, are we going to have genitalia police outside restrooms and locker rooms to confirm the presence of the right genitalia before people enter,” to which I reply, “Are we going to have ‘gender identity’ police outside restrooms and locker rooms to prove that the man seeking to enter really is ‘trans’ rather than a predator pretending to be ‘trans?’”

Since “gender identity” is subjective and internal, how do, for example, boys who “identify” as girls know the “gender identities” of the students in the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms? Let’s try this thought experiment: If most of the boys in the boys’ locker room at a particular school were to identify internally as girls and most of the girls were to identify internally as boys, which locker room should boys who impersonate girls use and why? It’s likely Leftists would answer that they should use whichever private spaces they want. And that, my friends, is where this is headed: The end game is the eradication of public recognition of biological sex everywhere for everyone, which means no private spaces anywhere for anyone.

Cates has either become a true believer in the “trans”-cultic mythology or he has sacrificed his principles and integrity on the altar to the almighty god of the greenback. Faced with a lawsuit against the district by a boy who pretends to be a girl, perhaps Cates—a graduate of the University of Notre Dame—would rather sacrifice science and the privacy and modesty of girls and boys than either district money or his job.

A man of real courage, principle, and integrity would never adopt such a foul policy. Rather, a man of courage, principle, and integrity would resign instead of adopting a policy that teaches girls and boys that biological sex has no meaning relative to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when undressing.

A man of courage, principle, and integrity would resign before adopting a policy that implicitly teaches that opposition to sharing locker rooms with opposite sex peers is ignorant, bigoted, and hateful.

A decent and wise leader would know that it’s wrong to put normal children in the awkward position of having to ask for special accommodations because they don’t want to change clothes or go to the bathroom in the presence of opposite-sex peers.

A decent and wise leader would know that such a pernicious policy will desensitize children and teens to engaging in private acts in the presence of opposite-sex peers, thereby undermining what is left of respect for the necessary virtue of modesty.

I’ve had “progressive” parents tell me that their daughters are fine undressing in the presence of “trans”-identifying male peers. These parents are happy about their daughters’ socially constructed, unnatural feelings. They—like Cates—view the belief that biological sex has no meaning relative to modesty and privacy as social and moral progress. Compassion—in their distorted worldview—demands we pretend maleness and femaleness have nothing to do with biological sex.

Ironically, while rejecting the importance of biological sex, which wholly determined by biochemistry, “progressives” believe that if biochemistry influences the desire to be the opposite sex, such desires are supremely important and morally legitimate to act upon. But do they apply that principle consistently? If biochemistry influences the desire to be an amputee (i.e., Body Integrity Identity Disorder), should we allow students to socially transition at school? Should schools allow anatomically whole students who identify as amputees to use handicap parking spaces, use a wheelchair in school, and be given extra passing-period time?

Since we know that biochemistry can be disordered and influence both thoughts and feelings, how do “trans” cultists know that when there is a mismatch or incongruity between their biological sex and their “gender identity” (i.e., their subjective, internal sense of their maleness, femaleness, both, or neither) the error resides in their bodies rather than their minds?

How many dads and moms will show up to publicly and courageously oppose this feckless policy proposal? How many staff or faculty charged with supervising locker rooms will oppose supervising students of the opposite sex who are undressing?

District 211 encompasses a large geographic area in which there are many churches. It will be interesting to see if any pastors—who are citizens that enjoy the privilege of self-government and whose congregations include children in this district—will turn out to oppose the sexual integration of locker rooms. (Don’t hold your breath.)

Conservatives, get your kids out of government schools now. No child should be trained up by foolish, cowardly adults who refer to boys and girls as “adolescents with different anatomy” and let them undress together. Trust me, no matter what empty blather “progressive” government school administrators and faculty members spew about respecting diversity and “all manifestations of the human condition,” they don’t like conservatives or want them around—especially conservative Christians, you know, the “haters.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Largest-Illinois-High-School-District-Opposes-Single-Sex-Locker-Rooms.mp3

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-and, please-

Despite a lack of evidence proving the safety and efficacy of chemical and surgical interventions and social “transitioning” for those who experience gender dysphoria, “progressives” plow forward mutilating the healthy bodies and manipulating the psychology of children who feel they are or wish they were the sex they are not.

The science-denying, incoherent “trans” ideology affects all of society. The end game for “trans” activists and others in cultic thrall to this superstition is not access for a few boys and girls or men and women to opposite-sex private spaces and sports. The end game is the eradication of all public recognition of sex differences everywhere for everyone. Think about what that means:

• It means children will be raised under the delusion that their anatomy signifies nothing. All that matters is “gender identity.” It means society will tell them that no one—not doctors, parents, or anyone else—knows if they’re male or female.

• It means putting at risk the psychological welfare of students, particularly younger students and those already struggling with other issues, including autism; depression; anxiety; body dysmorphia; eating disorders; OCD; and the effects of molestation, family dysfunction, and bullying. Introducing the “trans” ideology, which teaches the disordered nonsense that a boy can be a girl or vice versa, to at-risk children will confuse and disturb them and will provide a distorted lens through which they may misinterpret their experiences.

• It means that we must all pretend that humans with congenital penises and fake breasts sashaying through our women’s locker rooms in the altogether are women. (Many who identify as “trans” don’t believe surgery is necessary to pass as the opposite sex, which is why you’ll hear terms like “chestfeeding men” or claims like “women can have penises.”)

• It means that at public pools, beaches, and parks, our children will see topless women who pretend to be men but opt to keep their breasts.

• It means that men’s roommates in semi-private hospital rooms may be biological women. And it means women who seek sanctuary from abusive boyfriends and husbands in shelters may be forced to share rooms or private facilities with biological men.

• It means many of us will lose jobs if we refuse to refer to colleagues by incorrect pronouns, which is to say, if we refuse to lie.

• It means that our taxes will continue to subsidize the indoctrination of children with the “trans” ideology through government schools

• And it means the sterilization and mutilation of the healthy bodies of children.

Since the “trans” ideology is metastasizing throughout the sinews of American life—including our schools—all stakeholders must understand the “trans” orthodoxy better. In previous articles, I provided questions that anyone who affirms the “trans” ideology should be asked.[1] In this article, I provide information of which many are unaware, that may be useful to anyone opposing co-ed private spaces in schools, and that should make society reevaluate the barbaric path we’re treading:

• At birth, doctors identify the sex of babies. They do not assign them a “gender.” A person’s sex can never change. Biological sex is not a disorder, illness, deficiency, shortcoming, or error. Scientists and other medical professionals have recognized that biological sex is a neutral, objective, and immutable fact of human nature. Likewise, puberty is neither a disease nor a disorder.

• There is no conclusive, research-based evidence proving that if there is incongruence between one’s objective, immutable, biological sex (and its attendant healthy, normally functioning anatomy and physiology) and one’s subjective, internal sense of being male or female that the problem resides in the body rather than the mind.

• The article “Hormone Therapy for the Treatment of Gender Dysphoria” in the May 19, 2014 issue of the highly respected Hayes Directory reports that the use of hormones and surgery to treat gender dysphoria in adults is based on “very low quality of evidence” and that the use of hormones and surgery to treat gender dysphoria in children and adolescents has no evidence base.[2]

• There are health risks and complications attendant to the use of puberty-suppressing drugs. Boys whose puberty is suppressed will have micro-penises which present surgical problems if they should one day seek vaginoplasty (i.e., there isn’t enough skin to turn into “vaginas,” so more complicated and risky procedures must be used). The health risks of the off-label use of puberty-blockers for the treatment of gender-dysphoria include the arrest of bone growth, decrease in bone density, the “prevention of sex-steroid-dependent organization and maturation of the adolescent brain, and the inhibition of fertility by preventing the development of gonadal tissue and mature gametes for the duration of treatment.”

• “There is an obvious self-fulfilling nature to encouraging a young boy with GD to socially impersonate a girl and then institute pubertal suppression. Given the well-established phenomenon of neuroplasticity, the repeated behavior of impersonating a girl alters the structure and function of the boy’s brain in some way—potentially in a way that will make identity alignment with his biologic sex less likely. This, together with the suppression of puberty that prevents further endogenous masculinization of his brain, causes him to remain a gender non-conforming prepubertal boy disguised as a prepubertal girl.”[3]

• Some of the effects of the off-label use of cross-sex hormones are permanent and long-term risks are unknown:

– Sterility and voice changes are permanent for both men and women.

–An interagency statement published by the World Health Organization states that “sterilization should only be provided with the full, free and informed consent of the individual” and that “sterilization refers not just to interventions where the intention is to limit fertility… but also to situations where loss of fertility is a secondary outcome…. Sterilization without full, free and informed consent has been variously described by international, regional and national human rights bodies as an involuntary, coercive and/or forced practice, and as a violation of fundamental human rights, including the right to health, the right to information, the right to privacy.”[4] Since parents or guardians must provide consent for hormonal interventions, and since parents are not being made aware of the experimental nature of the off-label use of hormones for the treatment of gender dysphoria, or of the fact that most children with gender dysphoria outgrow it by late adolescence if otherwise supported through natural puberty, parents and guardians are unable to provide fully informed.

–For biologically healthy men who take estrogen to treat their subjective, internal feelings about their sex, there is an “increased risk of liver disease, increased risk of blood clots (risk of death or permanent damage), increased risk of diabetes and of headaches/migraines, heart disease, increased risk of gallstones, and increased risk of noncancerous tumour of the pituitary gland.”[5] Breast tissue growth in men who take estrogen is permanent.

–For biologically healthy women who take testosterone to treat their subjective, internal feelings about their sex, there is an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and possibly of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, or uterine cancer. Taking testosterone can have a “destabilizing effect” on “bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia.”[6] “Male”-pattern baldness and body and facial hair growth in women who take testosterone are permanent.

• Surgery (e.g., mastectomy, orchiectomy [i.e., castration]) is irreversible.

• Men who choose penile inversion vaginoplasty are castrated and their penises inverted to fashion a fake vagina (aka “neo-vagina”). For the rest of their lives, surgeons recommend that they use vaginal dilators once a week. Since the skin of fake vaginas is not vaginal tissue, men must also douche 2-3 times per week for the rest of their lives.

• Some men are unable to have inversion vaginoplasty. For example, because 18-year-old boy and reality TV star Jazz Jennings, who was recently castrated, started puberty blockers so young, his penis was the size of a prepubertal boy’s penis, and, therefore, too small to provide enough skin for a fake vagina. In these cases, skin from the colon or small bowel is used:

This technique… is naturally self-lubricating…. Since the secretion is digestive there is a risk of malodor and frequent secretions, and secretions are constant rather than only with arousal. Wearing panty liners or pads may be necessary for the long term. Bacterial overgrowth (diversion colitis) is common and may present with a greenish discharge…. The bowel lining is also not as durable as skin. Use of intestinal tissue also places the vagina at risk of diseases of the bowel including inflammatory bowel disease, arterio-venous malformations (AVM) or neoplasms [i.e., abnormal growths].[7]

• The Christian Medical and Dental Association “believes that prescribing hormonal treatments to children or adolescents to disrupt normal sexual development for the purpose of gender reassignment is ethically impermissible, whether requested by the child or the parent.”[8]

• The Catholic Medical Association (CMA) “urges health care professionals to adhere to genetic science and sexual complementarity over ideology in the treatment of gender dysphoria (GD) in children. This includes especially avoiding puberty suppression and the use of cross-sex hormones in children with GD. One’s sex is not a social construct, but an unchangeable biological reality.”[9]

• Neuroscientist, professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Teenage Brain, Dr. Frances Jensen, explains that,

Teenagers do have frontal lobes, which are the seat of our executive, adult-like functioning like impulse control, judgment and empathy. But the frontal lobes haven’t been connected with fast-acting connections yet…. But there is another part of the brain that is fully active in adolescents, and that’s the limbic system. And that is the seat of risk, reward, impulsivity, sexual behavior and emotion. So they are built to be novelty-seeking at this point in their lives. Their frontal lobe isn’t able to say, “That’s a bad idea, don’t do that.” That’s not happening to the extent it will in adulthood.

• The oft-cited suicide rate of 41% for those who identify as “trans” is based on an erroneous understanding of a study by the Williams Institute—an understanding that ignores the acknowledged and serious limitations of the study.[10] There is no evidence that surgery or chemical disruption of normal, natural and healthy development or processes reduces the incidence of suicide.[11] J. Michael Bailey, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, and Dr. Raymond Blanchard, former psychologist in the Adult Gender Identity Clinic of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) from 1980–1995 and the Head of CAMH’s Clinical Sexology Services from 1995–2010, have written the following[12]:

–Children (most commonly, adolescents) who threaten to commit suicide rarely do so, although they are more likely to kill themselves than children who do not threaten suicide.

–Mental health problems, including suicide, are associated with some forms of gender dysphoria. But suicide is rare even among gender dysphoric persons.

–There is no persuasive evidence that gender transition reduces gender dysphoric children’s likelihood of killing themselves.

–The idea that mental health problems–including suicidality–are caused by gender dysphoria rather than the other way around (i.e., mental health and personality issues cause a vulnerability to experience gender dysphoria) is currently popular and politically correct. It is, however, unproven and as likely to be false as true.

• There is no phenomenon of women trapped in men’s bodies or vice versa, or of men having women’s brains or vice versa. Science has not proven that the brains of transgender individuals are “wired differently” than others with the same biological sex. In other words, there is no conclusive evidence of a “female brain” being contained in a male body or vice versa.[13] In fact, it is impossible for an opposite-sexed brain to be “trapped” in the wrong body. Every brain cell of a male fetus has a Y chromosome; female fetal brains do not. This makes their brains intrinsically different. Additionally, at 8 weeks gestation, male fetuses have every cell of their body—including every brain cell—bathed by a testosterone surge secreted by their testes. Female fetuses lack testes; none of their cells—including their brain cells—experience this endogenous testosterone surge.

• “[C]urrent studies on associations between brain structure and transgender identity are small, methodologically limited, inconclusive, and sometimes Even if they were more methodologically reliable, they would be insufficient to demonstrate that brain structure is a cause, rather than an effect, of the gender-identity behavior. They would likewise lack predictive power, the real challenge for any theory in science.”[14]

• Desistance is “the tendency for gender dysphoria to resolve itself as a child gets older and older.”[15] The best research to date suggests that without social or medical “transition” most (60[16]-90%[17]) gender-dysphoric children will come to accept their biological sex after passing naturally through puberty. [18] While “12- 27% of ‘gender variant’ children persist in gender dysphoria; that percentage rises to 40% amongst those who visit gender clinics.” Research shows that persistence rates rise significantly among those who are given puberty-blockers and “gender-affirmative psychotherapy,” thus suggesting that such interventions lead minors “to commit more strongly to sex reassignment than they might have if they had received a different diagnosis or a different course of treatment.”[19]

• Detransitioning is the process by which someone who has been identifying as the opposite sex, presenting himself or herself as the opposite sex, taking cross-sex hormones, and possibly had surgery rejects his or her “trans” identity and accepts his or her objective, immutable biological sex. The American College of Pediatricians confirms what “detransitioners” assert: There are many possible post-natal, environmental causes for gender dysphoria: Family and peer relationships, one’s school and neighborhood, the experience of any form of abuse, media exposure, chronic illness, war, and natural disasters are all examples of environmental factors that impact an individual’s emotional, social, and psychological development.[20]

• “Mounting evidence over the last decade points to increased rates of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and autism traits among children and adults with gender dysphoria…. It is possible that some of the psychological characteristics common in children with ASD—including cognitive deficits, tendencies toward obsessive preoccupations, or difficulties learning from other people—complicate the formation of gender identity.”[21] A study published in May 2018 “further confirmed a possible association between ASD and the wish to be of the opposite gender by establishing increased endorsement of this wish in adolescents and adults with ASD compared to the general population controls.”[22]

• J. Michael Bailey and Dr. Raymond Blanchard explain the phenomenon of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD):

The typical case of ROGD involves an adolescent or young adult female whose social world outside the family glorifies transgender phenomena and exaggerates their prevalence. Furthermore, it likely includes a heavy dose of internet involvement. The adolescent female acquires the conviction that she is transgender. (Not uncommonly, others in her peer group acquire the same conviction.) These peer groups encouraged each other to believe that all unhappiness, anxiety, and life problems are likely due to their being transgender, and that gender transition is the only solution. Subsequently, there may be a rush towards gender transition…. We believe that ROGD is a socially contagious phenomenon in which a young person–typically a natal female–comes to believe that she has a condition that she does not have. ROGD is not about discovering gender dysphoria that was there all along; rather, it is about falsely coming to believe that one’s problems have been due to gender dysphoria previously hidden (from the self and others). Let us be clear: People with ROGD do have a kind of gender dysphoria, but it is gender dysphoria due to persuasion of those especially vulnerable to a false idea.[23]

• Brown University Researcher Dr. Lisa Littman conducted a survey of parents whose children developed Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. Littman writes,

In recent years, a number of parents have been reporting in online discussion groups… that their adolescent and young adult (AYA) children, who have had no histories of childhood gender identity issues, experienced a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. Parents have described clusters of gender dysphoria outbreaks occurring in pre-existing friend groups with multiple or even all members of a friend group becoming gender dysphoric and transgender-identified in a pattern that seems statistically unlikely based on previous research. Parents describe a process of immersion in social media, such as “binge-watching” Youtube transition videos and excessive use of Tumblr, immediately preceding their child becoming gender dysphoric. These descriptions… raise the question of whether social influences may be contributing to or even driving these occurrences of gender dysphoria in some populations of adolescents and young adults…. The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate teens from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning. More research is needed to better understand rapid-onset gender dysphoria, its implications, and scope.”[24]

• The number of children “being referred for transitioning treatment” in England has increased 4,400% for girls and 1,250% for boys, which has resulted in calls from members of Parliament for an investigation.[25]

• Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) shares several features with gender dysphoria. BIID is a condition in which “Sufferers… experience a mismatch between their physically healthy body and the body with which they identify. They identify as disabled. They often desire a specific amputation to achieve the disabled body they want.”[26] As with some cases of gender dysphoria, scientists say there is evidence for neurological involvement as a cause of the experience of BIID,[27] and yet physicians largely oppose elective amputations of healthy anatomical parts:

According to the principle of nonmaleficence physicians must not perform amputations without a medical indication because amputations bear great risks and often have severe consequences besides the disability…. for example, infections [or] thromboses.  Even though some physicians perform harmful surgeries as breast enlargement surgeries, this cannot justify surgeries that are even more harmful. Even if amputations would be a possible therapy for BIID, they would be risky experimental therapies that could be justified only if they promised lifesaving or the cure of severe diseases and if an alternative therapy would not be available. At least the first condition is not fulfilled in the case of BIID, and probably the second is not fulfilled either. Above all, an amputation causes an irreversible damage that could not be healed, even if the patient’s body image would be restored spontaneously or through a new therapy…. But since all psychiatrists who have investigated BIID patients found that the amputation desire is either obsessive or based on a monothematic delusion, and since neurological studies support the hypothesis of a brain disorder (which is also supported by the most influential advocates of elective amputations), elective amputations have to be regarded as severe bodily injuries of patients.[28]

• The American College of Pediatricians, “a national medical association of licensed physicians and healthcare professionals who specialize in the care of infants, children, and adolescents” and that split from the American Academy of Pediatrics because of its politicization of the practice of medicine, describes puberty-suppression, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries variously referred to as sex-change, sex reassignment, gender reassignment and gender confirmation surgeries as child abuse.”

• Lisa Simons, pediatrician at Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, stated in a PBS Frontline documentary that “‘The bottom line is we don’t really know how sex hormones impact any adolescent’s brain development….’ What’s lacking, she said, are specific studies that look at the neurocognitive effects of puberty blockers.” [29]

• Kenneth Zucker, one of the world’s leading authorities on gender dysphoria, states that,

Identity is a process. It is complicated. It takes a long period of time… to know who a child really is…. There are different pathways that can lead to gender dysphoria…. It’s an intellectual and clinical mistake to think that there’s one single cause that explains all gender dysphoria…. Just because little kids say something doesn’t necessarily mean that you accept it, or that it’s true, or that it’s in the best interest of the child…. Little kids can present with extreme gender dysphoria, but that doesn’t mean they’re all going to grow up to continue to have gender dysphoria.[30]

• Eric Vilain, a geneticist at UCLA who specializes in sexual development and sex differences in the brain, says the studies on twins are mixed and that, on the whole, “there is no evidence of a biological influence on transsexualism yet.”[31]

• Sheila Jeffreys, lesbian feminist scholar, warns against the “transgendering” of children: “Those who do not conform to correct gender stereotypes are being sterilized and they’re being sterilized as children.”[32]

• Heather Brunskell-Evans, social theorist, philosopher, and Senior Research Fellow at King’s College, London, UK, and Michele Moore, Professor of Inclusive Education and Editor-in-Chief of the world-leading journal Disability & Society, critique the “transgender” ideology:

[O]ur central contention is that transgender children don’t exist. Although we argue that ‘the transgender child’ is a fabrication, we do not disavow that some children and adolescents experience gender dysphoria and that concerned and loving parents will do anything to alleviate their children’s distress. It is because of children’s bodily discomfort that we argue it is important families and support services are informed by appropriate models for understanding gender. Our analysis of transgenderism demonstrates it is a new phenomenon, since dissatisfaction with assigned gender takes different forms in different historical contexts. The ‘transgender child’ is a relatively new historical figure, brought into being by a coalition of pressure groups, political activists and knowledge makers…. Bizarrely, in transgender theory, biology is said to be a social construct but gender is regarded as an inherent property located ‘somewhere’ in the brain or soul or other undefined area of the body. We reverse these propositions with the concept that it is gender, not biology, which is a social construct. From our theoretical perspective, the sexed body is material and biological, and gender is the externally imposed set of norms that prescribe and proscribe desirable behaviours for children. Our objection to transgenderism is that it confines children to traditional views about gender.[33]

• Stephanie Davies-Arias, writer, communication skills expert, and pediatric transition critic, writes that “changing your sex to match your ‘gender identity’ reinforces the very stereotypes which [transgender] organisations claim to be challenging… as, in increasing numbers, boys who love princess culture become ‘girls’ and short-haired football-loving girls become ‘boys’. Promoted as a ‘progressive’ social justice movement based on ‘accepting difference’, transgender ideology in fact takes that difference and stamps it out. It says that the sexist stereotypes of ‘gender’ are the true distinction between boys and girls and biological sex is an illusion.”[34]

• Increasing numbers of young men and women experience “sex-change regret” and are “detransitioning.” Unfortunately, some effects of “medical transitions” are irreversible. A BBC documentary includes “Luke,” a young biological woman who regrets taking cross-sex hormones and having a double mastectomy at age 20 shares her experience:

The assumption from the outset was that if I said I was transgender, then I must be. Nobody, at any point, questioned my motives. The only cure for this would be hormones and surgery…. I became very self-conscious of my body. I was developing breasts and periods which, for me, felt like there was an alien crawling out of the inside of my body.  I became very depressed. I thought the only explanation for my gender dysphoria must be that I was actually a man. I was struggling with self-harm and had attempted suicide on a number of occasions and was very much told by the community that if you don’t transition, you will self-harm and you will kill yourself. I became convinced that my options were transition or die. I didn’t understand that the degree of disconnect from and hatred of my body could be considered a mental health problem…. The darkest moment was when I realized that I had actually looked normal for a girl. That I had actually been slim and pretty. That my body hadn’t been grotesque the way I thought it was. Now, as a result of having transitioned, I will always have a female body that is freakish. I will always have a flat chest and a beard and there’s nothing I can do about that…. Nobody wants to question the received knowledge that transition is the only option because nobody wants to be the one person that puts their head up and says “hang on, I don’t think this is all right”.… If I was talking to a gender-dysphoric girl who hated her body the way I hated mine, I would tell her to get out into the mud, to climb trees, to find ways of inhabiting her body on her terms.[35]

• While the American Academy of Pediatrics has formally endorsed chemical and surgical interventions and social “transitioning” for children and teens who wish they were the sex they are not, no one knows exactly how many of the 67,000 academy members agree with this position since only about 55 members created and voted on it. [36]

It is unconscionable for anyone who cares about children and the future of America to remain ignorant of and silent on this issue.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Surprising-Stuff.mp3

Footnotes:

[1] https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/homosexuality/questions-restrooms-locker-rooms-leftists-must-answer/

[2] http://www.hayesinc.com/hayes/htareports/directory/sex-reassignment-surgery-for-the-treatment-of-gender-dysphoria/. Accessed 3.24.16.

[3] http://www.jpands.or g/vol21no2/cretella.pdf

[4] http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/201405_sterilization_en.pdf

[5] https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/gsc/assets/hormones_MTF.pdf

[6] https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/gsc/assets/hormones_FTM.pdf

[7] http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/trans?page=guidelines-vaginoplasty

[8] https://www.cmda.org/resources/publication/transgender-identification-ethics-statement

[9] http://www.cathmed.org/assets/files/Gender_Dysphoria_Treatment_of_Minors.pdf

[10] http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AFSP-Williams-Suicide-Report-Final.pdf

[11] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/

[12] https://4thwavenow.com/2017/09/08/suicide-or-transition-the-only-options-for-gender-dysphoric-kids/comment-page-1/

[13] L Mayer, P McHugh, “Part Three: Gender Identity,” The New Atlantis, https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/part-three-gender-identity-sexuality-and-gender

[14] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/part-three-gender-identity-sexuality-and-gender

[15] https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/whats-missing-from-the-conversation-about-transgender-kids.html

[16] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18981931

[17] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18194003

[18] http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html

[19] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20170619_TNA52HruzMayerMcHugh.pdf

[20] https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/gender-dysphoria-in-children

[21] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zhanavrangalova/2017/11/15/growing-evidence-for-a-link-between-gender-dysphoria-and-autism-spectrum-disorders/#26953173153e

[22] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1218-3

[23] https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

[24] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330

[25] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/09/16/minister-orders-inquiry-4000-per-cent-rise-children-wanting/

[26] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/body-integrity-identity-disorder-the-condition-where-sufferers-want-to-be-disabled-a6680306.html

[27] http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/03/27/voluntary-amputation-extra-phantom-limbs/

[28]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15265160802588194 

[29] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/when-transgender-kids-transition-medical-risks-are-both-known-and-unknown/

[30] https://vimeo.com/247163584

[31] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/a-boys-life/307059/

[32] https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/sheila-jeffreys-the-mccarthyism-of-transgender-and-the-sterilization-of-transgender-children/

[33] http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/64273

[34] http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/64273

[35] https://vimeo.com/247163584 

[36] https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/homosexuality/55-members-of-american-academy-of-pediatrics-devise-destructive-trans-policy/ 

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The recently released policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in support of chemical and surgical interventions for children and teens who experience gender dysphoria, or who falsely believe they are the sex they are not, or who wish they were the sex they are not is being trumpeted far and wide by “progressives” and “progressive” organizations. That document, dripping with leftist, politically-constructed language, is titled, “Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse [TGD] Children and Adolescents.”

First some facts:

1.) The policy was created by only 28 medical doctors, 2 psychologists, 1 nurse practitioner, 1 social worker, and 1 person with a PhD in behavioral sciences. At least 4 of those involved in creating the policy are not members of the AAP.

2.) In addition to the 33 people listed as writers, contributors, or liasons at the conclusion of the policy, only about another dozen members of a board would have voted on it.

3.) The policy was not presented to all 67,000 members of the AAP for a vote, nor are minority reports solicited. In fact, most of the 67,000 AAP members would not have seen the policy before it was released to the public.

So, all we know is that fewer than 60 members of the 67,000-member AAP created and voted for the new policy affirming the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of minors. One would think the mainstream press would include this salient information when reporting on the destructive and politicized policy.

You can read the AAP recommendations here, but a plain-speaking summary should suffice. According to the AAP,

• The medical and mental health communities should embrace and affirm the anti-science “trans” ideology by chemically sterilizing and surgically mutilating minors.

• All health records should identify only the subjective, internal feelings of minors about being “male, female, somewhere in between, a combination of both, or neither” and should conceal the biological sex of minors who seek to pass as the opposite sex.

• Insurance plans should cover all Mengelian science experiments performed on minors in their futile quest to become the sex they are not and never can be.

• Pediatricians should actively promote the “trans” dogma in public schools, community organizations, and the law.

• Federal government research should “prioritize research that is dedicated to improving the quality of evidence-based care for youth who identify as TGD.”

Note what the AAP doesn’t recommend.

• It doesn’t recommend that medical and mental health communities should provide comprehensive, biological-sex-affirming health care in a safe, clinical space.

• It doesn’t urge medical and health care professionals to ascertain when a patient’s feelings first emerged or to determine the presence of comorbidities (i.e., other conditions present simultaneously).

• It doesn’t call for research into 1. the safety of lifelong cross-sex hormone-doping, 2. the effect of social “transitioning,” and chemical and surgical interventions on desistance/persistence rates, 3. the rate of detransitioning/sex-change regret, 4. the phenomenon called “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” or 5. all the possible causes for the “high rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicide” among adolescents who self-identify as “gender diverse,” which could include abuse, molestation, social ostracism, bullying, and family breakdown.

Do the 33 AAP members know with absolute certainty that in every case of feelings of incongruence between a child’s objective, immutable biological sex and his internal feelings about his sex, the error rests with his sex and not his internal feelings?

Maybe the 33 AAP members could explain why adolescents who experience incongruence between their anatomical wholeness and their internal sense of themselves as amputees (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder) should not be permitted surgical intervention to achieve a sense of congruence. Why is it justifiable to amputate the healthy breasts or testicles of those who identify as “gender diverse” or “trans” but not justifiable to amputate a leg below the knee in order to alleviate the feelings of incongruence that those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder experience? Why shouldn’t we allow “amputee wannabes” to socially transition at school even without surgery by being permitted use of wheel chairs and handicapped parking, and allowed more time for passing periods? Why shouldn’t school forms be required by law to falsely identify bodily whole students as having orthopedic impairments?

The 33 AAP members cite the non-medical, highly political Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) whose sole reason for existence is to exploit government schools in its quest to normalize homosexuality and the “trans” ideology. GLSEN’s non-medical, non-objective claim cited by the AAP is that schools that prohibit co-ed restrooms are guilty of having “antibullying policies” that don’t provide “specific protections for gender expression.” Never mind that sex-segregated restrooms provide specific protections based on biological sex. That doesn’t matter to either GLSEN activists or the 55 people who devised and voted for this boneheaded AAP policy.

While wandering through the thicket of citations carefully selected by the 33 AAP members, I made an interesting discovery. The AAP policy statement cited an article titled “Gender Variance and Dysphoria in Children and Adolescents,” which in turn cited an AAP document titled, “Childhood Gender Nonconformity: A Risk Indicator for Childhood Abuse and Posttraumatic Stress in Youth,” which examines the prevalence of abuse among “gender nonconforming” children. That AAP article states this:

Our study cannot determine the causal relationship between abuse and gender nonconformity; in other words, the extent to which nonconformity is a risk factor for abuse versus an indicator of abuse. (emphasis added)

The 33 members of the AAP’s pro-sterilization/pro-mutilation contingent likely don’t want the public to learn that it’s possible that childhood abuse may cause gender nonconformity, just like “trans” activists don’t want the public to learn that the well-known phenomenon of “social contagion” may lead to adolescent self-identification as “trans.”

One of the contributors to the AAP pro-sterilization/pro-mutilation policy is Dr. Robert Garofalo. He is the openly homosexual, HIV-positive doctor who is the Division Head of Adolescent Medicine at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. In a May 2015 Chicago Magazine profile of him titled “The Change Agent,” Garofalo admits that he “has had patients as young as 15 undergo top surgery.” That was then… this is now, and now double-mastectomies are ravaging the healthy bodies of girls as young as 13.

Another contributor to the new AAP policy and chief architect of the first policy is Dr. Ellen Perrin. A Tufts University profile of Perrin reports that for her, “pediatrics is more than just medicine; it’s a vehicle for social change.” A 2006 Boston Globe profile of Perrin says, “Politics, specifically politics with a progressive tincture, is in Dr. Ellen Perrin’s blood.” Further Perrin, who was “chair of Pro Family Pediatricians—a group of pediatricians opposed to the Federal Marriage Amendment,” shared that “[a]dvocacy is one of the things I do.”

Fortunately for children, there’s another medical organization that has sprung up precisely because of the radical positions taken by the AAP: the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds). You may have heard of ACPeds because the very name sends shivers of revulsion (or is it fear) up the spines of “progressives” everywhere. Why? As I asked a year ago, is it because ACPeds is composed of charlatans and snake oil salespersons who received their medical degrees from Rufus T. Firefly’s University of Freedonia?

Nope.

ACPeds is ridiculed because it holds different positions on the treatment of gender-dysphoric minors. Leftists are reluctant to discredit ACPeds based solely on disagreement about treatment protocols because that argument becomes circular: “You can’t trust ACPeds because it doesn’t support ‘gender affirmative’ protocols, and we all know ‘gender affirmative’ protocols are right.”

So, how do liberals attempt to discredit ACPeds which was founded just sixteen years ago? They do so by citing the fact that the number of members is lower than the number of AAP members—which was founded 87 years ago. That’s still a fallacious argument (i.e., appeal to popularity), but it works as a soundbite and it works for the  ignorant among us of which there are many.

Dr. Joseph Zanga, ACPEDS member who serves “as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Medical College of Georgia,” Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics at Mercer University School of Medicine, and is a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, further clarified the policy-making process that liberals would likely prefer concealed:

• Policy Statements are produced by 10-12-member Committees or Councils, or Section or more commonly by Section Executive Committees.

• The 10 members of the AAP Board of Directors are elected by the AAP members of their district (elections never garner votes from even 40% of members) and the Executive Committee consisting of the president, president-elect, immediate past-president (elected by the AAP members nationally with equally small numbers voting), and the paid executive director (hired by the Board)

• Statements are sent to the board for review and vote. Often there is discussion at a board meeting. Rarely is there outside opinion sought, and there is never a minority report.

• AAP members often don’t even see the report until after it appears in the media. They have no direct input.

Meanwhile the AAP continues to provide reasons for pediatricians to join ACPEDS. In September 2016, the AAP discredited itself as an impartial, unbiased medical organization when it announced that henceforth it would be partnering with the nation’s largest pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” activist organization, the radical Human Rights Campaign (HRC). I wonder how many of the 67,000 AAP members voted to partner with the HRC.

Here are some HRC recommendations  from its guide for schools:

• “While this guide focuses primarily on transgender youth who are transitioning from male to female or female to male, it is important to note that a growing number of gender-expansive youth are identifying themselves outside the gender binary, and many use gender-neutral pronouns. While it may be more difficult to adapt to gender-neutral pronouns, it is still important to do so in support of the student.”

• “Another crucial element in supporting a transitioning student is giving them access to sex-separated facilities, activities or programs based on the student’s gender identity [including] [r]estrooms, locker rooms, health and physical education classes, competitive athletics, overnight field trips, [and] homecoming court and prom.”

• “Any student who feels uncomfortable sharing facilities with a transgender student should be allowed to use another more private facility like the bathroom in the nurse’s office, but a transgender student should never be forced to use alternative facilities to make other students comfortable.”

Leftists assume that hard science provides all the answers to our ethical questions, and, therefore, we need only defer to our objective scientific organizations to point the way to sexual Shangri-La. But science does not provide answers to moral questions, and our scientific organizations are not objective. When in ten or twenty years the medical community and public at large are faced with the enormity of the harm done to children and teens by the “trans” ideology, I hope feckless doctors, school administrators, teachers, and “progressive” pundits are still around to answer for the damage they facilitated.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/New-Recording-4.mp3

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These days government (“public”) schools prefer to teach from Howard Zinn’s text book rather than fact based American history. Mobs want to tear down monuments to everyone from Columbus to Lincoln, Wikipedia hasn’t gotten up to speed. Leftists want history erased, not recorded.

For all its flaws, Wikipedia has been chronicling many years of evolution in the use of language when it comes to moral standards regarding sexual behavior.

Note the opening of this paragraph from Wikipedia’s “Paraphilia” page which we have excerpted before:

Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. Such attraction may be labeled sexual fetishism. No consensus has been found for any precise border between unusual sexual interests and paraphilic ones. There is debate over which, if any, of the paraphilias should be listed in diagnostic manuals, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

For the sake of space, let me encourage you to re-read that, focusing on what each sentence is saying. “Previously known as…” “No consensus has been found…” “There is a debate over…”

One might expect a “91 percent of scientists agree” line as we falsely hear about man-made climate change, but no, Wikipedia admits there is, indeed, disagreement.

What also stands out is their use of the DSM (mental disorders!) and even their mentioning of diseases (a no-no as it undercuts the “gay” happy narrative).

Here is the opening sentence of Wikipedia’s next paragraph: “The number and taxonomy of paraphilia is under debate; one source lists as many as 549 types of paraphilia.”

To learn more about that number of “unusual sexual practices,” here is the book to read: Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices by Anil Aggrawal (here is an excerpt at Google Books).

Not to get too far into the weeds, but researchers have now created several paraphilia classifications. Why?

There is scientific and political controversy regarding the continued inclusion of sex-related diagnoses such as the paraphilias in the DSM, due to the stigma of being classified as a mental illness.

Of course. And:

Some groups, seeking greater understanding and acceptance of sexual diversity, have lobbied for changes to the legal and medical status of unusual sexual interests and practices.

One way some divide up the paraphilias is between the “typical” and “atypical.” I could find no reference to the dividing line between the two. I assume some Leftist researcher is on the hunt for one. Or maybe not.

Again, note the “formerly known as sexual perversion…” Later, in the page, the word “Perversion” is linked to its very own page. It opens: “Perversion is a type of human behavior that deviates from that which is understood to be orthodox or normal.”

The Wikipedia editors included this paragraph:

One view is that the concept of perversion is subjective, and its application varies depending on the individual. Another view considers that perversion is a degradation of an objectively true morality.

The “perversion” page links to the “Permissive Society” Wikipedia page:

With the sexual revolution of the later twentieth century, much that Freud had argued for became part of a new, wide-ranging liberal consensus, a quasi-normative belief that “everyone’s entitled to his own sex life…”

The old “imposed morality” began to be seen as too “restricting” — it “took very little account of the complexity of human emotional connections…”

The permissive society page links to the Wikipedia page for “Deviance.” To review, we’ve gone from Paraphilia to Perversion to Permissive Society and have arrived at Deviance.

Our list of basic definitions continues with the opening of the “deviance” page:

In sociology, deviance describes an action or behavior that violates social norms, including a formally enacted rule (e.g., crime), as well as informal violations of social norms (e.g., rejecting folkways and mores).

Of course, norms are relative:

Deviance can be relative to place and time because what is considered deviant in one social context may be non-deviant in another (e.g., fighting in a nursing home vs. fighting during a hockey game). Killing another human is considered wrong, except when governments permit it during warfare or for self defense.

And so, society — and morality — evolves. Leftists call it progressive. Those who support the West’s Judeo-Christian foundation call it a return to paganism.

Now to our Paraphilias of the Day, which is really a follow-up to our post about Body Integrity Identity Disorder: Acrotomophilia and Apotemnophilia:

Acrotomophilia (from the Greek ákron [extremity], tómos [a cut] and philía [love]), refers to a paraphilia in which an individual expresses strong sexual interest in amputees. It is a counterpart to apotemnophilia, the sexual interest in being an amputee.

Follow the links to learn a lot more (though I understand completely if you prefer not to).

The number of letters following LGBT continues to grow, and I have yet to see any Leftist attempting to stop the addition of letters. Thus, as we continue with this series, it’s important to understand that all those letters represent groups which are claiming that they are being denied rights (or something) and, of course, wide acceptance because of bigotry. Regarding the latter, it’s not a matter of bigotry but of a differing view of morality.

Remember when Wikipedia wasn’t needed to keep up on all the definitions of common words? Back then, perversion was perversion, period.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias

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Three and a half years ago in an article titled “Frightening The Horses,” writer and editor Rod Dreher opens giving a fellow writer kudos. “Ben Domenech calls it,” Dreher notes, and then excerpts him:

I think they have really been arguing against the rise of something which has a much larger impact than just a small number of homosexuals getting married — they have instead been arguing against the modern concept of sexual identity. And this is a much tougher task, considering how ingrained this concept has become in our lives.

During the sexual revolution, we crossed a line from sex being something you do to defining who you are. When it enters into that territory, we move beyond the possibility of having a society in which sex acts were tolerated, in the Mrs. Patrick Campbell sense — “I don’t care what they do, so long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses” — and one where it is insufficient to be anything but a cheerleader for sexual persuasion of all manner and type, because to be any less so is to hate the person themselves. Sex stopped being an aspect of a person, and became their lodestar — in much the same way religion is for others.

After commenting on that, Dreher goes back to Domenech again:

So the real issue here is not about gay marriage at all, but the sexual revolution’s consequences, witnessed in the shift toward prioritization of sexual identity, and the concurrent rise of the nones and the decline of the traditional family. The real reason Obama’s freedom to worship limitation can take hold is that we are now a country where the average person prioritizes sex far more than religion.

. . .

In a nation where fewer people truly practice religion, fewer people external to those communities will see any practical reason to protect the liberty of those who do.

I highly recommend Rod Dreher’s entire article, where he weaves together several more excerpts from others, including the late Justice Antinon Scalia. Ben Domenech’s article The Future of Religious Liberty is also worth your time. Their point — that opening the door to mandated acceptance of everyone’s choice of identity has serious negative consequences.

Let’s turn to our next identity. A few years ago the Illinois Family Institute’s Laurie Higgins wrote an article titled, “Whole: A New Documentary on a Troubling Disorder.” Here is the opening:

The new documentary Whole, which recently premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, explores the troubling topic of Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). This disorder, which I have mentioned in several articles, used to be called apotemnophilia.

Those who suffer from BIID identify with amputees and seek to have their bodies align with their psychological identity. That is to say, they seek to have healthy limbs amputated. Many of those who suffer from BIID (known colloquially as “amputee wannabes”) recount feeling these desires from a very young age. Some have accomplished their goal through self-mutilation, and at least two have been facilitated in their quest by a doctor in Scotland.

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia page (emphasis added):

Body integrity identity disorder (BIID, also referred to as amputee identity disorder) is a psychological disorder wherein sufferers feel they would be happier living as an amputee…

BIID is typically accompanied by the desire to amputate one or more healthy limbs to achieve that end. BIID can be associated with apotemnophilia, sexual arousal based on the image of one’s self as an amputee.

So, next on our list of basic and important questions: How will society respond to “After the Ball” type efforts to normalize BIID, remove it from the DSM’s (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) list of mental disorders, and demonize those who disapprove of it?

It is their identity, after all, and you shouldn’t be a bigot.

Up next: Transgenderism.

Chloe Jennings-White, a 61-year-old research scientist in Utah who was a Fulbright scholar and has a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Cambridge University, has known since she was 4-years-old that she is different. She feels uncomfortable with her normal, healthy, fully functioning body. She experiences a mismatch between her physical body and her mental image of her body. In an effort to achieve consonance between her body and her “identity,” she has engaged in risky activities and self-harm, hoping that injuries would result in the type of body with which she identifies. For years in private, she used props to pretend she had the body she wanted, but now she engages in these behaviors publicly.

Chloe Jennings-White identifies as a paraplegic and is part of the “transabled” community. She suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), and careens about in a wheelchair wearing leg braces. Jennings-White reported that in 2010, she found a doctor overseas who was “willing to help her become disabled by cutting her sciatic and femoral nerves, but she could not afford” the $25,000 cost.

Oh, I almost forgot. In addition to identifying as a paraplegic, Jennings-White identifies as a woman. Chloe Jennings-White is, in reality, a man, formerly known as Clive. (Interestingly, according to a 2011 study, 25% of those who suffer from BIID identify as homosexual, while homosexuals constitute only 1-3 % of the population.)

While most people who suffer from BIID identify as amputees and desire a limb amputated, some, like Jennings-White, identify as paraplegics. Still others identify as blind persons, as is the case of 32-year-old Jewel Shuping who ten years ago was able to persuade a psychologist “to pour drain cleaner into her eyes…an excruciating process that took six months to fully take her sight.”

Dr. Michael First, a Columbia University professor of psychiatry, sees gender dysphoria as an apt though imperfect analogue for BIID:

 “When the first sex reassignment was done in the 1950’s, it generated the same kind of horror that voluntary amputation does now….It’s one thing to say someone wants to go from male to female; they’re both normal states….To want to go from a four-limbed person to an amputee feels more problematic.” 

The medical community—though not all of its members—has decided that amputating healthy breasts and testes and providing sterility-inducing cross-sex hormones constitutes medicine, while amputating an arm is quackery. Isn’t that judgmental and “transabled-phobic”?

Yes, male and female are, indeed, both normal states, but being female is not a normal state for men, being male is not a normal state for women, and the desire to amputate healthy body parts in a futile quest to become the opposite sex is definitely not normal.

There are, however, differences between voluntary amputations of arms or legs and voluntary amputations of breasts or testes.

First, elective surgery for BIID—which doctors will not do—would actually succeed in transforming able-bodied persons into amputees, paraplegics, or blind persons, whereas elective surgery for gender dysphoria—which doctors will perform even on minors—creates only an elaborate disguise.

Second, with regard to gender dysphoria (and unlike BIID), the medical community has been politicized by the infiltration, badgering, and bullying of “trans”-activists who have compelled the medical establishment to at least publicly assert that the desire to be the opposite-sex is not a psychological disorder.

Don’t take my word about the political pressure effecting such a change. “Julia” Serano, a male “trans”-activist who pretends to be a woman, recently admitted as much. He said that our healthcare system is “gradually becoming our contemporary trans healthcare system” an “evolution” that was brought about in part by “trans activists ‘f***ing sh*t up’….[T]his change was facilitated by a more general trend within research and medicine — away from the paternalistic ‘Doctor Knows Best’ attitudes of the mid-twentieth century, towards today’s recognition that practitioners and researchers need to actually be concerned about, and seek feedback from, the communities that they serve.”

Translation: Science isn’t shaping “trans”-treatment. “Trans”-activists are.

The medical malpractice masquerading as “treatment” for those who suffer from gender dysphoria is actually fashioned out of the remnants left over from the Emperor’s new clothes, and the flimsy garment is unraveling before our eyes as research fails to support the claims of “trans”-activists and as more and more people experience “sex-change regret” and “de-transition.” Tragically, what is exposed is mutilated bodies (more on that in a coming article).

Even though BIID-sufferers report “depression, frustration, and ‘constant consuming agony,’” the medical community still opposes what I guess should be called “transabled-identity confirmation surgery.” Well. it’s opposed for now. Just wait till “transabled” activists learn some lessons from the “transgender” community and kick their badgering into high gear.

Maybe President Barack Obama could tell us whether public school students who “identify” as amputee-fluid should be allowed to park in handicap spots, use wheelchair-accessible facilities, and be provided with extra time during passing periods on the days they’re feeling limbless.

Presenting “Laurie’s Chinwags”

IFI is pleased to announce a new feature we are calling “Laurie’s Chinwags.” In light of changes in the way many Americans prefer to access information, we’re adding podcasts to our articles. Podcasts will accompany both our new articles as well as previous articles that are of particular importance and relevance. As we add podcasts to previous articles, we will republish them for our subscribers’ convenience.

We hope this new feature will serve the needs and desires of IFI subscribers, and we would appreciate any constructive feedback.

Chloe Jennings-White, a 61-year-old research scientist in Utah who was a Fulbright scholar and has a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Cambridge University, has known since she was 4-years-old that she is different. She feels uncomfortable with her normal, healthy, fully functioning body. She experiences a mismatch between her physical body and her mental image of her body. In an effort to achieve consonance between her body and her “identity,” she has engaged in risky activities and self-harm, hoping that injuries would result in the type of body with which she identifies. For years in private, she used props to pretend she had the body she wanted, but now she engages in these behaviors publicly.

Read more here…

Once more for the hard of hearing or weak of understanding: The athlete formerly known as Bruce is not now nor ever can be a woman. Further, it is the apex of cruelty and ignorance to pretend along with him that he is.

If the cultural dictators continue to demand that everyone in society participate in this delusional, dishonest, destructive fiction, then intellectual consistency requires that they demand everyone in society to treat Africana Studies professor and race activist Rachel Dolezal—who is in reality of Central and Eastern European descent—as if she is African American.

Dolezal has been reverse-“passing” for years, falsely claiming to be African American. She has modified her physical appearance to align with her self-conception. She is “trans-raced.”

In addition, society needs to revisit the treatment protocols available to those who experience Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), which causes sufferers to identify as amputees (Click here to read more on BIID). In order to alleviate the disturbing sense of discordance between their feelings and their bodies, they desire to have a limb amputated. Some even go so far as to mutilate themselves in order to force the medical community to amputate a limb. Society rightly views the disordered desire of the “trans-abled” to amputate healthy body parts as barbaric. Society largely believes, for now, that the compassionate, humane treatment protocol involves medication and counseling to encourage those who suffer from BIID to accept their bodies.

Then there are scores of Americans who identify as young’uns. Many are found in Hollywood. They reject their unchosen, unwanted age and seek to modify their appearance to align with their age-identity. The “trans-aged” should be permitted to attend high school and date those with whom they identify. They should be permitted to change their birth certificates to identify the year they wish they had been born as opposed to the year they were assigned at birth. And if the “trans-aged” identify as toddlers, they should be permitted to wear diapers to work where restrooms should be retrofitted with enormous changing tables.

And finally, let’s not forget the “trans-specied” who identify as sloths. Surely an evolving society must adapt by changing its work-productivity expectations. Sloths can’t possibly produce at the frenetic pace of alpha humans or even alpha wolves.

The Chicago Tribune once again revealed how foolish smart people can be. In yesterday’s editorial on Jenner, the Trib editorial board employed the imbecilic and insulting comparison of opposition to interracial or interfaith marriage to disagreement with the ontological and moral assumptions of Leftist sexuality dogma:

There was a time when intermarriage between faiths and races was taboo….Then the culture shifted and what seemed wrong or abnormal became accepted, and normal….Now we’re in a moment of cultural discovery about another frontier in sexual politics. This moment will pass and transgenderism will seem different, but not so strange.

The board conveniently omitted any discussion of whether or how faith or race per se correspond to gender dysphoria, cross-dressing, elective amputations of healthy body parts, and cross-sex hormone-doping. Such a discussion may have revealed the speciousness of such comparisons.

The board went on to state that “gender identity is a recognized concept,” without acknowledging that the assumptions that inhere a “progressive” conceptualization of “gender identity” are substantively different from those that inhere a conservative conceptualization of “gender identity.” The board suggested reductively that those who “are not comfortable” with the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as “marriages,” will also be “utterly bewildered by transgender politics.”

It isn’t discomfort or bewilderment that impels opposition to “transgender politics.” It is intellectual reasoning and science. In contrast, the uncritical embrace of all things sexually deviant demonstrated by the Left is impelled by feelings and doctrinaire ideology, largely divorced from philosophical reasoning, common sense, and science.

The Left has embraced the moral solipsism of the “LGBTQQAP” movement, which denies that anything outside the self exists that can serve as an arbiter of moral truth. That’s why the movement is rife with intellectual and existential inconsistencies and incoherence. Of course, they then judge moral disapproval of homoerotic activity and “transgender politics” as inherently immoral.

The issue of whether to call gender dysphorics by opposite sex names is a peripheral distraction. In some contexts, their original name may be unknown, so their adopted opposite-sex name is all people will know. What is not peripheral, however, is the issue of pronoun-use. Referring to a man as “she” or a woman as “he” constitutes a denial of reality, otherwise known as lying. Gender dysphorics cannot become the other sex. That is a matter of science. Neither “LGBTQQAP” activists, nor their ideological “allies,” nor arms of the government (e.g., public schools) have the ethical right to compel others to lie. And facilitating a destructive fiction is the antithesis of love and compassion.

Oh what a tangled web…

 Stand With Us

On Thursday, Nov. 29, at the second meeting of the East Aurora High School ad hoc committee formed to revisit the possibility of establishing policy regarding students who experience gender confusion, over 120 people showed up, including approximately 10 pastors and 15 chaplains.

Most of these community members were Hispanic as were the faith leaders who serve the Aurora community. Almost all of the 120 people opposed such policy. Over 20 people, including a high school student, voiced their opposition to any policy that would permit boys and girls to use the restrooms and locker rooms designated for those of the opposite sex. And they expressed their views with unapologetic, unself-conscious, bold, and impassioned conviction, often with the help of a translator.

In contrast to their respectful tone, the two attendees who spoke in support of such policy—neither of whom live in Aurora and one of whom identifies as “transsexual”—were by multiple accounts condescending and rude.

After the meeting, one of the gender-confused non-community members who serves on the ad hoc committee sent the following offensive email to the entire committee, which he also asked to be shared with the school board. This disturbing email alone should suffice to disqualify him from serving on any school committee (emphasis added):

Dear Fellow Ad Hoc Committee Members,

One of the nice things about being in business for myself is that I enjoy the freedom to speak my mind without fear of having my employment terminated or other negative repercussions. I was invited to serve on the Ad Hoc Committee and have every intention of continuing to do so. But I cannot go through an experience like last Thursday night’s meeting without saying what I need to say about it. I didn’t speak up at the meeting only because I understand and respect Robert’s Rules of Order and the process by which governmental and quasi-governmental bodies operate.

Never have I seen so many people gathered in one place so determined to display their own ignorance, bigotry, and mean-spiritedness. I should not have been surprised because the protest was organized by the Illinois Family Institute, which has been certified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Beacon News had a photograph of David Norck of the Illinois Family Institute assisting the protestors. It would be like having the Ku Klux Klan come to a meeting of a committee whose work was to craft a policy for racial integration.

We had speakers tell us that transgender people have “twisted minds” and are “gender confused”. My favorite part of the evening was when a speaker, who for some reason was allowed to stand behind my chair for the entire meeting in an intimidating posture, pointed his pen at me, and told the assembled throng that I was there to “push my lifestyle” on the children of East Aurora. This same person had never met me before that evening; doesn’t know anything about my “lifestyle”; doesn’t know if I spend my free time with my children, in the library, out clubbing, or at church; and knows nothing about me other than the fact that I am transgender. Because he knows nothing about me other than the fact that I am transgender and feels justified in attacking my “lifestlye”, he is nothing but a hate-filled ignorant bigot. It is no different from making assumptions about a person’s “lifestyle” because they are black or Hispanic.

We heard a lot of talk about putting girls in the boys’ bathroom and boys in the girl’s bathroom. But the only people at the meeting who want to put girls in the boys’ bathroom are the people who want to force transsexual girls into the boys’ bathroom where their identity, comfort, and safety will be compromised.

I was disappointed not to have had an opportunity to speak out at the meeting, and to have to listen to ninety minutes of transphobic diatribes.

We cannot let a certified hate group prevent the Ad Hoc Committee from having its dialogue, proposing policy, and taking a vote. We don’t have mob rule; we have a democracy. And while the First Amendment certainly protects every one, including bigots (the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the American Nazi Party to march in Skokie), reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions may be imposed on the right of public comment so that government bodies and quasi-government bodies can do the work that they are charged to do. It is my suggestion that we, as a Committee, or the School Board, itself, adopt reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on public comment so that the Committee can do its work.

This letter will be an open letter which I post on my blog.

Joanie Rae Wimmer

This remarkable letter calls for some remarks:

1. It should take Aurora community members aback to learn that someone who is not a community member is being allowed to serve on a non-elected committee that will be developing and voting on policy for their school. The Aurora community should demand to know who invited Wimmer and every other non-community member (e.g., Rick Garcia and Sara Schriber) to serve on the committee.
2. The community should be outraged that Wimmer seeks to limit the capacity of community members with whom he disagrees to express their opinions.
3. Adding insult to injury, Mr. Wimmer calls community members and other attendees with whom he disagrees ignorant, mean-spirited, hate-filled bigots who are the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan. Does anyone think a conservative community member—let alone an outsider—who hurls epithets like that would ever be included on this committee?
4. Wimmer’s anger reveals how self-righteous and presumptuous homosexual and gender-confused activists have become from years of being coddled, wooed, apologized to, and deferred to. When they encounter public dissent from their assumptions about homosexuality and gender dysphoria expressed with the same certitude that they express theirs, they respond with rage and incivility.
5. Mr. Wimmer attributes “mean-spiritedness” to his ideological opponents. It is appropriate for compassionate people to feel sympathy for those who suffer from gender dysphoria. We should have sympathy for the pain that such obsessive thoughts about one’s sex and the compulsive acts that are impelled by these thoughts create. But compassion does not require people to accept Wimmer’s beliefs about what constitutes gender or about the morality of cross-dressing and elective amputations of healthy body parts.Further, once he brings his non-factual ontological and moral views into the public square, demanding that public policy and laws reflect them, it is ethical and critically important for conservatives to express their dissenting views.No one argues that compassion requires society to affirm the beliefs and desires of those who suffer from a similar disorder: Body Integrity Identity Disorder (i.e., who identify with amputees, desire to have limbs amputated, and often pretend to be amputees). Compassion and kindness do not require conservatives to deny reality or censor their competing views regarding truth and morality. Quite the contrary. Compassion demands that our actions reflect truth, morality, and objective reality.
6. Homosexual and “transgender” activists have cleverly constructed a rhetorical universe in which only they are permitted to speak. They simply assert that their subjective, non-factual beliefs about homosexuality and gender dysphoria are inarguably true and central to their identity and that all dissenting views are hateful, ignorant, mean-spirited bigotry that make them feel “unsafe.” Therefore, because they feel“unsafe” if they hear views with which they disagree, such views must not be permitted to be spoken or reflected in policy or law.I would argue that if Mr. Wimmer finds it too hurtful to hear dissenting views about gender dysphoria, then perhaps he shouldn’t venture into the public square demanding that public policy reflect his.
7. Mr. Wimmer is incorrect when he compares conservative views of homosexuality to racism, which he does when he suggests that allowing conservatives to speak at ad hoc committee meetings or serve on the committee is equivalent to having a racist serve on committee to establish policy on racial discrimination. Wimmer went so far as to defame one attendee, David Norck (who is not an employee of IFI), by calling him the equivalent of Ku Klux Klansman. Wimmer’s suggestion is both offensive and wrong.

   First, gender dysphoria is utterly different from race. While race, or perhaps more accurately skin-color, is 100% heritable and does not impel any kind of behavior, let alone morally questionable behavior, gender dysphoria is constituted by subjective feelings and impels behavior that many consider profoundly disordered. There are no points of correspondence between these two conditions, and, therefore, his analogy fails.Second, most people who believe that cross-dressing and elective amputations of healthy body parts are unhealthy, perverse responses to disordered thinking do not hate those who suffer from gender dysphoria.

8. Does Wimmer have any evidence that those who believe differently than he does about gender dysphoria hate those who suffer from it? And does Wimmer have any evidence to justify his implicit comparison of gender dysphoria to race?As discussed earlier, it makes more sense to compare gender dysphoria to Body Integrity Identity Disorder. Should someone who suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder serve on a committee formed to create policy on the use of school elevators intended for use by injured or disabled students?
9. We have exalted social science to some unjustifiable position as the ultimate arbiter of truth, reality, and morality. Even if the majority of mental health professionals were to conclude that the desire to be the opposite sex constitutes a healthy and normative mental state and that achieving “congruence” between one’s self-perception/desires and one’s “presentation” through elective amputation of healthy body parts and cross-dressing  is proper and good doesn’t make those conclusions true. History is littered with the detritus of psychosocial theories once accepted as gospel truth.
10. Wimmer takes umbrage at one community member’s reference to his “lifestyle,” fulminating that this person knows nothing about Wimmer’s lifestyle. I’m not sure if Wimmer is being deceitful or obtuse, but clearly this person was referring to the only relevant aspect of Wimmer’s lifestyle: his cross-dressing and elective amputation of healthy body parts, both of which Wimmer has made public. In fact, Wimmer is serving on this committee in order to advance his non-factual beliefs about these aspects of his lifestyle.
11. Wimmer uses the terms “transphobic,” which denotes irrational fear, and “hate-filled” to malign those who disagree with him about gender dysphoria. Does Wimmer believe that all expressions of moral disapproval about volitional behavior constitute fear or hatred , or is it just the expression of beliefs with which he disagrees that are “phobic” and hateful?The most hate-filled language I’ve come across in any reports about the East Aurora controversy appears in Wimmer’s invective.
12. Wimmer criticizes Aurora community members “who want to force transsexual girls into the boys’ bathroom.” “Transsexual girls” are, in reality, boys. Wimmer treats as indisputable fact his non-factual belief that boys who suffer from gender dsyphoria are actually girls and arrogantly suggests that no one has the right to any other beliefs about gender.
13. One final and less significant comment: Wimmer twice refers to IFI as a Southern Poverty Law Center-“certified” hate group. If this designation were not so malignant, Wimmer’s comment would be funny. Wimmer, an attorney, might spend some time researching the SPLC’s “certification” process. In short, the SPLC decided which organizations espouse views on sexuality with which the SPLC disagrees, placed those groups on its hate groups list, and then after-the-fact invented criteria that would justify their inclusion. There is no certification process.

The kind of radical sexuality activism that East Aurora High School has encountered will come to every elementary, middle, and high school in the country. Let’s hope that every community has men and women as courageous as the men and women in Aurora—including faith leaders. Right now the picture looks bleak on the courage front, but maybe the actions of these Aurora community members will inspire others to follow their lead.

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