The world’s richest man has it right. Last Friday Elon Musk tweeted, “[a]ny parent or doctor who sterilizes a child before they are a consenting adult should go to prison for life.”

Twenty years ago this would not have been a controversial statement. The general response would have been, “of course.” But today it is a position at the very edge of a massive chasm that exists between the left and the right. How did this happen, and why?

It is not as if Elon Musk is a distant observer, who emerges from his executive suite from time to time to issue statements just to weigh in on current controversies. For him it is also a personal matter. A month ago, Musk’s 18-year-old son by a previous marriage filed a a petition for a name change in the Santa Monica Superior Court. He also petitioned for a new birth certificate, changing his sex to female. The wide rift that exists in our culture, apparently is equally as wide within the billionaire’s own family.

So called “trans-affirming care” — puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery — have been restricted, banned or are under consideration in 15 states: Indiana, Idaho, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Iowa, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Dakota, Utah, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas.

In the remaining states the care remains legal and several have passed or are attempting to pass laws that will make the states trans sanctuaries.

A bill is under consideration to do just that in Illinois, but it has remained in the Assignment Committee since February, with no other action taken so far. California, by law, already is a trans sanctuary and in Minnesota legislation has passed in the House to become a sanctuary state. By Executive Order, Governor Tim Walz already has required protection for “gender-affirming” care since March 8th.

In Colorado, Governor Jared Polis signed a bill on April 14^th making that state the third official sanctuary state. On April 12^th, the Washington State House passed an amended version of a Senate Bill that protects runaway trans children and allows them to get hormone therapy and surgery without parental consent, although the Department of Children, Youth and Families has to be involved.  That bill apparently needs Senate approval before being sent to the Governor. Many other states are taking up this issue as well.

The Biden Administration is fully behind “trans-affirming” care and has declared it “settled science.” Biden, himself, just released a statement opposing H.R. 734, a bill that would require children to play on teams that align with their biological sex. The President says if it reaches his desk, he will veto it.

It is simply incredible and nonsensical that this deep divide exists. Even Saturday Night Live, which was once a comedy show, took up the issue over this past weekend. In an unfunny skit with Molly Kearney, the show took shots at several red states for banning what she called “health care for trans kids.” The left refuses even to look at the possibility that chemicals that sterilize, and surgery that mutilates and sterilizes children could be viewed as destructive, not helpful.

Anyone who speaks out against medical intervention for children risks condemnation and even physical assaults. Those who favor medical intervention become completely unhinged by any challenge to their views, making it impossible to have a civil debate. There is no debate, according to the left, pointing to the endorsement of “gender-affirming” care by the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital Association, and others as confirmation for their position.

We cannot get a coherent answer to the question of why these organizations support such care, when in Europe, where trans hormone therapy and trans surgery started, the medical clinics are being shut down. The preferred therapy there is now talk therapy.

Why the difference?

Popular bloggers, Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, recently hosted Jamie Reed on their podcast, Triggernometry. Reed is the whistleblower who exposed the destructive transgender care practices at Washington University Transgender Clinic in St. Louis, MO. The clinic currently is under criminal investigation by the Missouri Attorney General.

Reed is a gay woman who is married to a transgender man and worked in the clinic managing the care for the clinic’s patients for the last several years. Initially it was expected the clinic would care for 50 or so patients a year, but 50 turned into hundreds, then thousands.

Kisin asked Reed how she explained this explosion of trans-identifying children. While Reed’s observations cannot be generalized to other populations, she has come to a few conclusions based on the thousands she saw. Her view was interesting.

She observed that white children in the U.S. are indoctrinated to believe they are privileged, and because of that they are seen as “oppressors.” Many are desperate to escape that label. Because they are white, it is difficult for them to claim a different race or ethnic identity. They can’t claim poverty when their family is affluent, and they find it too difficult to identify as gay or lesbian. It is easier for them to claim to be non-binary or trans. Trans seems to be the path of least resistance to become a member of an oppressed group, freeing them from condemnation as an oppressor.

She didn’t explain what accounts for other racial or ethnic groups who identify as trans, other than to say that most of the upsurge, she believes, is fueled by social media. These children are encouraged to join the oppressed class. She said if you took most of these kids to a farm in Montana and took away their phones, it would be better for them than the treatment they receive in gender clinics. The idea they were trans would most likely vanish.

Doctors, too, are affected by social and professional pressures. More important, she said, is that each medical professional is merely a “cog in a spinning machine.” The machine involves multiple professionals, each one carrying out his or her specific task. If any one of them stops or does something different the entire machine breaks down. Each professional performs his assigned task to the best of his ability, without the necessity to evaluate the entire spinning machine. That is someone else’s responsibility. They don’t think about it.

It reminds me of an examination of the people who were involved in Hitler’s death camps. Both Hannah Arendt and Christopher Browning looked at the phenomena of seemingly normal people committing mass murders in places like Auschwitz and multiple other concentration camps.

Both authors pointed to the Nazis using a division of labor as a way that allowed each worker an out. They were just one cog in a very large wheel, disconnected from ultimate responsibility for the mass exterminations. Someone else was responsible for designing the machine and keeping it going, not them.

The church, too, has taken sides on transgender divide, many of them coming down on the side of genital mutilation in the name of love, as the church from Revelation’s Thyatira might have taken. Most won’t adopt a position, being too cowardly to pick a side, much like the church at Laodicea would have done.

Very few follow the model of the church at Philadelphia, which faithfully followed God’s will.

Today the church is not driving the culture. It is being driven by it, transformed by it. Nothing is going to change in Chicago, or Springfield, or Washington D.C. until the church stands up and becomes an instrument of both truth and grace. That looks like that’s a long way off, but it could happen overnight if enough Christians answer the call.

Can you hear it?

Read more:

Analysis: Illinois One of 29 States Allowing Boys to Play Girls’ High School Sports (Prairie State Wire)

The Trans Quagmire – How We Got Here (Thomas Hampson)

[VIDEO] Transgenderism is The Most Dangerous Extremist Movement in The U.S. (Tucker Carlson)

[VIDEO] Riley Gaines Speaks Out Against Trans-Insanity in Women’s Sports

[VIDEO] Transgender Agenda Run Amuck (Fox News Channel)

New CA Bill Requires Foster Parents to Swear Allegiance to LGBT Ideology (California Family Council)

Opposing Transgenderism Is Not Genocide (Oliver Perry)

30 Transgender Regretters Come Out Of The Closet (The Federalist)

[PODCAST] Generation Indoctrination: Inside the Transgender Battle (Christian Post)

If one State Senator has his way, Illinois will become a center for gender affirmation care for children—which is just a euphemism for chemical castration and surgical mutilation. Mike Simmons (D-Chicago) recently introduced SB 1283 which is to be known as the “Gender-Affirming Health Care Protection Act.” He introduced the bill as a response to several states outlawing puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and cosmetic surgery for children who think that they want to transition to the opposite gender of their birth.

The bill immunizes “any person for providing, aiding, assisting, receiving, or otherwise allowing a child to receive gender-affirming care or referring a child for such care. . .” In other words if someone from another states helps a child to come to Illinois for transgender treatment, Illinois will not help the other state prosecute the person under that state’s laws. Illinois law enforcement and others are prohibited from providing information, warrants will not be recognized, civil penalties are to be ignored, extradition is prohibited, civil or criminal subpoenas for testimony or records will not be recognized or enforced.

In our Constitutional system, I don’t know how this law would be legal, but that is for someone else to figure out. The much larger issue is how woke Springfield has become.

The bill says the General Assembly finds “[g]ender-affirming care encompasses many forms of health care support that improve the mental health and overall well-being of gender diverse children and adolescents and has been shown to increase positive outcomes for transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents.” Claiming that these treatments are for the health of the child is nonsense. There is no empirical evidence to support that claim.

Even after hormone treatments and surgery, the transgender patient remains at high risk for suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, as well as mental health issues associated with gender dysphoria. These cannot be ignored. There also are the lifelong medical treatments to maintain the transgender status and to treat the side effects of all the surgery and hormones alien to their natural born sex. Even Marci Bowers, the doctor who performed the surgery on Jazz Jennings and on at least 2,000 others, reportedly has had second thoughts on performing the surgery on children. There is not enough “material,” meaning the genitalia are too under developed to obtain the best surgical result, according to Bowers.

There is a growing consensus, based on a growing body of empirical evidence, that talk therapy is the preferred treatment, at least until the underlying mental illnesses are relieved.  This is especially true for treatment of children. Also the number of detransitioners is increasing.

The detrans group on Reddit has increased from 38,700 in September, 2022 to 44,200 members this month. These are only the numbers on Reddit. Think of what that means. At least forty-four thousand people have realized they made a mistake. This is a staggering number of mistakes! How many people are transitioning? And what is the real number of detransitioners? We don’t know. Do our legislators know? Do they care?

A recent whistleblower from a hospital in St. Louis has given us some clear insight into gender clinic practices. Jamie Reed, a self-described queer woman who is politically to the left of Bernie Sanders, worked at the Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases for almost four years. The target group for her unit was HIV positive teens and young adults, some of whom were trans. Because of her experience with that patient population, in 2018 she took a position “as a case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.” That clinic opened in 2017.

After working at the gender clinic for four years and managing the cases of approximately 1,000 youths, Reid

“left the clinic in November of last year because [she] could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time [she]  departed, [she] was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm.’ Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.”

According to Reid, her conscience would not allow her to continue in her position. The clinic, she said, lacked formal protocols. More troubling to Reid was the changing demographic of the patients. Historically there were more boys who sought to become girls, than there were girls who wanted to be boys. But that started to change.

Reid handled intakes for new patients and families. “When [she] started there were probably 10 such calls a month. When [she] left there were 50, and about 70 percent of the new patients were girls. Sometimes clusters of girls arrived from the same high school,” Reid said.

Reid was concerned about all 0f the additional issues the youths presented as well, like ADHD, autism, depression,  anxiety, and OCD among other problems. Her bosses at the clinic were not concerned with these issues. All the clinic cared about was getting a letter from a therapist that supported transitioning. The clinic would recommend the therapist and even gave a template to the therapist which detailed what the letter of support should say. Remember, Reid is a member of the LGBT community. Moreover, she is married to a transman, yet she has taken a stand against what is being done to our youth. She was not just indicting the St. Louis clinic. Her criticism was directed at clinics throughout the U.S.

Because of Reid’s disclosures, the Washington University transgender clinic is now under civil and criminal investigation by the Missouri Attorney General as well as other agencies.

So far there have been no whistleblowers for clinics in Illinois. Nor for many other clinics in the U.S. Still, there have been enough similar kinds of disclosures to take action. We should take these warnings to heart and pause this rush to embrace child and adolescent transitions.

Are there reasonable protocols in Illinois transgender clinics? What are they? Are they publicly available? Are our clinics ignoring or inadequately addressing the comorbidities of those suffering from gender dysphoria? Are doctors performing surgeries on autistic patients?

How are the clinics insuring that children and their parents are being adequately and meaningfully informed? Are chemical and surgical intervention the best, least destructive, course of treatment? Are the patients and parents informed that any chemical or surgical treatment causes permanent damage? Are they informed that these treatments will not eliminate the high risk of suicide?

How many transgender surgeries are being performed? What does the clinic do when a patient seeks to detransition? What oversight does the government regularly perform?

If our legislators cannot fully answer all of these questions, they need to find out. In the meantime, Senator Simmons should withdraw his bill.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state senator to ask him/her to please oppose SB 1283.

You can also contact State Senator Simmons to ask him to table his irresponsible and harmful bill by call his district office directly. That number is (773) 769-1717.

Read more: 

Most support banning transgender surgery in children (Sharyl Attkisson)

Written by Peter Sprigg

“Puberty blockers” are hormones originally intended to deal with “precocious puberty,” in which a child experiences the physical signs of puberty prematurely. Now, however, puberty blockers are being used as a treatment for “gender dysphoria.” The theory is that a child who is already unhappy with his or her biological sex may become even more unhappy when his or her body begins to develop.

The most extreme claim is that transgender children forced to undergo normal puberty will kill themselves. Into this debate came a new academic study published in the Pediatrics medical journal that resulted in headlines like these:

• “Puberty blockers could save the lives of trans teens, study shows” – The Hill
• “Puberty blockers linked to lower suicide risk for transgender people” – NBC News

There’s only one problem. These headlines are wrong.

The word “suicide” implies a fatality. The Pediatrics study was not a study of suicide—because none of its subjects were dead. It was based upon answers given in the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.

The key outcome referenced in the article was “lifetime suicidal ideation.” This means thinking about committing suicide. The finding that those who received puberty blockers had lower “lifetime suicidal ideation” than those who wanted them but did not receive them got the attention because it was the only one that reached the level of “statistical significance.”

However, “lifetime suicidal ideation” was only one of nine mental health outcomes that were listed in the study.

On four of the nine outcome measures—nearly half—the outcomes for those who received puberty blockers were worse than for those who did not. Most of these differences were small, but one figure jumped off the page. Those who received puberty blockers were twice as likely to have had a suicide attempt resulting in inpatient care (i.e., hospitalization) in the last 12 months as those who did not (45.5 percent vs. 22.8 percent). While we cannot reach definitive conclusions because of the small numbers involved, this raises important questions that are at least worthy of further research.

Also, the lifetime rate of suicidal ideation for those who received puberty blockers were lower than for those who didn’t—but it was still astonishingly high, at 75 percent. This hardly suggests that administering puberty blockers makes most children with gender dysphoria mentally healthy.

The authors acknowledge the study’s design “does not allow for determination of causation.” But they go further, raising doubt that puberty blockers cause lower rates of suicidal ideation—because it may be that people with suicidal ideation were simply considered poor candidates to receive puberty blockers.

Let’s be clear—we cannot conclude from this study that children who take puberty blockers are more likely to commit suicide than those who don’t.

But we also cannot conclude that they are less likely to commit suicide—notwithstanding the breathless media coverage.

Legislators considering restrictions on radical gender transition procedures for minors should make those decisions based on the harmful physical effects and risks of those interventions, many of which are well-known—not based upon the misinterpretation of psychological studies whose implications are far from clear.

This article was originally published at FRC.org.

I earnestly hope and pray that every child and adult struggling with gender identity issues will find wholeness, peace, and happiness from the inside out. I earnestly hope and pray that we will live to see the day when every person who feels trapped inside the wrong body will find internal resolution without hormones and radical surgery. At the same time, I wholeheartedly oppose the transgender revolution and predict that, ultimately, it will fail. Here’s why.

1) The transgender revolution is oppressive. As reported on July 16 on Lifesite News, “Failing to refer to a gender-confused student, professor, or staffer by his or her ‘preferred’ pronouns could become a fireable or expulsion-worthy offense at the University of Minnesota, according to proposed guidelines currently under consideration.”

It is not enough to allow a biological male to identify as a female. Hardly. Society must conform, or else. If “he” now identifies as “she” (or “xe” or “ze”) and you fail to use the right pronoun, you will be punished.

This is already the law in New York City. And Canada has taken steps to make this kind of enforced speech the law across the country.

This cannot succeed in the long-term. Society will push back.

2) The transgender revolution is irrational. As a result of trans activism, tampons are now available in some college campus bathrooms. After all, we are told, men menstruate as well!

Yes, a woman who identifies as a man but still gets her monthly period is actually a menstruating man.

And we are supposed to believe this nonsense? We are supposed to shake our heads and say, “How quaint”? I don’t think so.

Recently, however, trans activists have taken things to a new depth of irrationality. Men who identify as women have declared that they get their periods too – just differently! So, other biological realities must now be redefined as well, and a monthly cycle is no longer a physical event.

To quote a “trans girl” directly: “Nobody teaches trans girls about our periods. We just get these weird times where we’re moody and crampy and sad and we don’t know why and just chalk it up to another reason we’re not good enough in life.

“So, just so you all know: Trans. Girls. Get. Periods.”

Enough said. This is beyond irrational.

3) The transgender revolution is unhealthy. Trans advocates tell us that failure to diagnose and treat gender dysphoria will result in depression, suicide, or other forms of self-harm. And I’m sure that, in some cases, post-hormone and post-surgery, many individuals are more satisfied with their quality of life.

Others would point to the high percentage of suicides after surgery, along with the substantial number of people who experience sex-change regret.

But there’s more to be concerned about. A recent headline on a gay website announced, “Hormone therapy linked to dangerous health issues in trans women.” Yes, “Researchers set out to examine heart and circulatory health in transgender people, and found that transgender women face a greater chance of strokes, heart attacks, and blood clots compared to their non-transgender counterparts.”

And what about kids who are put on hormone blockers before puberty, then put on a life-long regimen of hormonal therapy? What will the ill effects be?

4) The transgender revolution is extreme. Scarlett Johansson, one of the biggest female names on the big screen, recently felt the wrath of transgender activists, withdrawing from her starring role as a trans man after protests. How dare a female actor play the role of a trans man when there are plenty of trans men who can play the role.

But isn’t this what actors do? It’s one thing for a white man to paint his face in order to play the role of a black man.

But actors act. They play all kinds of roles that are unrelated to their private lives. They play villains and thieves. They play athletes and politicians. They play liars and saints, good guys and bad guys. They play super heroes and super criminals. They play aliens and vampires. And all that is acceptable – unless they play a trans person.

Enough said.

5) The transgender revolution is dangerous. When you insist that a biological male who identifies as a female has the “right” to use a women’s bathroom, locker room, and dressing room, you are asking for trouble.

A headline from England stated, “Transgender prisoner who was put in a female jail despite not having sex-change surgery ‘sexually assaulted four women inmates before being moved to a male prison’.”

So, a biological male with male organs intact (and obviously, still attracted to women) was put in a women’s prison. Should we be surprised by what happened?

In the States, Planet Fitness sided against a female, former sexual assault victim who protested against the presence of a man (identified here as “Mr. Rice”) in the locker room. As explained in the case being brought by Liberty Counsel, “This is not the only incident with Mr. Rice known to Planet Fitness. Another woman reported that he exposed his naked body to her in the women’s locker room at this location. In another instance, he was involved in an argument with another woman over use of the tanning room. Misogynist, anti-woman harassment should have no place in Planet Fitness locations, and violates Florida law.”

6) The transgender revolution is unnatural. There are fundamental, undeniable differences between men and women, which is why there is an increasing pushbackagainst biological males competing against biological females.

Even among some feminists and lesbians, there is resistance to trans women being accepted as females. And it is for good reason. A biological male will never be a female.

7) The transgender revolution is an attack on children. Trans advocates would tell us that they are helping children, that they are saving them many years of grief and pain and confusion. In reality, for every child they might help (and even at that, in a temporary, non-holistic way) they are confusing many more children — innocent, tender kids.

As the Daily Mail asked, “Are children as young as 11 really capable of making life-changing decisions about their gender?”

We are playing with fire here, and there will likely be many, many casualties before we wake up.

There is much more that could be said, but here’s a final reflection. For decades now, billions of dollars have been invested to discover a cure for cancer. Chemotherapy is not sufficient. Radiation treatment only goes so far. Other “cures” fall short of the mark.

In the same spirit, let us continue to pursue better treatments for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Surely there is a better way than hormone blockers for children, double mastectomies and sex-change surgery for older teens, and hormones for life.

Let’s work toward this while firmly resisting the transgender revolution. We owe it to our kids and grandkids.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.