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)

America’s children are being targeted by sex predators. Their recruiters are already in our schools and libraries. These “transgender” people need your children as converts. Consider:

• Children returning from school carrying “gender unicorn lessons,” which teach strange ideas of sex and gender.
• Public libraries are conditioning your children through “drag queen readings” to get children familiar with these recruiters.
• Schools are hiding from parents that they’re giving puberty blocking drugs to their children.

The transgender people insist that they be allowed to access and recruit children, and that you accept them as being of their assumed sex – even in private places like separate-sex bathrooms. They claim, “trans rights are civil rights.”

If you oppose them, you’re charged with genocide- of mass murdering hordes of children. But, if you don’t oppose them, you’ll end up losing your rights as parents and all of the children will be prey to sexual and financial abuse. Read on to become aware of how the transgender agenda destroys parents’ oversight, age of consent, and causes bodily harm to their young victims.

Sexually flailing against God’s creation

People practicing homosexuality want to be accepted as normal by society. That is what the “love is love” campaign is all about. Likewise, people practicing transgender behaviors want us to affirm their choices. Why, then, do Christians actively oppose homosexuality and transgenderism? It’s not out of hate for these people, but because God hates these behaviors. Even if we wanted to affirm them, we couldn’t do that and also have a God-honoring society.

In Genesis, we read how God created everything, including Adam (a man) and Eve (a woman). God told Adam “from any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17, NASB). But Adam decided he didn’t trust God’s version of good and evil, and sought his own understanding. This was the sin of Adam– that he pursued his own version of right and wrong.

Homosexuality is a manifestation of Adam’s sin. God hates it because, at its root, it is rebellion against Him and rejecting His creation. They’ll have man-to-man, or woman-to-woman, sex and curse us if we tell them that this is wrong. An article from Got Questions calls it “shaking our fists at God.”

Homosexuality is not the cause of a society’s decline, but it is a symptom of it; it is the result of people making themselves the final authorities. Romans 1 gives the natural digression of a society that has chosen idolatry and sinful pleasure instead of obedience to God. The downward spiral begins with denying that God has absolute authority over His creation (Romans 1:21-23).

The result of a society’s rejection of God’s rule in their lives is that God gives “them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:24-25). Verses 26 and 27 say, “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” The phrase “God gave them over” means that, when we insist on shaking our fists at God, He finally lets us have the perversion we demand. And that is a judgment in itself. Homosexual behavior is the result of ignoring God and trying to create our own truth. When we defy God’s clear instruction, we reap the “due penalty” of our disobedience (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9; Revelation 21:8).

Transgenderism is a variant of homosexuality. The important difference between them is that a man or woman claims to be of the other sex – an assertion in defiance of the facts. It’s another claim of godhood, that someone can declare their own sex and it becomes true because they say so. We’re all supposed to chime in and affirm this claim, much like throwing a pinch of incense to Caesar. Frequently, but not always, transgender behavior also includes surgical removal of a person’s sex organs.

A key thing about transgenderism is how you can’t just ignore it. People are in your face about you acknowledging the sex assertion, and about you using “preferred pronouns.” Woe to you if you disagree with them. Walter Hudson, a state legislator from Minnesota, commented about this:

We used to take our differences a lot more seriously. But we eventually settled on a social contract rooted in classical liberalism, the notion that neighbors should be able to peacefully co-exist without demanding renunciation of sacred belief. The transgender community has not received that memo. Despite individual exceptions, the general rule among the dominant trans culture is an illiberal insistence upon affirmation. It’s not enough for them to believe that “transgender women are women.” You must believe it too. You must confess it with your mouth upon every social interaction. You must call a guy cosmetically altered to appear as a woman “she,” or you will be found guilty of heresy and summarily convicted in the court of public opinion. At the very least, your sentence will be social censure and condemnation. More likely, you will lose your job or face other grave consequences that hobble your capacity to live…

The dominant trans culture has successfully employed a repressive cultural strategy of social censure and unearned indignation to enforce a code of conduct that “affirms” their beliefs. Of course, it amounts to gaslighting. No one believes that the man cosmetically altered to appear as a woman has become a woman. But you’re expected to “affirm” that lie with every use of a “preferred pronoun” as an act of fealty and submission. It’s enforced with severe social censure for violations of trans decorum, which typically involves being treated as beneath contempt.

Christians aspire to proclaim the gospel, and to build a Christian society (Matt. 13:33, 28:18-20). America still has a strong Christian influence, and our standards of right and wrong are measured by what the Bible says. God hates homosexuality, in either form, and judges a society that approves of it (Gen. 19:15-26; Rom. 1:26-27). This means that building a Christian society includes opposing homosexuality and transgenderism.

Transgenderism brings unwelcome surprises

Are Christians being meanies, not letting an “oppressed minority” experience full acceptance into American society? No, we’re trying to protect our society from predators, who would use this acceptance to exploit and hurt children. After everything is said and done, this conflict is over recruiting children into transgenderism.

Consider the rage over a  Texas bill, which would ban sexual transition surgery on minors. And look at the concern about a Florida bill that, only modestly, regulates when transgender concepts could be taught in public schools. It certainly is about the children.

If America gives these advocates what they demand, if they convince us that it’s fair and just to yield to their claims, then look at the life-changing surprises awaiting us.

Surprise #1: Transgender education is already in American schools

Of the things a people can expect of society, perhaps protecting the vulnerable is its most important task. And children are its most vulnerable group, because they’re innocent of how the world might mistreat them. American society provides them special protection through concepts like “age of consent,” and by the understanding that their parents are their legal guardians. This has been consistently confirmed, most famously in the Wisconsin v. Yoder Supreme Court case:

The history and culture of Western civilization reflect a strong tradition of parental concern for the nurture and upbringing of their children. This primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition.

However, teaching children about transgender behaviors has already been forced into public schools, without seeking parents’ consent and usually without notice. It’s done because  teachers believe that the students belong to them. In practice, teachers, administrators, and school boards act like they can they can do as they please with their students.

They approve, not merely permit, teaching transgenderism, and seek to indocrinate students even in kindergarten. They teach propaganda like “assigned sex at birth”and “gender unicorns.” They even seek to reach three-year-old children with these lessons! To evade parental oversight, they counsel children in secret, and deny what they’re doing.

Don’t be fooled in thinking that your “excellent school district” doesn’t do that stuff. They probably do already, for so much of their agenda is set by state bureaucracies. Remember what Ronald Reagan said: “Trust, but verify.”

Surprise #2: Transgender agenda overrules “age of consent”

The point of the “age of consent” is that the parents protect a child from making uninformed or immature decisions. The child increasingly learns how the world works, and his or her parents give increased personal control.

Young children know nothing about how “gender-affirming” therapy changes the body’s development. Even drug therapy has permanent consequences. If you stop taking the drugs the body doesn’t play “catch-up” for the years of missed development. No youth of nine or ten has the wisdom, or skepticism, to understand the implications of tampering with puberty.

Non-parental counselors are conflicted, having self-interests to not tell the youth of any potential problems. We used to call people like this “predators” and “child exploiters.” Yet transgender advocates demand that youth be allowed to make these decisions without parental approval. For example, the Minnesota Lt. Governor said, “when our children tell us who they are, it is our job as grown-ups to listen and to believe them,” she added. “That’s what it means to be a good parent.” Not true, because a good parent looks for the best interests of a child, and much of love means saying “no.”

Surprise #3: All ages of consent could be nullified

If a child can consent, without having parental approval, to body-altering procedures, even surgery, then the “age of consent” is nullified. Perhaps some advocate will then petition a judge that the sexual age of consent should also be nullified. A similar argument exists for removing the minimum age for entering into financial contracts. This results in many exploiters, and many hurt children.

Surprise #4: Parental oversight would effectively be abolished

In a transgender-affirming world, a child can ask for, and expect to get, body-altering treatments without parental permission. And the schools can effectively ignore the parents, teaching things and transitioning youth without their parents’ knowledge. After all of that, what is left of parental oversight?

In Minnesota, the enmity towards parents is so strong that the legislature passed a law, making the state a sanctuary for children who want to run away and get transgender treatment there. And the state will fight the parents when they ask for the return of their child. By the way, isn’t it a crime for an adult to help a child make that journey across state lines?

Let’s take this farther. If parental oversight isn’t respected, then what purpose is served by a family? Why should society, or the law, honor it? In 1920 the socialists in Soviet Russia asked this question, and decided that abolishing the family was a good idea. That turned out horribly, and families were again honored – but only after many lives were ruined.

Affirming transgender behavior opens a big box of trouble

As you see, we can’t simply say “let them have their way” and we all live happily together. A decision to normalize, to affirm, transgender behavior, in the scope they want it for, will soon lead to widespread child exploitation and neutering of the protective family environment. This would be a major change in American society. Decisions like this shouldn’t be made by manipulating some judges, or through bureaucracy. It is a major deal, and demands public debate.

Opposing transgender agenda is not genocide

We’ve seen how submitting to transgender demands would cause much harm to American children. A Christian culture ought to prevent this harm by rejecting their assertions, and not changing society to suit these demands. At minimum this means:

• A man might claim to be a woman, or a woman a man. But that doesn’t grant any rights or privileges other than those of the person’s biological sex.
• A person doesn’t have any legal right to require others to recognize him or her as their claimed, non-biological, sex.
• Civil rights laws don’t favor someone’s pretending to his or her non-biological sex.

However, transgender activists claim that opposing them amounts to genocide. Here’s the advocacy site, OutFront Magazine, claiming that denying transitioning drugs or surgery amounts to a crime against humanity:

While, of course, this convention, passed by the Third United Nations General Assembly in 1948, does not specifically mention sexual orientation, gender identity, romantic orientation, etcetera, the objects of the oppression of the queer community, including the trans community, such communities should obviously be included under such a definition.

The sentiment of the opening clause is that, in short, genocide is the purposeful destruction of an oppressed societal out-group on the basis that they are that group, and such unequivocally includes the entirety of the queer community.

Regarding the transgender community specifically, many enacted policies, or policies attempting to be enacted, in the modern-day meet such a definition. The aforementioned policies of banning transgender healthcare for trans youths are potentially the most egregious instances of violation of this definition of genocide.

Puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy, the topics of these policies, have been shown to drastically reduce the horrifically high suicide rate of transgender youths, saving lives. To block trans youth from such a treatment manufactures a higher suicide rate and thus manufacture more suicides, more deaths within the transgender community, specifically amongst youth.

That is, it’s genocide because they wish it were so. But they are preying on our youth, and blaming us when their targets despair. It seems far more likely that the children are hanging out with the wrong adults, “groomers” if you will. And according to the articles I provided earlier, our public school teachers and employees seem to be at the forefront of transgender recruitment.

On the Dr. Phil show, a transgender man (biological female) named Reece explains her decision process. Note that she thinks that using transitioning drugs at age eight is a really fine and normal thing. And if you should deny these drugs, she thinks that this would be genocide.

One of Dr. Phil’s guests not only defended trans medical procedures for minors but claimed that it is absolutely vital for their mental health.

“Being able to start my transition at 11 was just so overwhelming and scary, but exciting, and I feel grateful. Say that a trans person came out at 8, and they had to wait till they were 18 to start hormone replacement therapy and not even able to get puberty blockers so their body has to fully now go through puberty,” Reece, a trans man, said. “That now makes transitioning 10 times more hard and traumatizing.”

Reece went on to say that legal regulations to prevent these procedures being done to minors is akin to mass-murder.

“It’s extremely important for trans youth to be able to transition at puberty, I think, without that, all of these kids who know who they are deep down inside would never get the opportunity to live their childhood as their truth. And I think that’s just horrendous. And I think it’s just transgender genocide. If I was not able to transition at the age I was, I would not have made it to 18. I do not think the government should be denying trans health care. It’s life-saving healthcare,” Reece said.

The guest went on to contradict themselves when describing hesitation to actually go through with a double mastectomy at a young age and deciding to “wait till I’m older.”

Reece then said, “I didn’t want to wait. I was eligible at 15. I went to get it at 15 and I just was too young to go through with it at that age for myself personally, but someone who has a bigger chest who is also that age would definitely need it if they felt like they did and I think they should be able to get it.”

These two articles underline that the transgender community wants your children. After all, it’s hard to assume the appearance of the other sex after you already have adult genitals. So they evangelize the children early, before puberty, especially before they’ve got the wisdom to resist.

In a more general sense, stopping this agenda will indeed shut down the transgender community. Without getting easy converts, it won’t be much fun for them to do their role playing. But it’s not genocide. By that logic, you may as well claim that enforcing traffic laws is “genocide against speeders.” So saying “genocide” is just using a scary word. Why not also call us “fascists” and “racists,” to get full value out of using scary sounding, but no longer meaningful, words.

Don’t be afraid to eliminate child abuse, and child maiming, by opposing the transgender agenda. But this agenda would be implemented not through legislation, but by top politicians changing bureaucratic rules, such as the words in the Civil Rights Act. We must be loud and persistent in getting our politicians to behave, because we really do care.

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)

One of my colleagues has been combating LGBTQ extremism for several decades, working tirelessly for almost no money, and with constant vilification as his main reward. I asked him one day on the air, “Why don’t you just stop?” He answered, “I’ll stop when they stop.”

That is exactly how I feel.

When I no longer have to read headlines like this, I’ll stop: “‘We’re uncomfortable in our own locker room.’ Lia Thomas’ UPenn [female] teammate tells how the trans swimmer doesn’t always cover up her male genitals when changing and their concerns go ignored by their coach.”

Seriously? His male genitals? What kind of madness is this?

And the fact that a biological male with male plumbing (who, by the way, is attracted to females), shares a locker room with women – where they disrobe and shower – is absolute insanity, not to mention terribly unfair. In fact, it is outright abusive.

As one of the female swimmers said (anonymously), “‘It’s definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women.’

“The swimmer said that multiple teammates have raised their concerns with their coach, trying to get Thomas ousted from the female locker room,” but all to no avail.

How can anyone possibly defend this? And does anyone want their daughter exposed (literally) to something like this? This is madness.

As for Will “Lia” Thomas competing against other girls, even Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner has weighed in, calling out the unfairness of it and saying, “We must protect women’s sports.”

So, as long as the madness continues, I’ll continue to shout out as well. How can I (or we) do anything less?

And what about headlines like this? How can we stay silent when this is happening on our watch?

“EXCLUSIVE: ‘They created a double life for my daughter’: Parents of girl, 12, who tried to hang herself twice at school after ‘months of secret meetings about her gender identity’ slam district staff who ‘went behind their backs’ and ‘likens it to sex offenders who take advantage of a child and try to keep things in secret’.”

What an outrage.

Yet similar things happen in schools across America every day, as the teachers and administrators and counselors encourage kids in their gender identity and same-sex attractions, to the complete exclusion of the parents.

In the words of the girl’s father, Wendell Perez, “We’re talking about the staff from school this information and developing a plan of several sessions with my daughter, for months, talking about issues that are related and that the parents need to be involved. They basically created a double life for my daughter.”

He added, “If we allow this to happen, we are admitting that the sex offenders – the models operating of the sex offenders – is correct, because that is actually what they do. They take advantage of a child, they try to keep things in secret and make them do things that they are not supposed to do.”

He was hardly exaggerating.

A mother and father in another country with a “progressive” school system were shocked when they met with their daughter’s teachers at school. She was a young teen.

In previous months, for the first time in her life and quite out of the blue, she had begun to identify as a male, wanting to go by a new name. But when the parents probed more deeply, they learned that the school had been encouraging her in this direction.

When they met with her teachers, they were shocked and outraged to learn that the school had planned to announce their daughter’s new male identity and name the very next day – without the parents having the slightest hint this was going on.

How can this be tolerated? And who on earth gave these teachers and administrators and counselors these kinds of rights?

As for those who struggle with gender identity confusion, I do not refer to their struggle as transanity, as I have stated many times. I have compassion for them in their struggles and cannot imagine the pain and agony they have lived with.

That’s also why I advocate strongly that we do our best to help them from the inside out, finding better solutions than puberty blockers for children and sex-change surgery and then more hormones for life for adults.

But as long as the casualties mount. As long as children’s lives are being destroyed. As long as girls are being exposed to male genitalia in their locker rooms (and sexually assaulted in their bathrooms). As long as female athletes are forced to compete with males.

Written by Patience Griswold

Amid growing international pushback on the transgender movement’s so-called “gender affirmative” approach to gender dysphoria and the rush to give minors experimental treatments including puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has released new draft guidelines recommending a less radical approach than they have held to in the past.

Rather than immediately rushing adolescents into a lifetime of hormone “treatments” and surgeries, the draft guidelines recommend mental health evaluation and several years of monitoring for adolescents with gender dysphoria, although they continue to encourage harmful and irreversible procedures after that.

WPATH, an international organization headquartered in Minnesota, plays an extremely influential role in the use of so-called “treatments” such as cross-sex hormones and “gender transition” surgery. Throughout the rest of the draft guidelines, WPATH continues to recommend so-called “gender affirmative treatments” that have caused permanent harm to young people and adults, yet the proposed draft offers slightly more protection to adolescents struggling with gender dysphoria than recommendations from major medical associations in the U.S. WPATH’s shift, slight though it is, also shows that on an international level, the transgender movement is recognizing that they may be held accountable for the damage they have caused.

WPATH’s draft guidelines added a chapter on adolescents requiring a full mental health evaluation and several years of monitoring before receiving cross-sex hormones or surgery. The guidelines continue to recommend irreversible surgeries for minors, including mastectomies for girls as young as 15 and “bottom surgery” for 17-year-old girls, although they do not recommend similar surgery for boys under 18. The guidelines also removed requirements that adults receive mental health evaluation, despite the fact that many adults who have detransitioned have spoken up about how the mental health struggles that were driving their gender dysphoria were not adequately addressed when they sought help.

At the same time, if WPATH adopts these guidelines, multiple major medical associations in the U.S., including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Endocrine Society will be out of step with international standards, advocating an even more radical approach than WPATH. These associations encourage a so-called “gender affirmative” approach known as the “Dutch protocol,” originated by a doctor in the Netherlands who has since cautioned against his own approach. This protocol encourages medically “transitioning” children, disregarding the fact that puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones can lead to dangerous complications including stunted bone growth, pulmonary embolisms, increased risk of heart attacks, and permanent loss of fertility.

Attempting to live in denial of biological reality is always harmful. No amount of surgery or cross-sex hormones can ever change the fact that a man is a man, and a woman is a woman, down to every single cell. People struggling with gender dysphoria deserve compassion, and true compassion never reinforces lies.

The New York Times’ coverage of WPATH’s new guidelines claims that “transition” improves mental health outcomes. However, the best studies show that this is not the case, and the studies that have been used to prop up this narrative are riddled with methodological flaws. One study claiming to show that “transition” improved mental health actually showed the opposite, a fact that the authors of the study eventually acknowledged.

Sadly, the LGBT lobby is actively working to penalize counselors and mental health professionals who would offer compassionate support to minors struggling with gender dysphoria. 20 states have implemented so-called “conversion therapy” bans and, and the five largest cities here in Minnesota have adopted them. These counseling bans interfere with the client-patient relationship and deny help to kids who are struggling with gender dysphoria, insisting that the only option that should be available to them is to be rushed to “transition,” even as a growing number of young people and adults who have detransitioned speaking out about how they have been harmed by transgender ideology.

Children and teens with gender dysphoria deserve better than to be treated as guinea pigs for the sake of advancing radical gender ideology. WPATH’s guidelines, while they offer slightly more protection than they have in the past, are dangerous and recommendations from the AAP, APA, and ES are even more so.

This article was originally published by the Minnesota Family Council.

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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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.