The United States Supreme Court

The U. S. Supreme Court today ruled that a Tennessee law, called SB1, that bans hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and transgender surgeries for minors can stand. In its ruling, the Court split 6-3 along conservative/liberal lines.

The Tennessee legislature passed SB1 in March of 2023. It was challenged by three transgender teens and their parents, who were joined by a Memphis physician. In their challenge the teens claimed that the law violated the right to equal protection under the law, as secured by the U. S. Constitution, and that the law should be scrutinized using a standard that is more strict than that employed by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned a hold on the law imposed by a U. S. District Judge. The Supreme Court justices disagreed.

I’m not an attorney or judge, so I’m not going to pretend that I understand fully the grounds on which the Supreme Court ruled. You can read the linked article and make your own call. But it does seem to me that banning these types of treatment makes sense, given the percarious nature of childhood mental health development and the fickle minds that most minors possess.

There are plenty of studes by prestigious organizations that insist that “gender-affirming care” is good for minors. In fact, it may be life-saving. These studies show that young people who identify as trans have reduced rates of depression and suicidality if they receive puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and even transition surgeries. To be blunt, I don’t believe them. Sadly, and quite by surprise, medicine has been taken over by those who feel the need to accomodate those with mental illness, at least when it comes to gender dysphoria. We would like to think that medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologist, and therapist are not influenced by social, cultural, or political pressures. But that’s not the case. Doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, and even nurses, teachers, ministers, priests, and rabbis, are often influenced or pressured by social, cultural, and political forces to take a particular position on a matter, or risk their reputations, their positions or, most horrible of all, their funding. Too many times, especially in the recent past in association with the COVID pandemic, the medical profession simply got it wrong. Not only did they get it wrong, but they used their positions of influence and authority to trample the rights of ordinary citizens who were not convinced either by their bromides or their righteous outbursts against those who did not agree.

The key to undermining their subterfuge is the simple question: Why doesn’t this apply to body dysmorphic disorder? All of these “experts” on the matter (and, really, have we been doing this long enough or widely enought yet for anyone to presume to call themselves an expert?) will tell you that a person who is a male but identifies as a female is a female, and we have almost a medical and psychological, if not even a moral obligation, to accomodate their gender identity by means of social transition and hormonal and/or surgical intervention. They will insist that it is possible for a female to be wrongly born in to and feel trapped in a male body. All kinds of metaphysical and philosophical questions there, such as the fact that this entirely separates gender and sex from biology, but let’s not be hampered by those. Medicine has decided that it has no qualms about cutting off a male’s genitalia, or of cutting of a female’s breasts – even for minors – in order to accomadate their feelings of being born the wrong gender. But every one of them will immediately balk if a person suffering body dysmorphic disorder begs them to cut off his arms because he identifies as a person trapped in a body with arms.

Another question that exposes their duplicity: Why doesn’t this apply to race? It is absolutely accepted by these experts that a female can be born in to the wrong gendered body. So, can a Black man be born in to a wrongly racial body? Can a White man identify as Black and merit being socially transitioned to Black? Oli London, a White male British internet influencer received a great deal of criticism when he identified as Korean. He underwent a number of surgeries to look like his favorite K-Pop star, Jimin, from BTS. Critics said he was demeaning Korean people by claiming to identify as Korean. Funny, proponants of trans women and girls competing in sports competitions against biological women and girls never get accused by proponants of gender ideology of demeaning women and girls. I also find it interesting that gender is literally programmed into every cell of one’s body, while race is largely, though not totally, a social construct. Yet, it’s gender that is somehow “fluid” while race is considered immutable.

The bottom line is, gender transition is an experimental process, and we have little idea of what the final outcome will be. There is evidence that those who undergo hormonal and surgical transition have increased rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide. These results will not be reported by the legacy media because they don’t support the narrative that gender affirming care is an unqualified good thing. Neither will it be accepted by such prestigious organizations like the AMA for the same reason. The red flags are there. It will be up to us to attend to them.

So-called gender affirming care impacts one’s life for the rest of one’s life. It seems to me we ought not be letting those whose brains are not yet even fully matured make decisions that will impact them for the rest of their lives, especially since those decisions have the potential to impact them negatively, and are irreversible. You can’t sew your breasts back on if you change your mind a few months after a double mastectomy. Your penis won’t grow back once it’s cut off. Why are we, as a society, even considering these types of surgeries on children, knowing that they are irreversible and that children can barely keep their minds on straight regarding what they want to wear on any given day, who their best friend is, or whose party will be more fun, much less what gender they are?

Tennessee and the other twenty-four states that have banned puberty blockers, hormonal therapy, and sex-change surgeries have it right. If an adult wants to make those choices, I don’t agree with it, but it’s a free country. But children? Children who are so heavily influenced by their peers who think being trans is cool (when our second daughter was in middle school, she told me, “Dad, everyone at school is bi”; were they really bi-sexual? of course not, but it was the cool thing to be). Children are also heavily influenced by their parents, who can themselves be heavily influenced by the perceived need to be perceived as socially virtuous. Children naturally want to make their parents happy. Can you imagine the horror of a parent who pushed their child to transition (don’t tell me it doesn’t happen) because their boy admired a Barbie doll, or their little girl hated wearing dresses, only to have that child confront his or her parents with the despair they feel at having had decisions made for them that impacted their lives forever while they were too young to feel that they could speak up?

Pope Francis said that gender ideology was “demonic.” Pope Leo XIV hasn’t gotten around to addressing the matter yet, but I can’t imagine he won’t speak to it eventually. We cannot allow those who direct the social, culteral, and political movements of our generation to have power over our children. As parents and grandparents, it’s our responsibility to protect our children from influences that may disrupt their being raised in righteousness. Human life is directed toward the eternal. Redeemed by Christ, we are destined to share in the very nature of God (1 Pt 1:4). That destiny ought to direct the lives of every person dedicated to Christ.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.