Tag: Gender Dysphoria

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Why Liberals Should Take the HHS Review Seriously

In a striking and carefully argued Newsweek editorial, bioethicist Moti Gorin and psychiatrist Kathleen McDeavitt urge liberals to reconsider their assumptions about pediatric “gender-affirming” medical care. Their appeal is unusual not because it is partisan, but because it is not: both authors identify as liberals and were contributors to the recent review issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services titled Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices.

The authors begin by acknowledging widespread distrust of HHS—especially among progressives after years of controversy surrounding public health institutions. But they argue that skepticism should not excuse disengagement, particularly when the evidence concerns vulnerable children.

Their central claim is straightforward: many organizations and professionals trusted by the political left have embraced a medical model for pediatric gender distress that is not supported by strong scientific evidence.

A Fragile Foundation for a Sweeping Medical Practice

The editorial traces the origins of today’s “gender-affirming” approach to a small and methodologically weak Dutch study involving just 70 adolescents. Most of the participants were same-sex attracted, and all who proceeded to medical transition were rendered sterile. One patient died from surgical complications, others were excluded from analysis due to adverse outcomes, and some were lost to follow-up. Yet despite these limitations, the study became the foundation for a sweeping international medical practice involving puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sometimes surgery.

Gorin and McDeavitt argue that serious ethical concerns have since been minimized or obscured. They note reports of unfavorable findings being buried, including completed suicides among minors placed on hormones. They also highlight the role of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which removed age limits for medical interventions under political pressure while failing to warn patients about risks such as permanent sexual dysfunction.

The HHS review, the authors explain, reached conclusions that should alarm anyone committed to justice and evidence-based medicine. The risks documented in the review include infertility, impaired sexual function, decreased bone density, delayed cognitive development, and irreversible surgical consequences.


Progressive Countries Lead the Retreat

Importantly, the authors point out that this reassessment is not driven by conservative politics. Some of the first countries to restrict pediatric medical transition were progressive social democracies, including Finland and Sweden, followed by the United Kingdom. These nations conducted systematic reviews and concluded that the benefits of medical transition for minors were unproven and outweighed by the harms.

The editorial closes by proposing an alternative: non-medical therapeutic support that helps young people manage distress without rushing them into irreversible interventions. Most adolescents, the authors note, will see gender-related discomfort resolve over time. While the issue remains politically polarized, polling shows that a majority of Democratic voters already oppose pediatric medical transition.

Gorin and McDeavitt’s plea is simple but bracing: liberals should read the HHS review for themselves (link above). Doing so, they argue, is not a betrayal of progressive values—but an affirmation of them.

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Confusion about Creation and the Rise of Political Violence

When Rebellion Against Nature Turns Deadly: The Troubling Pattern of Political Violence and Gender Ideology

In a culture that increasingly confuses affirmation with compassion, we risk ignoring some very disturbing truths.

Last week, court documents revealed that Nicholas Roske, the man who plotted the assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, now identifies as a transgender woman named “Sophie.” Roske was arrested in 2022 outside Kavanaugh’s home, armed with a gun and burglary tools. He admitted to targeting not only Kavanaugh, but other justices, in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

This isn’t just an isolated incident. According to the Justice Department’s sentencing memo, Roske had spent months researching, planning, and preparing for the attack. He looked up how to break into homes, strangle someone, and escape prosecution. He studied the anatomy of the head and neck. He searched mass shooting footage and sniper techniques. All to eliminate jurists whose legal opinions conflicted with his ideology.

This was a politically motivated assassination attempt—by someone immersed in pro-abortion and transgender-affirming circles.

Unfortunately, Roske’s story is not unique.

A Disturbing Trend

In recent years, we’ve witnessed a growing number of violent incidents involving individuals either identifying as transgender or deeply embedded in trans-activist ideology:

  • In 2023, Audrey Hale, a woman who identified as a man, opened fire at Covenant School, a Christian elementary school in Nashville, killing six people—including three children.
  • Just months later, Robin Westman, another trans-identified shooter, murdered two children and wounded others in a mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School. Authorities later confirmed Westman harbored anti-Christian sentiments and fantasized about “killing as many children as possible.”
  • In a different case, Tyler Robinson, the man charged with murdering conservative activist Charlie Kirk, reportedly told his trans-identified partner that he couldn’t “negotiate out” the “hate” Kirk represented. According to family members, Robinson had recently become more radicalized around LGBTQ political issues.

These are not mere outliers. Each case represents a violent collision of grievance-based identity politics with moral nihilism. Each involves individuals who had become deeply politicized in the context of gender identity or allied ideologies. And in each case, the targets were Christians, conservatives, or children.

When violence is repeatedly justified or rationalized on the basis of perceived “oppression,” it becomes clear that we are dealing with more than mental illness. We’re dealing with an ideological deformation of conscience.

The Fruits of a Fractured Worldview

These violent acts raise urgent questions about the psychological and spiritual consequences of building one’s identity around inner feelings detached from truth, nature, or moral law.

When people are told that their subjective sense of gender is sacred—and that opposing it is tantamount to violence—we should not be surprised when violence becomes their chosen response to disagreement.

When political movements elevate personal identity over public morality, and self-definition over objective truth, they create the conditions for extremism. They reward victimhood with moral license. They justify hatred of anyone seen as standing in the way of “liberation.”

This isn’t compassion. It’s chaos.

And it’s being fueled—unwittingly or not—by cultural elites, academic theorists, corporate sponsors, and even church leaders who confuse mercy with moral surrender.

Political Violence is Still Violence

There was a time not long ago when political violence was uniformly condemned—regardless of the source. But we now live in a moment where leftist rage is often indulged, and even celebrated, as “understandable” or “justified.”

When pro-life groups are firebombed, or Christian schools are targeted by shooters, or conservative justices are hunted in the night—too many remain silent. The media covers it reluctantly. Activists deflect. Politicians equivocate.

But violence is violence.

The attempted assassination of a Supreme Court Justice is not a form of protest. It’s terrorism. And when it comes from someone driven by a radicalized view of gender and justice, we should stop pretending this is a coincidence.

A Better Way

As Christians, we must be both compassionate and clear. Those who struggle with gender confusion deserve our prayers, our care, and our truth-speaking—not our silence.

But compassion does not mean complicity.

The gospel calls us to affirm that we are not self-created. We are made in the image of God—male and female. To reject that creational truth is to invite disorder into the soul and body, and eventually into the world.

Christians must be prepared to name this disorder—not with hatred, but with courage. Because love without truth is just sentiment. And truth without love is just noise. But love with truth? That is the medicine our world desperately needs.

Courage to Speak

If you’re wondering whether this trend of violence will continue, ask yourself: are the cultural forces driving it slowing down?

Until the church finds the courage to speak plainly about the dangers of identity idolatry, and until society recovers a moral center rooted in something higher than self-expression, we will continue to reap what we have sown.

And the fruit will not be peace.

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“Grace and Truth Came Through Jesus“
(John 1:17)

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More Than Two Sexes?

The video below is well done and the “Sex is a Spectrum” advocate does a great job packing in a lot of important information in just 13 minutes. Although I strongly disagree with his belief that there are more than two sexes, this video is a good primer on current beliefs about Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD’s) which have been misrepresented in the video as “Differences of Sexual Development.”

So as you watch:

Note how many times the words or word groups mutation, syndrome, congenital condition, anomaly, disabilities, sterile, incomplete, ambiguous, recessive, health conditions, and even the dreaded word disorder are mentioned.

I counted over 15.

Also after reading my last post, DSD’s and Sex “Assignment” you should be ready to answer correctly this question: Do these DSD’s sound more like a difference or a disorder? If your answer is disorder, then you know there are only two sexes.

There Are More Than Two Sexes?

MOST IMPORTANT QUOTES:

“Biologists today are saying sex is a spectrum.” (0:35). There are plenty of prominent biologists and other medical professionals who dispute this. I mentioned two in my post, What is Sex?

“…biological features don’t always agree with each other.” (1:27). He’s talking about chromosomes, gonads, hormones & genitals which most would say should agree or you have a disorder.

“It’s estimated that nearly 2% of live births are born with congenital conditions of Atypical Sex Development.” (1:42) Based on everything I’ve read the 2% number used here is extremely high. Nothing I’ve read comes close to 2 percent. Based on my research the actual number is 1 in 5000 births.1This figure is found in Peter A. Lee et al., “Global Disorders of Sex Development Update since 2006: Perceptions, Approach and Care,” Hormone Research in Paediatrics 85 (2016): 159. Not sure where they get this 2 percent number. Unless their definition of “atypical” is an expansive definition not used by most medical professionals and scientists.

“That basically means that something in their chromosomes, hormones, gonads, or genitals is different from what many people expect of a “boy” or a “girl.” (1:52). So these are differences, not disorders. Notice how “boy” and “girl” are in quotes.

“This used to be known as being intersex, but these days, it’s better described as having Differences of Sexual Development, or DSD’s.” (2:01). Most health professionals and scientists still call them “Disorders of Sexual Development.”

“There’s a lot of variation within what we call male or female, and there’s a lot of overlap that’s normal too. Anatomically, someone might look…female on the outside but not have ovaries or a uterus, or have tissue from both overies and testes.” (3:24) How anyone can seriously call this variation or overlap “normal” is part of the problem we face. Because of a well-meaning desire not to stigmatize and also, it must be said, a desire to propagandize an ideology, we are expected to believe these are mere differences, and not disorders.

“Minor Learning Disorders” (4:35). The first and only occurrence of the word “disorders.” Interestingly this disorder has to do with learning. Or the lack, thereof. Hint, hint, for those who haven’t learned the “new” science of sex and gender.

“Did I learn nothing but lies in High School?” (5:29) The way he says this is funny. But he makes a serious mistake in again suggesting that DSD’s like Mosaicism and Chimaerism are just “different” developments. For example, a Genetic Chimera occurs when two different embryos combine early in a pregnancy. Some cells are XX and some cells have XY chromosomes. Fewer than 100 cases documented worldwide. No, you were not lied to in High School. You were told the truth about normal human bodies. Which the advocate tacitly admits in the next quote.

“Depending on the distribution of those cells, mosaicism and chimaeras can result in ambiguous sexual characteristics or both male and female reproductive body parts. (5:54). Nothing normal about that!

From this point forward the words “mutation” and “syndrome” occur frequently. Notice the many times a so-called “difference” in development is mentioned. The advocate is “spinning” the story here to fit his narrative, but by now you should understand these as disorders.

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People born with Disorders of Sexual Development often develop gender-dysphoria. Gender Dysphoria — formerly known as “Gender Identity Disorder” is characterized by a severe and persistent discomfort in one’s biological sex. They need our loving support which also means telling them the truth about their disorder.

On the other hand, the vast majority of young people today who are convinced they have gender-dysphoria do not in fact have it. Classic gender-dysphoria presents early in life, ages 2-4, and until the recent explosion among teenage girls, was almost exclusively experienced by young boys. Today most of those who say they are gender-dysphoric don’t have any DSD’s, for example. Their discomfort is purely psycho-social in nature but they remain convinced they were born in the wrong body. We can blame the Gender Ideology taught in our schools, coupled with “affirming” therapy that largely disregards other co-morbidities like anxiety, autism, depression, and in far too many cases, trauma caused by sexual-abuse. We can also blame the social contagion phenomena spread via social media for the confusion, especially among our girls.

The Irreversible Damage being done to their bodies is heartbreaking.

Is this the world we want to live in?

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