“Resolved, that the 80th General Convention calls for the Episcopal Church to advocate for access to gender affirming care in all forms (social, medical, or any other) and at all ages as part of our Baptismal call to ‘respect the dignity of every human being.'”
“Gender-affirming care” (GAC), as it’s known, requires psychologists, parents, and teachers to unquestioningly validate the child’s feelings about their “true sex,” first through social means, but often proceeding to “medical” interventions such as puberty blocker medications, cross-sex hormone injections, mastectomies for teenage girls who identify as boys, and, even worse, mutilating “bottom” surgeries. These interventions can deleteriously impact a child’s physical health. Puberty blockers can stunt bone growth, and hormone injections can cause blood clots and lead to physical changes that can’t be reversed if the patient ceases to identify as the opposite sex. Mastectomies destroy a girl’s breasts, while bottom surgeries cause sterilization, and, often, lifelong difficulty (or impossibility) in attaining orgasm.
Yet, the Episcopal Church wants these GAC interventions “in all forms” available to children “at all ages.”
This is worse than misguided. Not only can these interventions cause serious side effects, but, as other commentators have already suggested, blanket social affirmation of a gender dysphoric child’s subjective belief is akin to agreeing with an emaciated anorexic teenager that she is, indeed, fat. Moving onto blocking puberty to prevent the development of secondary sex characteristics is like giving her laxatives to prevent weight gain, and doing surgeries is akin to performing gastric bypass surgery to help her lose more weight.
Of course, no ethical psychologist would yield to the anorexic that she is too fat, nor would any doctor perform bariatric procedures on such a child—no matter how adamantly the girl insisted that was what she wanted. So why treat transgender children differently? The answer we usually hear is to prevent suicides—but anorexic children become suicidal too, and we don’t claim that the answer to their despair is “fat-affirming care.” So, again, why the divergent approaches between these different agonizing but analogous emotional states?
Blame ideology—and politics. The LGBT-etc. movement is a cultural tsunami. Activists tolerate no dissent—to the point that even fervent gay rights supporters such as gay journalist Andrew Sullivan and the socially liberal “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling have been subjected to vicious criticism and professional canceling for daring to question transgender orthodoxy.
But it’s hardly settled science that GAC is the best approach to treating gender dysphoria in children. Indeed, a growing chorus of heterodox voices is now urging caregivers to hit the brakes.
Moreover—and this is very important—the academy found that “there is no test to distinguish between persisting gender dysphoria and transient adolescent dysphoria,” meaning that some of these children will come to accept that they are the sex they were born by the time they reach majority. “It is, therefore, appropriate,” the announcement reads, “to extend the phase of psychological care as much as possible.”
These aren’t exactly Bible Belt countries. So, I ask readers: What better preserves the “intrinsic dignity” of children who have gender dysphoria; which approach is more loving, protective, and rational—unquestioning and unequivocal endorsement of GAC, as epitomized by the Episcopal Church’s stance, or the more prudent and child-protective approach advocated by the Finns, Brits, Swedes, and the French Academy (as well as by some U.S. states, such as Florida)?
