Sex Transitioning of Minors and the Threat to Parental Authority

Typical of regimes that believe they have correct doctrine is the threat to the authority of parents who disagree with state doctrine. Such people are in danger of losing their children.

It is not at all a modern problem; state religions in the past deprived parents of their children to prevent training in what was believed to be false doctrine. Today, the false doctrine is held to be traditional sexual morality. It holds the natural family of man and woman in exclusive, permanent union, and their offspring to be the normal condition of humanity, and departures from this condition to be immoral. This is of course the morality clearly taught in Scripture, and it is on a collision course with existing or pending state requirements.

The new morality has already threatened to preclude traditional Christians and other religious persons from becoming adoptive or foster care parents because of their objection to homosexuality. As noted in earlier articles, it also threatens natural parents from instructing their own children against homosexuality in Canada and the United Kingdom. But the advent of transgenderism as a legal threat in the wake of the same-sex marriage decision brings the prospect of sex “transitioning” of a child to the opposite sex against the parent’s wishes. A child’s self-identification with the opposite sex, or even the opinion of a social workers could bring demands for “sex transitioning,” and possible loss of custody.

An early instance (for our rapidly developing cultural revolution) of the loss of parental custody occurred in Ohio in 2018. There parents of a seventeen year old girl lost their daughter when a court deprived them of custody, giving it to grandparents who supported the proposed sex transition. As described by Heritage fellow and marriage and family scholar Ryan Anderson in the linked article, the “professional standards” for sex transition involve first treating the child as a member of the opposite sex in the clothing worn, the pronouns used, and a new name. Then at age nine, puberty blocking drugs are given to prevent puberty, and hormones of the opposite sex are given at age 16. To state the obvious, such a path of blocking normal sexual development would have horrified most people in previous generations, yet it is laid out in cool clinical and professional tones today.

Anderson correctly notes that true sex change is not possible, because sex is ultimately based on our DNA, although sexual anatomy can of course be altered. One remains a member of the same sex in which one was conceived and born, but with secondary sex characteristics mutilated, and characteristics of the opposite sex artificially constructed. Anderson points out that the great majority of children (80-95 percent) with gender dysphoria (confusion about one’s sex) grow out of it eventually, but where puberty blocking drugs are begun, these children almost always proceed to cross-sex hormones. The moral force behind the demand for sex change appears to be the trauma of the conflict, the imperative of self-determination, the claim of reversibility of sex transition, and high suicide risk otherwise.

Yet the safety of interrupting the crucial stages of sexual development defies common sense, and Anderson notes a scholarly article of Drs. Paul W. Hurz of Washington University in St. Louis, and Lawrence S. Mayer and Paul R. McHugh of Johns Hopkins University on the inadvisability of this. They observe that claims that puberty suppression is reversible are strongly made, but are in fact speculation, with no major studies to back them up. People cannot in fact be reasonably assured that they can later have the sexual development characteristic of their sex if it is interrupted at a crucial stage.

A very high profile case concerning parental custody involved James Younger (pictured above with his father), a seven year old boy in Texas, whose divorced parents disagreed about sex transitioning for the boy. Testifying against transition was Dr. Stephen Levine, a researcher in human sexuality, along with Dr. Hurz. Levine long worked in the field of gender research, but also testified about the politicization of the field. He said it has become less a scientific endeavor, and more an ideological one. He maintains that “an ideal outcome of trans youth is to desist”, (i.e., accept their biological sex), and that the vast majority of children do eventually desist, but those who are entered into “gender affirming” therapy are unlikely to desist. He noted the objective of making “the child happier now” conflicts with the prospect of “misery later.” In particular, the major negative consequences, as identified in the linked LifeSiteNews article are “infertility, impairment of adult sex function, and a shortened life expectancy.” These are devastating prospects for anyone, yet risking them (indeed, guaranteeing the first and likely the second where surgical removal of sex organs occurs) is pressed on society as the compelling cutting edge of liberation.

Another very high profile case occurred in British Columbia in which a father objected to the sex transition of his teenage daughter as ill-advised. Encouraged by a counselor, she opted for sex transition, and was supported by her mother, who is divorced from her father. Not only did a British Columbia court approve the procedure, but the father was required to use male pronouns to refer to her on pain of being found guilty of “family violence,” and forbidden to speak publically about the issue. A later appeal took away the threat of punishment for “family violence,” but still required the father to use preferred pronouns and not speak about the case publically.

Dr. Levine’s claim that sex transition is undesirable has been backed up by a Swedish study done several years ago. Its very helpful (and disturbing) table (Table 2) shows persons with sex alteration surgery fairing much worse than the average population in many different categories, not just suicide or mental illness.  Wide differences were found between persons having undergone surgery for the alteration of sex characteristics (“sex reassignment”) and the general population, with the surgically altered group fairing substantially worse in all categories. Some of the very grave categories included death for any cause, by cancer, by cardiovascular disease, occurrence of substance abuse, or any accident. But by far the worst was death by suicide (19 times more likely with persons having had sex altering surgery).  

Pressure against parents apparently has been building since 2017. There appears to be a “three wave” strategy to give the government power to remove children from their homes where parents refuse to recognize a child’s gender identity opposite from their biological sex. This is held to be “medical neglect.” The first wave involves separated parents who can’t agree about setting their child on a path of gender transition. The second involves health care professionals initiating action against parents who object to gender transition of a child deemed to require it. The third involves schools establishing protocols which allow children and young people to set their own gender identity, and report parents who object to the identity.

These coercive policies really substitute state authority for parental authority. Given as an example of how state authorities are mobilized to do this was training at a judicial conference in Rhode Island at which distributed literature “made clear that affirmation and transition are the end goal for therapists, social workers, lawyers, and the courts.” Additionally, that students at school should “have access to information and resources about LGBT issues and people, regardless of objecting school officials or parents,” be called by preferred pronouns, and “be free from religious indoctrination that condemns or disparages their sexual orientation or gender identity.” In other words, there should be a one-sided presentation of sex supportive of homosexuality and transgenderism, with any religious instruction condemning homosexuality or transgenderism forbidden. Presumably if this is the information children and young people should receive, it applies to home as well as school. It is the same denial of parental rights as the British Colombia court engaged in, instructing a father to refer to his daughter by preferred pronouns, on pain of being guilty of “family violence.” It also clearly forbids parental religious instruction of children which is contrary to gender ideology. As an earlier article noted, this is also true of bill C-8 in Canada and proposed legislation in Great Britain.

Concern about the rush to transition children and young people and the rights of parents, who are at least as intimately connected with their children as therapists, school counselors, and other social workers is not limited to the socially conservative. But it does take courage to question or resist the cutting edge of liberation and be cast as oppressive, uninformed, or unscientific (although science is supposed to be based on physical reality, not wishes or inclinations). An excellent plea for reason was posted a few years ago from a socially liberal viewpoint, arguing exactly that. It notes that the distress felt by young persons claiming (or persuaded) that they are transgender could be from the many other conditions. These are commonly comorbid (simultaneously occurring) with identifying as a transgender child or adolescent. They need to be addressed, rather than rushing without question to the extreme resort of stopping puberty, administering cross-sex hormones, and sex altering (really mutilating) surgery, followed by cosmetic surgery to show the characteristics of a sex one does not really possess.

It should also be added that – as with homosexuality – how do we know that distress about feeling that one is a member of the opposite sex (or possessing one of the limitless “genders” bandied about today) is not distress at knowing one should act and feel that one is a member of one’s biological sex, rather than distress at being unable to be a “true self” contrary to one’s biological sex? Biblically, this must be the case at a deep level, and the Swedish suicide statistics of surgically altered persons cited above would indicate that it is. One might disagree, holding that it is only non-acceptance of transgender persons that leads to suicidal distress, but it is hard to believe that this is the case in socially liberal Sweden.

While parents may face the threat of coercive measures taken in the United States and Canada, real protection against the threat of sex transitioning of minors has come in Great Britain, where the U.K. high court prohibited at the beginning of this month the administration of cross-sex hormones to young people under the age of 16. Although the decision could be appealed, the court said that it is “highly unlikely” that children 13 or younger are able to assess the changes sex transitioning will bring to their lives, and “highly doubtful” that 14 or 15 years olds are capable of making these decisions.

The case was brought by a 23 year old de-transitioner (of which there are many) who claimed that hormone administration “puts you on a path that changes your life forever. And when you are a minor you have no chance of understanding how that affects you and your adult life. If we put a stop to this it will allow people to grow naturally.” Importantly, the young woman claimed that the British National Health Services “should have challenged me over my belief that I was a boy.” This, however, is precisely what gender ideology does not allow. It is a clear example of what this writer has called “the sovereignty of the present,” which tyrannizes both past responsibilities and future prospects.

From a Christian standpoint, we can easily see that sex transitioning, and especially hormones and surgery, amount to mutilating the image of God. We are properly of the sex that God made us. Our desires and inclinations and imaginations do not establish the truth. They lead us away from God and life if they are clearly contrary to his will as revealed in Scripture. And it is God, and not the state, that we must finally obey.