Transgenderism: A Rebellion Against Nature and God

“[T]he young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created, for thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation… An appreciation of our body as male or female is also necessary for our own self-awareness in an encounter with others different from ourselves. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment.”

― Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia

In the battle against transgender extremism, there are some growing signs of hope. A few days ago, for instance, Florida became the eighth state to ban certain kinds of “transgender” procedures for children younger than 18.

The new regulations will ban doctors from prescribing puberty blockers or artificial hormones to minors suffering from gender dysphoria. The Florida Board of Medicine and the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine had originally approved the regulations last fall. However, final approval was given this past week, putting the rule into effect.

Meanwhile, a bill (HB 1421) that would ban these kinds of dangerous, experimental procedures is advancing in the Florida House. A few days ago, HB 1421 received easy approval from the House Healthcare Regulatory Subcommittee. In addition to banning artificial hormones and puberty blockers, the bill would also ban body-mutilating surgical interventions designed to make a child’s body appear to be that of the opposite sex.

“Children deserve to learn how to navigate this world without harmful pressure, and Florida will continue to fight for kids to be kids,” said state surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, in a statement in response to the Board of Medicine’s decision. “This action protects minors from irreversible surgeries and highly experimental treatments. I appreciate the integrity of the Board for ruling in the best interest of children in Florida despite facing tremendous pressure to permit these unproven and risky treatments.”

Biden: Banning Trans Procedures Is “Almost Sinful”

A growing number of countries and states are starting to be alarmed at the skyrocketing number of children who are being medically “transitioned,” often with almost no effort by doctors to identify and treat underlying mental health conditions. Instead, children are being prescribed powerful drugs and pushed on a pathway towards body-mutilating surgery, often after a single visit to doctors.

Although transgender activists often try to pretend that puberty blockers and hormones are “harmless” and scientifically proven “treatments” for gender dysphoria, in reality, these highly experimental “treatments” involve powerful drugs that can have life-long, irreversible effects, including life-long sterility, osteoporosis, and various mood and cognitive disorders.

Some activists, however, are so blinded by ideology that they continue to mechanically parrot-talk points about “affirmation” and “acceptance” in the face of a tsunami of evidence of serious harm. Tragically, among these blind ideologues we can find the self-professed “Catholic” president of the United States of America.

In a recent interview, President Biden claimed to be horrified at the common sense steps being taken by Florida and other states to protect children. In truly bizarre remarks, the president turned reality completely on its head, suggesting that protecting children in this way might even be morally sinful!

“What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful,” the president told Kal Penn during an interview for The Daily Show. “I mean, it’s just terrible what they’re doing.” He added, “It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, you know, I decided I want to become a man, or I want to become a woman, or I want to change…. They’re human beings. They love, they have feelings, they have inclinations that are…I mean, it just to me is I don’t know, it’s cruel.”

Our “Catholic” president then went on to tout his administration’s support for the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act,” which, as he said, “compels” all states to recognize same-sex “marriages.”

Fortunately, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wasn’t having any of it. In a Tweet, he shot back at the president, saying, “It is not “sinful” to prohibit the mutilation of minors. It is not acceptable for the federal government to mandate that procedures like sex change operations be allowed for kids.”

“Detransitioners” Speak Out 

It is difficult to believe that a man with so much power, who professes to be a faithful “Catholic,” could be so completely and maliciously clueless about the pain and suffering that his ideas are causing, right now. Indeed, if anyone is being “cruel,” it is Biden and all the transgender idealogues to whom he is giving cover.

Indeed, I believe that history will harshly condemn the willful blindness of people like Biden. In fact, it may only be a few short years before people like Biden find that their views are looked on with horror, as evidence of a fit of madness that seized many of our institutions and the social “elite.”

Already cracks are beginning to show in the façade of the mainstream media’s unified front of pro-transgender propaganda. This is thanks, in no small measure, to the sudden explosion of so-called “detransitioners” who are courageously sharing horrific stories of being ushered down a path of Frankenstein-like medical interventions at the earliest ages, only to find themselves waking up to their mistake in their late teens or early twenties.

One forum on the social media site Reddit dedicated to “de-transitioners” has attracted over 45,000 members, with much of that growth happening in recent months. I cannot necessarily recommend the forum since the discussions are sometimes fairly explicit. However, I do believe that the rawness and frankness of the stories being shared are going to be critical to changing the conversation on this issue.

This forum is full of people who are de-transitioning, and not (as transgender activists disingenuously try to claim) because they are guilt-racked religious conservatives who couldn’t “accept” themselves or their new identity. Rather, it is full of teens and young adults who are furious at the adults in their lives for not loving them enough to warn them against making horrific, life-altering decisions, simply because they briefly went through a period of discomfort with their bodies.

One girl, for instance, shares how she began to suffer from “gender dysphoria” when she was thirteen. She felt uncomfortable with the normal changes of puberty, including the growth of breasts. When she searched on the Internet about her feelings, the first thing she found was information about transgenderism. In short order, she became convinced that she was “transgender” and began to “socially” transition (i.e., to dress like the opposite sex, etc.) In time, however, she found that she became comfortable in her body and embraced her womanhood.

“I’m really glad that I was born in a post-Soviet, and not a developed country,” she writes, “otherwise I would definitely have already started the transition, and no one knows how it would have ended.”

Think about that for a moment. In our “developed” country, a perfectly normal girl, experiencing perfectly normal feelings of pubescent awkwardness, could decide she wants to go on powerful hormones that will render her sterile for life, or have her breasts surgically removed, and there is a high chance that she would find doctors willing to do that. Meanwhile, if they only waited a year or two, her pubescent awkwardness would go away, and she would have a perfectly normal, happy life.

Indeed, this shows that an overwhelming majority of children experiencing gender dysphoria will overcome their condition with time, and when provided the love, care, and guidance that genuinely respects human persons and their God-given human dignity.

Related: What Percentage of Transgenders Regret Surgery?

The stories of other members on the “detrans” forum do not have such happy endings as the abovementioned girl. Many of them are desperately seeking advice about how they can undo the years of hormone drugs or are simply sharing their grief at lives destroyed by choices made when they were far too young and immature to fully understand the consequences.

Parents Not Given a Choice

Meanwhile, the parents of children who have self-identified as “transgender” are also beginning to share their stories on a Substack publication called “Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT).” These stories, too, are beyond heartbreaking.

Some of these parents share how the medical and legal establishments only give them one choice, i.e., to enthusiastically “affirm” their child in his or her new identity, or else be called a “hater” and sidelined from their child’s life. Many of them also describe the overwhelming sense of helplessness and grief as they watch their children fall under the sway of the ideologues in their classroom or at the “gender clinic.”

These parents are left impotently watching their child become emotionally distant, descend into states of profound mental depression, anxiety, and confusion, take on a completely new identity, and begin to mutilate his or her body. “I feel sick.  So unbelievably sick,” one woman wrote after recounting how her 18-year-old daughter suddenly decided that she is a boy.

Another mother recounts how a full quarter of the children in her daughter’s class have “come out” as “transgender.” Seven out of twenty-eight children. Her own daughter became one of them, after being exposed to a school-sanctioned talk on transgenderism. Her daughter had only had her first period two months prior. She decided that her perfectly normal feelings of being uncomfortable in her developing body “proved” that she was “transgender.”

This is the world we are increasingly living in, in which parents are expected to roll over and “accept” that their children, and all of their friends, have somehow magically been “born into the wrong body,” and that the only acceptable solution is to allow those children to change everything about themselves, without question.

It is utter madness.

Bishops Ban Transgender Procedures

Thank God for politicians like Gov. Ron DeSantis, who are willing to stand up to the bullies, and for all the other states that have put their foot down and banned transgender procedures for children. Thank God too for courageous spiritual shepherds who are willing and able to shine a light on the deeper issues at stake in this battle for the bodies and souls of our children.

Recently, the U.S. bishop issued a thoughtful and profound statement on the issue of transgenderism. The statement gets at the very root of transgender ideology and offers some practical steps to resist the harm it is causing. One thing that the statement clarifies is that no Catholic hospital can ever be involved in body-mutilating gender surgeries or other such so-called “treatments.”

“The Hippocratic tradition in medicine calls upon all healthcare providers first and foremost to ‘do no harm’ [primum non nocere],” note the bishops. “Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person.”

Rather than employing these radical medical and surgical interventions that do violence to nature, the bishops urge Catholic healthcare workers to “employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who struggle with gender incongruence,” while ensuring that those means “respect the fundamental order of the human body.” In other words, prioritize serious, evidence-based psychological interventions, that can help persons suffering from gender dysphoria to learn to live at peace with their bodies and given sex.

As the bishops’ note, we have a moral responsibility to respect the God-given order in human nature. “We did not create human nature; it is a gift from a loving Creator,” they write. “Nor do we ‘own’ our human nature, as if it were something that we are free to make use of in any way we please. Thus, genuine respect for human dignity requires that decisions about the use of technology be guided by genuine respect for this created order.”

At the heart of transgenderism, then, is a rebellion against nature, and ultimately against God. Rather than receiving what has been given by God, human beings seek, through technology, to impose their will onto reality. However, as the bishops note, our sex is a given aspect of reality, something that we are to receive with gratitude, rather than to change through medical procedures that cure no disease, but rather harm the natural functioning of the body.

It is good to see certain states and countries beginning to ban these harmful procedures, and to see our Catholic bishops issuing clear teaching on this most pressing of issues. I pray that more will begin to stand up, and to risk public criticism in order to speak the truth on this most important of issues, protecting our children and families.