There are a number of bills circulating in the Wisconsin legislature dealing with transgender youth. Two of them limit transgender youth participation in sports at the high school and college level to teams that match their gender at birth. A third bans transgender surgery on minors. Tony Evers vows to veto them all.
The groups registering opposition to the legislation are the ACLU, Medical College of Wisconsin, American Pediatric Academy’s Wisconsin Chapter, and the Social Workers Association.
The debate is loud and contentious and will force us to confront what we believe about truth, parental rights, and the limited role of government.
How did we get here?
The human species has two genders. Male and female. Males have an “x” and “y” chromosome. Females have two “x” chromosomes. This cannot be changed. Gender is not assigned at birth. It is observed.
Gender dysphoria, a mental disorder, is distress over one’s gender. It is estimated to affect a tiny fraction of 1% of the population. In recent years, there has been an aggressive, liberal push to bury the truth about human gender and convince us that gender is something we can choose, change, or reject altogether. In response, there are growing numbers of new parents who are calling their children “theybies”, refusing to acknowledge their child’s gender at birth with the intention of letting them choose their gender when older. Minor children are being treated with puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery to change their gender.
The legislation limiting transgender participation in sports to their birth gender is straight forward and must be signed into law as soon as possible. It is undisputed that hormone therapy given to “transgender women” does not reduce the muscles to female levels, allowing them to maintain an athletic advantage over biological women. They have significantly greater muscle mass and are stronger than women. The stories of “transgender women” who were not competitive in male sports and then broke records when competing against women have been widely published. If there is a “right” involved in the issue of women competing with men, it belongs to the women.
The efforts to mainstream gender as a choice have rapidly taken hold. We are confronted daily with transgenderism, non-binary, and other mutations of this lie. Confusion is growing and many are lost.
The impact can be seen in the numbers. Reuters recently partnered with a health technology company to determine the numbers of children being diagnosed and treated for gender dysphoria. They used insurance claims from 2017 – 2021 and caution that their numbers are likely an undercount because they do not include treatment that was not covered by insurance.
They found that at least 121,882 children between the ages of 6 and 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria in this time period. The Reuters analysis showed in the period studied, nearly 5,000 adolescents were started on puberty blockers, nearly 15,000 started hormone therapy and nearly 800 mastectomies were performed on children between the ages of 13 and 17.
How do those of us who believe in parental rights and limited government regulation of our freedom square full support of this legislation with our conservative values? We have to use reason and exercise judgment.
Parental rights are sacrosanct, but not absolutely without limits. The medical establishment bears a huge responsibility for perpetuating lies about human gender. Their positions and advice have confused and coerced parents, who want to do what’s right for their children, into making irreversible decisions that are destined to be a future source of mental distress far greater than anything we have seen. The opposition of medical groups to this legislation means nothing. They have shown us through their willingness to politicize science during the COVID pandemic they are not worthy of our trust. Further, I can attest as a member of the medical community for nearly 50 years, there are many medical professionals who know changing the gender of children is wrong and do not align with the official positions of their medical organizations’ leadership.
Parental rights must be vigorously defended but are not limitless. The following example was recalled in the debate over this legislation.
Joseph Kennedy, patriarch of the famed Kennedy family and father of JFK, agreed to a lobotomy on his 23-year-old daughter, Rosemary. She was mildly retarded and becoming irritable and difficult, and the surgery was intended to make her more docile. Instead, she was severely disabled by the procedure and institutionalized at St. Coletta’s in Jefferson, Wisconsin until she died in 2005. This horrific abuse of a young woman was made possible by the willingness of the father and the complicity of a medical team. We look back and understand how wrong it was.
During Hitler’s reign of terror, at least 7,000 people were victims of Nazi medical experiments. They were conducted without consent or safeguards, were gruesome, inflicted great pain and often deadly. Attempting to change the gender of minor children is a vile medical experiment as evil as the Nazi experiments. It must be stopped.
This legislation should be expanded to ban all medical treatments intended to change the gender of minor children and passed overwhelmingly from both sides of the aisle. It is rooted in truth and pits right against wrong, good against evil. Young lives are at risk and urgent action is required. There is no conflict with our steadfast belief in parental rights and limited government.
