March 14, 2022 | David F. Coppedge

Big Science Embraces Trans Activism

The flip side of endorsing a
movement is fighting its critics.

 

Among decent educated citizens, rare is the person who would insult, bully or harass an individual having issues with their sexual identity. When a group forms a movement to change laws and force their views on others, however, that’s another situation. Western democracies have a long tradition of free speech and civil rights for citizens and organizations to voice opposition to movements they consider detrimental to public policy. When the opposition is based on evidence and the law, should it be dismissed as “hate speech”?

Transgender activists have gone far beyond requesting acceptance. They are persuading lawmakers to outlaw free speech against them, and taking extreme measures to violate others’ civil rights. For instance, some states are passing laws to encourage children to doubt their birth gender, even as as early as ones in kindergarten. Some are denying parents the right to know about a school curriculum promoting gender questioning, even to the point of promoting sex-change operations. Some are outlawing any attempt to reason with the sexually confused about their gender identity, even if the person wants to hear it. Teachers and business employees have been fired for failing to use “preferred pronouns” of those identifying with made-up genders like “non-binary” or “genderfluid.” A major controversy is raging over whether biological men self-identifying as women should compete in women’s sports – a move that is not only destroying women’s sports records, but also making the category “woman” dubious. What is a “woman” if any man can choose to be one? What becomes of “women’s rights” in a society that embraces transgenderism?

As usual, the ones most hurt by the controversy are Christians and others who believe in traditional values. Also as usual, Big Science is jumping into another Leftist movement with both feet.

Telling LGBTQA+ they can be helped, fixed or saved can cause significant harm (Phys.org, 14 March 2022). A paper in the Medical Journal of Australia illustrates how scientists are promoting talking points and legal policies of the transgender movement. They are attacking so-called “conversion therapy” as not therapy at all, but a form of harmful imposition on LGBT individuals. The only acceptable position now is to allow such people to remain sexually confused and in denial of reality. Anything else is harmful and must not be tolerated.

Religious LGBTQA+ conversion practices cause significant mental health harm and the health sector needs to recognize, support and respect survivors in ways that are affirming of sexual and gender diversity, say the authors of a Perspective published today by the Medical Journal of Australia.

The new bogeymen are pastors and other religious leaders. Although anyone may be “guilty” of committing conversion therapy, the press release and paper target religious leaders as the ones to oppose with the strong arm of the law. To the extent the transgender activists who have infected Big Science succeed, it will be a crime for Bible-believing pastors and teachers to teach the Bible’s view of sexuality. Indeed, a former parliament member in Norway is on trial for quoting a passage in the New Testament. And yet what is a pastor’s job if not to reach out with the good news that Jesus died to save sinners? Can preachers no longer say that a sinner can come to the cross of Christ and “be helped, fixed or saved”? Everyone needs “conversion therapy”—not only those with sexual issues.

Moving beyond ‘man, woman, other’: CSU researchers make space for queer-spectrum identities in scientific surveys (Colorado State University, 11 March 2022). The transgenderists have gone way beyond seeking recognition and respect. They are forcing their views of gender fluidity on all aspects of social order, including surveys, polls, census operations and everywhere that used to have two check boxes, male or female. The academic elites at CSU are all for this, joining in to help the activists turn the social order upside down. Did transgenders infiltrate academia to do this, or did the academics do this on their own initiative?

1st study of LGBT+ physicists reveals red flags (University of Utah, 14 March 2022). There just aren’t enough transgender physicists, complains this press release. But is it really because they are suffering “exclusionary behavior”? That is not a scientific term. It is an emotional perception.

Almost half of all participants who identified as transgender experienced exclusionary behavior directly, compared with 19% of their cisgender peers. Transgender interviewees encountered institutional barriers, including discriminatory health insurance plans or policies that restricted their bathroom use. Many trans participants described face-to-face harassment.

Undoubtedly some have experienced actual uncomfortable encounters, but the opportunity for fudging data to promote an agenda is strong. Many calling themselves transgender have a prior sensitivity to any manifestation of behavior that might be construed as lack of total acceptance. They might report that as “exclusionary behavior.” Notice, however, that 19% of straight respondents reported experiencing exclusionary behavior directly, and half the transgenders did not report it. Conclusion: everybody feels exclusionary behavior sometimes. Was this really a scientific poll? Who were the ones conducting the survey? Did they have a motivation to inflate numbers to push a predetermined message?

Study finds three main barriers to transgender adults receiving primary healthcare in a supportive environment (Medical Xpress, 7 March 2022). This study comes from the “Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis, a comprehensive healthcare clinic for transgender and gender-diverse adults.” The “study” (prepare to be hoodwinked) found that transgenders who went in to caregivers already committed to treating them as their preferred identity felt more comfortable, obviously.

This “study” showed that much of the discomfort among transgenders came not so much from direct exclusionary behavior, but from inside their own feelings.

Other patients reported being uncomfortable in care settings outside of the transgender clinic. “It didn’t feel safe—not that anybody was mean or anything. It’s just that you get in there and you’re all nervous because now you have to explain who you are to somebody. I know they’re professionals and I’m [probably] not the first trans person they ever saw. But you never know. Sometimes it’s hard.”

Consider what this kind of response could imply for other surveys, like the one at University of Utah mentioned above. Transgender respondents come to the survey with pre-existing nervousness and discomfort stemming from their own life choices. How would that influence their descriptions of caregivers? If the survey takers had an agenda to promote transgenderism, would they not be eager to list any suggestion of discomfort as an instance of exclusionary behavior, even if it had been falsely perceived?

Voices of Realism and Reason

Teen Girl Commits Suicide After School, Courts, and Doctors Push Her into Transgenderism (California Family Council, 11 March 2022). Leftists say that “conversion therapy” causes “harm” to transgenders. But what harm could be worse than suicide? They don’t report on the dark side of the opposite kind of conversion therapy: voices that tell the sexually confused to pursue their feelings. After sharing Abigail’s story, CFC says, “The state is prioritizing dangerous gender ideology over parental rights and the health and well-being of children.”

Hitting the brakes on transgender treatments for youth (World Magazine, 14 March 2022). World, a conservative Christian magazine and news service, reported about matters that the Big-Science pro-transgender media fail to mention in their both-feet advocacy of transgenderism. For one, “International medical groups call for caution on hormonal and surgical interventions while U.S. promotes them.” As with the abortion issue, the USA is out of step with much of the rest of the world when it comes to making irreversible changes to the bodies of the sexually confused.

The 202-year-old National Academy of Medicine in France on Feb. 28 called for medical practitioners to exercise “the greatest caution” in administering puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to French youth struggling with gender dysphoria….

Medical groups and establishments in multiple countries in recent months have called for putting the brakes on hormone and surgical interventions for youth. But in the United States, by contrast, the medical establishment continues to promote an “affirmation-only” model of treating childhood gender dysphoria while stifling debate over evidence-based treatments.

Mary Jackson reports that as other countries are urging the “greatest caution” on life-changing decisions on children, the USA is pushing them at “breakneck speed.”

The reason USA is out of step? It is currently being governed by an administration that has gone over-the-top Leftist on every issue—abortion, foreign policy, border security, energy, economics, and more. The “LGBTQIA+” mania, with its anti-Christian overtones, is like a drug high for them. They can’t get enough of the opportunity to hate Christians, dismantle traditional values, and break up families. The LGBT movement is a direct denial of God’s created order for human beings as stated in Genesis 1:27 and 2:24.

Have you ever wondered how a society could become so perverted as to feed humans to lions and burn them alive on crosses, and have a stadium full of crowds cheering on the spectacle? The perpetrators of those ancient atrocities really believed they were doing good. Christians were atheists, they said; they were disrupting the social order by not sacrificing to the idols. The gods might be angry and punish the whole empire because of them. It was a righteous thing to eliminate them, they thought. Do you see any parallels?

The authentic behavior for the Christian, as Jesus modeled , was to take people where they were—the adulteress, the tax collector, the demon-possessed—to accept them with compassion, but not to leave them there. The good news is that we can be changed for the good, not by our own efforts, but by the forgiveness available through Christ’s redemption (“buying back”). Slaves to sin can be set free. Should that not be a welcome message to proclaim with joy?

The one who repents and believes in Christ is given the Holy Spirit as a helper to grow more Christlike over time. God helps the sinner move from what he or she “used to be” toward new life in Christ, that grows each day to manifest more of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and all the other graces that make life beautiful. Paul said to the Corinthians (a very pagan society in his day),

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (I Corinthians 6:9-11).

The best act of kindness that can be shown a LGBT person, or any other sinner (i.e., everyone) is to share the good news that God can save us and give us abundant life in Christ. Don’t take away the ability to share that best gift any human being could ever receive.

 

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