OPINION:
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has doubled down on his extremist agenda for LGBTQ youth.
The man who, as a teacher, launched a gay-straight alliance group in his school went on to use his power as governor of Minnesota to push the transgender agenda in full force.
He issued an executive order last year and signed a law making Minnesota what the measure’s supporters call a “trans refuge state.”
Critics rightly interpreted this as an anti-parent bill aimed at bringing in minors from other states who request puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery. Mr. Walz also signed a bill prohibiting conversion therapy, in which therapists counsel clients to help them overcome unwanted gay or trans desires.
In a recent interview, Mr. Walz pledged more LGBTQ activism if elected vice president. Vice President Kamala Harris has promised the same if she is elected president. Former President Donald Trump says he will end gender treatments on children if he is elected.
There are signs that the transgender wave is receding. You can tell this from the legacy media’s frantic attempt to keep the big gender lie going.
The Washington Post ran an article last week headlined “Youths highly content with gender-affirming care.” It cites a survey of about 200 people taken by the TransYouth Project and published in JAMA Pediatrics that said only 4% of transitioned children voice any regret.
This is similar to the media-hyped advocacy by researchers in the 1980s and 1990s that people are born gay. Therefore, any refusal to approve of homosexual acts is a form of bigotry.
Those much-publicized studies were unreplicated and flawed. They had researcher bias, self-selected subjects, tiny sample sizes and suppressed conflicting evidence. Nonetheless, they had a huge impact, paving the way for the LGBTQ juggernaut that is spearheading progressives’ assault on freedom of speech and religious liberty.
That movement is ensnaring more children. A shocking number of children — unlike previous generations — identify as gay, nonbinary or trans.
The Post article ignores the four-year Cass Review by Dr. Hilary Cass in Britain that found no enduring benefits to puberty suppression and significant downsides. In about half of U.S. states and all over Europe, authorities are halting what can be described as bizarre medical experiments on minors.
Seeing which way the wind is blowing, the director of a two-year federally funded Los Angeles trans youth project refused to publish her results. She said she feared they would be used to oppose gender-transition treatments for minors.
The big gender lie began with the fraudulent studies of Alfred C. Kinsey in 1948 and 1953 that painted a warped picture of sexuality for both sexes. Kinsey relied heavily on interviews with bribed prison inmates, prostitutes and libertines. The media took the bait and proclaimed that the sexual revolution had been scientifically justified.
Kinsey also had a section on “early sexual growth and activity” with data from the systematic, timed molestation of boys as young as 5 months and up to 15 years old. Judith Reisman, Edward Eichel and others finally exposed it in their 1990 book “Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People.”
A closeted and sexually active gay man despite being married to a woman, Kinsey set out to destroy the idea of normal sexuality. Cultural elites bought his vision and began promoting pornography, abortion and the LGBTQ agenda. They have been aided by the American Civil Liberties Union’s constant legal attacks on life, decency, marriage and natural sexuality.
The transgender movement took off in the 1970s thanks to John Money, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University. His fraudulent studies of a boy who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision intentionally fueled the idea that gender is a choice, not a biological reality.
Despite ample contrary evidence, Money falsely reported that the boy had adjusted well to being a girl. The boy, David Reimer, later had a sex-change reversal operation and married a woman, but he killed himself at age 38. The tragic tale is recounted by journalist John Colapinto in his 2000 book, “As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl.”
The first to exploit Money’s hypothesis were radical feminists who welcomed anything that would divide the sexes and weaken marriage. Then came the gay movement, followed by the transgender lobby, which has become a major cultural wrecking ball against faith, truth and common sense.
In the name of compassion, gender-dysphoric children are being subjected to oxymoronically named “gender-affirming” treatments.
The Biden-Harris administration issued an Education Department policy in April adding gender identity and sexual orientation to Title IX, which prohibits discrimination in schools based on sex. The Supreme Court will soon hear a challenge by the administration to a Tennessee law that bars sex-reassignment treatments on minors.
Democrats are targeting parents who don’t want to go along with the insanity. In July, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that overrules any school board policy that requires transparency with parents about their child’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In response, the city of Huntington Beach declared itself a “Parents’ Right to Know” sanctuary in September and sued the state.
The LGBTQ lobby has lost public support by allowing biological males in women and girls’ locker rooms, restrooms and athletic competitions, and subjecting children to drag queen story hours in public libraries and to LGBTQ books beginning in preschool.
Americans appear to be fed up. The Trump campaign has run effective TV ads showing Ms. Harris supporting sex-reassignment surgery for prison inmates.
This sleeper issue may well cost the Democrats votes among suburban women and fence-sitting men.
The feeling is growing that enabling mental delusions is not compassionate.
Children are precious beings made in the image of God. They should not be guinea pigs for mad scientists and avaricious doctors.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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