The Center for Childhood Innocence, a collaborative effort of Feed My Sheep Foundation and New Yorker’s Family Research Foundation, is passionately dedicated to loving children.
But how can we best love kids? In the well-known passage in 1 Corinthians 13, we learn a lot about true, biblical love. We learn that love is patient, kind, is not proud and does not dishonor others. We learn that “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects…”
How can we apply this knowledge of love to one of the most challenging issues of our day—navigating our response to those caught in the web of gender lies. How can we best love our sons and daughters who believe they were somehow born in the wrong body, or that they must use new pronouns and be recognized as non-binary to feel well or whole?
Let’s repeat… “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth… It always protects…”
Now for an important reality: affirming a child in a gender identity that is different from their biological sex is not rejoicing with the truth. It is not protecting that child. Unfortunately, activists, school staff, medical professionals and even our government officials have been resounding a chorus that “if you don’t affirm your child in their chosen gender identity then they will commit suicide.” This is a lie. Calling experimental puberty blockers, cancer-inducing cross-sex hormones and complicated elective surgeries “Life-saving gender affirming” medicine is a lie.
In fact, all 11 published studies on the matter show that most children with gender dysphoria come to embrace their biological sex by adulthood if they are not affirmed in their new/chosen gender identity or socially or medically transitioned.
When gender dysphoric kids are “affirmed” in an untrue identity and socially transition, (changing their names, pronouns, dress, and behavior), it becomes more likely that they remain convinced of that transgender identity. They are then caught in a state of celebrated mental illness with no real help in sight. Without this new affirmation, these children would have been likely to accept their biological sex after puberty. A long-term study on this matter showed that adults, after cross-sex surgery, were nearly 20x more likely to commit suicide than the general population. Is affirming this identity really helping children? The research is in: definitely not.
Transgender identity appears to be a symptom of mental distress rather than the cause. It is an egregiously destructive failure that our culture is choosing to ignore the underlying trauma, distress, and mental illness that these young people are experiencing, in favor of a mystical social ideology that says changing their “gender identity” will somehow provide relief. Gender dysphoric children often have a history of trauma or abuse. They have significantly higher rates of autism spectrum disorder, depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders. We must provide true help. However, our culture chooses to affirm an untrue delusion that is simply a symptom of mental distress, leading to countless irreversible harms.
Though we understand gender confusion is a complicated matter, here at The Center for Childhood Innocence, we urge you NOT to affirm a child’s transgender identity. “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth… It always protects…”
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