This is the article that appeared in the April 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.
What started as switching the genitals of minors behind the backs of parents has now evolved to the stage where children are being abducted from their parents if they object. This is the kind of nightmare that few would believe could happen in the United States as recently as 9/11. It is also the kind of condition we would normally associate with totalitarian regimes.
In 2015, Oregon became the first state in the nation to allow 15-year-olds to get sex-reassignment surgery without parental consent. Now the state of Indiana is taking children away from their parents if they object.
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the Indiana case. When a Catholic couple learned that their son identified as a girl, they provided mental health services for him, but they did not agree to affirm his new status. Government officials learned of this and moved with dispatch to remove the teenage boy from his parents and place him in a home. There was no evidence of parental abuse of any kind, just a disagreement about the kind of treatment the boy should have.
This is child abuse and the abuser is the government. The sincerely held religious convictions of a responsible Catholic couple have been eviscerated by ideological zealots who work for the state. Even if the couple were atheists, the government has no right to do this. Instead of putting the confused child in a home, the government officials who abducted him should be sent to prison.
This madness never ends. There is a bill in Illinois that would allow the government to charge the parents of a minor with child abuse if they do not accede to their child’s desire to transition to the other sex, or have an abortion.
All over Europe, nations which once heralded sex transition surgeries for minors are pulling back, and this includes the Netherlands, home to studies from 2011 which concluded they are beneficial. They later found the data were weak and reversed themselves.
Britain, Finland, Norway and Sweden were once strong advocates, but no more. They now regret doing so. The evidence is clear: so-called gender-affirming care for minors is dangerous to their mental and physical health. Regrettably, the U.S. has yet to figure this out. It is still harming innocent children, and this crusade is being led by the Biden administration.
Minors are not allowed to get a tattoo and teachers are not allowed to give them an aspirin. Yet these same children are allowed to have their hormones altered and their genitals mutilated while keeping their parents in the dark. But it is okay for school officials to know. Indeed, they are often the officiators.
Parents are the only ones who can stop this insanity—the medical profession, educators and government agents have become the enemy. The monetary and ideological profit being made by legally exploiting children is what fires them. There can’t be enough lawsuits.
