For The Sake of Our Children (Part 3)

Family policy matters, and engaging in weekly radio show and podcast trauma family policy Council hi this is John Rustin, presidency, family, and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program is our prayer that you will be in encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that you will for better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state and nation. Today we bring you part three of the keynote address delivered by Dr. Ron Anderson of the heritage foundation and NC families. Major speakers dinner in Charlotte North Carolina on October 8. Dr. Anderson is the William E. Simon Senior research fellow at the heritage foundation in Washington and is a highly sought after researcher, writer and speaker on many of the most pressing issues facing our culture today. We hope you enjoy the first step is what they call social transition you socially treat your child is the opposite sex. The second step is purely blockade you block your child from going through puberty in the quote wrong body and so children at age 89 and 10 are being prescribed off label drugs is not FDA approved for this purpose, but there being prescribed a powerful drug that will block their pubertal development because they don't want.

This is the, the gender experts say we don't want the child to develop into the wrong body so they block there.

There puberty.

This then leads to the third step, which is cross sex hormones because now you have a teenager who's trapped in a child's body. You have a 1415 16-year-old who is still in an adolescence body when all he observed her classmates went through puberty hit their growth spurts developed into a manner developed into woman.

This high school students still have trapped in a young person's body. So what they do for the high school girls. They administer testosterone they do for the high school boy they administer him estrogen to try to masculine eyes her body to try to feminize his body that then leads to the fourth in the final stage of this treatment protocol which is surgical transition and so the official recommendations are age 18. Increasingly, this is being done at age 16. This would be surgery to remove certain body parts and then use plastic surgery to create body parts that resemble the opposite sexes, it could entail top and/or bottom surgery top surgery being the removal of breast or the creation of Preston bottom surgery, the removal of external genitalia and internal reproductive organs. The saddest part of the research that I did for the book where the stories that people have told about regretting these decisions, you can read it's the third chapter of the book where I go through many of these but you can find them on YouTube.

These are videos that people of maiden. The particularly troubling parts were young women who decided to transition in high school high school. Was it difficult stage of development for anyone high schools particularly hard for girls in today's culture rate and the need to culture in a very kind of sexualized culture. There are a variety of reasons why I'm girls might feel uncomfortable in their own bodies, but the problem isn't with their bodies. That's where they're being fed a lie and so these are girls who at age 16, 17, 18, went on testosterone as some of them had the mastectomies performed in five, six, seven years later regretted it. D.

Transition and they tell the story of how never get my voice back. After taking testosterone for five years. My vocal arts have changed and that doesn't doesn't unchanged. You never get your original voice back. They talk about scarred chests after having a double mastectomy. Your breasts don't grow back.

If you go off the testosterone.

These are lives that have been severely damaged bodies that have been damaged psyche is that have been damaged and sadly parents have lost custody because they said no to this. I thought this would happen in California, New York, Massachusetts, happened in Ohio, parents, Catholic parents lost custody of their 17-year-old daughter because they said we want her to see a therapist and to undergo talk therapy about why she feels uncomfortable being a girl, rather than receiving testosterone therapy in the hospital said no testosterone therapy is the right way to go, and the judge sided with the hospital instead of the parents. This is why you need something like the North Carolina family policy Council to make sure that that doesn't happen here that parental rights are respected and protected, especially parental rights with respect to medical care, Dr. Paul McHugh.

He was the director of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital. One of the world's leading hospitals and in 1979 he shut down the sex reassignment clinic at Johns Hopkins because he said it was fundamentally participating with psychosocial struggles, not physical struggles. He said the problem with someone who is gender dysphoria gender identity conflict isn't with their body. It's with their mind and their emotions and so the proper medical response is directed at the mind and the emotions not the body.

The analogy that he draws us to anorexia. He says no physician worth his or her salt would prescribe liposuction to an anorexic high school girl, because the problem is not with her body, what you would do as you try to figure out what's causing the anorexia is it a body image problem is it an eating disorder does connect those Separate ideologies and separate underlying causes for why you struggle with your diet why you struggle with your body image you try to figure out for this particular child why do you have this body image problem.

Why do you have this eating disorder.

What's your underlying cause for your anorexia. He says do the same thing for the high school girl doesn't feel comfortable as a girl. Figure out what's causing that discomfort.

Is it something that she's experienced. Maybe she's been sexually assaulted.

Is that something is going on at the school environment may be the school has a lot of kind of like a toxic masculine environment in which she wants to become a man precisely to escape some of the male pressure on her. This is frequently reported by a high school girls who have transition. They said I wanted to become the type of person who hurt me so that that person could never hurt me again.

You can see there's only a variety of reasons why someone might feel uncomfortable in their own bodies and figure out what's going on in an address that give children a chance to grow through this. This is particularly true for younger kids. When I mentioned that there doing social transition for 2345-year-olds. The best research here shows that even a 95% of pre-pubertal children will naturally grow out of a gender identity conflict. If you just give them the time and the space if you let them explore you.

Let them go through a phase in life, they will naturally reconcile their identity with their body. By contrast, if you block there puberty. If you give them cross sex hormones.

It seems that you're blocking in the transgender identity that it may very well be going through mail puberty that helps that boy who doesn't quite feel comfortable being a boy feel comfortable being a man at the rush of testosterone that he receives a puberty hitting his growth spurt becoming taller becoming more muscular's voice deepening all of those changes. Developmental changes may be the very thing that helps them feel comfortable in his own body and remarkably hiking now. I think 17 states. Dr. McCue would lose his medical license if he practiced medicine with the minor. The way that he thinks it ought to be practiced. 17 states have banned what they call conversion therapy and they say look at the gender identity of this 10-year-old boy is really girl. He identifies as a girl and you try to convert his gender identity to being a bully that's unlawful and if a medical professional engages in that type of therapy. The medical professional could lose his or her medical license and yet in all 50 states. It's perfectly legal for medical professional to give that boy puberty blocking drugs and then estrogen which is actual conversion rate. That's what you're actually converting the body of that boy feminizing the body, but if you try to help the boy feel comfortable being a boy in 17 states, you could lose your license slightly wrap up with two thoughts. I'm Catholic and so I'm obliged to at some point quote a Pope in any sort of public address and the first is from John Paul John call back when he was just the philosophy professor in Kraków, Poland, and that he was the Bishop of Kraków, Poland. He's of the 20th century, the crisis of the 20th century was a crisis of faulty humanism, faulty anthropology of secular humanism that what we thought we were doing in the 20th century was that by abolishing God we be elevating man the exact opposite happened. By getting rid of God. We degraded man. And when you look at the 20th century look at the two world wars. You could the Holocaust you could the killing field. You look at serve totalitarian regimes to the communism and socialism etc. etc. what you see her as a consistent, degrading of man degrading of the of the creature made in the image and likeness of God, that if you get rid of God, you're actually doing damage to his image, and so John Paul analyze this back when he was a philosophy professor in terms what was going on in the middle of the 20th century then extended that as Pope to the abortion a scourge he said here were doing with abortion as were were neglecting to respect that image of God in the womb. And if you move with us today. He would extend that same analysis to the sexual revolution. The redefinition of marriage and now transgender ideology that what's at stake here are three truths right in the very first couple of pages of the book of Genesis that were made in the image and likeness of God, that were created male and female and male and female created for each other. Foundational anthropological shrews made in the image and likeness of God that explains all of the abortion embryo destructive research, euthanasia, assisted suicide, rejecting each and every one of us made in the image and likeness of God created male and female everything that were seeing the transgender question gender identity disputes male and female created for each other. The two become one flesh. Everything were seeing with the gay marriage debate and then all the religious liberty disputes the touch, and all three of those questions right Hobby lobby has to pay for abortion Jack Phillips has to bake the same-sex wedding cake.

True Catholic hospitals are currently being sued because they won't do sex reassignment surgery's right on all three of those issues.

If you try to stand for biblical truth, and the government disagrees that after you hit, there is liberty issues such the insight from from John Paul were seeing here are two competing accounts of human nature, one that's in accordance with God's creation will design one that discards it ignores it. The second, and this is the closing thought is that as important as all these ideas are in the private PhD I write books I you I do political philosophy is important as all that stuff is it's not the most important thing for any of us in the work that we're doing to kind of build up a culture of life in a marriage culture and the culture that does honor God the most important thing in this is the lesson from Benedict is our witness. If you're familiar at all with Benedict. He's he's a world-class intellectual. He was a theologian, professor of theology. He debated all of the leading intellectuals in Europe and there's a quote that's always stuck with me for memory says it's not the arguments of the philosophers and theologians that win converts. It's the lives of the saints. It's the beauty of holiness and what actually is attractive other people isn't kind of like you know what's the witty book chapter that we can give them. It's what is our embodied witness how are we living out the truth when it comes to marriage when it comes to religious liberty when it comes to life. What are we doing to welcome the stranger to our table. What are we doing to help out women facing unplanned pregnancies. What are we doing to help out the couples who are going through a rough patch in their marriage. How are we in our own families living out the beauty of the gospel on these issues precisely to be that witness to our neighbors that say what is it about that family across the street knew they were all the same struggles and troubles that we have what they seem to have a certain joy about it and to my mind this is something to me that is actually hopeful because this is entirely within our power, regardless of what happens at the state house regardless of what happens in DC each and every one of us can decide what we do with our families. What we do with our relationships we do with our decisions within our power to cooperate with God's grace to fulfill our vocation in life thinking and listening to deliver the keynote address into families annual Charlotte dinner on October the to listen to the full spiritual law and to learn more about into families work to one. Encourage and inspire families across North Carolina go to our website it and see family.ward that's in see family.org. Thanks so much for listening and may God bless you and your family