Shall We Trust Transgender Medicine? #2

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. Today, Don continues with our current series, the Bible and Pride Month, with part two of a message titled, Shall We Trust Transgender Medicine? Here's Don with an important word for you about today. Counteract the existence of Pride Month. You know, in my opinion, Bill, the Pride Month is the most ridiculous and destructive propaganda campaign that has ever been perpetrated on the American people and beyond them to the entire world.

It started with the acceptance of homosexuality, moved to the mandated acceptance of homosexual marriage, from there to the promotion of transgenderism, to the infliction of transgenderism on children, to the current grooming of children through the appalling existence of drag queen hours. You know, it seemed to me that there needed to be someone saying something each day in opposition to Pride Month in response to all of those things. So my friend, as you listen today, all that is being promoted here on the Truth Pulpit this month is designed to bring a biblical perspective to help you process what you are seeing in the world around you. Our goal is to be a voice in the wilderness of opposition to it all one day at a time. And so I trust it will help you see things clearly from God's perspective and that you will be encouraged to speak boldly for Christ in your circle of influence. Thanks for being with us today on the Truth Pulpit. Thanks, Don.

And friend, have your Bible open and ready as Don teaches God's people God's Word in the Truth Pulpit. The whole premise of transgenderism is that a person can have the brain or soul of one sex and the body of a different sex so that their mind is of a different quality, of a different essence than what their body itself is. There is no reason to believe that. There is no reason to believe that a person can have the brain of one sex and the body of another.

There is no objective, factual basis for that assertion as I plan to detail to you in what I am about to say. Now, as our conflicted transgender friends hear this, they would say, but you don't understand. And I'm happy to concede the fact that a person may have a strong feeling or deeply held conviction that that is their reality, that they are in the wrong kind of body for the kind of person that they are.

I concede that people feel that way, but I do not concede that that is an actual objective fact. Now, activists would have you believe that there are settled, medically recognized causes for gender dysphoria and for transgenderism. It's a bluff, which is another way of saying it's an unbridled fiction. And you can tell that they know that it's fiction by the fact that they tried to shut down anybody who raised objection to it.

You deserve and you're entitled to some support for those conclusions that I have just made. Doctors Lawrence Meyer and Paul McHugh published a report in the fall 2016 issue of a journal known as the New Atlantis, a journal of technology and society. The report by Dr. Meyer and Dr. McHugh was titled Sexuality and Gender, Findings from the Biological, Psychological and Social Sciences.

Now you say, who are these guys? What's their credibility in the field? Dr. Meyer is scholar in residence at in the Department of Psychiatry at John Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. McHugh was the psychiatrist in chief at the John Hopkins Hospital for 25 years with a long history of dealing with issues surrounding transgenderism. These guys have the chops to speak about that which they have written in this very lengthy report. I think the total report, if I'm remembering correctly, runs to like 140 pages or more as they address many issues in addition to transgenderism. After a 27 page discussion of various medical and biological issues surrounding gender identity, Dr. Meyer and Dr. McHugh conclude this. And I quote, the hypothesis that gender identity is an innate fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex, that is that a person might be a man trapped in a woman's body or a woman trapped in a man's body is not supported by scientific evidence. Continuing the quote, they say, in reviewing the scientific literature, we find that almost nothing is well understood when we seek biological explanations for what causes some individuals to state that their gender does not match their biological sex. Yet, despite the scientific uncertainty, drastic interventions are prescribed and delivered to patients identifying or identified as transgender.

This is especially troubling when the patients receiving these interventions are children. I'm continuing the quotation here. We are deeply alarmed that these therapies, treatments and surgeries seem disproportionate to the severity of the distress being experienced by these young people and are at any rate premature since the majority of children who identify as the gender opposite their biological sex will not continue to do so as adults.

End quote. Let me just summarize in a little bit of layman's terms what I just read to you. They said that the idea that transgenderism is something that is produced by biological causes is not supported by scientific evidence. They say that nothing is well understood when trying to explain transgenderism by biological means. And yet, despite this lack of understanding, despite this lack of evidence, doctors are nevertheless proceeding with these drastic interventions in a patient's treatment using, and using my terms here, using pharmaceuticals knives and with an invoice in the other hand to do drastic things to the bodies of these people, to these children, when there is no scientific basis to do it. And Dr. Mayer and Dr. McHugh express their deep alarm at this. It's interesting, I'm not quoting from the article here, but in the introductory material of this article, they said this, and this was telling.

I'm summarizing, giving you the gist of what was said. They said, in our conversations with other doctors, we found that there are other medical professionals that share our concern, but they are not willing to go on the record for fear of the consequences of disagreeing with LGBTQ dogma. They're afraid they're going to lose their jobs, lose their university positions, and so they won't even say what they professionally believe to be true because they prefer their jobs over saying what their own study proves to be the case. Now Dr. McHugh, Dr. Mayer were sympathetic to their colleagues. They deferred to them in saying that, but the gist of it was there are other people who believe what we're saying in this report, but they won't put their names on it because of the consequences that it has for their professional careers.

This is hardly a profession that deserves our admiration for its courage. Now, beloved, if you are interested in a more in-depth examination of these matters, let me recommend a book to you which gives a far broader base of documentation for the things that I'm saying in this message here. The book's title is this, When Harry Became Sally. It's written by an author named Ryan Anderson. It is a courageous book. It is a meticulously documented book. It is not a Christian book. I think the author may be Catholic.

He's certainly not writing from the Christian worldview that we've presented in this series. I will say this. It documents the medical, legal, and social issues surrounding transgenderism with a rare courage in this environment which goes beyond what even many Christian writers have shown in the matter. Shall we believe transgender medicine?

There are many reasons to say no. The warnings of ignorance caution us. Vast ignorance is the foundation of this realm of medical practice.

And, beloved, I don't hesitate to say once again it will eventually go the way of Dr. Benjamin Rush. Now, thirdly, let's consider the warning from results. We've seen a warning from history. We've seen warnings from ignorance.

Let's consider the warning from results. And here I just want to give you some background information, some statistics. How broad is the transgender issue, the transgender phenomenon? A recent estimate suggests that less than 1%, to be precise, 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as a gender that does not correspond to their biological sex.

In other words, less than one person in 100. Which makes it odd, doesn't it, to think that this is driving so much of public discourse? It makes it odd, doesn't it, that the House of Representatives found it necessary to pass an equality act to enforce these transgender delusions upon the American public? Let's ask some questions here, and I'll just give you a little bit of brief Q&A with answers attached.

All of this is documented. Let's ask this question. Is the transgender lifestyle one that is safe and secure and healthy?

Well, here's one way to answer that. The rate of lifetime suicide attempts across all ages of transgender individuals is estimated at 41% compared to under 5% to the overall U.S. population. 41%, more than two out of five attempt suicide in the course of their life. Why on earth would anyone encourage someone in a lifestyle with that kind of outcome?

Why would we not be trying to help people away from that which is proven to be self-destructive? There's no acceptable answer to that question. What about these children who supposedly identify as transgender?

What becomes of them? And it's just becoming increasingly common to see this. As far back as 2012, the Washington Post published an article titled, Transgender at Five, giving the course of a child in the Washington, D.C. areas supposed claim to being transgender starting from the age of two. And this is held up and reported and it's just becoming increasingly popular, so much so that children are even becoming talent show objects in a transgender identity. But leaving those extremes aside, what can we say about children who express feelings of transgenderism? Well, the statistics show that between 80 and 95% of children who express a discordant gender identity will come to identify with their bodily sex if natural development is allowed to proceed. In other words, they outgrow it.

80 to 95% of the time, if we just let them grow up, it will not prove to be a lifelong problem. Dr. Mayer, who incidentally, this is important for his credibility, Dr. Mayer identifies himself as someone who supports equality for the LGBT community. He has no agenda against people in the homosexual community. He supports equality for them in a way that we would not support.

So he says, I'm on their side. He says this about children and transgenderism. He uses the word iniquitous, meaning it's sinful. I quote, the notion that a two year old having expressed thoughts or behaviors identified with the opposite sex, that notion that he can be labeled for life as transgender has absolutely no support in science. Indeed, it is iniquitous to believe that all children who have gender atypical thoughts or behavior at some point in their development, particularly before puberty, should be encouraged to become transgender.

He says it is sinful. It is iniquitous to think, to believe that children who express some kind of atypical thoughts should be labeled and then entered into the transgender protocol and set on a course that changes the entire outcome of their lives. Why would you do that when 80 to 95 percent of them will simply outgrow it? Now, why would Dr. Mayer say that? What do these doctors do to these children as they become adults? There are various stages that are used.

There's a progress that goes through here, and I just want you to understand this ever so briefly. In younger people and even with adults, the process starts with what is called social transitioning. What that means is that people start to dress differently. They'll go out in public dressed as the opposite sex.

They'll start to use a different name. Carrie wants to be called by the name of Sally now, and so there's this social transitioning before anything medically is done. Now, from there, with younger people, what has happened is that puberty-blocking drugs are administered to stop their normal physical development. I don't know how that works chemically, but that's what they do, so that a girl doesn't develop female characteristics and the males don't develop their male characteristics.

The idea is you just put a pause button on it so you administer these drugs that interfere with the body's normal development. What follows after that, after a period of time, is that they will administer hormones, cross-sex hormones, so that biological males will develop female characteristics or vice versa, and eventually cosmetic surgery is done where healthy flesh is amputated in some ways, and in other ways I'm trying to be very delicate here. Through the use of skin grafts and other kinds of cosmetic devices, they will create artificial appendages to help this person identify with what they think is their gender in their mind. Well, so you do surgery, and from what I'm told, what I've read, you know, you can have some pretty impressive outward appearances. It looks kind of real. It's not real, and it doesn't function in a real way.

That's so important for you to understand, but it looks real. What's the long-term consequence of sex reassignment surgery? What happens to these people after they do it? Sex reassigned individuals are about five times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population. Understand, beloved, that these so-called sex reassignment surgeries or whatever the current name is, they change the terminology all the time. It's hard to keep up with even the labels that are used, but what you have to understand is this, is that that process does not change a person to the opposite sex at all. Dr. McHugh says, Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. The best they can ever hope to become is counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they identify.

The biology is hardwired in the DNA, and Ryan Anderson's book goes into this in great detail. You can make a few cosmetic outward appearances, but it does not change the biological wiring of the body. So you cannot change somebody into the opposite sex. You can simply participate in the delusion and the deception that's being practiced. Well, in addition to the suicide, you could view it from this way.

This is all part of the warning from results. Do people ever regret sex reassignment surgery? Beloved, there is an entire subculture crying out to have a voice in the discussion, conveniently ignored, but there is an entire subculture of people who have pursued gender transition only to detransition and to seek to return to living according to their biological sex.

Chapter 3 of When Harry Became Sally devotes 28 pages to telling the heartbreaking stories of several such people. They went the gender transition route, and they wanted to come back. And so they tried to get their life back after years of this medical stuff, and one can only imagine the heartache that they feel realizing the years that were squandered with aided and abetted by the doctors who treated them. I'm hoping that there rises up a whole phalanx of qualified, skilled medical malpractice plaintiff attorneys who will put this whole industry out of business.

Well, public propriety forbids me from describing the surgeries or some of the ways that these dear people have suffered at the hands of their doctors. But just to say this, the results are a cheap counterfeit for God-given biological sex. It's been my judgment, my considered judgment, that this all has been necessary to help establish a critical spiritual point for you. You and I, as believing Christians, you and I as the people of God, are right to stand on God's word against the world in this realm. And as a church and as families and as individuals, we cannot capitulate to the pressure that this realm would bring upon us to change us, to silence us, to intimidate us, to keep us from even having a voice in the discussion.

We reject all of that, and I believe that clarity leads to courage when you're standing alone. Turn to the book of Joshua as we close here. God said to Joshua in verse 6, Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you.

Do not turn from it to the right or to the left so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Those are the same words that Christ said when he commissioned the church, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. And beloved, I know that most of you agree with me when I say, I fear the Lord God Almighty far more than I fear transgender medicine doctors.

But that comes with a call to make a clear decision. Look at Joshua 24. In Joshua chapter 24 verse 14, we're faced with what God's word says, as we've seen over the prior four messages.

We've seen the warnings from history, ignorance and results that cause us to not accept the claims of transgender medicine. Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served which were beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

I see this transgender issue in those terms. We see the God of this world, which has more than one meaning, and I mean them both. We see the God of this world in what the world is doing. We see God's word, Beloved. I want to fear the Lord here. As for me and my house, we'll serve the Lord. What about you? You've been listening to Don Green with part two of a message called Shall We Trust Transgender Medicine? Part of a series titled The Bible and Pride Month here on The Truth Pulpit. We hope to see you again next time. I'm Bill Wright, and we'll see you then on The Truth Pulpit, where we teach God's people God's word.