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Terry Schilling has been in the mix fighting in support of pro-family values for a long time.

Schilling, the executive director at American Principles Project Foundation, has been involved in the social conservative movement since he was a child.

“I really didn’t like abortion, when I learned about it, I wanted to get involved in politics to change it and save unborn babies. Along with that comes a pro-family mindset,” he said. “I’m Roman Catholic, so the family has always been really important to me. Having basic rules when it comes to things like sex is really important. But, also on top of that, parental rights are really important and freedom of speech and freedom of association. It’s part of what our country was founded on.”

He said he views himself similar to the Founding Fathers, wanting maximum liberty but understanding we live in a fallen world.

“We need basic laws and basic rules to keep society afloat,” he said. “There’s a natural order. The idea that we have rights from God also means that we have rules from God as well. We need to have our civil law reflect natural law.”

Conversion therapy has been an issue Schilling has worked on for a while now.

“It is really, really, really problematic what they’re doing,” he said.

The bans, he believes, are well-intentioned. He noted there are some practices of conversion therapy that should be outlawed, but an outright ban is wrong.

“At the end of the day, we should not be making it illegal for minors to talk to doctors and therapists to get clarity on any confusion they might be having with their sexuality,” Schilling said. “The nefarious part about these laws is, that’s exactly what they do. On top of that, they make it illegal for children to seek clarity about their gender and their sex with doctors. Leaving parents and children only one option, which is to pursue a gender transition. That is totally experimental.”

Recent studies show it’s not even experimental anymore, he said.

“A lot of people are already regretting their sex changes,” he said. “We’re just very concerned about where this is all headed and how it infringes on the family, how it infringes on the individual and how it infringes on parental rights.”

Activists on the Left want to “lock people into these lifestyles,” Schilling said. And now, there’s an entire industry profiting off the sex-change treatments. An entire industry of therapists and psychologists is being established because the money is there.

“These cross-sex hormones and these surgeries are not cheap,” he said. “People are making a lot of money off this. If they can get even just one extra person to stay in that type of gender-confused lifestyle, that is a lot of money they’ll be making from taxpayers and from the individual. It’s not just a social issue, it’s an economic issue as well.

An increasing number of children are identifying as gender-confused. Studies show between 89-95 percent of children who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria actually go on to identify as their biological sex if they’re allowed just to go through puberty.

“But when you introduce the puberty blockers, it has almost a 100 percent rate of transitioning to the other gender,” Schilling said.

The Left, Schilling said, is painting conversion therapy as child abuse.

“They’re saying that if being gay or being transgender is an immutable trait that can never be changed, then any attempt to do that for a child is cruel and unusual,” he said. “It’s akin to trying to change someone’s race (according to the Left).”

And some Republicans buy into it. But why?

“I think that some of them buy into the notion that people are born gay and that there’s no changing it, which has actually been disproven,” Schilling said. “Even the Left says now it’s a combination of many factors. I also think it’s a campaign issue. They think that if they support this, it shows they’re not ‘anti-gay’ and they can’t attack them on this.”

Republicans get images in their heads of extreme situations involving electroshock therapy or forcing children to sit and watch straight pornography for hours.

“They really demonize this and slander a lot of these good doctors who do good work here getting clarification with these kids who are just confused,” Schilling said.

Kids, Schilling said, are nonsexual beings by definition.

“A lot of them haven’t even gone through puberty,” he said. “I think it’s a political calculation and some Republicans have bought into the Left’s narrative on sexual orientation.”

Conversion therapy is defined very broadly in these bills, Schilling said.

“It’s any type of therapy or discussion with a professional regarding changing one’s sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation,” he said. “So, if a kid tells his parents he thinks he’s gay or attracted to other boys, and they take the boy in to see a doctor, what these laws do is they force the doctor to have the child embrace their homosexuality.

“The more nefarious part of these bills is that they ban gender identity conversion therapy. So if a child is gender dysphoric and has real confusion over their gender and sexual orientation, doctors are forced to affirm their confused gender identity. So they have to tell them you were a girl born in a boy’s body and they have to give treatment accordingly. The problem with these bills is they take away the parents’ rights to seek the best care for their children. We do not do this in any other area when it comes to seeking professional and medical treatment.”

Schilling said there are still moral dilemmas to seeking chemotherapy for children who have childhood cancer.

“There are a lot of downsides to it, but we let parents make that decision for their kids,” he said. “No one knows their kids better than the parents.

“This is the biggest mistake of all — parents know their kids better than anyone and they know their kids better than any high school counselor or teacher or principal. They know their kids better than any psychiatrist or therapist who has maybe talked to the child for 10 hours at a maximum. They know when their kids are acting out and they know when their kids are going through a phase. They’re the ones who can make the right call here for what type of doctors their kids should go to and what type of therapy their children need.”

So, what motivates the Left to ban conversion therapy?

“They want to eliminate it because it is a real political battle, especially on the gender identity front,” he said. “They know the numbers that everyone else in the scientific community knows, which is that 94 percent of boys who are gender dysphoric and are allowed to go through natural puberty end up having their gender dysphoria dispensed and identify with their birth sex. They know that, but that’s harmful to their narrative that it’s an immutable trait and that it can never be changed. They want to get as many of these young kids on the puberty blockers and on the cross-sex hormones as possible. It’s a really nefarious agenda and now you have big pharma getting in on it. You have an entire industry profiting off of gender dysphoric children and adults.”

The Iowa Standard is a free online news source so we can reach as many people as possible. But we need to raise money! We are asking our readers to help support us as a news alternative entering 2020. If you could, please consider showing a sign of support to The Iowa Standard by making a contribution here.  Or, you can use Venmo and make a contribution to @Iowa-Standard-2018. 

You could also send a check to:
PO Box 112
Sioux Center, IA 51250

Author: Jacob Hall

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