On Friday, I listened to a completely one-sided story on NPR agitating against Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s order, now paused by litigation, that state agencies investigate transgender treatment and surgery for minors as potential child abuse.
Before I get started on this, let me repeat what I’ve said many times before: there have always been transgender people and nobody should hate them or wish them harm. But if you back out the people infected by social contagion or pushed into it by self-interested educators and medical professionals, and you also back out the children who grow out of gender dysphoria by the time they’re 18, there are very few genuine cases left.
NPR interviewed Texas parents with transgender children. The interview was conducted in hushed reverential tones with supposedly saintly persecuted parents, with the interviewer saying “Oh, my God” and “Wow” to emphasize how cruel the state was being to them. Total affectation on the part of the interviewer, and not one word about why the state wanted to investigate the transgender industry in Texas for child abuse in the first place. This was not reporting. It was what has come to be called ‘advocacy journalism’, the idea that journalists should no longer report the news but, instead, try to change the world into a left-wing Utopia. A story on NBC on the same subject was just as one-sided and a story on CBS, aside from one brief quote from a Texas lawmaker in favor of the investigations, was also lop-sided. I’m immediately suspicious when major news outlets won’t tell me both sides of the story and I have to go hunt for it. I’m also suspicious when transgender activists, some of whom expressly admit to being communists, attempt to shut downanybody trying to present the other side of the story, as happened in Texas recently.
The parents in the NPR story said “they’re just doing what they can to keep their children happy and healthy, and that includes gender-affirming care.” One of their children had “been up all night crying, having nightmares” over the investigations. Another child announced preferred pronouns one day at the age of 7. One parent said they were just providing “medical care” to their children and, if they were to leave the state, “thousands and thousands of families” in Texas wouldn’t have anybody to speak for them. This all sounds coached and way too pat. Thousands and thousands of families? Medical care? A whole sob story about children ages 3-7 to whom the law does not even apply? Children that age aren’t given drugs or surgery, but NPR uses them as props anyway to campaign against a state order involving drugs and surgery for older children.
So what is the other side of the story? The Texas Attorney General found that sex change drugs and surgery can constitute child abuse under the law because they can cause “mental or emotional injury to a child that results in an observable and material impairment in the child’s growth, development, or psychological functioning.” They can also cause physical injury and sterilization. Therefore, people like parents and medical professionals with a duty of care are legally obligated to make reasonable efforts to prevent these injuries to minors. “Child abuse” is defined broadly under state law and you don’t need a separate statute if parents start beating their kids with a board instead of a stick. It’s undeniable that people who try to switch genders have a higher risk of suicide and psychiatric hospitalization. It’s also undeniable there are many kinds of age restrictions in the law to protect children. We don’t let them drink or drive, nor should we let them have permanent life-altering mutilating surgery when they are too young to understand all the consequences. The minute they turn 18, fine, that’s a different story.
Back to the poor persecuted parents interviewed on NPR. There’s not one word in that story about them following a protocol or consulting a variety of experts to see how to handle the situation appropriately. Did they investigate when children typically grow out of gender dysphoria? Not a word about this. In the story, the parents just jumped right to so-called “medical care”. So maybe that IS child abuse for causing physical and emotional injuries to their children which the parents have a legal – and I would say, moral – duty to prevent. I don’t know the facts of these individual cases because NPR failed to tell us more about the choices these parents made, so we could evaluate their actions intelligently instead of just having transgender propaganda shoved down our throats.
The NBC story noted the Texas legislature failed to pass a bill last year that would have criminalized transgender drugs and surgery for minors. That may be true, but it’s also true the legislature did not take away the state’s discretion that lawmakers previously gave to decide what constitutes “child abuse”. This will all play out in the courts which is fine because, the more the transgender-industrial complex and the avowedly left-wing apparatus supporting it are put under the microscope, the less people are going to like this entire enterprise.
