Southern Baptists passed a resolution June 10 opposing the administration\u2019s efforts to \u201cvalidate transgender identity as morally praiseworthy.\u201d Messengers at the annual meeting affirmed what the resolution describes as \u201cGod\u2019s good design that gender identity is determined by one\u2019s biological sex and not by one\u2019s self-perception.\u201d The SBC resolution upholds the creation of \u201ctwo distinct and complementary sexes\u201d while opposing such procedures as gender reassignment surgery and cross-sex hormone therapies.<\/p>\n
Just days earlier, the latest push to elevate transgenderism as some sort of civil right came in a May 30, 2014, ruling within the Department of Health and Human Services allowing Medicare to pay for so-called gender reassignment surgery. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, also in May, stated he is \u201copen\u201d to lifting the ban on transgender military service, including taxpayer-funded sex change operations for those who serve.<\/p>\n
In a June 12 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal , Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins Hospital who holds the title of university distinguished service professor of psychiatry, argued that \u201cpolicy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or to the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment, and prevention.\u201d<\/p>\n
McHugh, who was psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins from 1975-2001, noted that \u201cthe idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken — it does not correspond with physical reality\u201d and it \u201ccan lead to grim psychological outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n
McHugh recounted that Johns Hopkins — the first U.S. medical center to do sex-change surgery in the 1960s — conducted a study during the 1970s of patients who had undergone the procedure there. Most were satisfied with the immediate results, but McHugh noted that \u201ctheir subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn\u2019t have the surgery.\u201d The hospital discontinued the surgery. [1]<\/p>\n
In 2011, McHugh noted, a long-term Swedish study revealed that, beginning about 10 years after gender reassignment surgery, mental difficulties ensue. Transgendered people who have had this surgery are 20 times more likely to die from suicide than the non-transgendered.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or visa versa,\u201d McHugh wrote. \u201cRather, they become feminized men or masculinized women.\u201d Transgender surgery solves nothing. In fact, in Dr. McHugh\u2019s view, it collaborates with and promotes a mental disorder.<\/p>\n
Gender confusion has always been with us. McHugh cited studies by Vanderbilt University and London\u2019s Portman Clinic that tracked children who reported such confusion and found that 70 to 80 percent of them later lost those feelings. There are strategies and therapies for those whose transgendered feelings persist; increasingly, however, our culture frowns on parental or professional attempts to encourage young people away from these proclivities.<\/p>\n
The Bible affirms God\u2019s creation of male and female and that both are created in God\u2019s image. Biological gender cannot be reassigned; rendering \u201csex change\u201d is biologically impossible. Studies demonstrate that attempts to do so promote mental and psychological confusion.<\/p>\n
Southern Baptists, in their resolution, are correct to \u201cextend love and compassion to those whose sexual self-understanding is shaped by a distressing conflict between their biological sex and their gender identity\u201d and to \u201cinvite all transgender persons to trust in Christ and to experience renewal in the Gospel.\u201d<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Penna Dexter is a regular panelist and frequent guest host of Point of View , a nationally syndicated issues-oriented talk radio program.<\/p>\n
===============<\/p>\n
1. Further information:<\/p>\n
“Transgender Surgery Isn\u2019t the Solution: A drastic physical change doesn\u2019t address underlying psycho-social troubles”
\nPaul McHugh, Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2014.
\n< http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solution-1402615120 ><\/p>\n
The government and media alliance advancing the transgender cause has gone into overdrive in recent weeks. On May 30, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review board ruled that Medicare can pay for the \u201creassignment\u201d surgery sought by the transgendered \u2014 those who say that they don\u2019t identify with their biological sex. Earlier last month Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that he was \u201copen\u201d to lifting a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. Time magazine, seeing the trend, ran a cover story for its June 9 issue called \u201cThe Transgender Tipping Point: America\u2019s next civil rights frontier.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken \u2014 it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.<\/p>\n
The transgendered suffer a disorder of \u201cassumption\u201d like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature \u2014 namely one\u2019s maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.<\/p>\n
With body dysmorphic disorder, an often socially crippling condition, the individual is consumed by the assumption \u201cI\u2019m ugly.\u201d These disorders occur in subjects who have come to believe that some of their psycho-social conflicts or problems will be resolved if they can change the way that they appear to others. Such ideas work like ruling passions in their subjects\u2019 minds and tend to be accompanied by a solipsistic argument.<\/p>\n
For the transgendered, this argument holds that one\u2019s feeling of \u201cgender\u201d is a conscious, subjective sense that, being in one\u2019s mind, cannot be questioned by others. The individual often seeks not just society\u2019s tolerance of this \u201cpersonal truth\u201d but affirmation of it. Here rests the support for \u201ctransgender equality,\u201d the demands for government payment for medical and surgical treatments, and for access to all sex-based public roles and privileges.<\/p>\n
With this argument, advocates for the transgendered have persuaded several states \u2014 including California, New Jersey and Massachusetts \u2014 to pass laws barring psychiatrists, even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor. That government can intrude into parents\u2019 rights to seek help in guiding their children indicates how powerful these advocates have become.<\/p>\n
How to respond? Psychiatrists obviously must challenge the solipsistic concept that what is in the mind cannot be questioned. Disorders of consciousness, after all, represent psychiatry\u2019s domain; declaring them off-limits would eliminate the field. Many will recall how, in the 1990s, an accusation of parental sex abuse of children was deemed unquestionable by the solipsists of the \u201crecovered memory\u201d craze.<\/p>\n
You won\u2019t hear it from those championing transgender equality, but controlled and follow-up studies reveal fundamental problems with this movement. When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London\u2019s Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings. Some 25% did have persisting feelings; what differentiates those individuals remains to be discerned.<\/p>\n
We at Johns Hopkins University \u2014 which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into \u201csex-reassignment surgery\u201d \u2014 launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as \u201csatisfied\u201d by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn\u2019t have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a \u201csatisfied\u201d but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.<\/p>\n
It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study \u2014 up to 30 years \u2014 followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.<\/p>\n
There are subgroups of the transgendered, and for none does \u201creassignment\u201d seem apt. One group includes male prisoners like Pvt. Bradley Manning, the convicted national-security leaker who now wishes to be called Chelsea. Facing long sentences and the rigors of a men\u2019s prison, they have an obvious motive for wanting to change their sex and hence their prison. Given that they committed their crimes as males, they should be punished as such; after serving their time, they will be free to reconsider their gender.<\/p>\n
Another subgroup consists of young men and women susceptible to suggestion from \u201ceverything is normal\u201d sex education, amplified by Internet chat groups. These are the transgender subjects most like anorexia nervosa patients: They become persuaded that seeking a drastic physical change will banish their psycho-social problems. \u201cDiversity\u201d counselors in their schools, rather like cult leaders, may encourage these young people to distance themselves from their families and offer advice on rebutting arguments against having transgender surgery. Treatments here must begin with removing the young person from the suggestive environment and offering a counter-message in family therapy.<\/p>\n
Then there is the subgroup of very young, often prepubescent children who notice distinct sex roles in the culture and, exploring how they fit in, begin imitating the opposite sex. Misguided doctors at medical centers including Boston\u2019s Children\u2019s Hospital have begun trying to treat this behavior by administering puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous \u2014 even though the drugs stunt the children\u2019s growth and risk causing sterility. Given that close to 80% of such children would abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated, these medical interventions come close to child abuse. A better way to help these children: with devoted parenting.<\/p>\n
At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. \u201cSex change\u201d is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Dr. McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is the author of \u201cTry to Remember: Psychiatry\u2019s Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind\u201d (Dana Press, 2008).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Southern Baptists passed a resolution June 10 opposing the administration\u2019s efforts to \u201cvalidate transgender identity as morally praiseworthy.\u201d Messengers at the annual meeting affirmed what the resolution describes as \u201cGod\u2019s good design that gender identity is determined by one\u2019s biological sex and not by one\u2019s self-perception.\u201d The SBC resolution upholds the creation of \u201ctwo distinct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3510,3509,1375,124,1311,3508],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6036"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}