In a chilling court decision that portends increasing attacks on religious liberty and parental authority, a judge in Ohio removed a teenage girl from the custody of her parents because the parents would not support their daughter’s desire to take testosterone hormone treatments to “transition” to a male. Custody of this 17-year-old girl has been granted to her grandparents who are encouraging her transgender quest.
Equally troubling as the loss of custody, is that the Ohio prosecutor and the girl’s attorney argued in court that the parents’ opposition was based on their Christian faith, claiming such beliefs were not a valid reason for denying their daughter such life-altering hormones. The parents were criticized for having their daughter meet with a Christian therapist and sending their daughter to a Catholic school where she was forced to wear skirts and use her given name rather than the male name she had chosen.
However, the parents’ attorney argued that their objection to their daughter pursuing a sex change was based on science, as well as faith. Numbers of doctors and experts have raised the alarm that sex change hormones and surgery have dire, life-long, often irreversible consequences.
It was even acknowledged by the judge that the girl did not struggle with gender identity issues until the age of 16, when she began to suffer from depression. It was then that her concerned parents sought treatment for her depression at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where a doctor claimed she had gender dysphoria and began to push the “treatment” of cross-sex hormones, which would cause infertility.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital opened an adolescent transgender clinic a few years ago. Since then, the number of children they’ve diagnosed as “transgender” has dramatically increased – from 115 in 2015, to 965 in January, 2018. Shockingly, 100% of the children treated by this Transgender Program have been deemed “candidates for continued gender treatment.” Similar malfeasance is occurring across the country where medical “specialists” are pushing children into believing they’re transgendered.
Dr. Paul McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital has stated that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits psychological treatment and that those who encourage sexual reassignment surgery are promoting a mental disorder. Further, a recent study reveals that the suicide rate among transgendered people who had reassignment surgery is 20 times higher than the suicide rate among non-transgender people. In addition, studies from Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic showed that of children who had expressed transgender feelings, 70%-80% over time “spontaneously lost those feelings.”
It is such facts which led these parents to deny testosterone drugs to their daughter. A teenager is incapable of weighing such risks and implications. Parents, by biblical mandate and United States law, have the responsibility and authority to make such medical decisions for their children. That is, until activist judges began ignoring that parental right and duty.
LGBTQ ideology now trumps basic biological, scientific facts and increasingly is usurping not only parental authority, but even church authority.
Recently, the Metro City Church in Riverview, Michigan, (metro Detroit area), has come under fire from state legislators for their efforts to help teenagers struggling with their sexuality and gender. The church hosted an “Unashamed Identity Workshop,” for girls, with this stated purpose: “Through thoughtful, relevant, and biblical counsel, we will help your girl be unashamed of her true sexual identity given to her by God at birth.”
The church has since been inundated with verbal attacks and death threats from the “tolerant” left, making the false claim that the church is pushing “conversion therapy.” Michigan representative Jon Hoadley (D- Kalamazoo), a declared homosexual, has sponsored a bill to ban efforts to help those struggling with gender confusion to embrace their true biological gender – referred to as “conversion therapy.” Hoadley, along with Rep. Adam Zemke (D) and Rep. Darrin Camilleri (D) are also calling on state Attorney General Bill Schuette to launch an official probe into the Metro City Church, claiming the church is “perpetuating a fraud.”
Family Research Council’s Travis Weber warns, “This should be a wakeup call for any Christian across our country who holds to historic biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality. Those who think they can stay out of the fray … are mistaken. Maybe not today, but at some point, you will have to take a stand for what you believe.”
Click here to contactMichigan representatives Jon Hoadley, Adam Zemke, and Darrin Camilleri.
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