Tracks for the Journey

Tracks for the Journey will improve your well-being with practical insight and inspiration from progressive Christian spirituality, positive psychology, and justice ethics. Your host is Dr. Larry Payne, a minister, chaplain, and counselor with more than 45 years experience helping people with discoveries on their journey of life. He believes well-being is founded on balanced self-awareness, quality relationships, and active spirituality. Access all the resources of the Network at www.tracksforthejourney.com.

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Tracks for the Journey

Affirming Transgender Care

July 21, 2023 • Larry Payne • Episode 53

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Transgendered youth and their parents have rights to determine their gender identity. But laws across America are trying to take away this fundamental freedom. Join me to understand the issues and the reasons this is bad for them, for you, and for the kingdom of God. Let’s affirm transgender rights in this episode of Tracks for the Journey.

For more resources www.tracksforthejourney.com

Sources include:
Kayden Asher, “This is not how you fix things.” The Imprint Newsletter, March 13, 2022. https://imprintnews.org/opinion/testimony-from-transgender-teen-in-texas/63370

American Psychiatric Association, “What is Gender Dsyphoria?” https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria

Jack Turban, “The Evidence for Trans Youth Gender-Affirming Care.” www.psychologytoday.com.

United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, “Born Free and Equal.” https://www.ohchr.org

Adam Nagourney and Jeremy W. Peters, “How a Campaign against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives.” New York Times, April 17, 2023.

Laurel Wamsley, “A Guide to Gender Identity Terms.” https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/996319297/gender-identity-pronouns-expression-guide-lgbtq

Frankie de La Cretaz, “Being Nikki Hiltz.” https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a44201663/nikki-hiltz-first-nonbinary-usatf-champion

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Kayden is a young adult living in Texas. He told Texas lawmakers his story of seeking mental health. He said, “I am a transgender man. I came out for the first time at 13 but knew something was different about me since I was a 4 or 5 old girl. Growing up I acted the part I was told to. When puberty hit and my body started to change, I began to hate myself. I could feel that there was something wrong with the way I looked. I didn’t even know there was a word for what I was feeling until I did my own research. That’s when I realized I was trans… When I was 15, I met another trans person at my school and decided to finally come out to everyone. When I did, my assistant principal called my father and outed me without my permission. That day, when I got home, we got in a huge fight that led to me being held down on my bed so I wouldn’t move while my father yelled at me…That day I tried again to kill myself…I went to a mental hospital for the fourth time within two months.. At 17 I decided to start testosterone. .. Since starting, my mental health has improved more than I ever imagined. I was finally able to get off my antidepressants and only be on ADHD meds… I am and always will be a man… When we say that gender-affirming care isn’t child abuse we mean it. Without it, I would be dead.” (Fix Things)

Hey friends. I’m Larry Payne, host of Tracks for the Journey, a channel dedicated to your well-being. Controversy about transgender youth and medical care have swirled across America this year. We’ve heard the words of one young person, so let’s explore the psychology, politics, and theology in this important issue. I believe affirming care for transgendered youth is an ethical and moral imperative.

Texas has a new law banning gender-affirming treatment of transgendered youth. Several other states have similar laws now. However, the facts about transgender transition and affirming care are not understood by most people. In reality, gender-affirming care has helped thousands of youth establish their gender identity in the past. The treatment is prescribed for a recognized mental condition known as Gender Dysphoria. This condition, recognized for many years by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Association, means that a person is suffering acute distress living with their assigned natal gender identity (APA, “Gender identity”). With Kayden, she had female organs but sensed deeply she was more comfortable living with a masculine lifestyle. Such strong and persistent negative emotional reaction to assigned gender identity may be is expressed in many ways, such as role-playing, clothing, hair styles, sports, or sex organ disgust. This distress emerges from within the person’s self-understanding during childhood and teenage years and often results in social isolation, poor school performance, anxiety, depression, or suicidal thoughts. It is not the result of family patterns, reading library books, or watching social media influencers. As Kayden testified, her distress began when she was in elementary school with no apparent external factors. Treatment protocols in place for many years include teenagers receiving careful psychological evaluation and hormone blockers under the care of trained medical specialists. Just as this courageous young adult said, the effectiveness and benefit of gender-affirming care changed her life. This positive outcome of treatment has been documented by numerous medical studies (Turban, “Evidence”). Tragically, the medical evidence and positive personal testimony offered to legislators across America has been ignored and harmful laws enacted.

These laws should shame caring people for several reasons. First, this law harms kids emotionally and physically. It conveys a toxic message of shame from the State. We support schools which punish the bullies who shame and abuse innocent students, yet the legal shame fostered by these laws will be far more damaging than a few comments from a classroom bully. Psychologically fragile kids, struggling to define themselves at the most basic level, are now further stigmatized by Big Brother. Parents who have given their best emotional and financial support are sidelined and overruled. The best medical and psychological facts are ignored. This harmful law threatens to increase the number of suicides among transgendered teens, which is already higher than the average. Stigmatizing a psychological condition and forbidding effective treatment is exactly the opposite of how to care for transgendered kids and their families. More harm will come to transgendered children from this movement than can be estimated today.

Second, the laws are a result of a political agenda driven by cultural bias. A well-organized and funded agenda from right-wing strategists seized on the issue to gain political power. The effort is one of several to promote the Christian Nationalism movement (Times, “Campaign”.) This political power-play seeks to marginalize non-Christians, the LGBTIA community, BIPOC persons, and certain ethnic groups. Labeling transgender persons as deviant promotes this unamerican agenda. Being noncisgendered is legally and morally acceptable in modern American society now and must remain so. The rights of LGBTIA human beings are enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights which states the incontestable truth, “All human beings are born free and equal in human rights” (UNHROHC, “Born Free”). Have we come to the place where our laws ignore human rights affirmed across the globe, imitating autocratic governments that squash fundamental freedoms, reject diversity, and criminalize those deemed unfit to build their oppressive empires?

Third, it is a gross act of abuse to refuse to provide treatment for a medical condition. Parents go to jail for neglect when they do not seek medical treatment for a child. Isn’t this law a cruel act of neglect to deny effective treatment when a child is in acute distress emotionally from gender dysphoria? To make it worse, the State has mobilized government agencies to investigate and charge parents and medical professionals who are acting in the best interest of the children. Families have fled to avoid this injustice. These parents have only the best interest in providing treatment for their child. This ban makes the state nothing short of an accessory to abuse.

Finally, the law is a betrayal of spiritual values. Christian teaching is clear that God imparts to every person a fundamental capacity to determine their fate. When this freedom of conscience is abridged by the state for no crime against society, then the dignity of that person is dismissed. The work to understand and adjust to one’s gender identity is a journey of authenticity that is pleasing to God. Jesus affirmed that each of us should love our Self as a foundation for life (Mark 12:31). To make illegal or immoral the quest for teenagers to know the truth of their personhood is an act of deep injustice that cannot be squared with the universal love of God for each individual. Considering the words of the Creation narrative that says, “male and female God created them (Genesis 1:27),” some have misunderstood this as an absolute proclamation of gender identities, rather than a metaphorical description rooted in a pre-scientific society. The reality is that gender identity is not a simple binary based on sexual organs, but instead a mental sense of who one is in their culture and behavior (Guide). We should note that Jesus accepted to the kingdom of heaven those who were eunuchs by nature or choice, a noncisgenered condition (Matthew 19:12). Turning to the merciful truth of a beloved hymn one might ask, “Is the truth of ‘just as I am’ focused on one’s genitals, or one’s soul?”

Nikki Hiltz is an elite pro athlete in contention for Olympic gold. Born female, she recalls making the wish on her sixth birthday that she would wake up as a boy the next morning. Her gender identity struggle continued as she grew to adulthood and world-class runner. After serious surgery and weeks of recovery, she took a bold step to clarify the issues, coming out as a non-binary trans competitor and telling the emotional certainty brought a new level of success in the sport. As Frankie de la Cretaz reported in Runners World magazine, “So much is asked of trailblazers. Hiltz’s very existence requires them to hold many things at once: an athlete and an advocate, existing both within and outside of the gender binary; a self-identified king racing in the women’s division. There is joy in crossing the finish line as the first person doing it in a body like theirs.”

For many reasons, I believe banning gender-affirming treatment offered by effective, well-established medical and psychological practices is a tragic, state-sponsored, abuse of transgendered youth. I plan to support every effort to overturn this toxic law for the good of children who need treatment, not stigmatizing. Please join me in extending the love of God and basic human rights to every youth who seeks to know their identity in an authentic journey to well-being.

CITED

Kayden Asher, “This is not how you fix things.” The Imprint Newsletter, March 13, 2022. https://imprintnews.org/opinion/testimony-from-transgender-teen-in-texas/63370