Under the leadership of President Joe Biden, the enthusiasm of the U.S. administration for LGBT+ “rights” has no brakes, not even in front of the little ones. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs released last week a document entitled Gender Affirming Care and Young People. On the same day, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration issued the document Gender-Affirming Care Is Trauma-Informed Care.
Both documents encourage gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatments for minors. The NCTSN in particular mentions a number of “appropriate treatments” for transgender adolescents, including “top surgery” in order to create “a typically male chest shape” and “bottom surgery”, which involves alteration of genitals or reproductive organs.
The NCTSN statement reads: “In transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents, early care for gender affirmation is critical to overall health and well-being,” as it allows the child or adolescent to “increase their confidence in the health care system.” The procedure may include interventions “such as puberty blockers” or “hormones” that allow gender reassignment.
The NCTSN document goes to great lengths to assure the public that various “gender affirmation” methodologies such as surgery and hormone replacement would involve neither “maltreatment” nor “child neglect.” This is most likely a response to the Texas ban on the this type of treatment. “There is no scientifically valid research showing negative impacts of gender-affirming treatments,” the NCTSN adds.
Biden puts his face on it
President Joe Biden himself has taken full responsibility for such “innovations,” even dedicating an entire video to LGBT+ issues. Addressing parents of transgender children, Biden states that “affirming your child’s identity is one of the most powerful things you can do to keep them safe.”
The President then explains that his administration will counteract laws of individual US states that limit the ability of male-born transgender athletes to compete in women’s competitions. A very heavy choice of field, taken a few days after the case of trans swimmer “Lia” Thomas.
Such laws in place in several states are “just plain wrong” and “hateful,” argues Biden whose administration “fights for transgender equality in schools, on playgrounds, at work, in our armed forces, in our housing and health care systems, everywhere.”
In late March, a Texas judge barred the state from investigating parents who initiate their children into gender transition. Of opposite opinion is the governor of the state, Greg Abbott, who calls those treatments “child abuse” and has ordered child protection services to investigate any reported cases. The website of the Houston Public Media reports that Attorney General Ken Paxton has also issued a legal opinion that comes to the same conclusion.