Hands Off Our Kids!

(Disclaimer: Some of the medical references are quoted verbatim from an article by Ben Johnson that appeared in The Washington Stand.)

When you are little, Halloween is a holiday that you circle in red on your calendar… and why not? On this very special day, you get to knock on the door of a complete stranger and – after you say the magical words “Treat or Treat” – they are duty bound to fork over free candy to you. Sometimes, it’s a single piece. Other times, it’s a handful of goodies.

I have five siblings and when we went Trick or Treating as kids, we had a “system.” We knew which house at the corner of Greenleigh Court and Somerset Avenue gave away the full-size Hershey bars. We also knew that Mr. Oakford, the second-generation owner of Aunt Charlotte’s candy store, handed out freshly made candy apples. So, we made sure that we “hit’ those places before heading home to dump our full bags of candy on the kitchen table, after which we went back out again and again and again.

Like they say on the shampoo bottle: wash, rinse, and repeat. Some years, we gathered so much candy that it lasted until Spring, when our chocolate-laden Easter baskets replenished our supply.

However, collecting free candy wasn’t the only Halloween perk. Once a year, we got to dress up as a gunslinger for boys and a fairy princess for girls. My favorite costume was a matador’s outfit that my mother sewed by hand. My two older brothers wore it first, but it was still in good shape by the time I grew into it… and it sure was a lot better than my best friend John’s clown costume with the plastic mask (what was his mother thinking?)

Guess what? At age 64, I no longer dress up for Halloween nor do I go door-to-door begging for free candy. Some things you just outgrow, I guess.

That, my friends, was the overall finding of a new and very exhaustive study of supposedly transgender children. Conducted over the course of 15 years by a team of researchers in the Netherlands – not exactly a bastion of conservatism – the results surprised virtually everyone.

The study tracked 2,772 adolescents from the age of 11 to 26, asking them to rate their mental and physical health every three years. The Youth and Adult Self-Report (YSR) asked participants to assess how much they agree with the statement, “I wish to be of the opposite sex.” A team of researchers then pored over the data from the Tracking Adolescent’s Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS) to measure “gender non-contentedness.”

Let’s take a “deep dive” into the actual findings…

The study, which was published in the peer-reviewed Archives of Sexual Behavior, showed that 78% of the participants never experienced gender dysphoria, compared to just 11% who reported gender “non-contentedness.” That’s a pretty wide margin if I must say so myself.

But wait… there’s more! “The prevalence [of gender non-contentedness] decreased with age and was [only] 4% at the last follow-up (around age 26).” That, my friends, is a decrease of 64%.

In other words, almost all sexually confused children and teenagers grew out of it and were content with their biological sex by the time their brains were fully formed and they entered adulthood. “Researchers also found that adolescents were 950% more likely to feel better about their sex than to feel worse: 19% of participants felt decreased “gender non-contentedness,” as compared with only 2% whose feelings deepened over time.”

No matter how you slice it, those results are significant. More than anything else, they show that – left alone to sort things out – almost all gender-confused kids came around not only to accept their biological sex, but to embrace it.

“This new study simply confirms what has been known for over a decade,” said Jay Richards, PhD, director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the Heritage Foundation. Dr. Richards also reported that in 2013, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) “noted that most kids who experience distress with their sexed bodies resolve those feelings after they pass through natural puberty.”

Admittedly, the Dutch study didn’t break any new ground. On the contrary, it reinforced the findings of similar studies conducted in 2016 and 2021. “The few longitudinal studies that have been conducted in a clinical setting found low persistence rates of early childhood gender dysphoric feelings into adolescence and adulthood,” wrote the researchers.

Experts say the transgender industry’s early medical intervention actually deepens and prolongs feelings of gender dysphoria that would otherwise go away on their own. “This is what makes ‘gender-affirming’ (that is, sex-denying) medical interventions on minors such a medical atrocity,” explained Richards. “These interventions fast track troubled kids onto a path to sterilization and lifelong medical problems.”

Make that sterilization and lifelong medical problems that are often permanent and 100% preventable!

Lost fertility isn’t the only casualty of so-called “gender-affirming hormonal treatment” known as GAHT. “There is no research into long-term harms, but some evidence suggests decreased IQ and brittle bones,” wrote Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “Permanent sterility is guaranteed for minors who go through full hormonal ‘transition.’ Sexual dysfunction appears to be extremely common as well.”

According to Sapir, GAHT also causes “excruciating genital growth, vaginal atrophy and tearing, and much higher risk for cancer and cardiovascular disease.”

A growing number of young people subjected to transgender ideology at pediatric gender clinics say they wish they had known how common, and fleeting, feelings of transgenderism can be. “Young people, particularly young women, are very susceptible to social contagion. They are the most susceptible demographic,” said Prisha Mosley, a detransitioner who now works with the Independent Women’s Forum.

Mosely said that she suffered from mental illness for several years before having radical surgery to outwardly transition from a female to a male. Tragically, her pleas for help were largely ignored and took 10 years for her to be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. “But as soon as I heard about gender ideology online and expressed to my doctors that I felt I was born in the wrong body, I was immediately fast-tracked,” Mosely said. “It was less than two years to go from hormones to a double mastectomy and transition.”

Now, Mosely wishes she had waited until her gender confusion passed. Instead, aided and abated by LGBTQ advocates pushing their radical social agenda, her body was carved up by supposed medical professionals.

“This new Dutch study reminds us that children are being subjected to experimental medical interventions to treat what, in most cases, is a temporary psychological state,” summarized Richards. “This is a grotesque perversion of the medical maxim to ‘first, do no harm.’”

Folks, if a minor is too young to smoke, drink, drive, or serve in the military, they have no business deciding their gender. On the contrary, parents, teachers, and doctors alike should reinforce the simple biological fact that there are only two sexes as determined by your chromosomes at birth. Any children who think otherwise should be counseled… not treated with puberty blockers and bodily mutilation.