Ms. Chiles [a therapist] does not question that Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy has some constitutionally sound applications. See Brief for Petitioner 53. She does not take issue with the State’s effort to prohibit what she herself calls “long-abandoned, aversive” physical interventions. Instead, Ms. Chiles stresses that she provides only talk therapy, employing no physical techniques or medications. Yet, she argues, Colorado’s law still applies to her, prescribing what she may say in “voluntary counseling conversations” with her clients. And because that application of the law strikes at the heart of the First Amendment’s protections for free speech, she contends, it warrants considerably more searching scrutiny than the rational-basis review the Tenth Circuit applied in this case or the intermediate-scrutiny review some other lower courts have employed in cases like hers.

I have written two fairly lengthy posts on the subject of these laws, so I’m not sure there’s much more to add except that I strongly believe this was the right decision and long overdue. My first post on the subject was in 2013, when New Jersey passed such a law (and Governor Christie signed it). An excerpt:

It is no use pretending that therapy—and the licensing of therapists by the state—is not at least partly a political endeavor subject to political fashion rather than a science. Nor should therapists be completely unrestricted. For example, therapists are already prohibited from sexual contact with patients—even willing patients, even adult patients—because it is considered inherently exploitative. But the most harmful practices that could be used by conversion therapists (for example, electric shock) could be banned without banning the entire enterprise. And as the articles point out, mainstream therapy organizations have already condemned conversion therapy and do not advocate it.

But apparently none of that would be enough for the advocates of this bill; the therapy itself must be defined by the government as inherently and unfailingly abusive (what’s next, taking children away from parents who don’t applaud and celebrate their gayness?) As the nanny state grows, so will these essentially political moves by the government. This bill opens the door for a host of governmental abuses in which the state dictates the enforcement of politically correct thought through the mechanism of so-called therapy, and therapists become the instruments by which the public is indoctrinated in what is currently politically acceptable and what is verboten.

The present ruling arrests that trend at least somewhat. It is encouraging that even two of the liberal justices voted with the majority.

My other previous post on the subject can be found here. It is about the Colorado law. An excerpt:

I have some retired therapist friends who are Democrats, and a few years ago when I told them that anything other than “gender-affirming” therapy was discouraged or even sometimes banned they were aghast. That’s how quickly the policies have changed, and how radically.

What is banned under the Colorado law is described this way: “efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” That’s pretty darn broad.

The post SCOTUS rules 8-1 against anti-conversion therapy laws as First Amendment violations appeared first on The New Neo.

Mr. Moran, 44, is the pasha of a new power tribe in the capital: the gay men of the Trump administration.

These are the A-Gays. They’re (mostly) out, they’re proud (to work for President Trump) and they have big jobs inside (or alongside) this administration. They wield influence all over town, from the Pentagon to the State Department to the White House to the Kennedy Center. …

The most powerful out gay man in the Trump administration is Mr. Bessent. There are a handful of others in the Treasury Department. Other A-Gays include Tony Fabrizio, the president’s longtime pollster; Trent Morse, an outgoing deputy assistant to the president; Richard Grenell, who was put in charge of the Kennedy Center; and Jacob Helberg, an under secretary of state. These are just some. There are lots of other lesser-known men who make up the tribe.

They’re overwhelmingly white and tend to have a certain kind of look. Close cropped haircuts. Windowpane suits. Golf shorts. They’re not the type to be telling anyone their pronouns or using the word “queer.” And they aren’t the least bit offended that the leader of their party continues to stoke a moral panic about transgender people.

They’re gay. But they’re still Republicans.

There’s no “moral panic” in Trump or the GOP about transgender people. There’s outrage at (a) the insistence on forcing language on people, particularly language that denies biological reality (b) the invasion of biological males into protected female areas such as women’s sports and ladies’ rooms (c) the medical transition of young people, and the negation of parental rights in order to do so (including lies told to parents about suicide among these kids, in order to coerce them into giving consent). I might add – particularly in light of the shooting discussed in the post right below this one – the fact that a significant number of trans people are mentally ill and that should be the emphasis for treatment rather than the medical and/or social transition of teenagers.

What’s more, is the Times article’s author ignorant of the fact that the trans movement feeds off of homophobia, often trying to convince kids who would otherwise enter the gay world as adults that transition is a solution to their own internalized homophobia? Therefore it’s by no means a given that gay people support the trans movement.

Then there’s this:

“The funny thing is, I had a lot of girlfriends who wanted to move here,” said Natalie Winters, the D.C.-based right-wing media darling who is a protégé of Steve Bannon. “They thought the dating scene would be really great, that MAGA would bring in a whole wave of, like, you know, eligible, conservative, smart, enterprising men.”

Instead, she said, “everybody’s freaking gay.”

The article is by no means all negative:

“The gay left just can’t handle the fact that President Trump loves the gays,” said Casey Flores, a 34-year-old MAGA gay who moved to Washington in April and started a job at the Kennedy Center as a fund-raiser.

“This idea that Republicans hate gays, that’s just so not the case, as clearly evidenced by all of us,” Mr. Flores said, referring to all of his gay friends who moved to Washington to work for Mr. Trump. “We’re so over it. We just want to help the country.”

Comments I saw from readers are mostly negative – the “all they care about is power” type of thing.

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The following list is not meant to be exhaustive, but its length is an indication of some of the many factors that went into the change. Part of the impetus was that the activist left became far more focused on trans causes because it seemed like the next step after other causes such as gay marriage had been won. Social media has been another huge factor, because the trans movement spreads through the susceptible younger population in that way, particularly among adolescent girls dealing with the conflicts inherent in going through puberty and becoming a woman in an era in which they feel pressured to be sexually active, and are aware – many through internet porn – of some of the more violent and extreme aspects that can become part of sex. Plus, a great many of these young people identifying as trans are gay or lesbian, and are in retreat from that. There’s also an element of some unknown number of older people with various sexual fetishes encouraging and “grooming” the younger ones, particularly online. And of course, there’s money for pharmaceutical companies, therapists, and doctors, particularly when insurance began to cover such interventions.

But there’s a physiological reason, too, which has to do with the way in which puberty affects the body, especially the bodies of biological males. The majority of transitioners today are young females, but it did not used to be that way. Not too long ago, most people identifying as trans were adult biological males who described themselves as having felt from early childhood that they were females, and it was well known that adult transition was especially difficult for those adult men because they had trouble “passing.” Adult women who took testosterone had a somewhat easier time looking like men even if they had started taking male hormones and had their surgeries in adulthood after puberty, because the growth of facial hair, the prominent Adam’s apple, the deepening of the voice, and the gaining of muscle mass as a result of testosterone in a female is significantly easier to achieve than the taking away of those things in a male once they have already occurred post-puberty. Testosterone often has a more potent masculinizing effect than estrogen has as a feminizer, especially for post-pubescent adults. And both can be dangerous drugs for the opposite sex to take, although that fact tends to be glossed over by many trans activists and trans activist doctors.

That latter goal – making the adult male-to-female trans person’s voice higher, getting rid of male facial hair, and doing away with the heavier musculature of a man – wasn’t really convincingly accomplished by most biological males taking estrogen post-puberty. Once vocal cords have thickened in a post-pubescent male, they don’t thin to female proportions even with estrogen. Once the jaw has grown and male facial features are set, it ordinarily takes heavy-duty plastic surgery to change things and even then the face often retains a certain masculine quality. And a while back, the vast majority of people identifying as trans were adult men who wanted to transition to female.

There also was a growing notion – although not supported by research (see this, for example) – that suicide in young people with body dysmorphia could be prevented through early medical intervention. And so the idea of having childhood medical treatment with puberty blockers and then hormones, followed in many cases by early “top” surgeries (for girls; otherwise known as double mastectomies) and sometimes (but less often) by early bottom surgeries for both sexes, became more and more common, more demanded, and more accepted for a while in the medical establishment. In addition, many websites began to advise teens on what to say to authorities in order to be greenlit for medical transition (threatening suicide works, even if a person isn’t really suicidal), making it relatively easy for children of both sexes to take puberty blockers and sex hormones, and to undergo irreversible surgeries.

It is therefore sadly ironic that, for girls and post-pubescent women, taking testosterone is relatively good at causing irreversible physical changes that will enable them to more easily pass as males (much better than taking estrogen works for post-pubescent males wanting to pass as females), because girls who change their minds and de-transition later on find that even after stopping the testosterone they don’t go back to their previous selves and that they now sometimes have trouble “passing” as females, their actual biological sex.

It is a tragic situation, enabled by the left and the supposed health professions, and that is often true even for girls who have not had surgery. To watch de-transitioner videos and hear their deep voices and listen to them talk about permanent changes in their genitalia, their prominent Adam’s apples, their hair loss, and their wider jaws, is to see something both sad and infuriating. And the people to be infuriated with are the members of the medical and therapy professions who allowed this to happen.

The dangers are obvious and not always or even usually told to these young people, and certainly often not well-understood by them even if they hear them. Informed consent is not possible at those young ages. And many adolescents, especially the girls with late onset gender dysphoria, actually are suffering from other mental disorders such as what used to be known as Asperger’s syndrome and is now known as being “on the autism spectrum.”

The surgeries themselves – difficult and problematic at best – also can have special problems when done early, after puberty blockers have been given. Apparently, it turns out that going through normal puberty is usually vital for psychosexual development. To be blunt, with the taking of puberty blockers, many of these young people never develop normally to the point of having orgasms and later cannot do so even when taken off the blockers. Even with “just” hormones, there can be fertility problems and bone density problems, and even cardiovascular problems. To be blunt again, biological boys who have been medically blocked from going through puberty usually don’t have enough penile material to accomplish bottom surgery (the creation of a fake vagina) in the usual way it’s done for adults. I could go on, but I think you get the idea without my getting even more graphic.

Adults can be assumed to have at least the possibility of informed consent, but that simply isn’t true for teenagers. And the parents of those children are often told by health professionals that if they don’t consent to the medical treatment, their children are likely to kill themselves. Even the most reluctant parents sometimes consent when they hear that.

Then we had the backlash of states banning the surgical procedures for minors. Some also ban hormone therapy for minors, as well. These laws predictably met with fierce resistance from the left and trans activists, for obvious reasons. Leftist “progress” is not supposed to be rolled back in this way. But SCOTUS has finally spoken, and has upheld the right of states to ban these “treatments.”

The post SCOTUS says it’s okay for a state to block the medical transition of children. But why did we get to the point of allowing medical transition of children in the first place? appeared first on The New Neo.

Ontario’s top court has ruled the province must cover the cost of a penile-sparing vaginoplasty for a transgender resident who does not identify as exclusively female or male and who wishes to have both genitalia.

In a unanimous decision released this week, a three-judge panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal confirmed a lower court’s ruling that the novel phallus-preserving surgery qualifies as an insured service under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. …

In a letter accompanying the request, her doctor said that because K.S. is “not completely on the ‘feminine’ end of the spectrum” it was important for her to have a vagina while maintaining her penis, adding that the Crane Center for Transgender Surgery in Austin, Tx.,”has an excellent reputation” for gender-affirming surgery, “and especially with these more complicated procedures.”

I have heard of this sort of surgery before, as well as a trend for surgery that obliterates the genitalia entirely.

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Kaley Chiles is a Christian counselor in Colorado. When the state passed a law forcing mental health professionals to advance radical gender ideology, she challenged it. Now, the Supreme Court has agreed to review the case — in what could bring a landmark ruling for free speech.

“The government has no business censoring private conversations between clients and counselors, nor should a counselor be used as a tool to impose the government’s biased views on her clients,” said Kristen Waggoner, CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom — which is representing Chiles — in a news release.

Chiles challenged Colorado’s law banning so-called “conversion therapy” in 2022, according to The Hill, saying it hindered her efforts to assist those with “same-sex attractions or gender identity confusion” who “prioritize their faith above their feelings.” She “never promises that she can solve” these issues but works to help clients “accept the bodies that God has given them and find peace.” Chiles sought an injunction, citing the law’s violation of her First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

The 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against Chiles, but in November, her attorneys petitioned the Supreme Court to consider the case, according to SCOTUSblog.

ADF said the Colorado law violates Chiles’ freedom of speech by banning counselors from “having any conversation with clients under age 18 that ‘attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.’”

Some “conversion therapists” formerly used harsh methods such as administering electric shocks to patients. But this suit is about a totally different thing: talking to patients under 18 who want to explore all possibilities, including – for example – whether or not their sexual desires are exclusively gay or whether it’s possible for them to live a heterosexual life – and if so, to encourage them towards the latter. Or conversing with teenagers who have encountered pro-transition websites, might have a history of sexual abuse and/or Asperger’s, and who want to sort it all out without going to a gender affirming counselor who will only reinforce the idea of transition as a solution.

I have some retired therapist friends who are Democrats, and a few years ago when I told them that anything other than “gender-affirming” therapy was discouraged or even sometimes banned they were aghast. That’s how quickly the policies have changed, and how radically.

What is banned under the Colorado law is described this way: “efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” That’s pretty darn broad.

The post SCOTUS will be considering a case about what therapists are allowed to say to clients about sexual orientation and sexual identity appeared first on The New Neo.

The majority of gender-confused children grow out of that feeling by the time they are fully grown adults, according to a long-term study.

Researchers in the Netherlands tracked more than 2,700 children from age 11 to their mid-twenties, asking them every three years of feelings about their gender.

Results showed at the start of the research, around one-in-10 children (11 percent) expressed ‘gender non-contentedness’ to varying degrees.

But by age 25, just one-in-25 (4 percent) said they ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ were discontent with their gender.

The researchers concluded: ‘The results of the current study might help adolescents to realize that it is normal to have some doubts about one’s identity and one’s gender identity during this age period and that this is also relatively common.’

Relatively common as well as transient:

The authors said: ‘Gender non-contentedness, while being relatively common during early adolescence, in general decreases with age and appears to be associated with a poorer self-concept and mental health throughout development.’

Back in the olden days – and by that I mean before about 2014, when gender nonconformity and medical intervention weren’t being pushed so hard and hadn’t become trendy – adolescents who had those feelings weren’t told the solution was to take drugs like puberty blockers and hormones, or to remove their genitalia (and try to construct new ones out of parts of the old) and secondary sexual characteristics like breasts. Lo and behold, most of them emerged from adolescence none the worse for wear, sexually mature and with fully functioning body parts. Some of them would be homosexual in orientation and some would be heterosexual, but the vast majority would adjust to whatever sex they had at birth.

There’s a lot more at the link, including charts and maps showing the trends in transgender diagnoses and care in recent years. There’s also this quote, which underlines what I wrote in the title of this post – the fact that we already knew that most adolescents will grow out of their dissatisfaction with their sex and that we have known it for quite some time:

Dr. Jay Richards, director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, told DailyMail.com: ‘We’ve known for over a decade that most kids who experience distress with their sexed bodies resolve those feelings after they pass through natural puberty.

‘Indeed, we can infer from the DSM 5 [2013] and other sources that as many as 88 percent of gender-dysphoric girls and as many as 98 percent of gender-dysphoric boys in previous generations desisted if allowed to go through natural puberty.

‘These two facts make it clear why “gender-affirming care” on minors is such an outrage. It leads, in the end, to sterilization and in many cases to a complete loss of natural sexual function.

‘There is no good evidence that this helps minors long term. Moreover, it medicalizes what could very well be temporary psychological symptoms.

‘History will judge this medicalized “gender-affirming care” on minors as we now judge eugenics and lobotomies.’

Puberty blockers make sure that such children don’t go through “natural puberty,” and then the blockers are followed by opposite-sex hormones which have the additional effect of halting the process of sexual maturity that would be normal for the actual sex of the child and substituting some elements of the sexual characteristics of the opposite sex. The result for many people is that their ability to experience sexual satisfaction is blunted, and they often find it hard to attract partners who are mainstream. Transgender surgery can be a real nightmare as well.

You can find the study at this link.

NOTE: By the way, although I haven’t written much about it, J. K. Rowling has been heroic on this issue and especially on freedom of speech related to the subject.

The post There’s a new study telling us what we already knew: that most adolescents unhappy with their sex grow out of that feeling if you just let them grow up without medical intervention appeared first on The New Neo.

Children will no longer routinely be prescribed puberty blockers at gender identity clinics, NHS England has confirmed.

The decision comes after a review found there was “not enough evidence” they are safe or effective.

Puberty blockers, which pause the physical changes of puberty, will now only be available as part of research.

They will still be available, just not “routinely” from the NHS. I don’t know what percentage of treatment comes at the hands of the NHS – I assume it’s a pretty hefty percentage – but “individual clinicians can still apply to have the drugs funded for patients on a case-by-case basis.” And the 100 minors who are now taking puberty blockers can continue to take them.

Such directives are somewhat simpler in Britain because their health care is more centralized. That centralization isn’t usually a good thing, but it helps in this case.

And not only is there “not enough evidence” that puberty blockers are “safe or effective,” there’s plenty of evidence that they are harmful, including harm to psychosexual development.

The post Brits are limiting puberty blockers in trans treatment appeared first on The New Neo.

?: NYT published a long article today about detransitioners and how the “always affirm” model has destroyed the bodies and lives of many confused children.

Some notable details below. pic.twitter.com/4nrvSgSQqN

— Yang (@AxiomAmerican) February 2, 2024

Is this a result of lawsuits? I think that must be having some effect.

There’s a long way to go, though, towards sanity. And the most fanatical trans activists and their allies on the left will fight it all the way.

The post <i>The New York Times</i> notices that “sudden gender dysphoria” might be a fad-like thing and that the “affirmative” model of treatment might be hurting many young people appeared first on The New Neo.

Kike Ojo-Thompson, a Toronto-based diversity trainer and founder and CEO of the KOJO Institute, told a class of about 200 administrators that Canada is more racist than the United States, according to a lawsuit filed by Richard Bilkszto in April.

Richard Bilkszto, a progressive and principal of Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute and Adult Learning Center, challenged Ojo-Thompson’s assumption by citing Canada’s publicly funded education system and socialized health care, according to the lawsuit and audio obtained by The Free Press. …

[Thompson replied,] “What I’m finding interesting is that, in the middle of this Covid disaster, where the inequities in this fair and equal healthcare system have been properly shown to all of us. . . you and your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on with black people—like, is that what you’re doing, ‘cause I think that’s what you’re doing, but I’m not sure, so I’m going to leave you space to tell me what you’re doing right now,” she responded.

Bilkszto killed himself July 11. Several of his friends noted that he was not doing well and struggled after the public discussion with Ojo-Thompson because he felt his character was assassinated for being labeled a “white supremacist,” The Free Press reported.

Lawsuits could get them right in the pocketbook, which might be where it hurts.

Note the language in the article – Bilkszto “struggled” after the discussion. That struggle is of course the point, because these confrontations are less physically violent forms of leftist struggle sessions a la the Chinese Communists, a public shaming meant to tear a person down and replace his or her ideas with new ones conforming to the cult:

Struggle sessions or denunciation rallies were violent public spectacles in Maoist China where people accused of being “class enemies” were publicly humiliated, accused, beaten and tortured by people with whom they were close. Usually conducted at the workplace, classrooms and auditoriums, “students were pitted against their teachers, friends and spouses were pressured to betray one another, [and] children were manipulated into exposing their parents”. Staging, scripts and agitators were prearranged by the Maoists to incite crowd support. The aim was to instill a crusading spirit among the crowd to promote the Maoist thought reform. These rallies were most popular in the mass campaigns immediately before and after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and during the Cultural Revolution.

The denunciation of prominent class enemies was often conducted in public squares and marked by large crowds of people who surrounded the kneeling victim, raised their fists, and shouted accusations of misdeeds.

The second piece of encouraging lawfare news is that some gender clinics are halting puberty blockers, hormones, and so-called “gender-affirming” (Orwell take note) surgeries on minors, for fear of the lawsuits that are just beginning:

There has been a wave of bans on gender-affirming care for minors in Republican-led states in recent years, but some states allowed those already receiving puberty blockers or hormone therapy to continue.

Two such states, Missouri and North Dakota, have halted children’s prescriptions because medical providers are wary of harsh liability provisions in those same laws.

The article doesn’t treat this as good news at all. But as a person who is against the medical transition of minors because it is not empirically supported and is often dangerous in its effects as well as spread by social contagion, I see it as good news.

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Here’s the Amazon link to the book, which is called Is My Child Trans?: A Guide for Parents. It will be available in October.

Here’s a podcast in which the authors describe the book:

The post Here’s a new book for parents of children declaring themselves to be trans appeared first on The New Neo.