This is wrong. A boy decides he is a girl—a boy—and psychiatrists and doctors agree to get on with the hormones before he has even had a chance to experience puberty and perhaps come to different conclusions. The worry was that experiencing puberty would itself be traumatic for a boy who believed he is really a girl. (Surgery has to wait until 18, thank goodness.) And here’s the kicker: Shades of Ashley’s case: “Doctors admit that the treatment involves a risk, however, and that its effects on children as young as Kim are not fully understood.” In other words, once again a child is being used in human experimentation.
Frankly, I think we are mucking up our children in so many ways, exposing them to concepts before they are really ready to understand and deal with them, treating them as if they are just diminutive adults instead of children, that we will never understand the lives we have harmed and the pain we have caused.
Yea, Yea. I know. I’m a dinosaur.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…