What you have to believe

The comments on this New York Times article about barriers to healthcare for trans-identifying children and young people are, as usual, much more sensible than the piece itself.

Well. Most of the comments.

As a secular liberal, far be it from me to speak for the religious right, but you don't need to believe that parents are stupid, kids are misguided, or doctors are pernicious quacks to see that there's a medical scandal unfolding here.

Kids are kids (that’s to say: they’re changing all the time and trying to make sense of their lives, and growing up is hard), parents are often under intense pressure (from kids, doctors, and society at large) to affirm, and many gender doctors appear to sincerely believe they're doing the right thing.

The fact is there's no "veritable mountain of evidence" supporting affirmative care. Instead, you could say we're running experiments on gender-questioning kids except that experimenters usually report to an ethics review board & track outcomes—and those things aren't happening.

Push aside the rainbow-spangled stories we tell ourselves and look at what we're actually doing: We're drugging gender-nonconforming, gay, and autistic kids — with shockingly little regard for the risks and unknown consequences for their cognitive and physical development, with short-term and highly questionable benefits, in service of a quasi-religious belief system about gender.

I'm sorry, but you don't have to be Genesis 1:27 fanatic to look at the evidence of harm and risk of future harm and balk — or to worry while you wonder why so many people are cheering along.