Families, communities, and nations are stronger when boys are allowed to be boys and girls are allowed to be girls without compulsion or influence to feel that they are the opposite sex. Gender issues are much in the news and have been for a few years. That could be one of the reasons why the prophets and apostles of God made a clear statement about gender in 1995. The first two paragraphs of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” are as follows:
We, the First Presidency and the Council
of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and
that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His
children.
All human beings – male and female – are created
in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly
parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an
essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity
and purpose.
According
to modern-day prophets and apostles, the word of the Lord states that our
gender was essential in our premortal identity, is essential to our mortal identity,
and will be essential to our eternal identity. It does not make sense that our
identity changes from premortal to mortal and will change from mortal to
eternal. It does make sense that a female in the premortal life will be born a
female into the mortal life and pass through the veil to eternity as a female.
I
suppose that a “quirk of nature” could happen once in a million or a billion
cases. However, we now have hundreds, thousands of people believing that they
were born with the wrong gender. I do not believe that there is room for that
many “quirks of nature.”
According
to Katelynn Richardson, there is a recent report published with the results of a
four-year review about prescribing puberty blockers to children with gender
dysphoria. The National Health Service England commissioned the review, and the
review undermined the recommendations of major medical associations about the
matter.
The
report is known as The Cass Report and was conducted by Dr. Hilary Cass, a
pediatrician and former president of the U.K.’s Royal College of Pediatrics and
Child Health. Dr. Cass’s review “found only ‘weak evidence’ for offering
puberty blockers to children.”
Cass concluded that her findings, released
April 10, “raise questions about the quality of currently available guidelines”
offered by associations such as the World Professional Association for
Transgender Health and Endocrine Society, yet neither organization has
committed to reviewing their guidelines.
The review recommends against treating
children with puberty blockers outside of a research setting. It also urged “extreme
caution” for providing cross-sex hormones to minors under 18 and stressed the
need for a “clear clinical rationale.”
The review further suggested a “full
programme of research be established” to “look at the characteristics,
interventions, and outcomes of every young person presenting to the NHS
[National Health Service] gender services.”
Although a diagnosis of gender dysphoria
has been seen as necessary for initiating medical treatment, it is not reliably
predictive of whether that young person will have longstanding gender
incongruence in the future, or whether medical intervention will be the best
option for them,” The Cass Report noted.
The American Medical Association, the
World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the American Academy of
Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the
Endocrine Society did not respond to multiple inquiries over the past week from
the Daily Caller News Foundation asking whether they had concerns with the
report’s findings or intended to conduct their own review.
Aside from WPATH, these organizations
largely have failed to address the report publicly. In a written statement, the
transgender health organization said it “supports policies that increase access
to high-quality ethical care for transgender youth” and claimed that the report
is rooted in a “false premise.”
Because
American health and medical associations have not made public statement, pressure
should be put on them to do their own reviews to determine the truth about the
gender situation.
Meanwhile,
American parents and children should be wise enough to pay some attention to
the information in The Cass Report. Since gender is essential to our mortal and
eternal identities, families, communities, and nations are stronger when adults
and children know their own identities.
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