Biden's executive order attacks children, families and the First Amendment
Recently, the White House hosted a “Pride Month Reception” with President Biden signing an executive order, “A Proclamation on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, And Intersex Pride Month, 2022.”
The president also released a Fact Sheet, explaining exactly how he is directing federal agencies. The agenda is an unprecedented, all-out assault on children, families, and First Amendment rights to religious freedom and free speech.
The order charges the Department of Health and Human Services “to promote expanded access to gender-affirming care.”
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This so-called “care” is built on the false premises that children are arbitrarily assigned sex at birth and that they might really be the opposite sex — or even a different, self-constructed “gender.” The administration is pushing gender ideology, a theory disconnected from reality, on the entire nation.
“Transgender” medical interventions for children, with sexual identity confusion include the destructive, experimental practice of giving them “puberty blockers,” powerful drugs that shut down their normal psychological, social, and biological development.
Although proponents claim that puberty blockers are reversible, this is untrue. A child can never fully reclaim the time stolen by the off-label usage of these drugs.
Puberty is not a disease. It is a natural developmental phase, not something that requires medical interference.
White House policies will harm children even further, giving these children opposite-sex hormones and suppressing their naturally-produced male or female hormones.
Taking opposite-sex hormones causes irreversible changes in an adolescent or teen’s body. And they are risky, with possible serious side effects such as sterility, psychiatric disorders, osteoporosis, blood clots, strokes, heart attacks and cancers.
These body and mind-damaging drug and hormone regimens are often followed by permanent, body-mutilating surgeries. Girls as young as 13 are given double mastectomies, and 16-year-olds are having hysterectomies. Boys as young as 16 and 17 have their penises removed and are surgically castrated.
Transgender treatments don’t change a person to the opposite sex. And, there is not one long-term study that shows these interventions are safe or effective for children with sexual identity confusion.
It would be so much better to help boys and girls accept their biological reality and embrace their innate maleness or femaleness.
But no. Federal agencies are told to shut down any therapy that would help these children, a direct assault on parents’ rights, religious freedom, and free speech.
The executive order also directs agencies to attack state laws that protect children, an infringement on state rights.
In many cities and states, parents with an adolescent girl struggling to accept her female body are already unable to obtain real therapeutic help. This administration would spread these therapy bans across the country – and around the world.
God created humanity male and female in His image, with individuals either male or female. Federal agencies have been ordered to engage in a full-blown assault on these religious beliefs.
In addition to banning real therapeutic help for those with sexual identity confusion, the administration orders agencies to work to ban counseling for those with unwanted same-sex attractions.
These bans abridge the free speech of mental health professionals and their clients. Imagine you’re a 15-year-old boy, struggling with addiction to homosexual pornography. Your faith teaches you this is not God’s best for you, and you want to live according to a biblical sexual ethic.
Ethical therapeutic practice gives you the right to determine the goals and direction of your counseling. But therapy bans strip away your autonomy and self-direction, forcing you toward embracing a homosexual identity.
The Federal Trade Commission was ordered to consider whether therapy for unwanted homosexuality or transgenderism “constitutes an unfair or deceptive act or practice.”
If the FTC pursues this, Christian counselors, pastors, bookstores, schools, ministries, and churches that teach God’s design for sexuality and offer help to strugglers could now be liable to lawsuits for consumer fraud.
This agenda is an all-out threat to children, parents’ rights, free speech, and religious liberty. We must fight back, working to protect children and our God-given rights.
Jeff Johnston is a writer for Focus on the Family’s Daily Citizen.
