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December 22, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Over the past several years writing for LifeSiteNews, a frequent response I have gotten to one of my columns has been disbelief. Is that really true? someone will respond on social media. You’ve got to be exaggerating. This doesn’t irritate me in the slightest, as many of the stories I’ve had to write in the last half-decade would have been considered insane circa 2010 and downright unbelievable around the year 2000. Despite that, progressives carry on as if what we are seeing unfold around us is not only normal, but good.

Consider a story from earlier this month, in which trans activist and YouTuber Lauren McNamara, popularly known by the pseudonym “Zinnia Jones” (and boasting over 44,000 subscribers), responding to the recent U.K. court ruling stating that minors could not consent to puberty blockers, stated on social media that all children should be put on puberty blockers until they could choose their gender. His argument (to use the term loosely) is that children are already fundamentally making a choice by naturally going through puberty.

“If children can’t consent to puberty blockers which pause any permanent changes even with the professional evaluation, how can they consent to the permanent and irreversible changes that come with their own puberty with no professional evaluation whatsoever?” he tweeted. “This is literally a position that permanent changes are fine as long as you're not trans. An inability to offer informed consent or understand the long-term consequences is actually an argument for putting every single cis and trans person on puberty blockers until they acquire that ability.”

If you’re wondering whether you’re reading that correctly, that is, in fact, a trans activist arguing that because natural puberty brings irreversible changes, we should consider blocking puberty for all children because they cannot consent to…nature. Which, in McNamara’s opinion, should now be optional, since we live in a society in which we can all live as gods.

“For the record, I understand that y'all just aren't capable of wrapping your heads around something like this, because if you could, then you wouldn't be the way you are. It's probably best to step away and have a juice box, this is beyond your level,” he tweeted in response to the disbelief that greeted his suggestion. “Natal puberty became optional the moment technology became available to enable deliberate choice between natal puberty and puberty induced by cross-sex hormones. It became a choice when it *became a choice* and I am really profoundly sorry if you cannot understand that.”

McNamara appeared to miss the fact that many people understand preciselywhat he is saying and that that is the source of their shock and horror—not their inability to grasp his suggestion. McNamara himself is an atheist male-to-female transgender person who says he was “assigned male at birth” with the name Zachary Antolak and came out as transgender after first identifying as gay. McNamara has been on hormone replacement therapy for eight years. As is so often the case with activists of this sort, he badly wants others to travel the same path he took. 

So how did the LGBT movement respond? Was McNamara widely denounced as a fringe crazy for advocating the universal medicalization of childhood? Was he repudiated for suggesting that healthy children be poisoned until they could be forced to choose whether they would accept nature? Of course not. Not so long ago, activists of this sort would have been immediately quarantined by the broader movement, with more palatable representatives assuring the public that he didn’t represent the real LGBT cause. 

Not anymore. The trans blitzkrieg conquered with such speed that those driving the train no longer feel the need to lie about the destination, or apologize for those accurately telling us where we’re headed.

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Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.