WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The Biden administration announced Wednesday an executive order directing federal departments to “promote expanded access to gender-affirming care,” including measures against counseling for unwanted gender confusion or same-sex attraction and state policies to protect children from life-altering surgical and chemical procedures.
“Today, to mark Pride Month, President Biden will sign an Executive Order Advancing Equality for LGBTQI+ Individuals, and he will welcome LGBTQI+ families, advocates, elected officials, and leaders to the White House for a reception,” the White House announced.
The order directs the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to draft and release “sample policies” for states and school districts to adopt as alternatives to state laws the administration claims “attack” homosexual and transgender individuals, but in reality do things like prohibit medically “transitioning” minors and ensure female students don’t have to share restrooms or lockers with biological males.
Additionally, it tasks HHS with “explor[ing] guidance to clarify that federally-funded programs cannot offer so-called ‘conversion therapy,’” and “increas[ing] public awareness about its harms, provide training and technical assistance to health care providers, and expand support for services to help survivors.”
The order also tasks the federal government with “work[ing] with states to promote expanded access to gender-affirming care” in the name of preventing youth suicide, “strengthening LGBTQI+ non-discrimination protections in the foster care system” (likely meaning future challenges to religious agencies’ right to insist on placing children in homes with both a mother and a father), “promot[ing] safe and inclusive learning environments” (likely meaning enforcement of preferred gender pronouns and barriers to parents knowing about their children’s issues relating to sexuality), and “expanded federal data collection on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
The executive order follows the Biden administration’s wholehearted endorsement of “transitioning” children, expressed in documents put out by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs, and HHS’s Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration’s National Child Traumatic Stress Network. In April, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed that “every major medical association agrees that gender-affirming health care for transgender kids is the best practice and potentially life-saving.”
The evidence, however, indicates that Biden is the one who has endorsed practices harmful to children.
A range of scientific literature indicates that while reinforcing gender confusion may give a patient short-term satisfaction, over the long term it often fails to prevent, or actually exacerbates, significant emotional harm up to and including attempted suicide (with or without surgery), because fixating on “gender affirmation” tends to distract from exploring other issues that may be the actual root of a patient’s mental or emotional unrest and “transitioning” frequently comes with psychological side effects.
On top of those issues, experts outside the medical establishment warn that surgically or chemically reinforcing gender confusion imposes irreversible harm on children such as infertility, impairment of adult sexual function, and reduced life expectancy, as well as the psychological toll of being “locked into” physical alterations regardless of whether they change their minds when they mature. Studies indicate that more than 80 percent of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, unless their confusion is reinforced by adults.
Additionally, “detransitioners” who tried to change identities but returned to living as their actual sex attest to the suffering they endured thanks to what Democrats consider a “best practice,” as well as the biases, blind spots, and negligence on the issue from the medical establishment.
One of the participants, “ex-transgender” Michelle Alleva, contends that pro-transition studies often suffer from failure to follow up with patients over a long enough period of time, and that transition regret is difficult to track because of the number of regretful patients who do not follow up with their doctors. She also argues that “informed consent” for transition procedures cannot be satisfied without a thorough mental evaluation of a patient, not to mention the unknown variables of the interventions themselves.