A Very Confused World

So I really don't watch TV anymore. The main reason for watching anything, and for even having cable, is so I can watch professional baseball, basketball and hockey. Yes, I am also an avid sports fan. Once and a while I'll watch The Big Bang Theory, and I'm into The Flash on The CW as well... but even that show which features my favorite childhood comic-book superhero is growing tiresome with it's push for "normalcy" of biased, liberal agenda items in today's "modern" (or really, confused) world. However, that's not what has left me shaking my head in recent days.

Confused?

That wonderful channel that has brought you such erudite and classy programming as I Didn't Know I was Pregnant and Sex Sent Me to the ER has another show that is finding popularity, and is also pushing an agenda which is utterly, and totally irresponsible. I'm talking about I Am Jazz, a show chronicling the life of a (now) 15 year old boy who has changed his name to Jazz, has started living as a female, and is taking hormone injections and other drugs (during puberty) in order to inhibit his body's natural and biological changes, while taking other hormones to acquire other secondary sex characteristics proper to females, such as breasts. Yes, this is real life, and yes we should be horrified. Now, the network, as well as Jazz's parents and himself have taken the step to press all of this backwards (or really, lack of) logic onto six year-olds in a Wisconsin school district. According to Breitbart:

"The book and the boy are being used by “transgender” activists who argue that new civil rights rules should be changed to prevent American schools and popular civic groups from tailoring their practices to benefit each of the two different sexes, male and female. The transgender activists argue there is no clear biological difference between males and females and that evolved social rules should be changed to help sexual minorities — such as former Olympian Bruce Jenner — who express their personal preferences, regardless of the cost to normal girls and boys...

"The Nov. 23 reading was blocked when one parent asked Florida-based Liberty Counsel to write a letter of complaint to the school board. The Liberty Counsel letter charges the announcement to parents “appears designed to catch parents off-guard, to prevent them from opting their children out of this reading and subsequent discussion. The book was to be read to first graders, which would largely include six-year-olds, “under the guise of ‘anti-bullying, ‘diversity’, and building a ‘safe and nurturing environment,’” according to the Liberty Counsel letter. 

I am Jazz is a picture book intended for small children that tells the life-story of a boy, “Jazz Jennings” from the age of two and how he “transitioned” to be a “girl.” Jazz’s parents have raised him as a girl and allowed him to have drug and hormone treatments that both inhibit his growth as a boy and encourage the growth of female breasts. Jazz says he hopes “the book can go into schools and teachers will read it so everyone can learn to accept one another and everyone can be happy.”

Rosy Brain- Alan Tunbridge

If you remember, I had a post up a few months ago where I had a pleasant dialogue with a male-to-female transgender person. There was a main question that I asked this person, and I have to ask it again in this particular case to all the people out there supporting Jazz in his decision: "...why does the mental feeling of womanhood override what growth is happening, and is reflected, both outside the body and inside the body?"

I suppose one could turn this question right back around. They could say, "Well why does what's happening to me biologically take precedence over my mental perception?" Here's where the two questions differ. The mind is subjective. You can be whatever you want in your mind. The notion of having a "girl brain" is ridiculous, Although Jazz has been quoted as saying: “I have a girl brain but a boy body... I was born this way", no scientific studies claim this as false; that is, the brain is more so in a state of flux or "in a continuum", as noted here at New Scientist. However, keep in mind, those behind this study have their own agenda to push, and that is that they wish to prove the point that there is no difference between men and women. It seems like a constant game of give and take, doesn't it?

Here's the thing though... it's just plain irresponsible, absolutely dangerous, completely absurd to think that it is a benefit to stop a teenager (a child, really) from going through puberty and then do something completely unnatural. Unnatural being pumping the body with hormones that couldn't be produced by nature. How can any sane person think it's all right to give a 13 year old boy elevated levels of estrogen and progesterone when his body hasn't even FINISHED reaching sexual maturation? We all know how volatile the psyche of a teenager is. heck, we've all lived through it, haven't we? And we want to give these children a decision of such magnitude? A decision in which the child decides they are the opposite sex and they must stop nature from taking its course? A decision which irreparably damages the body and mind? A decision that shouldn't be made until, at the very least adulthood? Doctors at McLean Hospital Brain Imaging Center concluded in their study that: "While adults can use rational processes when facing emotional decisions, teenagers are simply not yet equipped to think through things in the same way."

Because if they were, then they wouldn't ignore health risks such as the following. One doctor says that, "Those who want to develop as female are prescribed estrogen and progesterone while those who want to develop as male are prescribed testosterone. Prescribing cross-sex hormones is taken more seriously than hormone blockers. Teenagers must have socially transitioned and be aged over 16 to qualify. “We have to be sure it’s the right thing to do,” explains Dr Brinkmann. “Cross-sex hormones have irreversible effects on fertility. There’s no going back.” Another health risk is just that fact... we don't know how these unnatural treatments will affect the body long term because not enough studies have been made on the subject! How can we expect our children to do something as risky as blocking hormones to stave off puberty, and not even know what the long-term health effects definitely are? Not to mention, studies have shown that:

Most children with gender dysphoria will not remain gender dysphoric after puberty. Children with persistent GID are characterized by more extreme gender dysphoria in childhood than children with desisting gender dysphoria. With regard to sexual orientation, the most likely outcome of childhood GID is homosexuality or bisexuality.

Pope Francis in the Philippines 

Do we really want to give children these treatments if most of them won't even have this disorder once they reach adulthood? Do we not realize how ridiculous our society sounds by advocating for such measures as trumpeted by Jazz and his enablers? How is dishonesty seen as acceptance? Here is where Pope Francis' words in his recent encyclical Laudato Si really give us some good perspective:

"Pope Benedict XVI spoke of an 'ecology of man', based on the fact that “man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will”.[120] It is enough to recognize that our body itself establishes us in a direct relationship with the environment and with other living beings. The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation. Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different." (155)

Being a fan of wearing dresses, having a favorite color of pink, or liking to shop doesn't make one female. But if a male thinks these things are important or integral to being a female, and having these feelings make him justified in pursuing a "sex reassignment surgery", then he is sorely mistaken. Let's take the Holy Father's advice, and accept our bodies as God's gift.