by Scott Williams
A couple of months ago, I heard a series feature on National Public Radio about parents who are dealing with a child who felt like he or she was trapped in the wrong body (i.e., a boy who thought he should be a girl, or vice versa). This particular segment featured parents who sought to chemically delay their preadolescent son's hormonal surge until he decided what sex he wanted to be.
Confusing to say the least, but not something I spent a lot of time thinking about since (thankfully). Now just in the past week, Breakpoint commentary brings up the issue again because of a similar positive article in the McClatchy Newspapers (authored by someone named Pagan Kennedy, for what that's worth) about Dr. Norman Spack of Boston's Childrens Hospital, the most visible proponent of this type of treatment.
While the practice of using medical means to change sexual characteristics may be new when it comes to treating children it's been done with adults for many years. And the arguments against performing such operations on adults apply equally with children. The Breakpoint column counters the practice of Dr. Spack with evidence from Dr. Phil McHugh, a distinguished professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, an institution which has discontinued the practice.
He says that treating these children with hormones "does considerable harm, and it compounds their confusion. Trying to delay puberty or change someone's gender," he added, "is a rejection of the lawfulness of nature."
Dr. McHugh knows what he is talking about. He and psychiatrist Jon Myer studied men who received sex-change operations at Johns Hopkins. His conclusion? "That Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness." Better, McHugh thought, to concentrate on fixing their minds instead of taking the more drastic step of changing their sex.
Actually, McHugh has been speaking out against the practice for more than a decade, as evidenced by this article from the Johns Hopkins official newspaper honoring McHugh for 30 years of service to the University in 1998. In a more recent article in First Things back in 2004, McHugh points out that proponents of medical sex selection are committed to a very different view of nature.
One might expect that those who claim that sexual identity has no biological or physical basis would bring forth more evidence to persuade others. But as I've learned, there is a deep prejudice in favor of the idea that nature is totally malleable.
Long before McHugh decried the practice of relative sexuality, one other spokesman on the subject made a declaration.
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27)
It seems so simple and straightforward. But when we begin to consider ourselves not creatures of a Creator, but malleable products of nature, as McHugh puts it, we're willing to go just about anywhere our minds and scientific abilities will take us, no matter how bizarre it seems.
Stumble It!
