Sex changes for children is just wrong. But is it really happening? That Much?
NOTE: This is an older post from June that I only finished today.
A recent article online claims that "Layla Jones", a.k.a. Kayla Lovdahl (love-doll? are we being trolled?) has filed a case against Kaiser Permanente for doing a sex change on her at age 13, after only the briefest of psychological exams. If this is true, it is indeed an outrage.
As I understand it, the standard of care in the medical profession is to perform such surgery only on adults, and even then, only after months or years of psychotherapy - this is not a surgery to be taken lightly, as it is not reversible. And certainly not something to be performed on minors.
But is this true? And if this one case is true, does it represent a trend "sweeping the nation" as some claim?
I was skeptical at first - and still am, until I get confirmation of the facts. I first read about this on a conservative discussion group - a group known to plant false or exaggerated stories. They linked to an "Epoch Times" article. Epoch Times is a right-wing fundamentalist "news" source, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. But I did search online and found the complaint - not on the court website, but on a "cloud" server, uploaded by the... Epoch Times. A circular do-loop.
I searched the court docket and found nothing at the time. It may be the case has not been filed yet, or was filed recently (June 14th) and has not been docketed or it may never be filed because the whole thing is made up? There was no certificate of service accompanying the complaint online. UPDATE: The case now appears on the docket as STK-CV-UMM-2023-0006100.
The "complaint" is filed by the "Center for American Liberty" and you don't even have to google them to figure out what they are all about. The complaint itself, though, is odd. The statement of facts sounds more like an opinion piece by Tucker Carlson - full of rhetoric and short on facts. It doesn't sound like anything written by a lawyer, but rather something someone would write for the general public. As an attorney, I cringed reading it - it was not very professional.
I googled it last night (June 15th) and only the Epoch Times article turned up. Today, the story is appearing on other media (Such as Fox News and The Guardian) but these appear to be a barf-up of the original story. For some reason, only the Epoch Times seems to be in direct communication with this young lady and her family. UPDATE: I can find no follow-up on this story, such is the state of journalism today, just more barf-ups of the Epoch Times story.
UPDATE: Note that anyone can file a lawsuit against anyone, but that doesn't mean it has merit or that they will pursue it. Since the defendant is instructed by their lawyers to say "No Comment!" we never hear the other side of the story. And there is always another side to the story.
There is another case filed by this same "Center for American Liberty" on behalf of Chloe Cole (are we being trolled again with these names?) who claims she was forced to have a double-mastectomy at age 15. If this is true, it is indeed outrageous. Once again, I can find no record of the case - supposedly filed in the same district. Am I not using the search engine of the court properly? Or have these cases yet to be filed? I can find the Complaint on the "Center for American Liberty" website, which has a stamp indicating it has been electronically filed. A case management conference is slated for August this year - which means a trial might not happen until around, say, election time, 2024.
I found the case by searching under "attorney name" which pulls up the Chloe Cole case. The Layla Jones case doesn't appear yet - must not be docketed yet - this takes a few days to do.
By the way, look at the photos in the article cited above - the "before" and "after" photos show someone with a different skin tone, ear shape, and nose. Maybe she had plastic surgery as well? I am not sure, but they look like radically different people to me.
Other sources claim there is a "wave" of such lawsuits, but as one site notes, the Chloe Cole case is the first lawsuit over transgender care - and it was filed in February of this year. If so, the Layla Jones or Kayla Lovdahl case appears to be the second. Not much of a wave just yet.
Of course, both Jones and Cole are darlings of the right-wing media - Cole giving speeches for the right-wing Heritage Foundation, obliquely described as a "think-tank." One site wonders whether the whole thing is a grift - a way of making money by being a darling of the far-right. They argue that despite attempts by medical professionals to discourage hormone treatments, Cole and her mother "doctor shopped" until they found someone who would prescribe the drugs. If true, this presents another side of the story.
That site notes that, despite all the hoopla, sex-changes are not being performed on children in the United States, at least not in a hospital. It is hard to know who is telling the truth and who is lying.
One of the most famous "trans" children, "Jazz" Jennings, had to wait until he/she was 18 to have sex-change surgery. Jazz was accepted to Harvard, but delayed going because of a 100-lb weight gain due to binge eating. Sounds like she has a lot of issues to deal with.
That is the issue central to the Kayla Lovdahl case - that she had other mental illnesses, such as bi-polar disorder, which her Mother also supposedly had, which was her real problem, not gender dysphoria. This of course, is contrary to other accounts which claim that she and her Mother doctor-shopped to get hormone therapy.
Is HRT a thing for kids? It is clear that "sex changes" (artificially altering genitals) are not allowed for minors, at least from what I have read. According to some sources, you can get "Hormone Replacement Therapy" or "HRT" if you are over 18. If you are under 18, you can get it with parental permission. However, many "Red" States have passed laws against this, which is probably a good idea.
HRT is what killed my sister. She had it after having breast cancer and going through menopause. It is now thought to make breast cancer worse. Hormones are really nothing to screw around with, and giving them to children is just... wrong. I mean, unless it is treating a physical medical condition, as opposed to a mental one.
Mental illness is no joke, and it is particularly tragic among young people. I know someone who has a daughter who basically has been institutionalized her whole life, because she is just goofy-crazy and sometimes gets violent and has a nasty drug habit. I suppose if she was a teenager today, she would claim to be "trans."
Therein lies the problem - that people can jump on bandwagons, particularly when they have spokespersons claiming that something will solve all your problems. Change your gender! That's why you're unhappy! It will fix everything!
But as the Jazz Jennings case illustrates, it is not a panacea. If you had mental health issues before a sex-change operation, chances are, you will have mental health issues afterwords. Some on the far-right go so far as to claim that all "trans" people have mental health issues, and maybe this is true for more than a few of them. "Chelsea" Manning, for example, seems to suffer from a Messiah complex, positing they are a "trans hero" by selling State secrets to WikiLeaks Russia. Sorry, but I don't buy it.
Sadly, the far-right is fabricating stories from whole cloth. One "meme" bouncing around Facebook tells the tale of an angry Father who confronts a "purple-haired" transgender school teacher who is taking his son for HRT treatments behind the parents' back. It is such an over-the-top troll it is almost funny, but sadly, many on the far-right believe this sort of nonsense. Talk to a school teacher - you can't even give a child a Tylenol without the parents being present.
But let's not let the truth get in the way of a good story!
And the truth is, I think, that there is no "wave" of transgender children. There may be a few misguided parents trying to put their children on hormone therapies - jumping on a trendy bandwagon for the sake of attention. But I doubt it is as widespread as Fox News would have you believe.
The other truth is, if this is happening, it is indeed wrong - such life-altering decisions should be made only by adults who are willing to pay for these procedures. Because, just because you threaten to kill yourself doesn't make this a "life-saving" treatment - that's just hostage-taking.
Another truth is that the far-right is carefully plotting to use this issue to make Democrats look like blithering idiots, and they are largely succeeding at it, as some Democrats are being unclear on where they stand on this issue. They want to be supportive of grown adults who want to make their own life choices (as indeed, a Libertarian would agree) but they are not denouncing childhood transitioning strongly enough.
On the other hand, the GOP is trying to make it appear that all Democrats support the idea of "transitioning" for grade-school children, paid for by the government. I don't think this true at all, just a way of distracting voters by painting Democrats as extremists (as opposed to, say, insurrectionists).
And yes, it is true that a "transgender" athlete in women's sports may have an unfair advantage - but we need to calmly discuss this, not shout each other down. And again, I doubt most Democrats are against laws limiting women's sports to biological women. And DNA testing should settle that issue - not "genital inspection" (which would prove nothing in some cases) that Republicans seem to eager to sign up for. Every accusation is a confession. GOPedophiles!
Sadly, this and the "bathroom bills" are blowing the whole thing out of proportion and encouraging people to become vigilantes. In a recent case, a man who was not even from the school district showed up at a grade-school athletic competition, only to call out and harass a young girl because she had short hair. The photos of the man look like he was all 'roided up - maybe on testosterone as well. Talk about HRT!
Other men have decided to be "bathroom vigilantes" and have dragged masculine-looking women out of ladies restrooms - themselves invading the privacy of a woman's sanctuary. In other cases, they have actually beaten up a "trans" man (who was born a women), and police arrested them for "disorderly conduct" - not the assailants, but the victim!
A lot of these "stories" about "waves" of transitioning children are being used to encourage violence against anyone who even looks like they may be transgender. Ladies ,let your hair grow out long, lest you be accused!. Maybe wear one of those "handmaid" hats? How about a Burqa? You've come a long way, baby!
For some reason, drag queens were next drawn into this mix. You see how they keep moving the football down the field. First it was "trans" people and sports, which seemed reasonable. Then it was bathrooms, which raised what seemed like a logical issue. Then sex-changes-for-children, which of course no one would defend and really isn't a "thing" in the first place. Then it was drag queens, who were accused of performing sex acts at "drag queen story hour" which was just made-up bullshit.
It is called arguing in bad faith. The real goal has nothing to do with "trans" this or that - it is such a small issue affecting a tiny minority of people. What they want is to generate a target for hate, as hate is such a more powerful emotion than love. And trans people make an easy, albeit small target. So they bootstrap this to drag queens, gays, Democrats, and eventually, people of color (which includes you Hispanics, so don't think they'll let you get by as "one of the good ones!").
The goal is to paint all LGBTQ people as perverts and pedophiles - and you know what comes after that. Mass shootings (already has happened, twice) and then more and more laws enacted proscribing behaviors. This is the push-back to gay marriage that I predicted would happen, Not only will the pendulum swing back to neutral, it will regress back to the "good old days" of gay-bashing. It already has.
And much of this is based on exaggerated or just made-up stories. We have two court cases here and we are told this is the start of a "wave" of litigation by a host of "de-transitioning" people who have transition regret. And I am sure they exist, too, just not in legions.
My own take on the whole thing? I don't think a sex change is going to make you happy or solve all your personal problems. Learn to live with the body you have, and leave plastic surgery to burn victims and accident victims. They need it more than you do.
And no, insurance or government money should not be used to pay for what is an elective procedure.
And no, that doesn't make me "transphobic" - just practical.
And as for the Democrats, will you stop playing right into the hands of the GOP? Inviting topless flashers to the White House is an image we will be seeing again and again, in the run-up to the 2024 elections.
But again, hate is a stronger emotion than love and you know which party is the party of hate and which is the party of love. Eventually, love wins out, not because it is stronger, but by default. If you look throughout history, you see a pattern of alternating periods of peace and war (although in one or another part of the world, there is always a war going on). Wars end, not because people crave peace, but because they become exhausted and tired of killing one another. That's the sad truth of the matter.
I don't see this ending well, either. The party of hate has already declared a civil war, unless they are allowed to take over with dictatorial powers. Sadly, in the past, some have given into this, and that's how World War II got started.
You wanna do that again? Over what? This trans kid?
