Dr. Norman Spack: profiting off of gender confusion, endangering kids’ health.

“Spack injects children with hormone-blocking drugs to prevent them from developing secondary sexual characteristics, like breasts or facial hair. The idea is to give them a few more years to make up their minds if they want to be male—or female.”

We highly commend Breakpoint’s website, which is loaded with useful information and commentaries like this defending a Christian, pro-truth worldview. Note the excellent additional resources offered following this article.

We also recommend a terrific expose on the “transgender” agenda by Amy Contrada of MassResistance: see her 125-page report, “The Coming Nightmare of a Transgender Hate Crimes Bill.” Don’t read it unless you are serious about understanding this bizarre, aggressive movement and the threat it poses to children and society. Emphasis added in the Church Colson’s Breakpoint commentary below:

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It’s a Sick, Sick World
By Chuck Colson
Breakpoint Commentary, July 8, 2008

Prepping Kids for Sex Change

He has been called “demonic,” “barbaric,” and has been compared to Nazi doctors. And when you read about his work, it is easy to see why Americans are so outraged. Dr. Norman Spack is a pediatric endocrinologist at Boston Children’s Hospital. Not long ago, he opened a clinic for what he terms “transgendered” children. Incredibly, he is giving kids as young as seven drugs that delay the onset of puberty—the first step in sex-change surgery when they are older.

Spack injects children with hormone-blocking drugs to prevent them from developing secondary sexual characteristics, like breasts or facial hair. The idea is to give them a few more years to make up their minds if they want to be male—or female.

When these kids hit their teen years, they are given the option of taking cross-hormones for a few years—which will allow them to develop the characteristics of the opposite sex. Tragically, the treatment will condemn these teenagers to lifelong infertility.

Spack appears to think that that is a reasonable trade-off for teens who feel they are trapped in the body of the opposite sex: After all, the cross-hormone treatments will make it easier for them to “pass” as the opposite sex. For instance, men will not grow as tall as they normally would, nor will they develop beards or Adam’s apples.

In a fawning article about Spack, the Boston Globe referred to his treatment of gender-confused children as “modern medical care.” Medical care, my eye! This is medical mayhem. It is unconscionable.

Dr. Paul McHugh, a distinguished professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, agrees: 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.

Thanks to the research of Myer and others, this practice was stopped at Johns Hopkins. And it became possible to begin to make sense of the mental disorders that were driving the request for the surgeries.

So why are doctors like Spack altering young bodies instead of treating confused minds?

The answer is that many doctors have embraced the modern teaching that sexual identity, rather than being biologically determined, is a preference or a choice. According to this, people should be allowed to choose whatever sex they want to be.

But both science and the Bible teach otherwise: God created us male and female in His image. Shots and surgeries and politically correct teachings cannot alter this fundamental truth.

Tragically, some parents are now buying into this false teaching—and allowing their children to undergo destructive treatments.

You and I need to be spreading the word that legitimate treatment is available for people suffering from gender confusion—and it is a treatment that does not sacrifice the well-being of children to the political agendas of adults.

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Today’s BreakPoint Offer

Learn more about Breakpoint’s Wide Angle worldview video series with Chuck Colson and Rick Warren—perfect for small-group Bible studies!

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For Further Reading and Information

Pagan Kennedy, “Q&A with Norman Spack,” Boston Globe, 30 March 2008.

“Critics Slam Boston Doctor Who Offers Sex Change Treatment to Kids,” FOX News, 19 May 2008.

Ashley Smith, “Mom Accepts Transgender Manchester Tween,” Nashua Telegraph, 22 June 2008.

Paul McHugh, “Surgical Sex,” First Things, November 2004 (reprinted by GodSpy).

Stephen Reed, “Sex Change Operations . . . for Kids,” The Point, 19 May 2008.

Gina Dalfonzo, “Who Will Watch the Watchers?” The Point, 27 May 2008.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 050615, “The Wisdom to Know the Difference: Is Sexual Identity Malleable?”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 040209, “Gender Blender: Adolescent Girls and ‘Heteroflexiblity’.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 061121, “Pick Your Nose, Not Your Gender: Postmodern Mischief.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 070423, “Coming to a School near You: Normalizing Homosexuality.”

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Homosexual “Marriages” in Massachusetts  

2004                        2005                      2006                     2007 (through April)  

6,121                      2,060                     1,427                              87 

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By J. Matt Barber 

Getting married isn’t even on the radar screen for the vast majority of homosexuals. 

The homosexual lobby has fine-tuned its rhetoric in recent years. Through the hyperbolic and repetitive use of such concocted expressions as “marriage equality” and “gay rights,” the left has dishonestly but effectively framed the debate over homosexual behaviors.

By co-opting and misapplying the language of the genuine civil rights movement, homosexual activists — along with kindred leftists in the media, government and elsewhere — are making considerable strides toward reshaping our culture. They’ve enjoyed much success in attaining official government recognition of a disordered and empty, though demonstrably mutable, sexual lifestyle.

They yearn for a society created in their own secular humanist image wherein all are compelled to not only accept, but to celebrate high-risk, unnatural and fruitless homosexual behaviors as both normal and equal to natural expressions of human sexuality. Their ideal is a society in which inherent gender distinctions are eliminated and God’s express design for human sexuality is replaced by morally relative and surreal notions of sexual androgyny.

Nowhere are the dumbing-down of sexual morality and the blurring of gender lines more evident than in the left’s effort to radically redefine marriage. Massachusetts is the only state that currently allows “same-sex marriage.” Nine other states permit some form of “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships,” which, in truth, are simply “gay marriages” by another name. (Those states are Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maine, California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.)

But despite the feigned and fevered cries of liberals for “marriage equality,” it’s becoming abundantly clear that the arguments conservatives have been making against “gay marriage” are spot-on. The vast majority of homosexuals don’t desire “marriage;” rather, militant homosexual activists desire to use “same-sex marriage” as both a tool to normalize homosexual behaviors and as a weapon to tear down the institution of legitimate marriage.

First of all, the term “marriage equality” is illusory. All men and women in the United States have equal access to marriage. But under the very definition of marriage (one man-one woman) no person has the right to marry more than one person at a time or to marry a minor child, a close relative, an animal or a person of the same sex. Generally speaking, any man can marry any woman. Just because one may choose not to do so, does not mean that he cannot do so. And just because one defines his identity based upon his choice to mimic sexual intercourse with persons of the same sex, it does not preclude him from marrying within equally applied parameters. He has equal access to marriage and by definition enjoys “marriage equality.”

But getting married isn’t even on the radar screen for the vast majority of homosexuals who choose to engage in a lifestyle which is largely delineated by short-lived and unstable relationships at best — and more often by casual and promiscuous sexual encounters.

Consider that according to the latest Massachusetts Department of Public Health statistics there have been only 9,695 total “gay marriages” in Massachusetts since 2004 when [Massachusetts then-Governor] began issuing marriage licenses to homosexuals. Of those 9,000 plus, some 6,121 took place in just over the first six months while the “gay marriage” novelty toy still had its sheen.

In 2005, only 2,060 same-sex couples took the “gay-pride” plunge; and in 2006 only 1,427 tied that queer little knot. By the end of April of this year, a mere 87 “gay” couples had “married” in Massachusetts.

Even more telling — though not particularly surprising — are statistics coming out of Canada where “gay marriage” is now legal nationwide. For instance, in the city of Toronto — which boasts of having one of the world’s largest homosexual populations — only one Canadian “gay” couple has “married” so far this year, according to a report by Reuters.

While recently addressing the rapidly downward spiral in homosexual “marriages” in Massachusetts and elsewhere, Tammy Mosher, Massachusetts State Director of Concerned Women for America, observed, “The thrill of their ‘victory’ is gone. It’s not about their ‘right’ to marry and it never has been. It’s about condoning their lifestyle and removing the sacredness of traditional marriage.”

And Mrs. Mosher is absolutely right. As the numbers on this whacky “gay marriage” social experiment continue to plummet, it’s becoming obvious that homosexual activists don’t care one iota about “marriage.” Their true agenda is not really “marriage equality” and the right to enter into monogamous “marriages,” but rather, their intention is to water down traditional marriage so that the institution — which is so very important to healthy child rearing and a healthy society — no longer has a unique and respected place in society. Everything that marriage stands for (i.e., monogamy, fidelity, the nuclear family and those “oppressive” gender stereotypes associated with the need for a “mom” and a “dad”) must be done away with in order to foster acceptance of sin.

But it goes far beyond simply undermining marriage. In order to legitimize disordered sexual behaviors, which have traditionally been considered immoral and are scientifically and objectively proven to be destructive, it’s necessary to dissolve the notion that traditional marriage and the nuclear family are normative and represent the gold standard. According to some, that’s a sexually repressive Judeo-Christian concept, you see. And in order for secular humanism to properly take root, we need a society which embraces the idea that all forms of sexual behavior — no matter how perverse or destructive — are equally valid.

The good news is that Americans are catching on to the disingenuous motives behind the homosexual activist push for “same-sex marriage.” A recent survey by the Pew Center indicates that opposition to “same-sex marriage” is currently at 57 percent (up from 51 percent in just March of last year).

As fewer and fewer homosexuals avail themselves of the opportunity to “marry” in those areas where it’s allowed, it’s likely that the obvious disconnect between the clamor for “marriage equality” and “gay marriages” actually performed will continue to both expose and alert Americans to the illegitimate motives behind this illegitimate concept.

Matt Barber is one of the “like-minded men” with Concerned Women for America. He is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law and serves as CWA’s policy director for cultural issues.

Now the cultural sewage spills into our state legislatures which will be debating: Toilets for “Transgenders.” The Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition has created a “resource” crudely entitled Peeing in Peace.

“Gender neutral” public toilets are part of the homosexual/”transgender” activist vision of the future — which means women and children will be forced to share restroom facilities with cross-dressing men or with “femme” homosexual men or even potentially with predators who decide to frequent women’s public restrooms. The purpose for exposing the heterosexual majority to mixed gender bathrooms is allegedly to protect the sexually confused from attack or harrassment in men’s public bathrooms. AFTAH categorically condemns violence against any practicing homosexual or cross-dressing person…but we also oppose this radical change to public toilet policy, as well as the waste of taxpayer resources in debating it. – Sonja Dalton

Read more at MassResistance…