GAIL DRAKE: Dallas case spotlights dangers of hormone-suppressing drugs

As a children’s attorney who has advocated in abuse cases for at least 13 years, I thought I had heard and seen it all. Until this week.

In an emotionally charged custody battle in Dallas, Texas, a father of 7-year-old twins named James and Jude has been fighting to keep his son James from undergoing transgender medical alterations, as demanded by the mother. (Who, by the way, is not the biological mother; the couple used a donated egg for in-vitro fertilization.)

The adorable child is trapped in a gender identity nightmare. When in the home of his mother, pediatrician Dr. Anne Georgulas, James lives as a trans girl called “Luna.” When with his father, mathematician Jeffrey Younger, he’s all boy. In a video circulating on the web, 3-year-old James tells his dad that he’s a girl because his mom told him he’s a girl. She dressed him in dresses, painted his fingernails, fixed his hair. When the mother filed for divorce, she charged the father with child abuse for not affirming James as transgender, demanding the child only be around people who called him Luna and used female pronouns. She sought psychotherapy for the father because he didn’t believe his son wanted to be a girl, filed a restraining order and tried to terminate his parental rights.

In response, the father filed for sole custody of the child. In desperation, he started an internet blog called savejames.com. The jury heard from Dallas Rainbow Therapy, which testified that James is a female and should receive therapy and chemically altering medication. The medication will eventually sterilize him and set him up for surgical removal of his genitals in a procedure he could undergo at age 15. The father’s expert witnesses testified that social transition (treating the boy as a girl) would increase the child’s gender dysphoria.

On Oct. 21, a jury decided that sole custody should go to the mother. The public outcry and national media reaction was enormous. Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the state’s child protection agency would investigate for child abuse.

The next day, Judge Kim Cooks set aside the jury’s verdict and ruled that both father and mother have equal joint custody of their twins and share equally in all medical, psychological and other decisions for the boys. The father was granted equal visitation with his sons, something that had been severely limited.

First, what is the research about the long-term outcomes from radical socialization and medical transgenderism for children? Experts in the field differ significantly, depending on their own persuasion. What is known from data collected from neutral clinicians over several decades is that if allowed to go through natural puberty, about 98 percent of gender confused boys and 88 percent of girls accept their biological sex. In other words, going through puberty cures most children with gender dysphoria. However, those who undergo social and medical transition continue with their gender confusion.

As for hormone-suppressing drugs — which can start as early as age 8! – the full effect of these drugs has not been studied and very few are FDA-approved. Those who have undertaken these drugs showed evidence of harm as adults with lowered IQs, increased depression and lack of bone development. And yet transgender enthusiasts herd parents and helpless minors down this harmful, irreversible path – for what reason?

A child cannot drink until age 21, sign a contract or join the military until age 18, and yet the LGBTQ community seeks to infuse drugs into children at age 8 that chemically castrates them. And those who voice an objection are labelled “paranoid.” As a DFCS attorney we remove children from the home for exposure to cocaine and methamphetamine, wounds from whippings, and severe unexplained injuries. How is it anything but child abuse to chemically alter a child’s gender and surgically remove their genitalia before they are legally old enough to consent?

Why do we not just embrace the wonder of our Creator’s plan for us and thrive in it?

“I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Thy works.” Psalm 139:14.