This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Oct 25, 2022
I am writing this article having just come back from the Rally to End Child Mutilation. The Rally was held in Nashville. I want to give you an idea of what I experienced being here for this event. But let me start by saying that I fully support the cause. I believe that the practice of so-called gender affirmation surgery is the most misleading name ever given to anything ever. What the surgery is supposed to do is to bring a person’s body inline with what they believe themselves to be. This used to be classified by the American Psychiatric Association as Gender Dysphoria. What that means is that a person believed themselves to be something they are not. That is what Dysphoria means and it was classified by the American Psychiatric Association as a disorder. Now, instead of treating the dysphoria, we do surgery to a physically healthy person to make their body appear more like the dysphoria they are having.
The really sad part of this is that the surgery is only physical, it is not cellular. Just because you look a certain way does not mean you are. That means that the surgery does not treat the underlying condition. It is a surgery to treat a symptom, it does not solve the problem.
Having said that, I also am a firm believer in people who are able to consent be able to do what suits them. I think it is a terrible idea and my prayer is that if a person is suffering from dysphoria, that they get the help they need to make them healthy, not a cosmetic surgery that does not fix anything but damages a healthy body. But if a consenting adult feels they want to do something like this, I do not believe there should be rules against it.
However, I draw a firm and clear line when it comes to children. There are MANY things that children cannot consent to and the idea that because a child feels out of place in their own body means we should prep them for cosmetic surgery is a departure from reality. Anyone who has ever been 14 knows that they felt out of place in their own body. To think that is justification for a child to undergo an irreversible series of hormone injections to prepare them for cosmetic surgery to treat a psychological problem is insane. We don’t have surgeries to treat depression, ADHD, or Autism. Why would we have a surgery to treat dysphoria? It is illogical on its face.
I wanted to come to this Rally because I wanted to see what a live event looks like in person. I know that when you hear about these things in the media, we all believe they have been blown out of proportion. I wanted to see one firsthand, so I made the trip to Nashville. My eyes were opened.
The group called Antifa showed up, and this is another group that is horribly misnamed. They are supposedly anti-fascist. They screamed and shouted into a megaphone starting about an hour before the event began and continued to shout the entire time. Right in front of me, I saw an older lady pull one of the protesters screaming into an electric bullhorn a question. He turned the bull horn right into her face and screamed into it F—YOU! And walked away. I ran forward to make sure she was ok. I asked her what she asked him and she asked him if he thought all of this swearing and vulgarity they were shouting out to the crowd was going to do any good. They shouted the F word the entire speech. For almost 2 hours, they chanted the F word.
The time that was most heartbreaking is when a young woman stood up at the podium and talked about how she had transitioned to a boy during her teen years. She had what is known as top surgery, where her breasts were removed. She had since transitioned back to a woman. She cried when she said it was people like the people who were protesting who encouraged her to go through with the surgery and now they were sending her death threats. She only mattered to them when she fit the message. As soon as she didn’t, she was the enemy. They did not care about her.
Kids can’t vote, can’t purchase alcohol, can’t get a driver’s license, or take out a loan at a bank. But they somehow can decide to have life altering surgery. What are they basing that decision on? Don’t tell me life experience because you don’t have any life experience when you are 15. They are basing it on the word of people they trust. That makes this the ultimate betrayal.
My heart breaks for kids who struggle. I pray for anyone reading this article who may themselves or know someone who suffers from gender dysphoria. I want you to get help more than anything, and by help, I mean actual help. I don’t want you in the hands or under the influence of what I saw today. I promise you, there are people out there who care about you. Many of them and I am one. Cosmetic surgery of any kind will never treat a psychological problem. It simply cannot do it. And because of that, I don’t want you to go down that road. I want you to get real help from someone, not affirmation from a highly trained medical establishment who is making hundreds of millions and soon to be billions of dollars off of cosmetic surgeries preformed based on a promise of relief that will never be delivered.
Also, and I throw this in for free, is someone you disagree with challenges you and the F word is the only response you have, you have already lost the debate.