Boston Clinic Offering “Help” for “Transgender” Children

FOX News recently reported a disconcerting story out of the East: Boston Children’s Hospital has launched a clinic to “help” gender-confused children. Critics rightly call the hospital’s version of help “disturbing and barbaric.”

Dr. Norman Spack is the pediatric specialist behind the clinic for “transgender children,” and he is treating patients as young as 7-years-old. For younger patients who desire to be the opposite gender from that of biology, birth and Providence, Spack offers counseling and drugs that delay the onset of puberty. The drugs, he says, halt the natural flood of hormones that will make it difficult to have a sex alteration later in life, allowing children “more time to decide whether they want to make the change.”

For teens similarly confused, Spack offers hormone therapy, a drastic step that changes the way they grow and develop. The effects of long-term therapy can be irreversible and can ultimately lead to permanent infertility. Spack cited a “high level of suicide attempts” among gender-confused children as a primary motive behind the clinic’s efforts. Thankfully, numerous doctors across the U.S. have pointed out the clear and present dangers of such “treatment.”

Paul McHugh, University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, is one such critic and he hints at transcendent truth in analyzing the potential harm of such dangerous therapy and injections: “Treating these children with hormones does considerable harm and it compounds their confusion,” McHugh told FOXNews.com. “Trying to delay puberty or change someone else’s gender is a rejection of the lawfulness of nature.” Further, McHugh said “gender reassignment” for children recalls the dark ages, “when choir boys were castrated to retain their high-pitched voices…It’s barbaric.” 

In the face of medical and psychological practitioners who argue for the existence of a “transgender gene,” McHugh points out that most children experience some level of anxiety over gender during the nascent years of hormonal maturity: “At some point in childhood, many children role play as the opposite sex, but it is a social, not a medical issue.”

And it is a truth issue. God’s transcendent truth—which the light of nature, or the “lawfulness of nature,” as McHugh references it, confirms—abides still: “God made them male and female.” The effects of the fall are indeed profound and comprehensive, so it should not shock us to see some level of gender confusion in children during adolescence. We must not, however, embrace the confusion and trace its possible sinful implications away from the timeless moorings of what Francis Schaeffer called “true truth.” We do not simply tell the alcoholic to embrace his deadly thirst. The alcoholic needs wisdom that leads to liberation. In the same way, we do not merely provide gender-confused children with therapy or counseling that would lead to their embrace of a “gender transition.” “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Prov 14:12)

It is the place of parents, not therapists, to bring to bear God’s treasure of wisdom on all the issues of life for their children, including God’s fundamental design of them as a boy or a girl. Parents must apply God’s wisdom to help their children to safely navigate the often-tumultuous waters of adolescence.

There are many practical ways for parents to raise masculine sons and feminine daughters. Injections that delay puberty are certainly not the answer.  Here, here, here, here and here are a few free resources from CBMW that will help parents to think biblically about this eternally crucial stewardship of raising sons and daughters. Many other resources are available at cbmw.org.