All Things LGBTQ+ (6 Viewers)

[Farb]

Didn't really see a place for this so I thought I would start a thread about all things LGBTQ since this is a pretty hot topic in our culture right now

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/sup...y-that-refuses-to-work-with-lgbt-couples.html

• The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered a unanimous defeat to LGBT couples in a high-profile case over whether Philadelphia could refuse to contract with a Roman Catholic adoption agency that says its religious beliefs prevent it from working with same-sex foster parents.
• Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in an opinion for a majority of the court that Philadelphia violated the First Amendment by refusing to contract with Catholic Social Services once it learned that the organization would not certify same-sex couples for adoption.

I will admit, I was hopeful for this decision by the SCOTUS but I was surprised by the unanimous decision.

While I don't think there is anything wrong, per se, with same sex couples adopting and raising children (I actually think it is a good thing as it not an abortion) but I also did not want to see the state force a religious institution to bend to a societal norm.

 

[LA - L.A.]

I have to assume by your continued refusal to answer that simple question that you are embarrassed that you said it.

You'd do better to re-watch The Crying Game instead of making the repeated mistake of thinking you know something that you don't actually know. Your assumptions are incorrect, because you have a faulty memory of what The Crying Game is about.

Why can't you let this go? I'm okay with you thinking I embarrassed myself, so just drop it and move on already.

 

[LA - L.A.]

You’re very correct, yet, I don’t like letting disinformation lie there unchallenged. Silence is tacit approval.

I see it the same way. If a poster is just being a jerk to people here, that's easy for me to blow off. If a poster is spreading disinformation that doesn't have the potential for causing significant harm, then that's fairly easy for me to blow off as well.

The disinformation that's being spewed in this thread has the potential to create a lot of very significant harm, so it's really hard for me to not speak up. What I try to remind myself is that I don't need to speak to or respond directly to a person who spreads disinformation to speak out against the disinformation they are spreading.

 

[Snarky Sack]

You'd do better to re-watch The Crying Game instead of making the repeated mistake of thinking you know something that you don't actually know. You're assumptions are incorrect, because you have a faulty memory of what The Crying Game is about.

Why can't you let this go? I'm okay with you thinking I embarrassed myself, so just drop it and move on already.

Consider it dropped.

 

[Snarky Sack]

There were 56 gender reassignment surgeries of minors in the US between 2019 and 2021, and 776 mastectomies. None under the age of 13.

More than 1,400 healthy breasts of children removed, in order to treat a concern that is psychological, not physical.

Fifty-six removals of healthy genitals of children for the same reason.

Here is one of those mastectomy cases:

 

[MT15]

 

[Snarky Sack]

Is this lady for real, or is she a satire?



Opinions sought.

 

[MT15]

Turns out it’s not considered appropriate to try to take away people’s rights to decide on appropriate medical treatment for their kids. Huh. This has text from the opinion:

 

[Snarky Sack]

We'll see what the Supreme Court says.

 

[LA - L.A.]

Turns out it’s not considered appropriate to try to take away people’s rights to decide on appropriate medical treatment for their kids. Huh. This has text from the opinion:

I'm thinking all the states that passed these laws will eventually lose their cases on the grounds of them all being unconstitutional. Both parties in all of the pending cases are going to exhaust their appeals if they lose, so eventually the Supreme Court will either defer to lower courts rulings or they will make a final ruling on this matter.

If the Supreme Court rules to allow these states's laws to stand, then I'm fairly confident that the Democrats will win the Presidential election and end up with the majority in the House and the Senate.

A wide majority of today's Americans do not like seeing people's rights to self-determination taken away and are highly motivated to vote against anyone who does it.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the states on this, right on the heels of overturning Roe v. Wade, I think there will be a huge voting backlash against Republicans. If a case seeking to overturn the protections for same sex marriage make it to the Supreme Court before the general election, then I think it's game over for Republicans.

The extremist who now control the Republican party are willfully ignorant of the fact that nearly 66% of us respect each other and will stand in unity to protect each other's rights. Obsessive compulsive bear poking is a self-correcting problem, because eventually the bear gets ticked off and mangles the pokers. It's the same reason why it's never a good idea to kick a sleeping dragon in its genitalia.

On a somewhat related note, if UPS doesn't adjust it's offer to the Teamsters, we're going to see massive disruption in everything when the Teamsters strike. Everyone should be bracing themselves for that possibility, because that's were it seems to be headed as of today. I'm hoping that UPS realizes that the Teamsters are not playing a game of chicken and that they will strike if they don't get an offer they find reasonable.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

So you agree that some doctors in the past were too quick to go to the surgical options?

Yep, we're learning things all the time.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

More than 1,400 healthy breasts of children removed, in order to treat a concern that is psychological, not physical.

Fifty-six removals of healthy genitals of children for the same reason.

Here is one of those mastectomy cases:

Sounds like she's got a civil suit on her hands, if best practices weren't followed and she wasn't given proper informed consent, then she has a basis for a civil lawsuit. See, the system works.

Btw - you do know the brain is part of the body, right?

And you still haven't answered my question of why do you think medical procedures should be determined by popular vote. Do you really want a nanny state that contradicts best medical practices based on people's fears? Does that really seem like a proper process?

Are you a big believer in mob rule?

 

[Snarky Sack]

I mean they're pretty easy to look up... but here are the first few:

Puberty suppression in adolescents with gender identity disorder: a prospective follow-up study - PubMed

Puberty suppression may be considered a valuable contribution in the clinical management of gender dysphoria in adolescents.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Young adult psychological outcome after puberty suppression and gender reassignment - PubMed

A clinical protocol of a multidisciplinary team with mental health professionals, physicians, and surgeons, including puberty suppression, followed by cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery, provides gender dysphoric youth who seek gender reassignment from early puberty on, the...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Psychological Support, Puberty Suppression, and Psychosocial Functioning in Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria - PubMed

Psychological support and puberty suppression were both associated with an improved global psychosocial functioning in GD adolescents. Both these interventions may be considered effective in the clinical management of psychosocial functioning difficulties in GD adolescents.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

APA PsycNet

psycnet.apa.org

Adolescent development and psychosocial functioning after starting cross-sex hormones for gender dysphoria - PubMed

<span><b>Purpose:</b> To assess how adolescent development progresses and psychiatric symptoms develop among transsexual adolescents after starting cross-sex hormone treatment.<b>Materials and methods:</b> Retrospective chart review among 52 adolescents who came into gender identity assessment...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2341287920300880

Psychological Functioning in Transgender Adolescents Before and After Gender-Affirmative Care Compared With Cisgender General Population Peers - PubMed

Transgender adolescents show poorer psychological well-being before treatment but show similar or better psychological functioning compared with cisgender peers from the general population after the start of specialized transgender care involving puberty suppression.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

That should get you started...I'm not sure why you haven't read them already if you are interested enough in the subject to recommend going over the head of doctor recommendations. I can't imagine that anyone would think they should make medical decisions based merely on their own feelings.

I appreciate your showing me those, since I asked for them. You realize that those are abstracts and summaries, not the actual studies? I'm no researcher, but I have been trained in how to look at research, and the first step is of course to have the research. What you are showing me is what the researcher purports the research to show, it is up to the reader to analyze the research itself for validity, reliability and robustness, as those terms apply to experimental research.

I tried finding them via Google Scholar, which used to have almost every research article that you would look for, but, but in trying to find your articles, through GS, or through links in your summaries, I ran into a paywall every time. I don't want analyze abstracts and summaries too much, because that is not my training.

I did look at the summaries, while spending a lot of time trying to track down the actual article. As expected, all of the summaries that I saw relied on either self-reports, or a combination of self-reports and parental reporting. From the first summary of an article on your list:

Those are instruments that I'm very familiar with in my work with emotionally disturbed children. Doctors frequently send them to me to fill out on kids I work with. They are very good tool for diagnosis. They are not intended to be used in such experiments. When used that way, they are not much more useful than a poll.

Even at that, they could be useful if the experiment had been double blind, i.e. using an experimental group given the medication and a control group given a placebo with random selection to groups and neither the patient/participant, not the scorer of the instrument knowing whether they had the placebo or the treatment. That is how research to test effectiveness of treatments is done.

I get it, though. If I were not trained in research analysis and there were such summaries that supported a position I agreed with, I would accept them as well.

Could you share what process you think should be used to allow any particular medical procedure?

For the overwhelming majority, the process should be the process that is already being followed. Medical boards set standards for best practices, and doctors stay informed on them and treat each patient as they see fit, so long as the patient provides informed consent. For most medical procedures, that is more than sufficient and politicians need not really even take notice.

However . . . that is not an absolute, and hasn't been in the U.S. for a long time. Medical practice is regulated, that is nothing new. Doctors are licensed by the state or it is a crime for them to practice medicine. Doctors are limited in the drugs that they can prescribe; they must wait for government approval. No one ever says, "using heroin to treat pain should be between the patient and doctor!" Before you say "yeah, but that is just for prescriptions," medication is the bulk of most doctors' practices, so they must follow regulations for most of their treatments.

I wish that politicians would never need to regulate how doctors treat patients. But when it comes to kids, the state has always exercised its powers to protect them. I hope that we're not debating that, but rather how the state should use that power in this specific instance.

If they really wanted to, Republican states could put a stop to childhood medical transitioning by banning off-label use of medications for children under a certain age. They could made exceptions for well-established off label uses, but not for puberty blockers for Gender Dysphoria.

That would force the pharma companies who profit from such treatments to submit their drugs to the FDA for approval for that purpose.

As to surgeries, they have not been regulated much as far as I know. But if there had been stories of kiddie pageant parents getting their daughters lip injections, surgery to keep their faces looking like pre-teens, and mastectomies so they could look like children longer, I would hope that such procedures would be banned, and that no one would object on parental rights grounds. If parents castrated their boys so they could sing soprano as adults, I would say the same.

Honestly, other than cancer, I have a hard time imagining any legitimate reason to remove genitals of any healthy child. I'd love to read a rational explanation for that rather emotional appeals and name calling. There is no way that a child can give informed consent for that.

Also, I find it curious that you recommend using anti-depressants but not hormone replacement when the studies that show the effectiveness of those medicines are the same, and governed by the same medical bodies. It seems weird that you are ok with outcome in one instance but not the other, when the process was the same.

I don't believe that I said that. My intention was to point out that cross-sex hormones are often successfully used to treat depression. Let me see if I can find what I said . . . here it is:

Post 4,497 of this thread:

I will say this: cross-sex hormones have been shown in scientific and apolitical clinical testing to reduce depression. That testing had nothing to do with transgender treatment, but sought evidence for efficacy of hormones in treating depression. They found it.

That may be why the "psycho trans professor," in the first video said female hormones were the best anti-depressant that he ever had. They were, but not for the reason he thinks, as far as is known.

Since depression is co-morbid in so many cases of Gender Dysphoria, it would behoove any doctor to try that as a treatment before going for the scapal. I don't believe that puberty blockers have any such record of success.

The poster I showed that to flew off the handle about "psycho trans professor," when I was only referring to the title of the video. Or maybe he or she was only pretending to be outraged by that to avoid responding to the substance of of what I said.

Which was that doctors should try treating the depression first, rather attempting to transition a child from one biological sex to the other, if that is really what they think they are doing. They seem pretty vague about that.

If they give a kid cross-sex hormones, but to treat the depression, not to make them look more like the gender they aspire to, I'd be fine with that. Several months of that might well stabilize the depression so that they kid is not miserable all the time and would be less likely to make poor decisions, like having body parts removed.

Which brings me back to my current problem with the state of modern "conservatism" and the GOP. It has been completely overrun with populism, governed by fear and loathing. There is no commitment to process, raw emotion. The Democrats have a similar problem but to a lesser extent in my opinion. They generally recognize things that are problems and understand that the government is the appropriate place to address them, they just have shirt solutions usually.

Yes, government in general sucks, and I don't recommend giving government more powers than they already claim without lots of thoughtful consideration.

And all of this doesn't mean that the actual best medical care for youths experience gender dysphoria is medical transition - just that the data we have right now suggests that it is, and that may evolve over time. The correct process for that evolution is through research and the medical community, not public opinion and polls. That's what is happening in some European countries (although they started off much more aggressive than the US in the first place). That's the proper way to govern medical care... it's not a political issue, it's a medical one.

The evolution taking place in some European countries amounts to reducing the number of child transgender medical treatments sharply. Whole clinics have been closed, and in others the procedures banned.

A Teen Gender-Care Debate Is Spreading Across Europe

Doubts have now come to the Netherlands, where the most-contested interventions for children and adolescents were developed.

www.theatlantic.com

This has been done in Europe for very good reasons having nothing to do with fear and loathing by populist Republicans, though journalists find themselves unable to report on this European news without mentioning Republicans.

As Republicans across the U.S. intensify their efforts to legislate against transgender rights, they are finding aid and comfort in an unlikely place: Western Europe, where governments and medical authorities in at least five countries that once led the way on gender-affirming treatments for children and adolescents are now reversing course, arguing that the science undergirding these treatments is unproven, and their benefits unclear.

The about-face by these countries concerns the so-called Dutch protocol, which has for at least a decade been viewed by many clinicians as the gold-standard approach to care for children and teenagers with gender dysphoria. Kids on the protocol are given medical and mental-health assessments; some go on to take medicines that block their natural puberty and, when they’re older, receive cross-sex hormones and eventually surgery. But in Finland, Sweden, France, Norway, and the U.K., scientists and public-health officials are warning that, for some young people, these interventions may do more harm than good.

The Atlantic

The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine.

www.theatlantic.com

If our own medical community would take counsel from that and also sharply reduce those numbers, there would be less call for government intervention.

Here, the profit motive holds sway, unfortunately. Medical boards take guidance on transgender treatment from gender specialists, who of course make money through medical and surgical treatment, not by recommending therapy aimed at helping kids accept their bodies as they are.

 

[Snarky Sack]

Sounds like she's got a civil suit on her hands, if best practices weren't followed and she wasn't given proper informed consent, then she has a basis for a civil lawsuit. See, the system works.

A fifteen year old cannot give informed consent, as I hope the jury will understand. Why do you think she changed her mind when she grew up? Like suicide, surgical alteration of the body is a permanent solution to what is most often a temporary problem.

Btw - you do know the brain is part of the body, right?

Yes, of course. But I think you intend a larger point. I don't want to guess at it.

And you still haven't answered my question of why do you think medical procedures should be determined by popular vote. Do you really want a nanny state that contradicts best medical practices based on people's fears? Does that really seem like a proper process?

Are you a big believer in mob rule?

Read my post above. It expands on my reply to the research you provided, which I didn't give a full enough answer to earlier.

I do believe in the process of lawmaking through our elected representatives under the constitution. I am not a big, small, or medium sized believer in mob rule.

I'll counter that rather extreme question with one just as extreme: Do you favor zero regulation of any medical treatment by any provider, so long as the patient chooses them? No licensing, no education lawfully required, no government approval for medications, any procedure can be done for any reason?

 

[LA - L.A.]

I'm posting this link to a video just as a reminder that we're not talking about theoretical or statistical people, we're talking about actual living and feeling people. I think it's easy to lose sight of that, especially when we're just interacting with each other through words on our screens.

This video is not about what's right or what's wrong. It's just about remembering that everyone we're talking about; parents, children, family, friends and doctors is an actual person who loves and wants to be loved.

I hope the embedded link works for everyone. Sometimes embedded CNN video links don't work for me, because of my privacy settings.

 

[MT15]

A fifteen year old cannot give informed consent, as I hope the jury will understand. Why do you think she changed her mind when she grew up? Like suicide, surgical alteration of the body is often a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Yes, of course. But I think you intend a larger point. I don't want to guess at it.

Read my post above. It expands on my reply to the research you provided, which I didn't give a full enough answer to earlier.

I do believe in the process of lawmaking through our elected representatives under the constitution. I am not a big, small, or medium sized believer in mob rule.

I'll counter that rather extreme question with one just as extreme: Do you favor zero regulation of any medical treatment by any provider, so long as the patient chooses them? No licensing, no education lawfully required, no government approval for medications, any procedure can be done for any reason?

What it comes down to - are you willing to trust the medical boards, the peer-review, that guides every treatment regimen in the US, to guide these protocols? Or do you think that politicians have the necessary medical knowledge? Even the FDA, when it decides on the approval of drugs, relies on medical peer reviews and studies the clinical evidence. They don’t ask state or federal legislators what they think about it.

Why make this situation different? Why trust non-medical people who are operating on emotion and religious beliefs to control this medical situation?

 

[Snarky Sack]

What it comes down to - are you willing to trust the medical boards, the peer-review, that guides every treatment regimen in the US, to guide these protocols? Or do you think that politicians have the necessary medical knowledge? Even the FDA, when it decides on the approval of drugs, relies on medical peer reviews and studies the clinical evidence. They don’t ask state or federal legislators what they think about it.

Why make this situation different? Why trust non-medical people who are operating on emotion and religious beliefs to control this medical situation?

The problem with "let's just trust the doctors," is that I know that there are not enough valid, robust, and reliable studies showing long-term benefits from surgically removing children's genitals. I've never seen a single one.

I also know that there are not enough scientific studies of puberty blockers being used to treat Gender Dysphoria for them to be approved for that purpose by the FDA. So, the FDA, which relies on medical peer reviews and studies the clinical evidence has so far said no to puberty blocking. Do you trust them?

 

[MT15]

The problem with "let's just trust the doctors," is that I know that there are not enough valid, robust, and reliable studies showing long-term benefits from surgically altering children's genitals. I've never seen a single one.

I also know that there are not enough scientific studies of puberty blockers being used to treat Gender Dysphoria for them to be approved for that purpose by the FDA. So, the FDA, which relies on medical peer reviews and studies the clinical evidence has so far said no to puberty blocking. Do you trust them?

I don’t think you are characterizing things correctly. I also don’t think you have the necessary expertise to characterize the studies, especially since you admit you haven’t actually read them.

So, yes, I trust the scientists who have conducted the studies and the independent scientists and doctors who have reviewed the studies to assess their validity over you.

I also think you are mischaracterizing the FDA. They haven’t offered an opinion at all as far as I know. Saying they say no is implying they have made a determination when they have not.

 

[Snarky Sack]

I don’t think you are characterizing things correctly. I also don’t think you have the necessary expertise to characterize the studies, especially since you admit you haven’t actually read them.

So, yes, I trust the scientists who have conducted the studies and the independent scientists and doctors who have reviewed the studies to assess their validity over you.

I also think you are mischaracterizing the FDA. They haven’t offered an opinion at all as far as I know. Saying they say no is implying they have made a determination when they have not.

You are welcome to trust others over me, and I agree that I don't have expertise that they do in medications. But I also do not have the profit motive that they do.

If the pharma companies could have puberty blockers approved as a treatment for Gender Dysphoria, why would they not? Why would you first cite FDA approval as a reason for acceptance of them, and then say FDA lack of approval is irrelevant?

You did not address the lack of studies of long-term effects of removing children's genitals. Have you seen science on that that you trust?