Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his Oct. 16 WorldNetDaily column:
Somebody has to state the obvious when it comes to the political agenda of “transgenderism.”
There’s no science behind it. There’s no common sense behind it. There’s no morality behind it.
Yet, our society has embraced the idea of allowing gender-confused small children to determine for themselves whether they are boys or girls and want to choose chemical castration and/or sterilization – ignoring the dire medical and health risks such procedures pose.
That’s why I appreciate Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, for speaking out boldly against the advance of political correctness and for sound medical practices.
“Chemical castration is what you’re doing when you put any biologically normal child on puberty blockers,” she said recently. “It’s treating puberty like a disease, arresting a normal process which is critical to normal development and bad for kids.”
I’m not a doctor, but this seems like simple common sense to me. What about you?
Farah is quoting from an op-ed by Cretella published three months ago at the conservative Heritage Foundation's "news" website, The Daily Signal. He goes on to tout Cretella's attacks on transgenders, claiming that "Her credentials affirm her expertise in this area."
But Farah is lyining in portraying Cretella as someone without a political agenda. In fact, the entire existence of the group Cretella heads, the American College of Pediatricians, is politically motivated, and the Southern Poverty Law Center considers it an anti-gay hate group. The Daily Beast details the love for the group on right-wing websites (like WND):
ACPeds is a favored citation among the far right because the organization disagrees with most major medical associations on LGBT and other social issues. It is not the leading organization for U.S. pediatricians. That would be the similarly named American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which has 64,000 members. The much smaller ACPeds was founded in 2002 to protest the AAP’s support for same-sex adoption.
But despite its small size, the Gainesville, Florida-based ACPeds makes frequent appearances in conservative news articles, especially stories about LGBT issues.
ACPeds recently published a position statement arguing that transgender health care for youth is a form of “child abuse.” Breitbart, The Daily Caller, and The Blaze promptly published that claim without contrasting their primary source with the AAP. The truth is that most major professional organizations in the health care industry affirm the validity of transgender identity and that the AAP supports transgender youth.
Further, the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine has refuted all eight of the "hard facts" from Cretella Farah touts in his column, pointing out that Cretella repeatedly cites correlated claims without establishing causation, concluding of Cretella: "One cannot claim to be an unbiased medical professional writing for the greater good when one’s entire article is predicated upon gender dysphoria as a choice."
Farah concluded: "This crazy cultural tide needs to be reversed – with real science, real common sense and real morality." Too bad he offers someone who ignores the former to push the latter.
