Lessons From Mr. Rogers

My children grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and they learned so much about life from him.

He used to sing, “Boys are boys from the beginning. Girls are girls right from the start. Everybody’s fancy, everybody’s fine. Your body’s fancy and so is mine.” What would Mr. Rogers think about what’s happening to boys and girls today and the fluidity of the gender movement?

This past week was very interesting at the General Assembly. There were several controversial bills up for debate. I presented a bill in several committees, H808, Gender Transition/Minors.

This bill will prohibit medical professionals from performing surgical gender transition procedures on minors and prohibits prescribing, providing, or dispensing puberty blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones to minors, with some exceptions. There is a list of exceptions for medically necessary medications or surgeries.

A young woman originally from Kernersville, now living in Michigan, spoke to the committee and her testimony was riveting. She told of suffering from a number of mental health issues, including OCD, borderline personality disorder, anxiety and depression. She also engaged in self-harm. Her parents were asked, “would you rather have a dead daughter, or a live son?” (This is a common phrase used by medical providers, according to transitioners.) She met with a counselor, and within a matter of minutes, she was told by the counselor that she was actually a boy and changing her body to be more like a boy would help her mental health issues.

She told of the nightmare she has been living after having surgeries and suffering severe lifelong injuries. She is now 25 years old and has already experienced menopause. She is now a beautiful young woman, as she was meant to be, with lots of health issues.

There has been a tremendous increase in gender affirming care. The drugs that are being prescribed are not FDA approved. They are powerful drugs that are currently used to treat cancer patients. This care is experimental, and we don’t know what the long-term consequences will be. Transitioning has doubled between 2017 and 2021.

Dr. Miriam Grossman, a child psychiatrist and a senior fellow at an organization called “Do No Harm”, appeared before Congress recently and shared some important information. Dr. Grossman said, “I am here today to provide you with facts you haven’t heard. You haven’t heard them because when it comes to gender dysphoria (also called transgenderism) the public, and most importantly parents, are, I am sad to say, consistently fed misinformation.” She went on to discuss key truths grounded in science and evidence, directly contradicting the misinformation spread by activists.

• Suicide of youth with gender dysphoria is very rare.
• Gender dysphoria is a psychiatric condition. There is no evidence of a biological cause.
• The U.S. is an outlier in the treatment of youth with gender dysphoria.
• Health authorities in the U.K., Finland, Sweden and Norway now recommend exploratory psychotherapy as the first line of treatment and have severely restricted hormonal interventions, reserving them for exceptional cases.
• In U.S. hospitals, young teens’ natural puberties are prevented. Girls as young as 12 are having mastectomies. Minors are also having genital surgeries.
• A recent study found that 60% of trans youth (ages 13-17) that received hormonal treatment still experienced depression and 51% still seriously considered suicide. There are also clinically significant risks associated with these drugs like infertility, loss in bone density, cardiovascular disease, etc.
• The drugs and surgeries being discussed can be permanent and irreversible. They carry with them significant risks. Decisions about this should not be made or influenced by minors. 

I’ve been asked, “you’re a big proponent of parents rights, why should parents not be allowed to make this decision?” Government has an obligation to protect citizens from harm, especially children. There are many things we don’t allow children to do even with parental consent. 

We don’t allow children to get tattoos, buy cigarettes or alcohol, drive a car without a license, have sex with adults (that’s called sex trafficking). We don’t even allow minors to use tanning beds, for Heaven’s sake.

We need a good dose of common sense to start waving across our country. We need another Mr. Rogers to move to the neighborhood.