Presbyterian Church (USA) Votes Overwhelmingly to Back “Gender-affirming Care” for Kids

The nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination voted recently to support “gender-affirming care” for minors, falsely claiming it is “medically necessary, safe,” and “backed by decades of research.”

Delegates to the 227th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted 441-30 in favor of a motion declaring that the church “supports all individuals to have access to all medically necessary, evidence-based gender-affirming healthcare.”

The motion, known as an overture, originally included the phrase “including minors.” However, according to The Christian Post, “The Rev. Olivia Lane, moderator of the 227th General Assembly’s Gender and Sexuality Justice Committee, explained to those gathered that her committee amended the overture to remove” the phrase because young adult advisory delegates feared it “might be weaponized to cause further harm to the very children it named.” Nevertheless, she said, “‘All individuals’ means exactly that: all, without exception, without qualification, and without age limit.”

The Great Trans Mission

The stated rationale for the overture was that “multiple states have banned or are in the process of banning transgender healthcare for minors,” which the PCUSA believes should be legal. In fact, the previous paragraph actually makes the ludicrous claim that “trans” youth are “entitled” to such care under the 14th Amendment.

The rationale goes on to fret that “thousands of pre-teen youths” will now be denied “hormone blockers to prevent [them] from going through the ‘wrong’ puberty,” i.e., the one their bodies would go through naturally based on their God-given DNA.

It also complains that some states have prohibited public funding of “transgender health care,” as if taxpayers should be forced to bankroll procedures they find morally repugnant or, for that matter, scientifically unsound.

It concludes:

Gender-affirming care is age-appropriate care that is medically necessary and evidence based for the well-being of many transgender, non-binary, and gender-expansive people who experience symptoms of gender dysphoria or distress that result from having one’s gender identity not match their sex assigned at birth.

By preventing doctors from providing this care or threatening to take children away from parents who support their child in their transition, these bills prevent transgender, non-binary, and gender-expansive youth from accessing medically necessary, safe health care backed by decades of research and supported by every major medical association representing over 1.3 million US doctors.

Irrational Rationale

Those two paragraphs contain numerous falsehoods.

Having one’s body parts mutilated or puberty blocked over a feeling that one has the “wrong” body is never “medically necessary.” In fact, noted The Christian Post, contrary to a member of the General Assembly’s Advocacy Committee for LGBTQIA+ Equity, who claimed kids need such procedures to avoid becoming suicide victims,

studies have shown that “patients who have undergone gender affirmation surgery are associated with significantly higher risks of suicide, self-harm, and PTSD compared to general population control groups in this real-world database.”

Nor are such procedures “backed by decades of research” — at least not good research. The U.K.’s Cass Review determined:

While a considerable amount of research has been published in this field, systematic evidence reviews demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies, meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for children and their families to make informed choices.

Indeed, such findings are the reason the U.K. and several other European countries have put the brakes on so-called “gender-affirming care.”

As to the procedures’ alleged endorsement by “every major medical association” in the United States, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons announced in February that it now recommends delaying gender surgery until the age of majority. The American Medical Association concurred at the time, though it later made a ham-handed attempt to take back those words.

Therefore, if the PCUSA were really serious about ensuring that individuals could get “medically necessary, evidence-based gender-affirming healthcare,” it would oppose the very treatments it champions.

Progressive Decline

Of course, the PCUSA’s stance has nothing to do with science and everything to do with left-wing politics. The denomination long ago abandoned any pretense of adherence to orthodox Christianity by ordaining practicing homosexuals, then embracing same-sex “marriage” and, wrote Decision magazine, “hosting annual events like the ‘National Queer Presbyterian Gathering.’” Last year, the General Assembly amended the PCUSA’s constitution to add gender identity and sexual orientation to its antidiscrimination policy; this year, it demanded that all congregations agree to accept “LGBTQIA+” clergy. That the General Assembly has grievance committees for practically every trendy progressive cause — from “women and gender justice” to “LGBTQIA+ equity” to “racial equity” — only further cements the PCUSA’s descent into Marxist madness.

In its drive to be more “inclusive,” the PCUSA has managed to exclude so many people that its membership has dropped by two-thirds since it was formed in 1983. Sixty percent of its members are over 55 years old, and 35 percent are past 70. Yet the denomination seems incapable of recognizing the cause of its decline, let alone doing anything to arrest it. Next year, no doubt, the General Assembly will pass more woke resolutions and then wonder why membership drops again.

“When a denomination votes to bless what God calls sin, the vote itself is not the real story,” Christian pastor, podcaster, and author Virgil Walker told Decision. “The real story is a church that has decided the spirit of the age gets the final word instead of the Word that made the age. That decision was settled long before any ballot was counted.”