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HOMOSEXUALS' NEW AGENDA - TRANSSEXUALISM
According to an article in the homosexual
newspaper, Capital Xtra, (May 6, 2004) a major objective of
homosexual activists in 2004 and its lobby group, EGALE, is
to have the federal Human Rights Act amended to promote protection
for gender identity and transsexualism. Transsexuals are individuals
who believe they were born the wrong sex. Transgendered, on
the other hand, is an umbrella term to cover a variety of
behaviour including drag queens and cross-dressers, etc.
The activists have already begun to push transsexualism
on the provincial level. For example, Mr. Justice Davies of
the BC Supreme Court, on an appeal from a recent BC Human
Rights Commission decision, accepted the argument that discrimination
on the basis of sex included a prohibition against discrimination
on the basis of transsexualism. When the Nunavut Human
Rights Act was passed with great controversy last December,
activists attempted to have protection of "gender identity"
included, together with protection on the grounds of sexual
orientation. The activists were successful in regard to sexual
orientation, but failed to have gender identity protected.
Transsexualism requires surgery and hormone
treatment to "change" the sex of an individual because
he/she has a fixation that he/she has been born the "wrong"
sex.
Unfortunately, however, unlike removing a
breast due to cancer, there is no actual medical indication
for attempting to change the sex of an individual. The only
criterion is the wishes of the patient. According to Dr. Paul
Cameron of the Family Research Institute in Colorado Springs,
Colorado, this syndrome or condition is believed to be generated
or induced by a therapist; a form of autosuggestion based
on the therapist's handling of the case. That is, some mental
health professionals assert that society must "heal"
the patient by following his/her wishes and allowing the patient
to be mutilated. Further, once the surgery and hormone treatments
have been completed, then society is expected to treat the
individuals as "real" men or women, and protect
them under the non-discrimination sections of human rights
legislation.
These surgeries at best are superficial since
mutilating a woman's vagina to create a penis-like appendage,
and, for men, to mutilate the penis and then attempt to build
a vagina are really only a pretense, since the "plumbing"
doesn't function appropriately. That is, transformed men don't
menstruate and transformed women don't have erections. Whatever
the pretense, following surgery and hormone treatment, these
people remain genetically and psychologically members of their
birth sex.
Health care professionals indulge and exploit,
for fees, the obsession of those who want to have their genitals
mutilated because they believe that they are living in the
body of the wrong sex. Campaigning to have society join in
this charade is neither ethical nor wise. It also ignores
the price paid by spouses, children, parents, employers and
work mates.
Moreover, relatively little is known about
the long-term effects of this 70-year old experiment on those
seeking a sexual transformation. Even less is known about
the long-term effects upon society.
Indeed, it is increasingly uncertain that
genital mutilation is in any permanent respect beneficial
for the obsessive individual. Tragically, about 25% drift
into the sex trade ending up as prostitutes or dying of AIDS.
Indulging them is almost certainly bad for society, since
the transition health costs are high, family and other social
disruptions are considerable, and the recipients are seldom
any more productive or satisfied after their mutilation. More
than 40% of transgendered people are unemployed.
In the not too distant past, those who worked
with self-centred, fixated, obsessive clients believed their
task was to persuade them that wishes were not horses, and
to abandon their obsessions, and do something constructive
with their lives. The notion that society ought to indulge
an obsession may well be 'mental health' dogma, but it makes
no sense since there is no 'scientific' reason for it.
Babette Francis, Founder and President of
REAL Women's sister pro-family organization in Australia,
in its publication, "Endeavour Forum", February,
2003 and published in the Australian newspaper, The Sydney
Morning Herald (July 14, 2003) states:
Dr. Paul McHugh, director of psychiatry
at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said 'a patient's feeling
that he is a woman trapped in a man's body is not obviously
different from an anorexic woman's feeling that she is drastically
overweight'.
'We don't do liposuction on anorexics.
Why amputate the genitals of these poor men? Surely the
fault is in the mind, not the member.'
In the 1970s, McHugh halted sex-change
operations at Johns Hopkins, calling them 'perhaps with
the exception of frontal lobotomy, the most radical therapy
ever encouraged by 20th-century psychiatrists'.
His conclusion was that reputable surgeons
should not be in the business of carving up a healthy body
to satisfy a feeling about what that body should be.
What is needed before more men are cut
up is a review of the castrations to date to determine whether
the victims are any happier and have had their psychological
problems resolved, or whether they are still dysfunctional
in one or more ways and would have been better treated with
psychiatry.
In July 2003, the inevitable occurred in Australia when a
34-year old man sued the doctors who wrongly advised him to
have a sex-change operation at 19 years of age, having diagnosed
him as a transsexual when he sought help from the Gender Identity
Clinic at Monash Medical Centre. The doctors claimed, after
only three consultations, that his psychiatric problems were
caused because of a "confused gender identity".
Ten years later, Alan/Helen realized the sex change had been
a mistake and that he/she suffers, as a result, from chronic
depression and has difficulty keeping jobs. Though he/she
has had breast implants removed and taken hormones to revert
to being a man, the individual has been advised that gender
re-assignment is irreversible. This individual is now suing
the Gender Identity Centre, two psychiatrists, the gynecologist
and the plastic surgeon, who were responsible for his present
condition.
Canada has its own sad experience with transsexual
medical intervention. Winnipeg born David Reimer was born
a boy, 38 years ago, but raised as a girl after a botched
circumcision led to the removal of his penis. He later received
female hormones. His parents had gone along with this sex
change following the advice of psychologist, Dr. John Money
of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The parents renamed
their son, Brenda, and raised him as a girl. However, he didn't
adjust well as a girl, and at puberty, the experiment fell
apart. Nature hadn't forgotten his gender, even if others
tried to do so. David rebelled and went back to being a boy,
and lived out the rest of his life as a man. He married and
was stepfather to three children. He subsequently separated
from his wife, however, and eventually committed suicide this
year. His mother believes he would still be alive if it were
not for the devastating gender experiment done on him.
Transsexualism Taken Seriously
Even if the obsession of belonging to another
gender has no medical basis, some nonetheless take it seriously.
For example, in Montreal on May 29, 2004, the Canadian Mental
Health Association (CMHA) hosted an "Out in Colour"
conference, which addressed issues of concern to Montreal's
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered or two-spirited population.
Two further similar conferences have been scheduled to take
place in Montreal on July 28 and November 29, 2004.
EGALE held a Trans Awareness week in May 2004
to "celebrate the lives of transsexual and transgender
people across Canada". Educational and information forums
were held in several cities. At the Vancouver meeting, held
on May 3, 2004, National Film Board documentaries (who else
would have made them), called "In the Flesh" and
"Trans Revolution" were screened. The tax-supported
National Film Board, by the way, is listed in EGALE's website
as a sponsor of its conference and gala.
International Olympics Committee
The recognition of the transsexual campaign
scored its greatest success, however, in May 2004, when the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) declared that athletes
who have undergone sex-change surgery would be eligible for
participating in the Olympics if their new gender has been
legally recognized and the athlete has undergone a minimum
two-year period of postoperative therapy. This decision is
to go into effect at the Summer Olympics in Athens this August.
This decision, however, is bound to create
problems for the Olympics as male-to-female transsexuals have
physical advantages when competing against women, since men
have higher levels of testosterone and a greater muscle-to-fat
ratio and heart and lung capacity, even after hormone therapy
and sex-change surgery.
This extraordinary decision is also out of
line with the IOC's past dealing with drug scandals, which
have so damaged the image of the Olympics. Further, up until
1999, the IOC conducted gender verification tests on athletes,
especially those from the then Iron Curtain countries, e.g.
Russia, East Germany and Romania, because it was apparent
that some of the so-called female athletes had been hormonally
"fixed" to become females in order to enter into
the women's competitions. These screenings, however, were
dropped before the 2000 Olympic games in Sydney, Australia,
because of political pressure from homosexual activists.
It just doesn't make sense that those taking
hormones should be admitted to the games. As a competitor,
if a transsexual's drug therapy gives the athlete more zip,
one wonders how many more hormones he/she might take to enhance
his/her performance.
Transsexuals Receive Insurance Coverage
for Treatment
The cost of medical treatment for a purported
sex change is between $20,000 and $30,000. The provinces of
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland-Labrador
include this coverage in their provincial health insurance
plans.
However, in October 1998, the Ontario Conservative
government de-listed sex reassignment surgery (SRS) from coverage
under the Health Insurance Act. The Minister of Health
in the recently-elected Ontario Liberal government, however,
is a well-known homosexual activist, George Smitherman. Consequently,
it was not long after the provincial election that the (sexual)
Transition Support Group, supported by EGALE, came knocking
on his door demanding the re-listing of SRS. This group also
demanded that the Ontario Health card give gender recognition
to people who have not even had sexual surgery, but are living
as another sex. (Currently, only if an individual has undergone
SRS is he/she eligible to change their health card to reflect
the acquired gender.) Mr. Smitherman promptly instructed his
Ministry officials to begin preparatory work to restore funding
for transgender operations.
However, in its May 2004 budget, the Ontario
government de-listed such medical services as eye examinations,
chiropractic services and physiotherapy, and ordered those
earning over $20,000 to pay a premium (tax) for health care.
This placed the Liberal Premier, McGuinty, in a touchy situation
because of the intensely negative reaction to his budget.
Consequently, his office decided that transgendered operations
would not be covered by the provincial medical insurance plan.
Luckily, however, the Ontario government now
has a way out of this conundrum. The transsexuals had laid
a complaint with their friendly office, the Human Rights Commission,
citing discrimination. In March 2002, the Commission found
that failure to cover transgendered surgery is discrimination.
Consequently, Ontario Attorney General, Michael Bryant, has
now instructed his lawyers to negotiate a settlement with
the transsexuals. That's the way it's done in Canada. A decision
by a biased Human Rights Commission, which is not appealed
by a sympathetic government, stands. All the public has to
do is pay the bill.
Please write to:
The Rt. Hon. Dalton J. P. McGuinty
Premier of Ontario
Room 281, Main Legislative Bldg.
Queen's Park
Toronto, ON M7A 1A1
Fax: (416) 325-7578
Email: dalton.McGuinty@premier.gov.on.ca
The Hon. Michael Bryant
Attorney General of Ontario
Queen's Park
720 Bay Street, 11th Floor
Toronto, ON M5G 2K1
Fax: (416) 326-4016
Email: mbryant.mpp@liberal.ola.org
to insist they appeal the Ontario Human Rights
Commission's bizarre decision on medical coverage for transsexuals.
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