My understanding of how the secular left pushing transitioning kids onto parents is that the teacher, the guidance counselor, the health care workers, etc. tell the parents “would you rather have a dead girl than a live boy?” This approach is in keeping with the compassionate “don’t judge” worldview, which emphasizes emotions over moral standards and truth. But does it work?

Here is the latest study that I found on Pubmed, entitled “Risk of Suicide and Self-Harm Following Gender-Affirmation Surgery“. (archived)

The Abstract says:

Introduction

With the growing acceptance of transgender individuals, the number of gender affirmation surgeries has increased. Transgender individuals face elevated depression rates, leading to an increase in suicide ideation and attempts. This study evaluates the risk of suicide or self-harm associated with gender affirmation procedures.

Methods

This retrospective study utilized de-identified patient data from the TriNetX (TriNetX, LLC, Cambridge, MA) database, involving 56 United States healthcare organizations and over 90 million patients. The study involved four cohorts: cohort A, adults aged 18-60 who had gender-affirming surgery and an emergency visit (N = 1,501); cohort B, control group of adults with emergency visits but no gender-affirming surgery (N = 15,608,363); and cohort C, control group of adults with emergency visits, tubal ligation or vasectomy, but no gender-affirming surgery (N = 142,093). Propensity matching was applied to cohorts A and C. Data from February 4, 2003, to February 4, 2023, were analyzed to examine suicide attempts, death, self-harm, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within five years of the index event. A secondary analysis involving a control group with pharyngitis, referred to as cohort D, was conducted to validate the results from cohort C.

Results

Individuals who underwent gender-affirming surgery had a 12.12-fold higher suicide attempt risk than those who did not (3.47% vs. 0.29%, RR 95% CI 9.20-15.96, p < 0.0001). Compared to the tubal ligation/vasectomy controls, the risk was 5.03-fold higher before propensity matching and remained significant at 4.71-fold after matching (3.50% vs. 0.74%, RR 95% CI 2.46-9.024, p < 0.0001) for the gender affirmation patients with similar results with the pharyngitis controls.

Conclusion

Gender-affirming surgery is significantly associated with elevated suicide attempt risks, underlining the necessity for comprehensive post-procedure psychiatric support.

This reminds me of how doctors in gender-bender clinics see their work. Are they helping children? Or are they virtue-signaling to parents about how much more moral they are than parents?

Here is a story from Daily Wire about that:

“It’s a lot of money,” VUMC Clinic for Transgender Health’s Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said at one Medicine Grand Rounds lecture, video reveals. “These surgeries make a lot of money.”

Taylor noted that a “chest reconstruction” can bring in $40,000 per patient, and someone “just on routine hormone treatment, who I’m only seeing a few times a year, can bring in several thousand dollars … and actually makes money for the hospital.”

Citing the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery, Taylor said vaginoplasty surgeries can generate $20,000, gushing that it “has to be an underestimate,” since hospital stay, anesthesia, post-op visits, and other add-ons are not included in the total.

“And the female-to-male bottom surgeries, these are huge money makers,” the doctor continued, adding that such surgeries could bring in “up to $100,000” for the hospital.

Some clinics are “entirely” “supported” financially by such phalloplasty surgeries, Taylor boasted.

“These surgeries are labor intensive, there are a lot of follow-ups, they require a lot of our time, and they make money,” she emphasized. “They make money for the hospital.”

The interesting thing about these stories is how often it’s white progressive women doing the virtue-signaling, and collecting the money for their new cars, traveling and cosmetic surgeries.

I recently spoke to my doctor about my concerns that medicine was becoming too politicized, and that their motivations seemed to be to follow the priorities of politicians and special interest groups. He actually lost his temper, and insisted that doctors are guided by “evidence” in every respect, and that people who oppose doctors are guided by “social media”. He was quite upset.

That might be the case for him, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for patients to ask their doctors what’s guiding their decisions.

One of the other software engineers at work is always finding interesting sermons and lectures to listen to. On Friday afternoon, things were a bit slow, so she messaged me a lecture featuring Dr. William Lane Craig, talking on “Who Was Jesus?” at Columbia University. I wanted to encourage her, so I put it on to listen as well. I liked it so much, I wrote out a summary below to go with it.

Here is the lecture:

Description:

Dr. William Lane Craig unpacks questions surrounding Jesus’ resurrection and the historical accuracy of the biblical claims.  Columbia University, 2009.

And my outline:

Different views of Jesus:

• Jewish view of Jesus
• Muslim view of Jesus
• skeptical historian view of Jesus
• what did Jesus think about himself?
• Jesus didn’t write anything of his own
• best sources are the records of Jesus followers
• problem: how do we know these records are accurate
• maybe stories of Jesus’ divinity emerged over time

New tools from the Renaissance:

• historiography
• textual criticism
• investigate Jesus as a historical figure
• same tools are used for other historical figures

Sources:

• Christian
• Jewish
• Roman
• Many more sources than other figures of antiquity

External sources:

• confirm what the gospels say, but don’t say anything new

Treating the Bible as a collection of ancient documents

• not using the Bible to prove the Bible is divine
• just treating the books as historical documents

New Testament

• a collection of the earliest documents
• much later documents about Jesus not included
• later documents not written by eyewitnesses

Skeptical scholars:

• ignore the earliest sources
• focus on the later sources
• result is a more radical left-friendly Jesus

Burden of proof

• are the gospels assumed reliable until proven unreliable?
• are the gospels assumed unreliable until proven reliable?

Five reasons to assume the New Testament is reliable

1. Insufficient time for legendary influences to erase the historical core

• the gap between the events and the sources is much shorter than other comparable sources
• Greek and Roman sources are at least 1-2 generations from the events they record
• Gospels written down and circulated within first generation after the events they record
• the eyewitnesses were alive at the time they were written down

2. Gospels are not the same genre as folk tales or urban legends

• Gospels talk about real people who actually lived
• Gospels talk about real places excavated by archaeologists

3. Oral tradition in first century Jewish society

• Jewish culture valued reliable transmission of religious tradition
• Memorization of long passages and entire books

4. Restraints on the embellishment of traditions about Jesus

• The apostles and other eyewitnesses could correct embellishments

5. Gospel writers make testable statements that are found to be true

• Luke is the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts
• In Acts, Luke accompanies with the eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus
• Acts contains many historical details accurate to the times and places he writes about
• Luke’s gospel is in accord with archaeological discoveries made since

It’s reasonable to accept the general reliability of the Gospels, unless they are found unreliable

Historical basis for facets of Jesus

1. Unique Son of God

• historical critics claim that the divinity of Jesus developed over time
• why would monotheistic Jews contradict their monotheism by inventing a divine Jesus?
• the only reasonsable answer is that Jesus claimed divinity for himself
• His followers accepted it because Jesus provided reasons to believe
• Mark 12:1-8
  Earliest gospel reveals Jesus’ self-understanding as God’s “only beloved son”
• Matthew 11:27
  “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” This story is also in Luke. Source is “Q”, an early set of traditions common to Matthew and Luke
• Mark 13:32
  Jesus sees himself as above humans and angels, but subordinate to God the Father

Why would anyone take Jesus seriously, unless he was able to provide evidence?

2. Jesus’ miracles

• Jesus’ miracle stories are in all four sources
• The only reason to reject them is because of a philosophical bias against the supernatural

3. Trial and crucifixion

• Crucifixion narrative is in the Gospels, Paul’s letters, Acts
• Also confirmed by Josephus and Roman historians
• Historians across the ideological spectrum affirm the crucifixion

Why was Jesus crucified?

• Doesn’t fit with the skeptical view that Jesus was uncontroversial and had few followers

4. Jesus’ resurrection

• Jesus resurrection is the best explanation for historical facts accepted by diverse majority of historians

1. Burial location known to friends and enemies, and corpse would refute the resurrection
2. Tomb was found empty by a group of Jesus’ women followers
3. Post-mortem appearances to individuals and groups, friends, skeptics and enemies
4. Original disciples became convinced that Jesus rose from dead counter to their own interests

• The facts are accepted by a majority of scholars across the ideological spectrum
• Dr. Craig’s debate with a scholar who invented an unknown, identical twin brother who was separated from Jesus at birth
• Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide affirms the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event

Then there is a period of question and answer, which I did not find useful, because the questions seemed to be more about the needs and feelings of Christians, rather than about the facts presented by Dr. Craig, or about how these facts survive in debates on university campuses. Facts don’t care about your feelings.

It never hurts to listen to William Lane Craig. If you listen enough, you can remember his points when you get the opportunity. In college, all of my friends at Crusade could do his opening speech from his debates on God’s existence from memory.

I really enjoyed this interview of Dr. Stratton from the Apologetics 315 podcast. I’ve had non-Christians in previous workplaces raise the problem of free will vs divine sovereignty. After all, they say, how can humans be responsible for their choices if God is all-powerful? If God is all-powerful, then surely he must control everything, and there’s no space for free will. Right?

The episode can be heard here.

Here is the show description:

In this episode, Brian Auten and Chad Gross interview Tim Stratton of Free Thinking Ministries. They discuss the topic of Molinism as it relates to God’s sovereignty, human free will, and why it matters. Tim’s book on the subject is Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism: A Biblical, Historical, Theological, and Philosophical Analysis.

1:03 – Intro to Tim Stratton
1:41 – Why Molinism on the podcast?
3:20 – Welcome to Tim Stratton
3:54 – How Tim became a Christian
9:37 – God as a maximally great being
10:43 – Tim’s dissertation
11:18 – What does Tim find compelling about Molinism?
12:42 – The Mere Molinism Facebook group
16:14 – What is the problem that Molinism is trying to solve?
22:47 – How to briefly summarize Molinism?
23:41 – Defining terms: Middle knowledge and counterfactuals
31:39 – Scriptures that affirm counterfactuals / middle knowledge
41:53 – Why us the term “mere” Molinism?
46:22 – Can Molinism be applied to salvation?
48:21 – Does this chess analogy work?
52:10 – Objection: Molinism is not derived from scripture
58:23 – Objection: Who cares? That’s just for scholars and theologians
1:02:45 – How Molinism saved Tim’s marriage
1:06:20 – Where to find Tim’s resources

Tim Stratton’s reconciliation of divine sovereignty and free will is interesting to me. He keeps God as the sole initiator of salvation. And that’s good. But it also makes sure that human who resist God’s leading are responsible for their choice to resist God, and that’s also good. We want salvation to be 100% by faith alone in Christ alone. But we don’t want God to be the cause of people not being saved. On Stratton’s view, God wants everyone to be saved. If anyone is saved, it’s because God did ALL THE WORK to lead them and secure their salvation with the death of Jesus on the cross. But, on Stratton’s view, humans do get a choice – the choice to trust God or not. And so, if a person is not saved, then it’s their fault – not God’s.

If you hear this challenge from non-Christians, be sure to listen to the podcast. You can find a written version of his argument on his web site, Free Thinking Ministries.