Democrats maintained control of the Senate in the 2022 mid-term elections, and as a result, they are holding a vote on a bill that will deprive children of relationships with their biological mother and/or biological father. Katy Faust, who we cited in our episode defending natural marriage, writes about it for the Daily Signal.

Here is the political news from her article:

Control of the U.S. Senate has been decided and now we hear that Democrats have scheduled a vote Wednesday on the misnamed Respect for Marriage Act, in hopes of legislatively cementing the mother- and father-loss that the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling endorsed seven years ago.

What’s the “Respect for Marriage Act”?

When it comes to issues like this, I trust the Alliance Defending Freedom to explain it, since they are the ones who go to the Supreme Court for these cases.

They say:

The so-called Respect for Marriage Act is a misnamed bill that expands not only what marriage means, but also who can be sued for disagreeing with the new meaning of marriage.

While proponents of the bill claim that it simply codifies the 2015 Obergefell decision, in reality it is an intentional attack on the religious freedom of millions of Americans with sincerely held beliefs about marriage.

The Respect for Marriage Act threatens religious freedom and the institution of marriage in multiple ways:

• It further embeds a false definition of marriage in the American legal fabric.
• It opens the door to federal recognition of polygamous relationships.
• It jeopardizes the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that exercise their belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
• It endangers faith-based social-service organizations by threatening litigation and liability risk if they follow their views on marriage when working with the government.

The truth is the Respect for Marriage Act does nothing to change the status of same-sex marriage or the benefits afforded to same-sex couples following Obergefell. It does much, however, to endanger religious freedom.

This is serious. If you are reading this, you should definitely contact your senators in Washington to make sure they vote against this legislation.

OK, so the first problem is religious liberty trouble, but this law is bad for children, too.

Let’s go back to Katy, writing for Daily Signal:

With Obergefell, the Supreme Court made gay marriage the law of the land and mandated that government institutions and processes could make no legal distinctions between adult romantic relationships.

Two married men cannot be treated any differently than a married man and woman. Indeed, from the perspective of adult emotional fulfillment, there may be no distinction.

But from the child’s perspective, these two couplings are polar opposites.

A child who is the product of a married man and woman receives the complementary developmental benefits of a male and female parent, the two adults who are (statistically) the safest, most connected to, and most invested in them, and are granted 100% of their biological identity.

A child raised by married men is deprived of the emotional and developmental benefit conferred exclusively by mothers, are being raised by at least one adult who statistically increases their risk of abuse and neglect, and are deprived at least 50% of their heritage and kinship network. In short, same-sex marriage requires child loss.

Many of us warned that making husbands and wives optional in marriage would result in mothers and fathers becoming optional in parenthood. The past seven years have validated those concerns.

In the name of nondiscrimination, the Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that two married women may be listed as parents on a child’s birth certificate, legally erasing the child’s father on the day of birth.

The old definition of marriage required opposite sexes work together to provide an environment for raising children. Not every couple has to have children, but every child born in a marriage has two biological parents nearby who have a biological interest in the child’s development.

Now that we have got rid of that male-female dynamic, people are just manufacturing kids with IVF and surrogacy, and those children DON’T have either their mom or dad nearby.

“Infertility” has been redefined so that same-sex couples can have their child “trappings” of marriage covered by insurance. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., proposed legislation that would use tax dollars to subsidize creation of intentionally motherless or fatherless children. Surrogacy tourism is on the rise, and entire industries are devoted to procuring custom-ordered motherless babies.

Her article also talks about how studies attempting to show that same-sex parenting is benign are problematic:

In 2016, after examining every single same-sex parenting study, researcher Walter Schumm concluded: “[S]tudies that show ‘no difference’ often used poor methodology (non-random samples, parental (self-) reporting vs. actual child outcomes, short duration, etc.) to reach their conclusions.”

Unsurprisingly when you employ the gold standard of the scientific method, “no difference” actually meant “significant difference.”

One such study found that compared to children with opposite-sex parents, children of same-sex parents:

• Experienced “definite” or “severe” emotional problems at a rate of 14.9% versus 5.5%.
• Were diagnosed with ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder] at a rate of 15.5% versus 7.1%.
• Struggled with learning disabilities at a rate of 14.1% versus 8%.
• Received special education and mental health services at a rate of 17.8% versus 10.4%.

Perhaps the disparity is a result of the same-sex couple’s inability to marry, you argue. There’s data on that as well.

A review of outcomes for children raised by unmarried and married same-sex couples found that “above average child depressive symptoms rises from 50% to 88%; daily fearfulness or crying rises from 5% to 32%; grade point average declines from 3.6% to 3.4%; and child sex abuse by parent rises from zero to 38%.”

Turns out you can’t legislate away the benefit that children receive from being raised by their own mom or dad, even if you call it marriage.

I think that people have a vague feeling that there is something wrong with redefining marriage, but they don’t know what it is. It’s right there in plain sight. When you take away a mom from a child, the child loses something. When you take away a dad from a child, the child loses something. When the child cannot see a man and a woman working together to provide a stable, calm environment for the child, the child loses something. Children’s needs are more important than adult desires.

I have been seeing interesting tweets about the sudden popularity of transgenderism among young people. One of them went something like this. First, they deny that sex-change surgeries are happening. Then, they say they are happening, but not many. Then, they say many are happening, but not to children. Sadly, this new study shows that many are happening to children.

Here’s the story from Daily Wire:

A new study of nationwide hospital databases found that at least 1,130 adolescents between 2016 and 2019 received “gender-affirming” chest surgeries in the U.S.

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, saw a 389% increase in adolescents (ages 12-17) obtaining chest surgeries from 2016 to 2019. An overwhelming majority (1,114) of the adolescents seeking this surgery were female (98.6%), and just 16 were male (1.4%).

“To our knowledge, this study is the largest investigation to date of gender-affirming chest reconstruction in a pediatric population,” the paper’s authors wrote, who are each affiliated with Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “The results demonstrate substantial increases in gender-affirming chest reconstruction for adolescents.”

Here is the breakdown by age:

The ages of the pediatric patients ranged from 12 to 17, with 42 (5.5%) of the recipients between 12 and 14, 131 (16%) aged 15, 291 (34.5%) aged 16, and 365 (44%) aged 17.

It’s an interesting situation. I would expect parents to set boundaries on their children. First, to shelter them from public schools and social media. But second, at least keep them away from the people who are profiting from “gender-affirming care”.

Speaking of profiting, there was this:

The median total charges for chest reconstruction were $29,886 ($21,285–$45,147), a number that was adjusted for inflation, the authors note. Most of the chest surgeries (61.1%) were covered by private health insurance, 16.5% used public health insurance including Medicaid, 15.8% paid out of pocket, and 6.7% indicated “other.”

Remember what the lady from Vanderbilt said?

It was reported by Daily Wire:

“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.”

Sadly, for one reason or another, the adults have decided that it is more virtuous to go along with the agenda of the schools and social media, and inflict surgeries on their children. I could never understands why anyone would cut healthy organs off of a child with mental health issues. That would be like putting an anorexic person on a diet.

There was a previous study:

In July, the same four authors, with the addition of two others, published a separate study on adults who received “gender-affirming” chest reconstruction surgeries. Their results, also using NASS outpatient hospital data, found that 21,293 individuals obtained chest surgeries between 2016 and 2019, a 143.2% increase. The large majority of chest surgeries were performed on female patients, with 82.1% receiving double mastectomies; 27.9% of trans-identifying males received breast augmentations.

When it comes to debating social issues, I like to have studies close at hand. For same-sex marriage, I use studies showing different outcomes for children raised in same-sex homes. For abortion, I use science textbooks showing that the embryo is fully human. It is self-directed and has distinct DNA from either parent. And for transgenderism, I like to use studies like these, showing how health care providers are profiting from the social trends being pushed by the “don’t judge” compassion crowd in the public schools. The study showing that gender-affirming care does not lower the number of suicides (in the long term) is a good one, too.