Obama's Transgender Mandates

In December 2016, National Geographic announced their January edition would feature a nine year old boy who wants to be perceived as a girl. The magazine’s editor wrote, "She has lived as an openly transgender girl since age 5, and she captured the complexity of the conversation around gender. Today, we're not only talking about gender roles for boys and girls—we're talking about our evolving understanding of people on the gender spectrum."

Advocates for sexual deviancy have quickly moved from using adults to promote their agenda to exploiting children as the face of their cause.

Susan Goldberg, the National Geographic editor, should be ashamed of herself for using a young child in such an abusive manner. The overwhelming majority of doctors and psychiatrists label what this child is going through as "gender dysphoria" and National Geographic is lauding it as "beautiful."

Studies show that roughly 40% of those who identify as transgender end up attempting suicide. Is this a lifestyle that should be lauded?

From the beginning of mankind there have been two sexes: male and female. Genesis 1:27 says, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them."

National Geographic is the latest lame stream media company to abandon what it does best to foist a lifestyle in the American public that the medical community identifies as unhealthy. Imagine the pain and psychological trauma gender dysphoria causes children and adults. Rather than abandoning geography to shame Americans into embracing such a lifestyle, we should be helping individuals who struggle with this disorder. That is, helping confused individuals accept their wonderfully crafted and God-given biology

A Texas court is expected to make a decision before New Year’s Day on one of President Obama’s newest transgender mandates, which would require doctors to provide transgender treatment for kids who desire it.

That treatment would be required under Obama’s federal rule even if the physician is convinced it would harm the child.

The case was brought by the Becket Fund on behalf of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, the Franciscan Alliance and the states of Texas, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska and Wisconsin.

Another case on the issue also has been filed on behalf of the Religious Sisters of Mercy, Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center in Jackson, Minnesota; Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center in Alma, Mississippi; SMP Health System; the University of Mary; and North Dakota.

The Becket Fund said Tuesday that one case had been heard in a Texas court by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Wichita Falls about how the Obama plan will impose treatment requirements on doctors “even if the doctor’s best medical judgment is that treatment could harm the child.”

“We made the argument that it’s incredibly improper for the government to invade the important doctor-patient relationship, and it shouldn’t be mandating doctors to perform procedures against their best medical judgement,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at Becket Law. “Personal medical decisions about the welfare of a child should be free from political agendas and interference by bureaucrats.”

The organization explained that the new rule is to apply to more than 900,000 physicians – nearly every doctor in the U.S.

And it would cost health-care providers nearly $1 billion – even though government experts say its own Medicare and Medicaid programs will not cover in even for adults because they believe “clinical literature is ‘inconclusive’ on whether gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries with gender dysphoria.”

Some studies, in fact, warn of harm, the organization reported.

“Yet any doctor relying on the same research or their own medical judgment would be in violation of the new regulation and face potential lawsuits or job loss,” Becket said.

The organization cites a transgender information website that reports “up to 94 percent of children with gender dysphoria (77 to 94 percent in one set of studies and 73 to 88 percent in another) will grow out of their dysphoria naturally and live healthy lives without the need for surgery or lifelong hormone regimens.”

“We’re optimistic that the court will remind the government it simply has no authority to pass this type of law and that it has no business telling licensed medical professionals what procedures are in the best interests of their patients, let alone a child,” said Rienzi.

In November a separate lawsuit had been filed on behalf of North Dakota and additional plaintiffs.

That complaint alleges the demand is invalid under the Administrative Procedures Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the U.S. Constitution’s First, Fifth and 14th Amendments. It seeks a permanent injunction against the regulation as well as damages and costs.

Becket argued the government ”does not require Medicare and Medicaid to cover these same procedures, because Health & Human Services’ (HHS) own medical experts found the risks were often too high and benefits too unclear.”

“Yet any private doctor who made the same decision about the risks would be in violation of the new mandate and face potential lawsuits or job loss.

The Obama move came after the administration simply changed the historical meaning of the word “sex.”

“For decades, across multiple federal statutes, Congress has consistently used the term ‘sex’ to refer to an individual’s status as male or female, as determined by a person’s biological sex at birth. But in the regulation, HHS redefines ‘sex’ to include ‘an individual’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female, and which may be different from an individual’s sex assigned at birth.'”

The Obama administration has done this, “despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly rejected similar attempts to redefine ‘sex’ through legislation.”

Federal courts also have rejected such efforts, the complaint note