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Monday, October 17, 2011

Controversial Therapy For Pre-Teen Transgender Patient Raises Questions

A lesbian couple in California who say their 11-year-old son Tommy who wants to be a girl named Tammy are giving their child hormone blockers that delay the onset of puberty -- so that he can have more time that he can have more time to decide if he wants to change his gender.

The couple’s supporters say the Hormone Blocking Therapy has only minor side effects and is appropriate for a child who is unsure of his gender. "This is definitely a changing landscape for transgender youth," said Joel Baum, director of education and training for Gender Spectrum, a California-based non-profit group. "This is about giving kids and their families the opportunity to make the right decision."

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9 comments:

andy said...

Only in California can they get away with that. Gays in general should not be raising kids. No wonder the kid is messed up. Tommy needs to be taken away so he can be raised by a normal family.

Anonymous said...

WHAT?

Anonymous said...

I agree with @ndre 100%!!!!

Anonymous said...

This is child abuse and if a hetero (that's a term used by many to describe straights) couple was feeding their child hormones to promote "straightness" all Hell would be being raised by the same people who are supporting this obscenity. The only "decision" being supported here is that of two homosexual women deciding they really want a little "girl named Tammy," not a messy, dirty, loud little boy (yuck!!) "named Tommy." An eleven year old isn't mature enough to make this kind of life-altering, permanent (?) choice. He is probably just seeking, as most children will, the approval of his parents and trying to "fit in" to the lifestyle he sees all around him. This is wrong and should not be permitted until the child is older and mature enough to make an informed decision. I seriously doubt he's been told the whole truth of the potential, long-term effects this will have for him. As far as gays raising children goes, just like "heteros," there are good and bad parents. I think these women fit into the latter category.

Anonymous said...

I've actually read quite a bit about this family. They aren't desperately trying to raise a little girl. they are desperately trying to figure out what's best for their child.

as a straight person with a transgender family member and a best friend who is gay, i can with 100% certainty assure you that homosexuality and gender identity are 2 completely different things, neither of which do any of us have any control over. Sure, you can live in denial of who you really are and be "accepted" by society while slowly dying inside. what a miserable life.

I think people who embrace who they are despite the backlash they will encounter are brave and have more backbone than the people who ridicule them.

i just don't understand why people can't live harmoniously. non-tolerance is what's killing our world.

Anonymous said...

10:36
HE'S A CHILD!!! He hasn't even BEGUN to live his life. There's practically NOTHING a child is allowed to make decisions about. He can't decide when he goes to bed, what he watches on TV, what movies he sees, where he lives, where he goes to school, what he's gonna be when he grows up, the list goes on and on, ad infinitum. How can you possibly think it's okay for him to decide he's a girl when he's as young as he is?!? His parents are making this decision, not him. Our youth is when we get to make mistakes without the same consequences an adult suffers. Our parents are supposed to be there to protect us from making irreversible, possibly deadly ones. These parents are not doing their job. I don't disagree with his right to make such a decision when he's old enough to fully understand what he's actually doing. You can read all you want about these women, but you will only read what they want you to know. You know nothing more about what is in their hearts and minds than even a person who has read nothing of them. Further, your assertions that you have "a transgender family member" and "my best friend is gay" do nothing to support your viewpoint and make you no more an "expert" on this topic than anyone else who makes such comments ("some of my best friends are black," ever heard that one?). Sometimes harmony and tolerance are simply euphemisms for cowardice and surrender.

Anonymous said...

@11:32 i think this child is old enough to tell people how he feels inside. and how he feels is something that not 1 other person can fully understand. no one ever listens to kids. they have feelings too. not just opinions but true feelings.

i'm not saying that giving him medication is the right thing to do. i just hate that people are making this out to be something that his moms have done wrong and that its something they are doing for their benefit. its absurd.

and i love how andre thinks that gays should not raise kids. i know alot of straight people who have no business raising kids either. it shouldn't be about gay or straight parenting, it should be about who provides the best home. but of course the homophobes out there don't care about that, as long as the parents are straight.

lmclain said...

No one is making the correlation that two lesbian women think that a child they are raising is having "gender identity" issues? Would he have those issues if he was being raised in a traditional family? Maybe. Maybe not. but I find the "coincidence", especially in a child his age, an interesting facet of the situation. How do they know (or have they been "coaching him"?) he's having an "identity" crisis? I'm sure all 11 year old boys wonder if they are REALLY girls....remember--- "indoctrination" was one of the larger argumments against same sex couples raising a child. THAT'S a mere coincidence in this matter, too?

Anonymous said...

12:35 "i'm not saying that giving him medication is the right thing to do."
Yeah, ya kinda are! That's the whole point of this discussion, ya twit!