An Important message from Catholic Allies

We were saddened to find a distressing article on the opinion page of the Criterion this week titled Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria and Tragic Seduction of our Daughters.  If you subscribe to the Criterion, we encourage you to read the article, and read the response letter below. If you feel compelled to provide the Criterion with your thoughts, you can locate the contact information of the paper's editor at this link.

As always, we stand with all transgender people and people experiencing gender dysphoria. We acknowledge that the mental health suffering that often occurs in correlation with transgenderism/gender dysphoria is the result of the way our society treats transgender people, not the *cause* of gender dysphoria.

We remain committed to taking a stand against inaccurate information and amplifying the dignity of all of our siblings in Christ. The following letter was sent to the editor of the e Criterion in response to the article titled Rapid Onset gender dysphoria and tragic seduction of our daughters. 

To the Publishers of the Criterion, the Catholic newspaper that serves Central and Southern Indiana:

While we respect your justification in publishing opinion pieces on Catholic teaching as it relates to our culture, we respectfully call your attention to a harmful opinion piece you recently published. The article Rapid onset gender dysphoria and the tragic seduction of our daughters touts unsubstantiated “facts” and vilifies doctors and teachers. We find your distribution of this article to our Catholic community to be irresponsible and dangerous.

Claiming that “There is evidence that transitioning can worsen mental health and correlate with suicidal thoughts” without any peer-reviewed evidence to support this statement is reckless.

Most youth who experience gender dysphoria suffer self-doubt and anxiety because of the way our culture isolates them. One line in the referenced article claims “…more than 60% of parents reported that the announcement of their child’s coming out had resulted in a popularity improvement at school and in other settings.” This quote cites a survey that has since been “corrected, revised and updated” by its publisher (Brown University). In printing this statistic (which is based on untrustworthy survey results), you lead our society to believe that these youth are not, in fact, suffering but seeking secondary gain.

The paragraph I find most troublesome is this:

A second relevant factor is that various authority figures in the lives of teens, including teachers, therapists and doctors, have started encouraging and affirming the idea of gender transitioning. These respected individuals may energetically advocate for a young person to transition, claiming they know best what the young person needs, and it is virtually always “transition.” When parents are hesitant to go along, these authority figures may adopt a savior posture by bringing up a coercive suicide narrative…

In most cases, caring for youth experiencing gender dysphoria has nothing to do with hormones or surgeries. It is, above all else, an exercise in empathy. It involves a team of people (including parents, teachers, therapists and doctors) seeking to listen to, believe the experience of, and support a child who is suffering because of the way our society has treated them. A person who is not sitting in classrooms and medical offices where these conversations occur does not have experience to postulate what happens in these discussions “virtually always.”

This article suggests that these “various authority figures” exist to work against parents. In contrast, we are usually sought out by the parents as they assemble a team to work together to help their child.

Referring to teachers, mental health professionals and doctors who are in the trenches of our nationwide mental health crisis as “adopting a savior posture” is aggressively condescending and polarizing. We, as first responders in pediatric mental health emergencies, have committed our lives to the pro-life ministry of helping all children realize the sanctity and value of their own lives. This article sews mistrust and paints a fictional division between our profession and parents.

I disagree with your choice to print an article that includes uncorroborated statistics and creates unnecessary polarization in an already divided world. I ask that the article be redacted or corrected, or that you publish this or another response to this piece in your paper next week.