When Children Become the Masks to Hide Prejudice

Anti-transgender campaigns are harming children and replacing parental authority with political agendas

Children often are the masks that disguise the true goals of those driven by prejudice. They have been the pawns for policies, politics and fear-mongering from the beginning of time.

The persecution of Jews from at least medieval times to Nazi Germany to today often was rationalized by “blood libel,” the allegation that Jews slaughter Christian children in order to use their blood in various rituals.

In the United States and Canada, hundreds of thousands of indigenous children were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in boarding schools, suffering physical, sexual and emotional abuse, disease and malnourishment. Proponents, including some religious orders, claimed to be “saving” the children by converting them to Christianity and assimilating them into white community.

The explicit immigration policy of the Trump Administration to separate children from parents crossing illegally into the United States was promoted as a way to protect children from trafficking. Overwhelmingly, though, the children weren’t targets of abuse. They were traveling with their parents. Separating children from their parents wasn’t to protect children. It wasn’t an unfortunate byproduct of the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. The real rationale of Trump’s family separation was to create a consequence so severe that it would deter other families from crossing the border. The policy’s inhumanity was its purpose and children were the victims.

Again today, using children to achieve political and policy ends is at the heart of a cruel and inhumane campaign to marginalize transgender Americans. It’s not so easy to promote prejudice on the basis of sexual preference or gender identity in a culture that now embraces – or at least generally accepts – equality for gays, including the right to marry. Live and let live is today’s mantra.

So those who seek to exploit prejudice and fear today exploit the safety of children. It turns out that using the threats of shared bathrooms or the threat that girls would have to compete against boys in sports weren’t provocative enough. Sure, they moved the needle for some, but the claims just weren’t urgent enough for most people.

But claims that children are being abused? That hits home. The campaign against transgender people has been percolating for some time. If there is a single inflection point that elevated the rhetoric and the hate, though, this past spring’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) might be it.

With the right-wing audience cheering on the speakers, former President Donald Trump railed against “chemical castration and sexual mutilization (sic)”​ of children. If re-elected in 2024, he promised a national ban on transgender medical treatment for young people. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told the audience that she was introducing just such a bill and would go Trump one better: criminalize doctors who provided such care.  Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said liberals believe children “should be able to change their gender at recess” and “hyperventilate on their yoga mats if you use the wrong pronoun.”

Set aside the falsehoods of these statements. Just stop for a moment and reflect on the irony of what these and other hard-core small-government, family-focused conservatives are proposing. Rather than allow parents, in consultation with doctors and other medical experts, to make decisions that are in the best interests of their children, they are dictating that parents be replaced by politicians in making these highly personal family decisions. With no scientific evidence to support the judgements, these “conservatives” are enabling, and in some cases requiring, government to intrude on the most personal family issues and overrule parental authority.

The fact is that what is being banned in states across the country would make illegal the evidence-based protocols endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, among others. Rather than following recommendations based in medical knowledge and efficacy, these advocates of limited government would use government in the most abusive and intrusive way to replace parents.

The truth is that these so-called conservative politicians are exploiting children, sacrificing their best care for political gain. It is that simple. “The truth is that data from more than a dozen studies of more than 30,000 transgender and gender-diverse young people consistently show that access to gender-affirming care is associated with better mental health outcomes—and that lack of access to such care is associated with higher rates of suicidality, depression and self-harming behavior,” according to Scientific American.

To be very clear, the medical protocols for treating children do NOT include surgery. The care protocol recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics includes “Providing youth with access to comprehensive gender-affirming and developmentally appropriate health care” and making “family-based therapy and support available to meet the needs of parents, caregivers and siblings of youth who identify as transgender.” 

Puberty blockers may also be part of the recommended treatment. Puberty-slowing treatments have been used since they were approved in 1993 to slow precocious puberty in children. According to most medical experts, the treatment is not permanent. “Puberty blockers are reversible,” according to WebMD. “These medications are just a short-term pause. They’ll delay the effects of puberty for as long as your child is on them. If they stop treatment, their body will go through puberty.”

Those who support bans on gender-identity medical care for children often ignore the recommended protocols and, like Trump at CPAC, jump to the far more provocative and false claim that children are being physically “mutilated.” When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation in May to prohibit gender-affirming treatments for children, for example, he claimed the ban was needed to “outlaw the mutilation of minors.”

The reality is that gender surgery in children is extremely rare. One study found that among minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria, there were fewer than 60 gender surgeries between 2019 and 2021. Surgery is not the recommended protocol for children.

There is no evidence that children are being groomed or that the number of transgender people – a small minority to begin with – is increasing. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, using data from two federal surveys, estimated that the total number of transgender people in America (age 13 and older) is well less than 1% of the entire population. The number hasn’t changed significantly from the Institute’s analysis in 2017.

Far from protecting children, the harsh language and legislation proposed by anti-transgender politicians likely is increasing violence toward transgender people. Transgender individuals are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators, and crimes against them – including murder – are increasing.

The bottom line is this: The biggest worry isn’t that straight kids are recruited to become transgender. It’s that transgender kids are able to live fulfilling, violence-free lives. That’s not too much to ask, is it?