A new report from a medical professional, Jamie Reed, in St. Louis, Missouri, makes it abundantly clear that Louisiana and any other sane State must bring a swift end to transgender treatments for minor children.  This is the opening of her powerful testimony, which should be read in full to understand the scope of the evil unfolding all around us (thanks to Rod Dreher for posting about this at his blog):

I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders. My worldview has deeply shaped my career. I have spent my professional life providing counseling to vulnerable populations: children in foster care, sexual minorities, the poor.

For almost four years, I worked at The Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases with teens and young adults who were HIV positive. Many of them were trans or otherwise gender nonconforming, and I could relate: Through childhood and adolescence, I did a lot of gender questioning myself. I’m now married to a transman, and together we are raising my two biological children from a previous marriage and three foster children we hope to adopt.

All that led me to a job in 2018 as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, which had been established a year earlier.

The center’s working assumption was that the earlier you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the more anguish you can prevent later on. This premise was shared by the center’s doctors and therapists. Given their expertise, I assumed that abundant evidence backed this consensus.

During the four years I worked at the clinic as a case manager—I was responsible for patient intake and oversight—around a thousand distressed young people came through our doors. The majority of them received hormone prescriptions that can have life-altering consequences—including sterility.

I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to “do no harm.” Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.

Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue—and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.

Almost everyone in my life advised me to keep my head down. But I cannot in good conscience do so. Because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling.

Though it is appalling, transgenderism is spreading quickly even in a very red State like Louisiana, where 128 doctors, voice coaches, counselors, and such like are busy raking in piles of cash as they destroy young lives.

This raises the question of the priorities of Louisiana’s State government – a proposal to try to resolve the property insurance problem sailed through the Legislature in mere days.  Yet the silence and inaction on the dangers to Louisiana’s children from hormone ‘therapy’ and gender reassignment surgery is stunning.  Are inanimate objects worth more to the legislators than the souls and bodies of living Louisiana children?  Are they willing to let them go on being exploited and mutilated so that doctors, hospitals, drug makers, and others will have more long-term revenue sources?

If they do nothing, our State is no better than the ancient cultures that practiced horrifying human sacrifice.

Hopefully they will do the opposite, however, and act in accordance with the Christian Faith many say they profess.  There are examples they can follow.  Oklahoma is proposing a total ban on trans treatment for young people.  Federal proposals to ban social media for children and teens, which is at the heart of a lot of the trans madness, have been floated.  There is no reason why Louisiana could not implement her own bans of these kinds for the good of her young population instead of waiting for others to do so.

This is not proposed out of hard-heartedness towards those who consider themselves transgender, but out of a recognition that human beings, created by the Holy Trinity in His image and likeness, are created with a goal, with a longing, to be united with their Creator in love.  Bishop Athanasios of Limassol of Cyprus explains:

A human being is a temple of the living God. This is an apostolic teaching of our Church which means that, just as the grace of God, the grace of the Holy Spirit, dwells in a temple, by the same token the grace of God abides in us and we become temples of the living God. God is called living because he isn’t shut away in heaven and we simply believe in him and accept him, but because he lives within us and we are temples of the living God. Of course, Saint Paul didn’t mean that a specific part of our being is a temple of God, but that the whole person is designed to be a temple of God. When we reach this planned destination, then we become temples of the living God. This is why, in the Orthodox Church, there’s great respect and honor for the whole of the human person.

When we honor the saints of the Church, who are people who have proved truly to be temples of the living God, having observed his commandments and found the truth, we don’t merely honor their souls, their teaching or their intellect. We honor the saints as whole beings, because people are sanctified as such, soul and body. This is why, in the Church, we venerate the holy relics of the saints, which are their bones which received the grace of the Holy Spirit and are temples of the living God. We Orthodox don’t simply render honor, as did some of our forebears, but we actually embrace the relics, the objects and the holy icons of the saints because we believe that, in doing so, we share in the grace of the Holy Spirit which these saints possess. Of course, they didn’t have this grace only when they were alive on earth, but have it much more now that they’re alive before God. They’re still alive and their soul is immortal.

. . .

Even when Saint Paul talks about sins of the flesh it’s because we have a duty to keep our body pure and free of all impurity, all sin. Because this body is designed to be glorified; the whole body is designed to be deified and sanctified.

The demonically inspired mutilation of children, teenagers, and adults diverts them from their true calling – to become deified and sanctified, to become whole (and thus holy), to become flesh of Christ’s flesh and blood of His blood, to become temples of the Holy Ghost, of the living God, the Source of true and lasting joy.

Dissatisfaction with the present state of our fallen, frail, and broken bodies and souls is therefore normal, but their transformation into their perfected state comes not from scalpels, pills, and potions, but through the practices exemplified by those whom the writer Paul Kingsnorth describes as the wild Christians of the caves (read his excellent Substack posts here).

Those of us who are aware of these truths should at the very least contact State legislators and AG Landry and encourage them to act.

If they care more for their fellow Louisianans, young and old, than they do about receiving money and other perks from pro-LGBT corporate lobbyists (or whatever it is that has been staying their hands), they will act.  If we outside of government care about the actual bodies and souls of our neighbors more than a pretend, make-believe right to change genders like one changes a pair of socks, we will press our State government officials to make the necessary changes to our laws to protect and promote the good of all.

Other States, and countries – as Dr. Reed points out in her essay, are implementing bans and restrictions.  Let’s not fall behind them, but at least keep pace, and with God’s help, perhaps we can move ahead of them in truly compassionate care for all of Louisiana’s citizens.