The proof is in the damnable pudding

There are many ways to assess the utility of a policy. One way is to simply ask who favors the policy. There are many known bad actors who wear their bigotry on their sleeve, so if you find them favoring something, there may be something wrong with it.

The anti-trans frenzy is peaking in England this week following the release of a much-anticipated review by Dr. Hillary Cass on transgender care. Many anticipated that the report would serve as a pretext to ban transgender care in England, and it appears to have been crafted to provide just such a rationale. Nations already enacting restrictive laws against transgender individuals will likely use it as justification for further discrimination. In the United States, far-right Christian nationalist groups, including Heritage Foundation (retweeted), Association of Christian Schools International, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, have cited it to support anti-trans legislation they are involved in drafting or lobbying. The Cass Review is an exercise in politics with predetermined conclusions, not science and medicine, and health authorities worldwide should reject its findings.

Uh-oh. Far-right conservative Christian groups in America are cheerleading for the Cass Report? But I thought England had embraced a “defanged” version of Christianity that would never harm gentle, diverse souls, and there they go, welcoming the rabid version of Protestantism that was supposed to only exist in the Colonies!

We can also ask whose opinions Dr Cass found worthy and interesting.

After a series of political attacks on transgender people and rising anti-trans sentiment in the country, the NHS commissioned a review and tapped Dr. Hillary Cass, a pediatrician whose list of follows on social media include extremist anti-trans sources such as Transgender Trend (which argues, as is obvious, that being transgender is a “trend”), the LGB Alliance (a LGB group that believes in “dropping the T,” or transgender people), and Graham Linehan (an anti-trans activist and comedian), along with many other noted anti-trans voices.

While collecting anecdotes about the harms that transgender care does, Dr Cass was unable to find any significant evidence of such care damaging patients. I would offer an anecdote of my own, about how anti-trans ideology does great harm, needing only to list Graham Linehan, a fanatic whose anti-trans fervor has destroyed his own family, wrecked his career, and demolished his reputation. Case closed.

To demonstrate the great damage that the report does to human beings, though, we only have to look at its immediate consequences. The Scotland health service is now taking away puberty blockers from their patients!

Scotland’s only clinic to offer treatment to gender-questioning young people has paused prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in light of last week’s publication of the Cass review.

The Sandyford clinic, based in Glasgow, which offers a range of services including emergency contraception, abortion and support for sexual assault victims as well as transgender healthcare, posted a service update online on Thursday morning.

It stated: “Referrals from the Sandyford sexual health services to paediatric endocrinology for the prescription of puberty suppressing hormones have been paused for any new patients assessed by our young person’s gender service.

“Patients aged 16 to 17 years old who have not been treated by paediatric endocrinology, but who are still seeking treatment for their gender incongruence, will no longer be prescribed gender-affirming hormone treatment until they are 18 years old.”

And puberty and sexual development are allowed to march onwards, compounding their effects and worsening the psychological conflicts these people already have, and requiring greater medical effort to roll them back years later. A cruel move.

America is watching, and eagerly anticipating making young people similarly miserable on this side of the Atlantic.