THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND MEDICAL INTERVENTION: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE DIABOLICAL

Talk given at Genspect, Lisbon, September 27th, 2024

In his fascinating book Sex Science Self, Bob Ostertag writes:

“Beginning in the 1960s, one of the principal rights demanded by queer activists was the right to be left alone by doctors. Today, one of the principal rights demanded by queer activists is the right to receive medical treatment. This fact alone merits our attention. What were the causes and what will be the consequences of this about-face?”

The question – as I think Bob acknowledges -- is based on a false premise. In the 1960s, queer was understood to mean gay. You know -- people who are sexually attracted to others of the same sex – and they – we -- still want to be left alone by doctors. So who are these queers who are demanding medical treatment? And in particular – my focus in this presentation – demanding it for children.

They are the leaders and hangers-on of the gender identity movement, which has taken over the gay rights movement and are the ultimate cuckoos. They have wrecked our nest, redefined us - and as for those who refuse to be redefined - they’ve thrown us out. They’re enthusiastically supported by so-called “allies” – people who are profiting financially, socially, and/or politically from this gruesome trend. 

I’d like to very briefly review some of the interactions between the gay rights movement and the medical profession.

In 1952, Alan Turing, the mathematical genius of World War II, known for his momentous cracking of the Nazis’ Enigma Code, was convicted of “gross indecency” at a time when male homosexuality was still illegal in the UK, and prescribed oestrogen in 1952 as a form of chemical castration. Two years later he died, probably – though some dispute it – by suicide. Today rehabilitated, he is honoured on the new £50 note.

Rehabilitation of Alan Turing (1912-1954)

Such barbaric practices, along with “gay conversion therapy” – involving cruel and completely ineffective medical assaults based on false beliefs that homosexuals were mad or bad and could be “cured” – had fortunately ended in the UK by the early 1970s. They ended partly as a result of the activism of brave gay rights activists such as the journalist Antony Grey. “Grey” was not his real name but a nom de guerre – chosen, he said, because nothing in life is black or white. We might have a lively disagreement on that point if he were alive today.

In the 1980s, governments and the medical establishment were very slow to respond to the plague that became known as HIV-AIDS that was ravaging gay male communities. It was gay rights activists who successfully campaigned to get funding for vital research. They encountered numerous obstacles: public prejudice against gay men; lethargy among officials and in the health profession; and above all a lack of funding. One of the greatest heroes, Larry Kramer, also encountered furious resistance from within the gay community.

Larry Kramer (1935-2020)

Like Antony Grey, Larry Kramer was not a medic. He had written a screenplay for Women in Love and a raunchy novel entitled Faggots -- for which he was lambasted by much of the gay male community for its - some thought - overly graphic depiction of promiscuous gay male sex. When he co-founded the group known as Gay Men’s Health Crisis, he had to work closely with medical practitioners in order to understand the nature of the evil they were fighting. And he again faced hostility from within the gay rights movement, for the sensible precautions he recommended. I love to remember that when queer activists call us names – as they frequently do!

So when I refer to the “good” and the “bad” in the relationship between the gay rights movement and medical science, the “good” is the activism that led eventually to research into HIV-AIDS and the invention of life-saving drugs. The bad is chemical castration and “gay conversion therapy” – including pointless, harmful psychotherapy, which was actively sought by many gays and lesbians in the 1960s and up to the early 1970s, since they’d been persuaded there was something wrong and fixable about their sexual orientation.

Fast forward to today. These problems have been tackled and largely – in developed countries – solved. Gay men in the UK or the United States are not given electric shocks. Nor are they prescribed estrogen – not for being gay, in any case. And revolutionary retroviral drugs can give people living with HIV a normal life expectancy – and indeed make the virus undetectable.

What role is “queer activism” playing today? What is this medical treatment that these groups are demanding - for children? As I said, lesbians, gay men and bisexuals are certainly not clamouring for medical treatment to treat their sexual orientation. So the first step towards understanding what Bob Ostertag calls an about-face is to realise that in today’s world, “queer” does not mean gay but has become a fashionable political label, often adopted by straight people. A video circulated on Twitter/X last year featured an earnest young woman who explained, finger wagging, that if we did not wear a mask at least once a week we might be gay but we were not queer! All those LGBTQIA+ -- or “queer” -- groups are not about gay and lesbian rights. They are united not by sexual orientation -- even though many high-profile gays and lesbians serve as their useful idiots -- but by a shared belief. They believe above all in the universal existence and primacy of the sexist, quasi-religious concept of gender identity. With their gender-based definitions, they have effectively dismissed the entire concept of sexual orientation. In order to create space for a public debate on these issues, we must separate LGB from TQ+. That is why my organisation is called LGB Alliance.

LGB Alliance Conference, London, 11 October 2024

I want to focus on the most pernicious aspect of the current drive towards medicalization -- the fierce campaign to promote puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for teens and young adults who are distressed with their sexed bodies. As you will have realized, this is the “diabolical” of my title.

The US Assistant Health Secretary Admiral Rachel Levine uses his considerable power not just to repeat well-known lies about puberty blockers being harmless and reversible, and the alternative being suicide. He pressured WPATH to remove minimum age limits from its latest Standards of Care (SoC8) – which had initially included age 14 for cross-sex hormones and 15 for mastectomies: The promotion of youth medical “transition” by the Biden administration is doing untold harm to LGB youth, and to “gender non-conforming” youth in general. That is undoubtedly why one of the first actions of the new initiative “Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender” is to promote a petition calling for Levine’s resignation or dismissal from the administration.

US Democratic Party: New initiative

Levine’s propaganda echoes that of the activist clinicians – and non-medical activists -- of WPATH, as well as all major human rights organisations, from the ACLU to Amnesty, and – in the most profound betrayal of all -- the propaganda of all LGBTQIA+ organisations.

What is the main group affected by this “queer” demand for drugs and surgery? It is teenage girls and young women. Mostly lesbians. Mostly lesbians who – in the feverish atmosphere of TikTok and YouTube, and amid homophobic bullying at their schools – mistake their sexual orientation for a “gender identity” issue. They have been persuaded that drugs and surgery, causing irreversible changes to their bodies, will cure their anguish.

Like any drug dealer, the advocates of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery promise a Nirvana of love and belonging.

And what are the actual, physical consequences of these drugs? 

You will recall: some 98% of kids who take puberty blockers go on to take cross-sex hormones. So let’s look first at exogenous testosterone. Still sometimes prescribed in the UK from age 16, and often available from age 14 in the US. Exogenous testosterone is virtually identical to the anabolic steroids given to female athletes from East Germany in the 1980s. However, when administered to girls and young women in the context of gender confusion, it is not referred to as “anabolic steroids” – partly because the “anabolic” effects are seen as secondary, but more probably because it sounds bad. (Just like chemical castration sounds bad in relation to boys and young men prescribed estrogen). And because in this context it has been classified as medically necessary. Medically necessary. The health impacts of exogenous testosterone have been studied at length:

Health risks of exogenous testosterone

• Cardiovascular

increased risk of heart disease and blood clotting

• Cancer

Higher risk of breast and possibly other cancers

• Metabolism

Elevated risk of diabetes and metabolic diseases

• Psychological effects

Mood swings, aggression

Clearly, these are very serious consequences. So taking the real risk of inducing such health impacts iatrogenically must surely be justified by the urgency of treating some terrible disease that is even worse.

How about puberty blockers themselves? GnRH agonists. Do we need research on the impact they have? At least one case study of a boy has shown a link with testicular cancer.

As for girls: One consequence of puberty blockers administered for any length of time, in some cases, can be premature menopause. Here are the well-researched consequences of premature menopause.

Health risks of premature menopause

• Low bone density and osteoporosis, fractures

• Cardiovascular disease and stroke

• Infertility & sexual dysfunction

• Mood swings, depression, and anxiety

• Increased risk of dementia and cognitive decline

• Increased risk of ovarian and colon cancers

• Increased risk of cataracts and gum disease

• Shortened lifespan

Clearly, these are very serious consequences. So taking the real risk of inducing such health impacts iatrogenically must surely be justified by the urgency of treating some terrible disease that is even worse. 

A different perspective. Let’s take a look at a little-known, very rare congenital condition: hypogonadotropic hypogonadism – hypog hypog, as medics affectionately term it. In congenital hypog hypog, there is a problem with either the pituitary gland or the hypothalamus that prevents the production of the hormones of puberty. The consequences of congenital hypog hypog have been researched far more than puberty suppression in gender-distressed children. It's a less controversial topic so that research has not been suppressed by ideologues.

Health risks of congenital hypog hypog

• Lack of sexual maturation and infertility

• Failure to achieve peak bone mass; increased risk of fracture and osteoporosis

• Low self-esteem, depression, anxiety

• Increased risk of metabolic issues such as obesity and insulin resistance

• Frequent neurological, urinary, psychological and genital complications usually associated with the postmenopausal phase of life.

I must emphasize: I am of course not a medic or clinician. I very much hope that medical researchers will pick up on the points I’m raising and study them. But I don’t think it’s controversial to say that puberty suppressants – GnRH agonists -- act on the pituitary gland to stop it sending the normal signals to the hypothalamus. In other words, these drugs, it’s fair to say, copy or mimic – or to use the medical jargon -- “phenocopy” the congenital disease hypog hypog. You see the consequences.

Of course, a drug-induced condition is different from a congenital disease, but if nothing else, congenital hypog hypog serves as a model for what happens when puberty is blocked. Clearly, these are very serious consequences. So taking the real risk of inducing such health impacts iatrogenically must surely be justified by the urgency of treating some terrible disease that is even worse. 

So -- what is this terrible disease, which is apparently even worse than the increased health risks we’ve just seen in these three slides? It’s gender identity disorder. Oh no, sorry, it’s gender dysphoria. Oops, wrong again, we’re now supposed to call it “gender incongruence”. Whatever it is, it is about profound distress with one’s sexed body. Something that many, many teenagers experience at some point, and especially those with emerging homosexual feelings who are growing up in homophobic surroundings.

Do puberty blockers at least help to relieve the symptoms known as “gender dysphoria”? According to Cass, there is little evidence that they do.

A brief digression. Between 2006 and 2011, an American physician named Dr Mark Geier prescribed Lupron, a GnRH agonist originally developed to treat advanced prostate cancer, to autistic children. He claimed it cured their autism. Geier’s conduct was reprehensible from many points of view. But when Maryland State Board of Physicians revoked his Maryland licence to practice medicine, the Board was particularly appalled by his use of Lupron in children because of its damaging side effects. Why was Geier’s licence revoked – and he remains unable to practice anywhere in the US -- while hundreds if not thousands of clinicians in the US and elsewhere continue to prescribe Lupron or similar, dangerous GnRH agonists to children? Why are medical practitioners willing to induce these serious potential health risks, and why are so few willing to condemn it?

As for a clinical trial of puberty blockers, planned in the UK, why is it needed? Who could it possibly benefit? The suicide prevention myth has been thoroughly debunked. That leaves only one supposed benefit -- as advanced by those who insist there is a benefit -- they help boys “pass” as female more easily as adults. But most of those demanding the blockers are girls. Who can “pass” perfectly well as men if they delay any medical intervention until adulthood. Are we to inflict harm on hundreds more lesbian teens as a sacrifice to the supposed cosmetic benefit for some boys? Given that the known health risks are so serious, I question whether such a clinical trial would be in line with the precept “First, do no harm”.

Those of us who have been following this issue for years know that it’s primarily LGB teens and young people who are impacted by these medical abuses. Anecdotal evidence, with the “lived experience” of lesbians in particular of course abounds on social media, and Stella and Sasha have often profiled such young women. 

Proving that most of the teens concerned are LGB with precise and recent statistics, taken from large-scale studies is not easy, since many gender clinics – as you’ll have seen in the Cass Review – don’t even bother to ask their patients about their sexual orientation.

Data on sexual orientation

“The [Cass] Review has not been able to obtain recent data relating to the sexual orientation of the GIDS patient cohort.”

Organizations surveyed by Cass that do not collect data on sexual orientation include:

• WPATH

• Endocrine Society

• Royal College of Psychiatrists

• Pan American Health Organization

• European Society for Sexual Medicine

[Source: Cass Review 2024]

The refusal to gather such data is one of the biggest outrages in this whole scandal. Around the year 2000, the trans youth charity Mermaids explained that most children with what was then called Gender Identity Disorder did not need any treatment and would simply grow up homosexual

Information on Mermaids website 2000 – 2008:

“Gender Identity Disorders in infancy, childhood and adolescence are complex and have varied causes: in the majority of cases the eventual outcome will be homosexuality or bisexuality, but often there will be a heterosexual outcome as some gender issues can be caused by a bereavement, a dysfunctional family life, or (rarely) by abuse. Only a small proportion of cases will result in a transsexual outcome.”

And we have a study from 2015, reprinted in 2020, which revealed that of the referrals to GIDS, only 8.5% of girls were exclusively heterosexual. The vast majority were only attracted to other girls.

Referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock Centre (Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust) in London between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2012 [source: Griffin, Clyde and Bewley 2020]

But more recent, large-scale studies from gender clinics are hard to find, because the data are – I suggest, quite intentionally – not being gathered.

The entire youth “transition” industry is above all an assault on LGB youth – and I am exasperated by noting that -- even in the rare vaguely impartial discussions of the topic in the media – this aspect is hardly ever mentioned. Maybe it’s not so strange. It’s not just the difficulty of citing recent data.

There is the more mysterious problem: How to explain to the public that a terrible medical scandal involves inducing serious disease primarily in young lesbian, gay and bisexual people and that the main cheerleaders for this abhorrent practice are the organisations that once represented LGB people? It defies comprehension.

I want to pay tribute to a virtually unknown group that called itself “Lesbians United”.

[Please use the following link: their site has been hacked.]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10Omhrs9fpWvaOIWjhkdV_bu9tcAuZb8j/view?usp=sharing

I think Lesbians United are heroes. They produced an extremely well-researched paper that is virtually a systematic review of the evidence on puberty blockers, and it is from that paper that I derived some of the information I’ve used here. I can’t name the women of Lesbians United because I don’t know their names. They have vanished into anonymity. Having produced this superb paper, which I hope everyone who has not yet read will read, they evidently found the hostile response too difficult to step into the limelight.

From Lesbians United, “Puberty Suppression: Medicine or Malpractice?”

“The review cites over 300 sources, most of which are peer-reviewed scientific studies, and digs into evidence from older and better-designed studies that have not yet been brought into the conversation about puberty suppression.

To our knowledge, this is the most thorough review of GnRH agonists, the drugs now marketed as ‘puberty blockers’, to date.”

Published August 21st, 2022

Today’s LGB activists have to endure not just the traditional homophobia that has certainly not gone away, even in Western societies, but the often even more vicious homophobia that has become fashionable in LGBTQIA+ circles. So, unlike the great gay and lesbian rights heroes of the past — Barbara Gittings, Larry Kramer, Antony Grey -- some of today’s gay and lesbian rights heroes are nameless. 

I’d like to demand, on behalf of LGB people everywhere, a public acknowledgment that the groups calling themselves LGBTQIA+ are largely hostile to the interests of young lesbians, gays and bisexuals. They are like the armies of women who opposed the campaign for female suffrage in the late 19th century. They do not speak for us.

I call on medical researchers to incorporate the existing information on the harmful effects of premature menopause, congenital hypog hypog, and the effects of anabolic steroids on young women’s bodies into their studies of the impact of puberty blockers and exogenous testosterone. I would also like to see the link made to documented harms from the approved uses of GnRH agonists for disorders such as endometriosis and precocious puberty. As Bob Ostertag says in the conclusion to his book, the entire experiment of medical youth transition is likely to prove “the next item to be added to the long list of ‘sex hormone’ medical catastrophes.”

To conclude – a sober historical reminder. In the eighteenth century, thousands of boys were castrated, turned into eunuchs, to preserve their angelic treble voices.

When they sang on stage you could hear ecstatic audience members shouting “Viva il coltello!” -- “Long live the knife!”.

I’m reminded of this historical abuse when I see crowds cheering girls displaying the mastectomy scars arising from gender confusion, and when I see gender identity extremists proudly wearing T-shirts saying “Protect trans kids” accompanied by the picture of a knife.

It is frankly insane, and it is diabolically contrary to LGB rights.

Thank you.