Transgender Day of Visibility is an international event that is held every year on March 31. This year it fell on Easter Sunday.

Left-wing government officials, led by President Biden and his administration, along with left-wing LGBT activists, led by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), called attention to the heroics of transgender persons. They should instead have called attention to their lifestyle, which too often is marked by drugs and violence.

At the end of 2023, HRC listed 32 incidents of transgender persons who died a violent death. It took the occasion to say that “These victims, like all of us, are loving partners, parents, family members, friends and community members. They worked, went to school and attended houses of worship.”

Well, not so fast. We examined each of the 32 cases and found that, while all are tragic, many of the incidents are still open to investigation; there was a lot of random violence. Importantly, there was not one incident that clearly merited the tag “hate crime” (in one instance, the police said it was a possible hate crime).

The fact is that a large portion of the violence was the result of an altercation between the transgender victim and the assailant. Too often the victim was not the kind of model citizen that HRC portrays.

Why was it necessary to get into a confrontation with someone who was innocently “misgendered”? Asking a stranger for sex is not a smart thing to do—it often results in violence. Assaulting a security guard can end in death, as happened in one instance. When an ex-con robs a store and is killed by a security guard, we shouldn’t be shocked. When an ex-con shoots at state troopers, that is really stupid. And so on.

Even HRC admits that in more than a third of these cases (36 %), the killer was a “romantic/sexual partner, friend or family member.” We found that in five of these cases, the killer was another transgender person. Which raises the question: Why are these people so violent?

Just looking at the pictures of these transgender persons who were killed is enough to conclude that they are not just like the guy next door. That obviously doesn’t justify violence. Still, the idyllic portrayal that HRC presents is nonsense.

No innocent person deserves to die a violent death. Unfortunately, in too many cases the transgender persons that HRC mourns were not innocent victims. Their lifestyle is very much in need of a corrective.

Militant secularists would like to erase our religious heritage, but they are clearly in over their heads. Our nation’s Capitol abounds with Judeo-Christian iconography, so much so that it overwhelms attempts to cancel it.

• The dome of the U.S. Capitol was inspired by the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, as well as St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
• The Supreme Court building is modeled after a Roman temple.
• St. Joseph’s church on Capitol Hill was built in 1868.
• The Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress features The Court of Neptune Fountain; it resembles a grotto.
• The west end of the Mall—from the U.S. Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial—has a statue of Lincoln surrounded by comments he made about his respect for God. At the far end of the Mall, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the Capitol building have inscriptions honoring our Judaic heritage.
• Within the Capitol there are statues of Catholic priests and nuns and medallions of Pope Innocent III and Pope Gregory IX.
• On the first floor of the Main Reading Room in the Library of Congress there is a statue of St. Paul.
• In the Library there is a quote from the Book of Proverbs and a reference to God from Shakespeare.
• There is a chapel in the U.S. Capitol. Moreover, prayer meetings for Senators and Congressmen are commonplace throughout.
• Crucifixes abound in the Capitol.
• On the front doors of the Capitol are pictures of Franciscans with rosaries, symbolizing the history of Columbus.
• In the Rotunda, there is a painting of Hernando De Soto and his armies standing on the banks of the river rejoicing, as well as a depiction of priests planting a cross.
• There is also a painting in the dome of the burial scene of De Soto depicting a Mass being celebrated; a barge is carrying his body for burial in the Mississippi. A priest is shown holding a crucifix during burial prayers.
• In front of the Federal District Court, across from the National Gallery of Art, there is a depiction of pilgrims praying before a cross—a splendid recognition of religious liberty.
• On the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th St. N.W. is the Temperance Fountain with the inscription of Temperance, Charity, Hope, and Faith. Nearby is a quote from St. Paul.
• Near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, engraved on the sidewalk, there is the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence Memorial with an inscription referencing our “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”
• There is a frieze on the Supreme Court Building that depicts Moses.
• The entrance doors to the Supreme Court, made of oak, have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each door.
• Inside the Supreme Court, right above where the Justices sit, there is a display of Moses and the Ten Commandments.

These are just some of the tributes to our Judeo-Christian heritage found in Washington, D.C. Noticeably absent are tributes to the contributions made by secularists. Small wonder.

P.S. To read more about this issue, see One Nation Under God: Religious Symbols, Quotes, and Images in Our Nation’s Capitol, by Fr. Eugene F. Hemrick.

A new poll on LGBT rights was published in March by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a left-wing outfit with a reputation for crafting politically skewed surveys. Its most prominent researcher, sociologist Robert P. Jones, is well known for demonizing so-called Christian nationalists.

PRRI recently released its 2023 American Values Atlas report, “Views On LGBTQ Rights In All 50 States.” It offers more proof that the aforementioned flaws are extant. As a sociologist and a Catholic leader, Bill Donohue has great interest in this subject.

First a word about LGBT people (there is no need to add a “Q”—it stands for Queers and is therefore a redundancy).

The typical LGBT person is a young Democrat with no religious affiliation. This makes perfect sense.

Transgenderism, the ideology that falsely holds that the sexes are interchangeable, is a culturally induced phenomenon that is more attractive to young people than older Americans. Democrats are mostly liberals, and as such they have an expansive view of sexuality. Secular-minded persons reject nature, and nature’s God, and are therefore easy bait for transgender influencers.

To put it differently, the older a person is, the less likely he is to buy into this mad idea. Republicans tend to be conservatives and are therefore more immune to trendy fashions unhinged from reality. Religious Americans appreciate nature, and nature’s God, and are thus inhospitable to militant secular ideas.

There are two aspects of the survey that deserve a riposte.

One of the questions asked respondents was whether they supported or opposed “allowing a small business owner in your state to refuse to provide products or services to gay or lesbian people if doing so would violate their religious beliefs.”

This is a dishonest question. In fact, it is a red herring designed to make religious persons look intolerable.

It is dishonest because PRRI knows that this issue, which was broached in two similar Colorado cases that wound up in the Supreme Court, had nothing do to with denying homosexuals products or services because of their sexual orientation. It had to do with the religious rights of Christians being violated for having to affirm conduct they could not in good conscience do.

Neither Jack Phillips nor Lorie Smith ever denied serving a customer who was gay or lesbian. Phillips sold them cakes and Smith serviced their websites. But when Phillips was asked to personally inscribe a wedding cake for two men, he refused. Smith issued a preemptive strike by publicly stating that she would not provide web services celebrating gay weddings. The high court agreed with them, noting the obvious religious liberty issues involved.

PRRI, following Jones’ obsession with Christian nationalism, claims that those who believe that America was founded as a Christian nation and should return to its moorings are a threat to democracy.

If someone were to say that America was founded as a secular nation and should become even more secular, would it be fair to say that this person is a threat to democracy? Of course not. One may disagree, but to assert that we are on the verge of a despotic secular regime would be as irresponsible as saying that Christian nationalists are about to establish a theocracy.

PRRI is not simply reporting survey results—it is setting the political table for liberals.

For example, Politico, a mostly responsible liberal media outlet, seems to go off the rails when it comes to Christian nationalism. Last month it maintained that if Trump wins in November, his allies are ready to infuse Christian nationalism in his second administration. It claimed to have the evidence to buttress its position, yet it conceded that “The documents obtained by Politico do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies.” That’s because there are none.

Heidi Przybyla wrote a piece for Politico last month that set off the alarms. The issue was the conviction, shared by millions of Americans, and encoded in the Declaration of Independence, that our rights come from God, not from government (that was what Stalin, Hitler and Mao believed). This simple observation was enough to send her into orbit. Now it would have come as a shocker to Jefferson, who was not exactly a religious guy, that he was a Christian nationalist.

PRRI knows what it is doing. None of what they did was a mistake. Which is why they are not to be trusted.

Is it a good thing, or a bad thing, for a free society to have a vibrant role for religion? The Founders, not all of whom were practicing Christians, were unanimous in their conviction: the public role of religion is indispensable to the crafting of a free society. The American people in 2024 seem to agree.

In a recent survey by Pew Research Center, 80 percent of Americans say that religion’s role in American life is shrinking, and most conclude that it is not a good thing. This is significant given that this is the highest percentage ever recorded in a Pew survey on this issue. It was also found that 57 percent of Americans express a positive view of religion’s influence in American life.

The survey did not ask why it is not a good thing for religion’s role to recede, but it is likely that it has something to do with the fact that the inculcation of religious values has a stabilizing effect on individuals, and hence on society. Also, character building, which is essential to citizenship, is facilitated by religion. Unfortunately, American society has become more unstable and character building has become more difficult.

Another bad sign: the faithful are in a precarious state. Almost half, 48 percent, say there’s “a great deal” of or “some” conflict between their religious beliefs and mainstream American culture (up from 42 percent in 2020). In fact, 3-in-10 (29 percent) now think of themselves as religious minorities. This is what we would expect from an increasingly secular society—religious Americans are in an uneasy spot.

The public looks to the president of the United States to defend the faithful. Indeed, 64 percent say it is important for the president to stand up for religious Americans. Interestingly, most don’t believe that either Trump or Biden is very religious: the figures are 13 percent and 4 percent, respectively. This is striking given that Biden has gone out of his way to hawk his Catholic credentials.

While Americans are concerned about the declining effect of religion on society, they are wary about extremists, and not just religious extremists. They do not support those who are too aggressive in pushing either a religious or a secular agenda. This is prudent: extremists are not a good role model.

Regarding this issue, it is interesting to note that secularists—atheists, agnostics and the religiously unaffiliated—are more likely to say that conservative Christians have gone too far with their agenda (72 percent) than Christians are to say that liberals who are not religious have gone too far with their agenda (63 percent). This helps to explain why the faithful believe there is a tension between their beliefs and the mainstream American culture. In short, it seems likely that they are feeling the pinch of militant secularists.

Secularists have made a lot of hay lately over the threat of so-called Christian nationalists. But if these people were really the threat that secularists say they are, the majority of Americans wouldn’t say they have never heard or read about Christian nationalism. So much for this bogeyman. It would be more accurate to say that it is not those being charged as extremists who are the problem; it is those making the charge.

The survey also found that while most Americans don’t want Christianity to be the official religion, a plurality (44 percent) of those who think this way nonetheless believe the federal government should promote Christian moral values. There is nothing inconsistent with this view. In fact, it is identical to the beliefs of the Founders: they did not want an established church, but they also maintained that the nation would benefit by advancing Christian-inspired values.

It would be instructive to learn what Americans consider secular values to be and why they are not supportive of them. The findings would no doubt prove to be enlightening, both for the faithful and for secularists.

Christopher Durang died on April 2nd. In its obituary on the homosexual anti-Catholic playwright, the New York Times predictably treated him with admiration, saying he had an “impish wit.”

The most anti-Catholic, and celebrated, play that Durang ever wrote was “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.” The Times obit branded it “an absurdist lacerating one-act” play. It said not a word about its vicious portrayal of Catholicism.

When the play was first performed in New York City, many prominent non-Catholics labeled it anti-Catholic, including the Anti-Defamation League and the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Here is what we previously said about the play.

“The play features a malicious nun who is confronted by four of her former students. All of them are obviously dysfunctional, a condition directly traceable to their Catholic upbringing. The play not only manages to mock virtually every Catholic teaching, it goes after Jesus with a vengeance—from the Nativity to the Crucifixion; the Virgin Mary is similarly disparaged. In the end, the nun shoots and kills two of her ex-students.”

The New York Times knows all about the anti-Catholicism that marks “Sister Mary Ignatius,” but it is not offended.

We are witnessing the greatest exploitation of children and women in recent times, and it is being driven by politicians, educators, therapists, and doctors, all of whom falsely claim to be on their side. The problem is transgenderism, the pernicious ideology that maintains that there are more than two sexes and that they are interchangeable.

This issue of Catalyst has several articles on this subject. We are taking our case to government officials, the medical profession and the media.

Children are having their sex changed without parental consent. The same teacher that is barred from giving students an Advil are allowed to aid and abet their physical transitioning to the opposite sex. If the parents object, the state can take their children away from them. It’s already being done in some states.

Girls have always been expected to compete against girls in sports, but now boys can compete against them, effectively eviscerating their rights. All the boy has to do is claim he is a girl and bingo—he can join the girls’ team and shower alongside of them.

When a Christian male heterosexual engages in misconduct, it makes the news. When a girl who “transitioned” to a boy commits a violent crime, a cover up ensues. This is what happened in Houston after a girl named Genesse switched her sex, adopted the name Jeffrey, and started shooting in Joel Osteen’s church. But the authorities quickly put the kibosh on the records, essentially covering for the transman. Bill Donohue asked the Houston mayor to release the records.

Young people who transition to the other sex—most of them are girls—often regret their decision. Unfortunately, not a few therapists and doctors jump at the chance to “gender affirm” them. There’s big bucks to be had. But few are willing to help them “detransition” back to their nature-determined sex. Worse, those who do choose this route are bullied and stigmatized for doing so.

Pope Francis has condemned gender ideology many times, and so have the U.S. bishops. As for the Catholic League, this has become the number-one civil rights issue of our time. Children and women are being abused physically and psychologically, and the perpetrators are not some strange-looking sexual deviant—they are the elite in the fields of education and medicine.

We will continue to issue reports, write letters to the authorities and professionals, address radio and TV audiences, grant interviews, and conduct ad campaigns, all with the goal of stopping this demonic form of child abuse.

There is some good news. There are signs that transgenderism is peaking. But the most resistant remain the most well-educated persons in America.

Is Ireland witnessing an epiphany, or was the recent pro-family vote an anomaly?

On March 8, Irish voters overwhelmingly voted “No” on two initiatives that could have changed the country’s Constitution.

The first would have redefined “family” as either “founded on marriage or on other durable relationships.” It was rejected by 68 percent of the voters.

The second would have removed a clause noting that the “state recognizes that by her life within the home, the woman gives to the state a support which without the common good cannot be achieved.” Voting against this referendum was 74 percent of the voters.

Liberals in Ireland and the United States were appalled. The half-Indian, openly homosexual Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, was sure the people would vote “Yes.” He said of the outcome, “when you lose by this kind of margin, there are a lot of people who got this wrong and I am certainly one of them.”

In America, before the election, the Associated Press wrote, “Ireland’s Constitution says a woman’s place is in the home.” That’s a twisted interpretation. More accurately, voters chose to honor the role that women, many of whom are mothers, play in society.

These two votes stand in stark contrast to the 2015 referendum on gay marriage (62 percent voted for it) and the 2018 vote legalizing abortion (supported by 66 percent of voters). Whether this represents a sea change is too early to tell.

William A. Donohue

In my years dealing with the media, government officials, educators, activists, business people, lawyers, artists, and others, I have met my share of bigoted persons. This is not surprising given the nature of my job. Unfortunately, many of these people are also dishonest. When bigotry and dishonesty are mixed together, it’s a bad combo. Regrettably, this is commonplace.

This issue of Catalyst has its fair share of examples. I have added a few more current ones that may be of interest to our readers.

When a crowd of disrespectful LGBT activists turned out for a funeral service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in February, some in the media gave a totally dishonest account. The New York Daily News, which is hanging on by a thread, took the side of the disruptors saying that the Catholic Church “has long condemned queer and transgender people.”

As I pointed out, this is simply wrong. The Church does not condemn any demographic group. It condemns sinful behavior. That’s not a small difference.

Time.com falsely argued that the Church “has isolated many queer folks from its doors.” But the Church doesn’t isolate anyone. If some of these people chose to do so—because the Church condemns homosexual behavior (so do most world religions)—that is their choice. So be it.

In the run-up to the traditional St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Staten Island, the biggest media outlet in the area, Advance/SILive.com, lobbied to have an alternative parade because the traditional one did not allow gay groups to march under their own banner.

Since when is it the business of the media to hijack an ethnic or religious event, turning it into something that misrepresents its purpose? Just as obnoxious was the dishonest reporting. Gays have always marched in these parades—just like pro-life Catholics—but in neither case should they be allowed to do so under their own banner. The parade is not about gay rights or the rights of the unborn—it’s about St. Patrick.

“60 Minutes” recently aired a segment on Moms for Liberty, the women’s group that believes children should be treated as children and not be subjected to sexual engineering.

The segment was dishonest—the tape was cut and spliced—making it appear as though these women were book banners. Nonsense. They simply think that books that are highly sexual, if not pornographic, should not be made available to kids. But the show did not air that part of the taping.

When CBS asked me to comment on the Staten Island Patrick’s Day Parade it misspelled a word that I wrote in my email response, and attributed the misspelling to me! Similarly, when the Baltimore Sun insinuated that I misstated data regarding a plan to expand a probe of Catholic dioceses in Maryland and Delaware—I did not—it was nauseating to read that these “fact checkers” couldn’t even spell my name correctly.

Some government officials are guilty of bigotry and dishonesty. The Maryland Attorney General is obsessed with misconduct in the Catholic Church—his earlier investigation got him nowhere (the bad priests are long dead or out of ministry)—yet he has had absolutely nothing to say about the horrible sexual abuse of minors taking place right now in the state’s public schools.

We have to start calling those who work against women’s sports for what they are—misogynists. That applies to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul. She wants boys and men to compete against girls and women in sports, and to use the same locker rooms and shower facilities. Yet she has the nerve to say that those who disagree with her are exploiting “vulnerable children.”

On the night of his State of the Union speech, President Biden trotted out a woman from Dallas who left Texas to have an abortion. He referred to her baby as a “fetus” (he refused to call her baby a baby) telling everyone that she had to abort her child because her doctor said her own life was at risk. Not so. We know from court records that her doctor did not assert that the woman had a “life-threatening physical condition.”

To make matters worse, why didn’t Biden mention that the baby was diagnosed with a disability? Why was it important that he, and his wife, chose this particular woman to showcase that evening? Babies with disabilities deserve the same rights as every other baby.

Disney says it is committed to inclusionary policies, yet in its hiring decisions it continues to give preference to groups that are already overrepresented, e.g., LGBT persons, while never addressing those who are seriously underrepresented, such as Catholics.

On pp. 8-9, Fr. Paul Sullins has a splendid piece on how dishonest scholarship is these days. Anyone who threatens the conventional wisdom on college campuses, as espoused by left-wing professors, is subject to banishment, or worse.

To be sure, there are good men and women who work in all of these fields, but too often the bigots and the liars rule the roost. They must be outed, resisted and defeated.

Fr. D. Paul Sullins

For years, as a faithful Catholic social scientist, I have experienced embedded, irrational opposition to the expression in scientific settings of evidence and truths that support the Catholic faith or the natural law. Like today’s often-noted two-tier system of justice, more permissive for progressives and more rigorous for conservatives, there are two tiers of academic review for scholarly research.

Studies whose findings advance the progressive causes favored by today’s trenchantly liberal scholarly associations, especially issues of sexuality and gender, are put on a fast track to publication. For these studies, the standards of normal science are often relaxed or overlooked altogether. The result is a body of weak, biased research published under color of science but without the credibility and rigor usually ascribed to scientific findings. Nevertheless, they are typically lauded as definitive scientific evidence, with favorable commentaries and many citations and popular publications. More propaganda than science, I call this the Propaganda tier.

In direct contrast is the Challenge Tier, studies whose findings challenge or obstruct one or more points of the dominant progressive orthodoxy. The same processes that encourage the appearance of Propaganda studies work in reverse to present a gauntlet of opposition to Challenge studies. Editors often dismiss them out of hand, without even sending them to peer review, because they don’t want the findings to become more widely known or cannot imagine that the findings could be correct. Reviewers amplify minor weaknesses or limitations to reject the study. If they do get published, they are ignored and rarely cited, or are met with angry scholarly denunciation and specious calls for their retraction, which increasingly are successful.

Increasingly, the scholarly world is moving from merely discouraging and impeding Challenge studies to openly censoring them altogether. I am going to illustrate this trend with two stories from my own experience.

In May 2016 I published an analysis of late-onset depression among children with same-sex parents using data that interviewed the same individuals at age 15 and age 28. Three Propaganda studies had used the age 15 data to show that such children were not more depressed than those raised by man-woman parents. I found that although there was no difference at age 15, by age 28 such children had developed three times the risk of depression as the general population. A gay activist who ran a website promoting the idea that children were no worse off with same-sex parents wrote a negative editorial full of falsehoods about the study in Slate magazine, and some pro-family media ran positive stories about the study. In August the gay activist submitted his editorial as a letter to the journal editor, to which I wrote a response refuting the multiple false statements therein.

There things sat until August 2017, over a year after initial publication, when my article was unexpectedly cited by a lurid anti-gay poster during the referendum debate on gay marriage in Australia. The poster pictured an abused child, used a pejorative term for gay persons, and referenced a data table in the article that the rate of all-cause child abuse, meaning the sum of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, reported by the children raised by same-sex parents was very high: 92%. Although notably high, this statistic was a minor point that did not figure into the main argument of the article, and had not been mentioned by any previous commentary on it pro or con. It appeared for only a few hours at a single location in Melbourne before it was taken down, but not before some photos of it had been posted on social media. (It came out later that the unsigned poster had most likely been placed by pro-gay sources in an attempt to discredit my study. Think about it. How many street posters include detailed academic citations?)

Within 24 hours I was contacted by several Australian news organizations and the journal publisher for comment. I made a statement denouncing the use of my scholarly findings for anti-gay bigotry, and I offered to join in such a statement with the publisher. But on one point I could not satisfy them: I was unwilling to retract the finding itself. As unattractive as it may be, the poster accurately cited my paper, which in turn accurately reported the finding in the data. The publisher then issued an official notice of concerns about a scholarly study, which implies some form of dishonesty and is usually a prelude to retraction. This statement, however, recounted an earlier attempt by the publisher, in June 2016, to have the study retracted amid concerns from “some readers” over several features of the study, including “the potential conflict of interest implied by the author’s position as a Catholic priest.” At that time, however, the journal editor pushed back, telling the publisher that he “believed that the article’s reviewers addressed these concerns, and the author made sufficient revisions to the article to address these flaws.” This was why, the notice explained, the publisher had subsequently invited the negative editorial, so that “the criticisms of this study [could] become part of the scholarly record.”

This treatment, of course, was patently unfair. The notice was entirely unwarranted, unfairly stigmatizing my study as if it had involved some misconduct. It did not seem to matter to anyone that I had no knowledge or control over how my published results were used or misused in public debate. No one was willing to publish or even acknowledge my statement denouncing anti-gay bigotry. I had not been made aware of the initial effort to retract my study, what the concerns were and from whom: all of which violates publication ethics.

No one from the publisher was willing to explain exactly what conflict of interest was implied by being a Catholic priest. This didn’t surprise me. This was little more than thinly disguised religious bigotry, which they were unlikely to admit or perhaps even recognize. The “conflict” was simply that the Catholic faith upheld a view—the importance of a child being raised by his or her own biological parents (see Donum Vitae 2; Amoris Laetitia 176)—which they could not tolerate. In their eyes, my challenge to a point of progressive orthodoxy itself constituted a form of misconduct, stemming from my Catholic faith commitments, which they were barely restrained by a stalwart editor from erasing. By the time of my second story six years later, however, the censorship of scientific findings simply because they may affirm Catholic teaching rather than the politics of progressive orthodoxy was openly advocated.

In late 2022 I published a rebuttal to a series of studies by LGBT scholar-activists who were attempting to establish that therapies to help persons sexually attracted to persons of the same sex try to reduce or avoid acting on those attractions, commonly called “sexual orientation change efforts” (SOCE), increased the lifetime risk of gay suicide and therefore should be banned by law. Due in part to the effect of these studies, SOCE has already been banned in over 20 U.S. states, in prohibitions drawn so broadly they could also inhibit Catholic pastoral care. Titled “Sexual orientation change efforts do not increase suicide: correcting a false research narrative,” my study re-analyzed the strongest of these studies, using the same data it had, and pointed out a disabling error: in its measure of “lifetime suicidality,” the study had included suicide attempts and thoughts that had occurred before the subject had undergone SOCE therapy.

This was not an inconsequential error. Obviously, to avoid overstating harm from an intervention, a study must find out whether the harm may have already been there before the intervention. When I took suicidality before SOCE into account, the effect was dramatic. For persons undergoing SOCE, it turned out, not just a little, but the majority of reported suicidality happened before undergoing the therapy. Almost two-thirds (65%) of suicidal thoughts preceded the therapy, with the result that the rate of suicide ideation following therapy was lower than for persons who had never undergone SOCE. Predicted suicide attempts were strongly reduced, under real life conditions, following SOCE. My corrected results suggested that the LGBT activist scholars had confused the cause of the problem with what was, at least in part, a cure for the problem.

As my study’s conclusion put it:

Imagine a study that finds that most persons using anti-hypertension medication have also previously had high blood pressure, thereby concluding that persons “exposed” to high blood pressure medication were much more likely to experience hypertension, and recommending that high blood pressure medications therefore be banned. This imagined study would have used the same flawed logic as [the studies claiming that SOCE caused suicide], with invidious consequences for persons suffering from hypertension.

In normal scientific discourse, the exposure of such a serious error would lead to the reconsideration or restatement of the flawed studies involved. Instead, my study was met with a series of angry editorials by the most prestigious scholars of the topic calling for its retraction, even suppression. The authors of the study I critiqued, who were affiliated with the Williams Institute, a research center formed to advance gay rights, doubled down on their false reasoning, refusing even to acknowledge that an effect cannot logically precede a cause. Others resorted to conspicuous falsehood about their own earlier research findings. One commentary clearly illustrated the anti-science bias involved.

Two European public health scholars wrote that, even if my findings were true, their publication was “egregiously problematic … for the simple reason that the problem with SOCE is not just about outcomes and well-being but primarily about rights and autonomy so that a methodological analysis seeking to undermine causation is just irrelevant.” Regardless of their effect on suicidality, for these theorists the mere attempt to change someone’s sexual orientation violated their bodily autonomy and sexual rights. Thus “the potential for these conclusions drawn by Sullins to be used nefariously in political and legislative debates can put sexual minority individuals in real danger if legislation allowing for these harmful practices is implemented or just debated.”

“Or just debated.” For these scholars, the assertion that sodomy is as morally acceptable and normal as heterosexual relations is not simply an opinion with which others may reasonably disagree, but has the status of a rigid article of faith, the denial or even debate of which cannot be tolerated. Evidence that may impede the advance of the gay rights agenda is “nefarious” and must be suppressed, even if it is true, by preventing its publication and dissemination.

Unlike the Catholic faith, which welcomes doubt and debate from all quarters because it believes its teachings to be demonstrably true and wants persons to come to believe them, the secular articles of faith are not open to question or debate. For a long time now, those who dare to question them have risked being ignored or discredited. Increasingly they risk being censored outright.

Father Paul Sullins, Ph.D., taught sociology at The Catholic University of America and is a Senior Research Associate at the Ruth Institute.

March 12 was Detransition Awareness Day, the most important LGBT day of the year. Those who are responsible for transgenderism, the pernicious ideology that holds that the sexes are not binary and are interchangeable, will never call attention to this day, and that is because it seriously undercuts their crusade. But we at the Catholic League are not afraid to celebrate it.

The tide is turning. The insane idea that biology doesn’t matter—we can self-identify our sex—has peaked. It is true that the Biden administration continues to promote transgenderism. It is also true that elite American institutions in the behavioral sciences and the medical community continue to misinform the public. But the good news is that, even there, many are rethinking their position, coming over to our side.

Our side is the side of science. Their side is the side of politics.

Jamie Reed is a middle-age woman who calls herself a queer and says she is politically to the left of Bernie Sanders. She is married to a woman who thinks she is a man, a so-called transman. She took a job in 2018 at a transgender center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and saw how children with gender dysphoria are treated. She left last November because of what she witnessed.

“By the time I departed,” she wrote, “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.”

To those who think this is just anecdote, they’re wrong.

The American College of Pediatricians recently did a review of more than 60 studies on the issue of adolescents who have transitioned. They concluded that “There are no long-term studies demonstrating benefits nor studies evaluating risks associated with the medical and surgical interventions provided to these adolescents.” Similarly, there is “no long-term evidence that mental health concerns are decreased or alleviated after ‘gender-affirming therapy.'”

The same organization found that “there is strong evidence that children and adolescents who identify as transgender have experienced significant psychological trauma leading to their gender dysphoria.” Therefore, they said, they “cannot condone the social affirmation, medical intervention, or surgical mutilation of children and adolescents identifying as transgender or gender nonconforming.”

By all accounts, the Europeans are way ahead of the Americans. The medical profession there has woken up and begun to realize that transgenderism should not be promoted. Even the Dutch, who were the first to tout its benefits in 2011, have concluded their enthusiasm for transitioning was not based on strong data.

The Economist, an influential British liberal weekly, wants desperately to believe in transgenderism, but has to admit that the medical evidence in support of it is “worryingly weak.” It cites a review of this subject conducted by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. “The academic evidence it found was weak, discouraging and sometimes contradictory….”

Tavistock, the English institute, is the world’s largest pediatric gender clinic. It was closed last year after an independent review. According to the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine, the clinic was “not a safe or viable long-term option.” This is because their work was “based on poor evidence and its model of care leaves young people ‘at considerable risk’ of poor mental health.”

The authors of an article published last year in the journal of the Danish Medical Association found their initial well-meaning intentions were based on insufficient evidence—they encouraged transitioning—but came to realize that they were doing more harm than good and sharply reversed course.

Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, a Finnish-born psychiatrist who heads the department of adolescent psychiatry at Finland’s Tampere University Hospital, was among the first physicians in the world to head a gender identity clinic for minors. She, too, has reversed course.

In a statement she wrote that was signed by 20 clinicians from nine countries, she said, “Every systematic review of evidence to date, including one published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, has found the evidence for mental health benefits of hormonal interventions for minors to be of low or very low certainty.” She knows why so many professionals have been snookered. “Medicine, unfortunately, is not immune to dangerous groupthink that results in patient harm.”

Last year, a group of five professionals in Norway examined what the medical community was promoting and took them to task for not following the science. Sex-affirming treatment with hormones and surgery, they said, was “not correct.” They explained why. “Such treatment methods, which have irreversible and significant consequences, have a weak knowledge base.”

In a lengthy piece published in February by the New York Times, it found that young people who have detransitioned, and medical professionals who no longer support transgenderism, are often stigmatized for doing so.

Those who have detransitioned, or are contemplating it, deserve our widespread support. They do not need to be marginalized by bullies who are too ideologically corrupt, or greedy, to realize that transgenderism is a monumental fraud.