Posted on 04/10/2015 12:25:06 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The headline alone is painful to read: "Transgender teenager, 17, leaves heartbreaking suicide note blaming her Christian parents before walking in front of tractor trailer on highway." The story itself is even more painful to read, while the loss of life is absolutely tragic.
Is there blood on the hands of these Christian parents?
What makes this story all the more heartrending is that the teenager, born Joshua Alcorn but who used the name Leelah to identify as a female, left a suicide note that was scheduled to be posted in the event of his death. (If you are a transgender advocate and are already furious with me for using the male pronoun for Joshua-Leelah, please hold your fury long enough to finish reading the article.)
In the note, Joshua explains how he began feeling that he was a girl at the age of four, writing, "When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was.
"I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn't make mistakes, that I am wrong."
Did the mother respond in the right way, or did her lack of understanding lead to Joshua's death?
Joshua says that his parents sent him to Christian therapists who allegedly told him that he was "selfish and wrong," and on his 16th birthday, "when I didn't receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep."
He added, "I'm never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself."
Not long after composing this note, on Sunday night, December 27th, he walked into the path of a tractor-trailer and ended it all.
There has been an immediate outpouring of support in his memory (along with condemnation of his parents), while a new Facebook page has been launched, called "Justice for Leelah Alcorn," receiving more than 12,000 likes almost overnight. The page links to a petition on Change.org entitled, "Enact Leelah's Law to Ban Transgender Conversion Therapy." By the evening of December 30th, it had received almost 20,000 signatures.
As conservative Christians who believe in the Scriptures, how do we respond to a tragedy like this? And should we oppose the concept of "transgender conversion therapy"?
Without a doubt, we must recognize that issues of transgender identity often run very deep and cannot be trivialized or taken lightly. Although I have often been dubbed "transphobic" because of my strong opposition to many aspects of LGBT activism, often focusing on transgender issues, at the same time, I have constantly drawn attention to the depth of struggle experienced by many who identify as transgender.
I interacted at length with one man who now identifies as a woman, asking him why he would destroy a 37-year marriage and become alienated from his own children. He explained to me that after decades of trying to resolve his issues, it was either suicide or sex change. He opted for the latter and says he is very glad he did.
Another man, whose story I know well, decided to come out as a woman in his mid-to-late 60's, also affecting his marriage. (I'm not sure how things stand today with his children.) He explained to me that I had no idea the pain he lived with all his life. I don't believe he was making any of this up.
And there are the many stories of children trying to hide or even mutilate their genitals, growing increasingly agitated as they come into puberty.
Surely, this cannot be taken lightly, nor can we look to glib clichés or superficial fixes. And parents need to do their best (with the help of professionals when possible) to spot signs of depression and potential suicide. In other words, handle with extreme love and care.
But that is not the end of the story.
I personally know individuals who once identified as transgender and who no longer do, and they are so thankful to God that they found a better way. They emphatically discourage parents from affirming their children as transgender (while even more emphatically urging those parents to show unconditional love to their kids). Should we ignore what they have to say? (For more on this, see the important, recent article, "Trouble in Transtopia: Murmurs of Sex Change Regret.")
Some of these individuals remained suicidal even after having sex-change surgery, and in some notable cases, which I mentioned in my article "Sex Change Regret," some have committed suicide after coming out as the opposite of their biological sex.
Don't their deaths count as much as the death of Joshua-Leelah?
Why are people so free to condemn Joshua's parents when they wouldn't dare criticize doctors who performed (or recommended) sex-change surgery on someone who then killed himself or herself, unhappy with their new identity? Shouldn't all these suicides give us pause for thought?
According to a major, 30-year study of "sex-reassigned" persons in Sweden, and as cited in an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal by Dr. Paul McHugh, formerly chair of the Johns Hopkins psychiatric department, "their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population."
And so, while the suicide of Joshua-Leelah is absolutely tragic, and while I understand the passion of those who want to ban so-called transgender conversion therapy, I respectfully submit that wisdom and compassion call for a better path, one that invests more time and energy into looking for the root causes of transgenderism, as we encourage therapists and counselors and psychologists to listen and learn even more, with the goal of finding non-surgical ways to help them find wholeness.
In short, rather than having an emotional, gut-level response (which is quite understandable, given this heartbreaking story), let us seek to do what is right and best. That is the way of love.
I am soooo glad I grew up before the LGBT liberal indoctrination became the rule of the land.
I think that when people have severe mental health issues regarding homosexuality and gender reassignment and who are seriously unstable, such as this young man was, it is often a mistake to have a church counselor put in charge of care.
This kid needed the intervention of a serious medical psychiatrist.
Any religious counseling after the person has been stabilized.
Jump, Jump, Jump.
The kid, at 17, was in the range of becoming an adult, and thus within range of making decisions on his own. But he chose to walk in front of a truck instead. That was his choice too.
He was a sissy, which is sad, but at least his parents wouldn’t let him pay a doctor for surgical mutilation. It’s a shame gay activists have so many mentally disturbed people convinced that surgical mutilation of healthy organs is a positive option.
If he had recognized that he could act effeminate without castration, he would have been much happier. The actual situation, believing that a chainsaw to the groin could change his DNA too, is what led to his stupid and selfish decision (yes, selfish - a non-selfish suicide would have killed himself without ruining a truck driver’s life on the way out).
I think it’s safe to say that this person did not get the right kind of help from anyone. Not even sure if it’s available right now considering that this isn’t considered a problem of the psyche.
The child got conflicting messages from everyone and wasn’t emotionally equipped to deal with it. Very, very sad.
I personally know of a lovely young lady who is currently in the process of becoming a young man. He is currently dressing and appearing as a man and so I will refer to him as he. He was raised Christian and graduated from a quality Christian college. His parents have decided to disown him for the time being. I think they are getting advice from a Christian counselor because I don’t see how you could disown your own flesh and blood child who you have loved passionately from day one. I don’t suggest an answer to this dilemma except to report that it is a very difficult and emotional situation for all involved. If I was the parent I would love and respect this child no matter what. Suicide would be my worst nightmare. Better to have your child alive and accessible to the family.
The proper response to this kind of request should be serious help from grounded mental health professionals. The only problem with this is that the psy-type professionals are brainwashed by the “standard of care”. This kind of thing is so sad. Anyone that wishes to engage in the false hope of changing their sex will find that they cannot hide from what they really are inside.
Imagine if this young impressionable boy had never been exposed to the idea of transexaulism. He would be alive today. Sexual development can be confusing but what hasn’t been addressed is that with all this openness about gender identity and inclusiveness that suicides among the young 15-19 have more than tripled since the 1950s. So all this crap, confusion and sensitivity has did nothing to help young kids and clearly is hurting them.
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c10690.pdf
I’ve read some stories about child sex abuse victims growing up to become transgendered.
There’s a lot of insanity in our society about sex and I identify with LGBT people on that basis for sure.
I agree, the truck driver is a true victim here... how horrible for him! I don’t understand why, even if you see no other option, and decide to kill yourself, why force another person to be your pawn?
The purpose of a suicide is usually to “punish” someone... in this case it would be the parents for not giving in to his temper tantrums ...
How would they know that their genitals are supposed to look different unless someone told them?
Seems to me that normal people don't look at pieces of their body and say "That's wrong." Where did they get this idea that what they have is wrong?
This idea could have only come from others, and therefore the argument that it is an innate characteristic of who they are, is just bullsh*t.
I think they just have a Body dysmorphic disorder, and they seize on the notion that they are the wrong sex. All of their subsequent efforts then go towards convincing themselves that their jumped to conclusions are correct. It becomes a self perpetuating self reinforcing delusion.
Transgenders are very prone to suicide, especially post surgery. They discover that it didn't solve their angst after all, and they realize there is nothing else they can do to feed their delusion.
This. The only reason they would have a preference regarding gender at that age is if they were steered that way.
[[From the article “either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wished he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself’]]
A typical sinner- ALWAYS blaming someone else for their misery- I feel sorry for the parents who have to live with both the loss of their child AND the FALSE accusation by their child- it is VERY clear that their son was unhappy no matter what choice he made (as is usually the case with gay and transgen der people) and it’s VERY clear that the source of his unhappiness was his lifestyle choice- He was VERY selfish and VERY self-centered (again, typical of gay and transgender people) for blaming his parents for his unhappiness when the real source of his unhappiness was his own sinful lifestyle- He CHOSE to live a SINFUL lifestyle, and when He did, his conscience wouldn’t allow him to be happy in his SIN- and he turns around and blames someone else? VERY selfish!
[[His parents had every right to not allow him to mutilate his genitals while he was a minor living under their roof.]]
It is now against the law in Massachusetts for parents to take their confused mentally ill kids who think they are gay or transgender to a counselor who tries to rectify the child’s illness- the only people they can take their child to are those who tell the child their decision to live a sinful life is just fine-
Most certainly, And the issue is not gender. It is the will. A human determined to force his/her will obstinately and defiantly not only upon parents but upon the whole of rational existence may carry this to the irrational end of removing self from that existence. Depression can be explained as simply anger turned inward, when one cannot have one's own way.
The parents' roles are inadequately described in this article, but obviously this youth's fixation needed to be dealt with, by someone, long before seventeen. IMHO
You can take on this wholly unrealistic attitude, but it is neither sane nor helpful, IMHO. Unless every cell of this person's body has a Y chromosome, it is not a male body, no matter what degree it is surgically disfigured, and to pretend otherwise is to send the whole of the range of society into a dichotomy of what is real. The only person with a real excuse for this is one born as a biological hermaphodite.
Actually, I don't believe this to be true.
I grew up in a time and place that had no exposure and had a friend in high school that was like this. The only thing he could figure out was he was gay but he did not feel like he fit in that category either. He committed suicide because he could not take it any more.
Looking back now, he was transsexual but had no idea what it was, or even if there was such a thing.
Not knowing is not the answer either.
However, granting all and every child the permission to destroy any chance of a normal life is not a good response.
There are standards but just like everything else at this time, they are being abused and there are victims being taken advantage of.
many of these youths are rebelling against a difficult childhood and it has this form.
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