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Well, today and in the next few weeks, I want to wade into the waters of the cultural maelstrom of this time in our nation's history, issues related to biological sex, gender, and human sexuality. perfect storm, if you will, brings together the high-pressure system of LGBTQ issues, that's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer issues, with the equally high-pressure system of a medical community that's now, in many cases, required to give cross-sex hormones and even body-altering surgery to those who claim that they are one gender trapped in the body of another. And to make this a cultural perfect storm, if you will, we've got to add the hurricane of what is called ROGD, Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, a phenomenon in which clusters of young people, usually teenagers, and usually teenagers who are hyperconnected through social media sites, come to the conclusion that they are non-binary, that is, neither male nor female, or trans, short for transgender, that is, people who feel that their gender is different than their biological sex. And understandably, parents are alarmed, even socially liberal parents who don't have a problem with things like so-called gay marriage or even transgenderism. Their concern is that their child, usually a daughter who hasn't had any previous issues regarding his or her sexuality, suddenly, out of the blue, announces that he or she is bisexual, non-binary, or transsexual. And then add to that The relative ease with which young people, including children, can get hormone replacement treatments and surgeries to make them look like the gender they feel they are, well, you can see why parents are upset. And there's even a popular website for parents who are experiencing this phenomenon in their own homes, Fourth Wave Now. You don't need to read much of the running commentary on that site to realize that we really are in a brave new world culturally. Now, I am not for a moment brushing off the many complications to human sexuality that come in a fallen world populated by fallen people who often do some very cruel things to other fallen people. And as a pastor for nearly four decades, I work with people with all kinds of sexual difficulties. I'm not thrown by these things, and I always try to enter the world of those who struggle with same-sex attraction, homosexuality, lesbianism and various gender identity issues. But this current perfect storm strikes me as being of a different order. I'm open to be corrected, but these more recent developments seem to me to be not so much a battle with personal sin and sexual brokenness but an actual rebellion against the way God made us as male and female. And some time back, I also came to the conviction that a lot of this is very faddish, not unlike the so-called free love movement of the 1960s. Then I learned about ROGD, Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. I wasn't aware of ROGD until I read an article by one of my favorite journalists in my favorite magazine. The journalist is Jamie Dean, and the magazine is World, a biweekly news publication that's just part of a much larger enterprise called World News Group. You can check them out at www.wng.org. I can't praise too highly World News Group's commitment to faithful journalism done under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Well, Jamie's article that caught my eye was called, Pressure to Conform. And despite the resistance of LGBTQ activists, studies are now confirming that ROGD, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, is a byproduct of peer pressure that has a fertile field on social media, especially in virtual worlds like Tinder. But there's much more. That peer pressure can lead teenagers to make major life-altering decisions regarding their biological sex, what we've always called gender, and those decisions have a host of unknown consequences down the road. Now, perfect storms are devastating. And this really is a cultural perfect storm in an uncharted new world. Jamie Dean, national editor of World Magazine, is once again my guest on a visit to the pastor's study. Our topic is, what is ROGD, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, and what helps can we give to parents and teens who are affected by it? Jamie and I invite your questions. Again, if you're listening on Saturday, you may call and be live on the program, 631-955-5400, or you can text your questions anytime, 516-367-0391. Jamie Dean, welcome to today's visit to the Pastors Study. Well, thank you. It's great to be here. Good to have you back with us. Jamie, ROGD is relatively recent on our cultural landscape. Could you give us a little history Sure. You know, the phenomenon around transgenderism is not new. We've seen a growing number of even young children expressing distress with their birth sex. But rapid-onset gender dysphoria is something different. This has crept up onto the radar screen really in the last few years as parents and online forums and websites have begun to seek each other out and speak out about their alarm over what they're observing in their teenage children. And it's just what you described earlier. Teenagers, usually girls, who have never shown outward distress over their birth sex, even as younger children, parents often describe them as having been girly girls, even ballerinas, But all of a sudden, they announce they're essentially trapped in the wrong body and want to live as the opposite sex. Jamie, the recent studies about ROGD, what are they concluding? Are there consistent findings regarding this? Well, you know, there actually haven't been many studies about it since it's a rather new phenomenon, and it's not a particularly popular subject to explore. partly because transgenderism is so accepted in the cultural narrative now. But a researcher at Brown University named Lisa Lippman conducted a study last fall that was published in a reputable academic journal, and she basically surveyed these parents who are distressed over ROGD and their teens. And one thing that was really interesting about these parents was that about 85 percent said they have no problem with homosexuality or even transgenderism. I mean, essentially, they would consider themselves liberal in the area of sexuality. So their concerns did not appear to be driven by any ideological or religious reasons. They were concerned because their daughters had shown no signs of distress before declaring they were transgender, or no signs of distress over their birth sex before declaring they were transgender. And parents said that they saw this i'm happening and clusters so in other words whole friend groups were suddenly declaring they were transgender they also said their kids it's been a kind of time online before it happened i'm a significant portion said their children had been diagnosed with a mental health disorder before claiming dysphoria mental health disorder unrelated to that so There were all sorts of interesting and, I think, important findings here, but this study met almost immediate condemnation by transgender activists. And I think it's notable that activists pushed back first. It wasn't academics and other researchers or physicians pushing back first, it was activists. And their contention was essentially that gender dysphoria is always real, and parents should never discourage their children from pursuing transgenderism if that's what the child wants. One activist even said, you know, this study isn't valid because the researcher has to be transphobic to even explore this question. And it was interesting, you know, the journal that this study was published in buckled pretty quickly and said they would review the study, they would address these concerns. Now, this was a study that had already been peer-reviewed and approved before going into the journal. I noticed that the former dean of Harvard Medical School said he had never once seen a comparable reaction from an academic journal within days of a study's publication, and that's important because it tells you that academics and physicians and parents are facing tremendous pressure from activists to conform to this cultural narrative surrounding transgenderism. no matter what it costs the people who are involved. Yeah, we found that out, Jamie, even doing programs on topics like this. We will inevitably get responses, usually I think they're form responses, with all kinds of criticisms. So certainly that resistance is out there. Jamie, in your article, Pressure to Conform, you talk about how suicide prevention is brought into all of this. Develop that for us a little bit. Well, sadly, this idea of suicide prevention, it's really kind of the ultimate point of leverage against parents who have concerns. Physicians and psychologists will sometimes tell parents, look, if you don't go along with what your child wants in this area, your child might end up committing suicide down the road over this distress over their gender. And so just imagine what that's like, especially for a secular parent who has no bearings or very little bearings for what's up and down and all of this, to tell that parent, you might be the reason your child commits suicide. I mean, it's almost an unbearable pressure for them to resist. And so many of them don't resist it because of that. And Jamie, for the people that are caught up in this ROG, I do think it's peer pressure, your pressure to conform, what kinds of treatments do these people seek out, Jamie? Well, they would, you know, I might not use the word treatment in this case, but maybe intervention might be a word. They seek out the same interventions that anyone who says they have gender dysphoria might seek out. So, young children sometimes will seek out, or their parents will allow them to be put on puberty-blocking drugs. For teenagers, the kind of teenagers we're talking about here who've already gone through puberty, many of them might seek out cross-sex hormones. In some cases, girls seek out what physicians rather euphemistically called top surgery, which means a mastectomy. So you might have girls as young as 16 having their breasts permanently removed. And I would just add here that 86 colleges nationwide have student health plans that include coverage for cross-sex hormones and cross-sex surgery. And Jamie, the long-term consequences of these interventions, are there studies about that? Other than there certainly are, I mean, I personally think one of the most tragic consequences of cross-sex hormones is sterility, which can happen often. And so you're essentially asking young teenagers or even children to make this life-altering decision to forego having biological children. I find that an unconscionable choice to ask a child to make about their future. That really breaks my heart when I think about that. And the scary truth is that we don't know the really long-term consequences. Lifelong use of cross-sex hormones is a new phenomenon, and physicians who approve of it, admit they don't know what might happen 20, 30, 40, and longer years down the line. We do know there's an increased risk of stroke. Some worry that it can decrease bone density in adolescents. And even if a person decides to stop taking the hormones, they don't always fully recover from the effects. So this really is a life-altering decision that these children and teenagers are making. Yeah, this really is, as I put it, a cultural maelstrom in a brave new cultural world. My guest is Jamie Dean, who is the national editor of World magazine. We're talking about ROGD, rapid-onset gender dysphoria. A lot more to do. We'll be back after this message from a voice, the voice of A Visit to the Pastors Study. It's not enough to listen to pastors on the radio or to watch them on television. Everyone needs a biblically faithful pastor and everyone needs a biblically faithful church. A Visit to the Pastor's Study is a ministry of the Orthodox Presbyterian Churches in the metropolitan New York area. We're no substitute for a faithful pastor in a local church, but we are a supplement. Visit our website, www.visitthepastorsstudy.org, and you can bring the ministry of this program right to your electronic device. Here you'll find archives of past programs, a weekly message from Pastor Bill's Pastors Post, helps for pastors, helps for congregation members, material for officer training, and much more. That's www.visitthepastorsstudy.org. And we also invite you to contact the host of this program, Pastor Bill Shishko. You can email him at visitpastorbill at gmail.com. He'd love to hear from you so that he can bring his pastoral ministry to you personally. That's visitpastorbill at gmail.com. Remember, everyone needs a pastor. And now back to today's edition of A Visit to the Pastor's Study. I'm your host, Bill Shishko, with you today. We're talking about what should we make of ROGD, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, and how do we approach the subject as Christians. My guest is Jamie Dean, national editor for World magazine, whose article, Pressure to Conform, got me interested in the subject. Along with the other contact information, feel free to call my study 516-593-1507 or you can text your questions anytime in the week 516-367-0391. Jamie, talk about the role of social media in ROGD. I think that's really important, especially for parents to be aware of. One of the things in Lippman's study that she found was that a high percentage of parents, as I mentioned earlier, said their children had spent a ton of time online, on social media, before declaring they were transgender. And there are all sorts of places that teenagers can go to get immersed in this world. When I write about this, I find myself being careful to not even lead people to where these things are found. But there's all kinds of online forums, uh... and website and places that that teens can go and and they can find it uh... not only just affirmation of what they're feeling an encouragement to go forward you know they can find uh... for lack of a better word counsel i guess from from others who have gone down the path who will tell them you know if you're going to a physician's appointment and you're still looking for cross-ex hormones here are the key word you're going to want to hit when you get into that office if you want to get this cross-ex hormones on your first visit here are some key phrases to use, whether that phrase applies to you or not, here's what you should say to get what you want. So it really is amazing what's out there and what's available. And any parent who has a child spending time online really should be aware of those kinds of things that are out there. And Jamie, your article points out that coming out as non-binary, neither male nor female or transsexual, builds a teenager's popularity. One of your quotations from the article, being trans is a gold star in the eyes of other teens than later being heterosexual and comfortable with it is looked down on. Really? Is that the case? Well, that's the question I wondered as well. I mean, I was fascinated by that part of the study. I guess every generation of teenagers has its own strange things that are popular or unpopular but this does appear to be um... quite a fad uh... among among teens and and there were parents saying that when when their teenagers were coming out saying they were transgender that it that it was boosting their their credibility at school and and being home at being straight being heterosexual with on the unit kind of like a buddy daddy you know square thing now so It was amazing to me that that's kind of where we are. Yeah, again, the article that I'm referring to from World Magazine, and I'm assuming it is available online at wng.org, worldnewsgroup.org, pressure to conform. Jamie, is this similar to other disorders that affect, and I'm going to call it that because that's what it is, but disorders that affect young people, eating disorders, that kind of thing? yeah you know and and i think you're right about paying disorder you had just i would mention that gender dysphoria was actually called gender identity disorder until around two thousand twelve so that tells you how quickly this is all happened that it was considered a mental disorder until just a few years ago when this when this pressure swept in uh... but yet i mean you know some uh... psychologist that i spoke with and others said you know this they'd be similarities to for example the fad of anorexia among young girls during the eighties and nineties. Now, anorexia is obviously a real problem that plenty of people face, but what they saw was that in teenage groups of girls, after one girl said she was anorexic, sometimes several other girls in that friend group would say that as well. And so they see some similarities here. One person says they're transgender, and then all of a sudden, and parents in these studies said this, every group of every girl in that group of friends would say they were transgender as well. So there does appear to be a fad or a cluster element to that. And Jamie, what's the response of the medical community that hasn't signed on to ROGD as anything more than a fad? Well, it's not easy for them to speak out about this. In fact, I wrote a couple of years ago about a psychiatrist at the University of Louisville named Alan Josephson, who was speaking out about it. He is a member of the Christian Medical and Dental Association, and just recently, just in the last couple of weeks, he announced that he recently lost his job at the University of Louisville after publicly saying parents should listen to their children with empathy, but then try to help them live according to their birth sex. He said this in a public forum at the Heritage Foundation. uh... some of the colleagues complained uh... he was apparently first demoted and then contract was a renewed after fifteen years of chairing his department uh... this has happened to others and um... it tells you there is a real-world cost to speaking out about this uh... one endocrinologist i spoke with said he thinks there's actually a lot of physicians that think that this is folly but they won't speak out because of because of what they think will happen to them, because they're afraid of the pressure that they'll face. And, you know, he said, even if physicians eventually do come around and start admitting that there are problems with this, he said, we will have done so much damage by then. And that is the really tragic thing here, damage that can't be undone in this life, at least. And so, you know, I've come to think of this group of especially children and teenagers as such an unprotected group. uh... in our country we are rightly concerned about the unborn and aging in the poor and all of these different groups that we have come to think of this group of children who are being pushed in this direction by adult that they trust such an unprotected protected group of children and and and it really is a heartbreak that we need to continue to follow And Jamie, thank you so much for your work with World Magazine. Jamie is National News Editor for World. She is tracking things related to this. We really very much appreciate World Magazine, Jamie, and we also appreciate your labors in particular. Thanks for being our guest today. Thank you for having me. You're welcome, Jamie. Time for counsel from the pastor's study. I cannot overstate Romans 12 and verses 1 and 2. I beseech you by the mercies of God that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God as your reasonable service. Don't be conformed to this age. but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may be able to prove the good and pleasing and acceptable will of God. It's a relentless battle to not let the world push you into its mold and rather to be continually transformed by the renewing of your mind under the final authority of the Word of God and unto the Lordship of the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Don't let the world push you into the mold of faddish views of gender and sexuality. Increasingly, we're hearing from those who had been duped. Jamie Shoup, poster person as a transgender woman, is now among growing numbers of people who've renounced transgenderism, and he now calls it, quote, a fraud perpetrated by psychiatry, the likes of something the United States and the world hasn't experienced since the lobotomy era. God's good design, He made Adam male and Eve female, not both and, for either of them. Now in a fallen world, medical rarities come, they can be corrected by medical means, and there are many issues in a fallen world, but these sexual issues can be dealt with by the grace of God in Jesus Christ, grace that really is greater than human sin. Let's let the church rise to the occasion. What does it mean that God made males and females? And how is this God's wise design? What are God's good purposes in heterosexual intimacy and the bonds of marriage? And how do people with challenges like same-sex attraction or gender identity issues deal with them by applications of the good news of Christ's work to forgive us and to make us new creation day by day and moment by moment. See, medical treatments can alter the way you look. Jesus Christ, the great physician, can transform what you are. Look to Him in true faith and true repentance, and then just watch what He'll do. My thanks to Jamie Dean, National Editor for World Magazine, for being my guest on today's visit to the Pastor's Study. Thanks for listening. It's a privilege to be a pastor to you through the medium of radio. I appreciate your feedback and your questions. Email me, visitpastorbill at gmail.com. Remember, Sunday is the Lord's Day. Be sure to set apart time to worship the Lord in a church that's faithful to the Word of God. And remember, everyone needs a pastor. You've been listening to this week's A Visit to the Pastor's Study, a ministry of Reformation Metro New York incorporated in the Orthodox Presbyterian Churches of Metropolitan New York and Connecticut. For more information on the program, check out our website at www.visitthepastorstudy.org. That's www.visitthepastorstudy.org. Listen in next week for another Visit to the Pastor's Study. Remember, everyone needs a pastor.