The 1960's, transgender tots, and parental abdication

I wasn’t born until the late 1960’s so I have no personal connection to the social and cultural upheaval happening then. However, I do know some aging hippies and, well, we all seem to hear about how cool the 60’s were. The era when “America came of age.” Oh sure, there was lots of sex, drugs, peace, drugs, tie-dye, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. And drugs. But we struggled as a nation with race relations and civil rights, the Vietnam War, the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., just to name a few of the major events.

It seems fair to say that America “grew” in the way we all do when we face adversity and come out the other end. We become stronger and gain new perspectives. Usually that’s a good thing.

Usually.

In response to the sexual taboos of the 1950’s, the sexual revolution was beginning to hit its stride as well and, as an outgrowth, the so-called gay rights movement. A lot was happening behind the scenes with sex and gender research courtesy of studies and publications by Masters and Johnson and others. Among the others was Dr. John Money.

Dr. Money “pioneered” new definitions of “gender roles” based on his belief that gender was not innate but could be assigned to a child before age 3. In other words, your DNA, sexual organs and hormones (to name a few things) don’t have to determine your sex. If Dr. Money got to you early enough in your childhood, he could help you choose your sex. Not surprisingly, Dr. Money also was a strong advocate of sex change operations while working at Johns Hopkins University.

To prove his theory, Dr. Money experimented in 1967 on a set of young twin boys, one of whom had had a botched circumcision that destroyed his penis. With the parents’ consent, Dr. Money removed the boy’s sex organs and put him on an aggressive hormone regimen so he could be raised as a girl. The result? An epic tragedy that ultimately led to the boy unsuccessfully reversing Dr. Mengele—sorry—Dr. Money’s plans several years later, the boy’s suicide in 2004, and his twin brother’s drug overdose in 2003. Ruined lives, broken relationships, a devastated family and generational lines lost.

The 60’s weren’t all bad and neither is some blurring of traditional gender roles. What is truly disturbing about the 60’s legacy is the indifference to and devaluation of life. People and traditional roles have become much less valuable with the approval and growth of abortion, assisted suicide, pornography, hedonism, and a culture that says it’s OK for anyone to do anything he wants as long as no one gets hurt. You’d think this legacy and the work of quacks like Dr. Money would teach us not to mess with God’s order.

Apparently the lesson hasn’t been taught in Omaha.

This past week, the Sioux City Journal reported that a local family planned to enroll their 8-year old son in a different school next year. Why? According to them, he is transgender and has wanted to be a girl since he was 4. The evidence? He says he’s wanted to be a girl, been allowed to wear girl clothes at home, and claims his inside doesn’t match his outside. No news on whether surgery will be involved.

Of course, the child’s family is responsible for making this decision and encouraging their son to live a heartrending lie. But we shouldn’t be surprised that this would happen in our “enlightened” post-60’s age. It used to be that men were men and women were women. And historically each sex was primarily responsible for certain familial and societal obligations. It is also true that these distinctions were the result in part of, as feminists might put it, male hegemony and a desire to keep women subjugated.

Most of it, however, was due to the fact that boys are boys and girls are girls. They are inherently different from each other! That’s God’s design. Boys will make guns out of any nearby toy because they are wired to be boys. Same with girls and tea parties. Yes, there are (very) few exceptions. I don’t know what causes the exceptions but I’m sure they are not the result of a choice one makes to be one sex or the other.

The approach of the Omaha parents is that their boy wants to be a girl, so let him be a girl and we’ll raise him that way. This has happened because either the parents have given up or society has deteriorated such that they’ve concluded their decision is valid and won’t be condemned. Either choice is a reflection of the changes in society that grew out of the 60’s—ambivalence and spiritual malaise, or free love, hedonism and the devaluation of life. Since the parents refused to permit publications of their names for fear of retribution, I suggest that they’ve given up. This family can likely expect broken relationships, heartache, and family devastation, courtesy of the “progress” our society has made.

Dr. Money’s work should be a cautionary tale to them and all of us. Thankfully, he died in 2006. He can’t mutilate anyone physically anymore, but his legacy and that of the era of his most prominent work will continue to mutilate families, lives, and life itself.