Social media outlets censor useful information in the transgender debate

Recently there has been a credible charge that Facebook, which is used by a growing percentage of the population as their primary news source, is censoring stories and opinion pieces that favor conservatism in their “trending” news section. Until such time as Facebook stops such unbalanced reporting, I believe it is necessary to present a significant new item that avid Facebook readers probably missed as a result of the news censorship. Let the readers decide if such a news item should have been kept hidden from Facebook news seekers.

Less than a year ago, long before the transgender-bathroom flap, The Wall Street Journal promoted a previous op-ed by Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. McHugh made the case that transgender identity is not a state of being but rather a “mental illness akin to bulimia and should not be treated with surgery, which can cause more harm than good.” He focused his arguments on the treatments being demanded and obtained by those who believe they are transgender, namely gender-reassignment surgery and puberty-delaying drugs in children.

McHugh reminded the public that Johns Hopkins was the first American medical center to offer so-called “sex-reassignment surgery” in the l960s. Johns Hopkins subsequently launched a study in the ‘70s to assess the benefits or detriments of such surgery. They found the patients who had the surgery were initially satisfied with the results, but the satisfaction faded with time, and the post-surgery patients soon reported no better success dealing with their “psycho-social adjustments” than those who had no surgery.

The Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced an even more decisive conclusion based upon a 30-year long term study with results published in 2011. In this study, Swedish doctors followed 324 patients who had sought and obtained sex-reassignment surgery. It was found that around 10 years after the surgery, the transgendered patients who had the surgery began to have mental problems. Their suicide rate was 20 percent higher than the nontransgendered population.

Johns Hopkins decided to stop doing sex-reassignment surgery based upon these studies. As McHugh said, it appeared the post-surgical patients remained too “troubled” to justify “surgically amputating normal organs.”

This is a bombshell of a story that few Americans have ever heard about. Consider how important it is to the current debate about “transgender rights. Take note that the current edict coming from President Obama and his Justice Department not only assumes the acceptance of transgenderism as a settled, in-born status, but also demands there should be no objective medical or psychological test to prove transgenderism. That means President Obama and the left are demanding that any child, teen, or adult should be able to enter and use any bathroom or locker room based merely upon his or her self-declaration of transgenderism.

Sadly, corporate America has caved into the uber-left in their rush to jump on whatever politically correct train is poised to leave the station. Rather than risk being labeled transphobic haters, what do you bet hundreds of big corporations and sports stadium owners are already planning to spend converting all their restrooms to the gender-neutral variety?

Think about it. Based on a transgender “status” claimed by only three-tenths of 1 percent of the population, according to the latest census figures, most big corporations will be willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to alter their properties in a way that endangers and inconveniences over 99 percent of Americans. Such is the power of most of the media to satisfy the people who make the latest claim of victimhood.

Writer Mytheos Holt recently argued in a Federalist website piece (another one that Facebook missed) that the culture war has been all but lost by the right because the left has succeeded in turning the free market system against the people on the right in favor of the political correctness of the people on the left.

But this is a discussion the public is not allowed to have because liberal gate keepers at popular social news sites like Facebook censor facts and opinions that don’t fit their liberal template. What is it that the Good Book says? “For lack of knowledge the people perish.” Indeed.

This story was originally published June 4, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Social media outlets censor useful information in the transgender debate."