Within a few days or weeks, someone by the name of Rachel Levine might become the assistant secretary for the United States Department of Health and Human Services. This would be the first openly transgender person to be appointed to a president-nominated, Senate-confirmed federal office in history. And we are not sure what this nominee thinks about surgically removing and altering the sex organs of children—because the nominee won’t tell us.

This silence is part of something much larger. There is a massive effort underway to hide the ugly truth about transgenderism. And it will go so far as to ensnare our children.

People who believe they are a different gender suffer much more depression and anxiety. Those who have actually undergone surgery—which is supposed to make them more self-actualized—suffer so badly that they are 19 times more likely than the average person to kill themselves.

The solution? Radicals in the Biden White House and across the American elite say the solution is even more transgender acceptance, promotion, education, therapy and surgery, even on children.

People who argue this are unaware of or lying about the facts.

Richard Levine was born in 1957, graduated from high school in Massachusetts, went to Harvard and Tulane, and became a doctor focusing on pediatrics and adolescents. He was married, had two children, and sang baritone in musical theater.

About 20 years ago, he began seeing a therapist, 13 years ago he began growing out his hair, and 10 years ago he said he was a woman named Rachel. Six years ago he became the physician general of Pennsylvania, four years ago he became secretary of the state department of health, and six weeks ago Joe Biden nominated him to become assistant health secretary of the United States.

The confirmation hearing for Levine last week was the transgender agenda in microcosm. Sen. Rand Paul questioned the nominee on whether children should be able to bypass their parents and, through medical professionals, interventions and surgery, try to change their sex.

Levine’s answer was an evasion that amounted to: Confirm me as assistant secretary, and then I’ll gladly answer.

This was after Senator Paul had pointed out that genital mutilation has been condemned by governments around the world, as well as the World Health Organization and the United Nations. “Genital mutilation is considered particularly egregious because, as the who notes, it is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children,” he said. “Dr. Levine, you have supported both allowing minors to be given hormone blockers, to prevent them from going through puberty, as well as surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia.”

After Levine’s evasion, Senator Paul said, “What I’m alarmed at is that you’re not willing to say absolutely [that] minors shouldn’t be making decisions to amputate their breast or to amputate their genitalia. Will you make a more firm decision on whether or not minors should be involved in these decisions?”

Levine wouldn’t answer.

This is where the United States of America is now. In the Senate. In an official, open hearing. A man who has destroyed his gender has been nominated to high office by the highest office in the land. And he won’t answer a question about whether he thinks children should undergo genital mutilation.

And the most prominent voices in the nation are criticizing whom? The senator who asked the question. For example, here’s how abc News, the Daily Beast and the Washington Post portrayed it: “First transgender nominee deflects inflammatory questions from gop senator,” “Rand Paul Launches Into Transphobic Rant Against Trans Nominee,” and “Rand Paul’s ignorant questioning of Rachel Levine showed why we need her in government.”

There is a reason why Levine won’t answer that question. It’s because transgender activists know that the less the public understands about these procedures, the better. The more you know about these procedures, the more appalled you will be!

The Question

Senator Paul told commentator Glenn Beck that his question was whether or not a child is or should be legally capable of consenting to such a drastic measure, or whether his or her parent should make the decision. But mainstream media outlets are showing themselves totally on board with the transgender movement and portrayed him as guilty of a “transphobic rant.”

Should children be able to decide for themselves whether to have irreversible surgical and hormonal treatments that destroy their healthy body parts and much of who they are?

Dr. Levine won’t say, but he’ll be happy to talk about it after you confirm him as United States assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, where the motto is “Improving the health, safety and well-being of America.”

According to mainstream news executives and their journalists, you are a bigot for asking the question.

Society has transformed overnight to adopt a radical and destructive way of thinking. The Senate is certain to confirm Dr. Levine, and nobody except Senator Paul seemed to raise an eyebrow about a man who thinks he’s a woman becoming chief adviser to a cabinet-level official in the federal government.

While the media covers for them, members of the Biden administration and the new Congress are rapidly moving to force the transgender agenda into law. Just last Thursday, the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act. If it passes in the Senate—the same Senate that is about to confirm its first transgender person—then the law of the land will offer this guarantee to homosexuals and transgenders: “An individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.”

This is a weapon against anyone who does not fully embrace this bizarre new idea about gender, which goes against biology, science and the functioning of family and society that almost all human beings have understood for all of human history.

The Equality Act gives the government massive power to punish “any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides health care, accounting or legal services,” along with any organization that receives any federal funding. You must agree that a man pretending he’s a woman is a woman, or the government will block you from participating in public commerce.

This is an advanced stage of radical sexual rebellion that has been working on the minds of young people for generations now. Young people are and have been growing up in a society where homosexuality, pansexuality, transgenderism and gender fluidity not only have their place but are celebrated. And these young people are getting the message.

A new Gallup poll reports that of all U.S. adults, 5.6 percent say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. That’s a 60 percent jump in less than a decade. And the biggest part of that jump happened in Generation Z. Among those born between 1997 and 2002, a jaw-dropping 16 percent categorize themselves as not heterosexual. Among these young adults, that’s 1 out of every 6!

And if radicals get their way—and they are getting their way—more and more children far younger than their 20s will be asking about gender and considering surgical destruction of their gender.

The news stories that started as a trickle a few years ago are now coming in a flood. Just a few days ago, reports came out that the state of Illinois has adopted new standards that will revoke a teacher’s license if he does not indoctrinate his students in the propaganda of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders and a host of other leftist causes. Members of the Illinois Board of Education call this “The Illinois Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards,” which specify:

The culturally responsive teacher and leader will: Understand and value the notion that multiple lived experiences exist, that there is not one “correct” way of doing or understanding something …. Recognize how their identity (race/ethnicity, national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional ability, socioeconomic class, religion, etc) affects their perspectives and beliefs about pedagogy and students.

Under “Systems of Oppression” they write, “Culturally responsive teachers and leaders understand that there are systems in our society that create and reinforce inequities, thereby creating oppressive conditions. Educators work actively against these systems in their everyday roles in educational institutions. … The culturally responsive teacher and leader will … Implement and integrate the wide spectrum and fluidity of identities in the curriculum.”

Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote in National Review that with a Biden administration overseeing education, these Illinois standards are likely to go national. However it happens, schools are increasingly imposing this agenda on their teachers and on our children.

In its haste to show itself accepting, tolerant and welcoming of men who decide they are women, American society is overlooking, ignoring, denying and trampling on precious and important truths.

We need to understand the truth about transgenderism.

This isn’t just a matter of accepting a handful of people whose thinking doesn’t match their biology. This has huge ramifications in every aspect of modern life. It raises not just economic questions in areas like public bathrooms, gym facilities, prisons and homeless shelters—not just educational questions like what the state is force-feeding your kindergartner’s mind—but also questions about freedom of speech and freedom of religion, questions about whether you can be fined or jailed for being anything less than fully supportive of this movement, or whether you are free to live by the dictates of your own conscience.

Society can’t afford to accept this lightly. It needs answers.

But Dr. Levine refused to answer an easy, obvious question. That is just a small glimpse of what this movement is all about. It pushes aside facts and truth. It is interested only in the power to transform society.

If you want an answer to the question, if you want truth about transgenderism, read When Harry Became Sally—Responding to the Transgender Moment by Ryan T. Anderson. He is president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, he was a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, he is founder and editor in chief of the Witherspoon Institutes’ Public Discourse, he has written four books and pieces for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, National Review and many other prominent publications, and he has appeared on cnn cnbc, msnbc and Fox News.

Published in 2018, When Harry Became Sally is full of important truth about the transgender trend and what actually happens to people who try to change their gender. But if you want to buy this book from the world’s largest bookseller, like I did a couple of years ago, you can’t. Amazon has removed it. It was approving it according to its content policy, selling it, profiting from it for three years, but on or around February 21, it disappeared. Nobody knows why, including Anderson. He posted on social media:

A week after they removed my book, Amazon still refuses to say which aspect of their “content policy” the book violates (after three years of not violating that policy). And they refuse to say which page of the book commits the offense.

There are powerful forces in politics, business, entertainment, journalism, sports and every other aspect of society that are forcing through the transgender agenda, in spite of what transgenderism is.

Facts

Here are some facts. It is a scientific fact that people are biologically male or female. It is a scientific fact that biological sex comes with physiological and even mental and emotional predispositions. But science can tell you nothing about a man feeling that he is actually a woman. There is no scientific explanation for that.

Trans supporters say that when a person’s thinking doesn’t harmonize with biology, he should not change his thinking—he should change his biology. Correcting his thinking would be bigoted, discriminatory and wrong. Acting like the opposite sex, using hormone blockers, and intentionally mutilating his genitalia would be sophisticated, healthy and fulfilling.

It is difficult to comprehend just how many contradictions are contained in this thinking.

Transgender activists say gender is an “artificial construct.” Yet at the same time, they say the entire society must pivot for someone who is exhibiting stereotypical and even cartoonish expressions of his “authentic gender identity”—if it is different from his actual, scientific gender identity. They say a person’s “real self” is separate from his or her physical body. Then they say that the person’s body must be surgically transformed to make the person “whole.” They say that even children must take puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical procedures to match the physical body to the idea in the mind.

This thinking is obviously and blatantly anti-science. But if you try to talk about scientific facts, you are labeled an intolerant, discriminating bigot.

Here are more facts these activists portray as “transphobic.” Science shows that among children who struggle with gender dysphoria, 80 percent of girls and 95 percent of boys will reconcile with their biological sex if they are allowed to go through puberty. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones have been shown to damage cardiovascular health, bone density and reproductive functions. Nearly half of people who identify as transgender experience anxiety disorders or depression. An estimated 41 percent have tried to kill themselves. Those who undergo sex-change interventions—far from experiencing lasting mental health benefits—are 19 times more likely to commit suicide.

Some people suffer the misery of undergoing the surgery and then bitterly regret it. Some even undergo surgery to undo the surgery and try to un-destroy their gender. That alone tells you that trying to alter their gender did not help them become their “authentic selves,” and it certainly has not led to happiness.

Genital reconstructive surgery is a field, and Prof. Miroslav Djordjevic is a leading figure in that field. For years, he has been voicing his concern about rising requests for gender-reversal surgeries. He says people wishing to undergo the transformation should receive better counsel. He says the effort to be politically correct is driving these decisions—rather than what is actually correct for the best interest of the individuals involved.

While studies on the effects of transgender procedures are rare for some reason, many unhappy stories are out there. When Harry Became Sally has an entire chapter titled “Detransitioners Tell Their Stories,” and it is heartbreaking. Many describe becoming dissatisfied with their sexuality early in life and trying to find happiness in things like sexual affairs. Then they were offered a radical solution: become the other gender through the wonders of surgical science.

If you have a lot of faith in the wonders of modern medicine, it sounds easy. But the reality is, biological differences between men and women are far-reaching and complex. Hormone blockers can prevent a boy’s voice from getting deeper or a girl’s hips from getting wider, taking hormones can shrink a man’s testicles or cause a woman to grow facial hair, and surgery can amputate body parts specific to male or female and attach artificial body parts. But the reality is that no matter how advanced or expensive the treatment or procedure—science cannot actually turn a man into a woman, or a woman into a man.

The scientific fact is that biological sex is embedded in your dna from conception, and it affects every system in your body.

So many of these individuals who undergo these procedures often find themselves requiring substantially more medical attention. Rather than being happier, they often grow even more depressed and even suicidal. Many say the doctors who advised them led them astray.

Let’s insist on science. Let’s insist on facts. Let’s do this for the sake of all those in our society, from adult to child, who stand to lose so much and suffer so much because of ignorance.

The fact is: Encouraging a child that their feeling of confusion is correct does not make that child happy. Teaching him that trouble with other kids and adults comes from everyone being bigots does not make that child happy. Allowing a child into the restroom of the opposite sex does not make him happy. Allowing him to win wrestling matches against girls will not make him happy. Censoring all discussion about transgender facts will not make him happy.

The idea that sex changes and societal transformation will solve the depression, misery and heartache of this group of people is a dangerous lie—a lie being boldly told at a tremendous cost! It is increasing the suffering of so many who identify as transgender.

I encourage you to read the cover story of our May-June 2019 Trumpet print issue, “Climate, Gender and the Fight Over Truth.” It explains how dangerous this assault on truth is, how many victims it is claiming, and who is the real author of this otherwise inexplicable deception: the father of lies. There’s something big going on here, something with the most twisted of consequences and the youngest of victims. Insist on the facts. Have a willingness to fight for them. You’re going to need it.