I am a pediatrician in Seattle. I started listening to your podcast today on the rules of dating. You made mention that male and female are immutable. I wondered if you had ever met someone who is transgender. I wondered what you thought of people who are attracted to other people of the same sex.
I wondered if you knew how your conception of them does not match the reality of who they are, or how using your platform to reinforce the idea that there are only male and female are some of the reasons why I see transgender and homosexual youth who are suicidal in the ER. Why would anyone choose to be transgender in our society with people like you who make their life as a young child hell? I do not believe this is a choice and I believe that because you are a good person you would see this if you did more learning on the subject.
Thank you for reading.
~ Dr. M
Dear Dr. M.,
We appreciate your willingness to have a conversation rather than just to indict. (We do overlook you insulting us as “people like you” who make other folks’ lives “hell”. What is people like us? Jews? Rabbis? People who disagree with you? Just wondering.) However, we shall reply in good faith, as we believe that you are a good person and working hard to do your best for the young people in your care.
We do know that there are very rare instances when babies are born with confusing external gender indications that can be seen physically and revealed through genetic testing. There are discussions of this going back 2,000 years in our tradition. Let us stipulate that we are not talking about the infinitesimally small number of cases such as these.
We are talking about the relatively recent stupendous increase in teenagers declaring that they are transgender. We are concerned about increasing anxiety and depression in children and teenagers. Our concern about suicidal youth is precisely one of the reasons that we believe that caring people should strive to make sure that our children are not confused, misguided and misled by the adults around them.
We do not think that the sexualization of society has benefited our children. Children do best in stable environments with age-appropriate exposure and we think that children are paying the price for adult fixation on sexuality that has only grown since the 1960s. Today, we might be incredulous to read of a nine-year-old in the 1800s who didn’t realize her mother was pregnant, only to be sent out of the house one afternoon and to be greeted by a newborn on her return. However, clearly the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction. An eight-year-old should be concerned with reading, writing and arithmetic, games and puzzles, friendships and family, not with deciding to whom she is sexually attracted. She should be able to enjoy construction toys and climbing trees without having those around her suggest she is really a boy. Similarly, didn’t we just spend decades stressing that boys can enjoy sewing or ballet without being told they are being “girly” or weird? Forcing sexuality and sexual identity into the forefront of children’s consciousness in order to make adults happy or to promote an agenda is unhealthy and borders on the depraved.
You raise homosexuality as well as transgenderism and while we (and we assume you too) don’t automatically lump them together, our response will flow from the same place. It concerns us greatly that the deletion of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder and then the later addition of homophobia as a psychiatric disorder in more recent editions of the DSM were both political decisions rather than medical ones. (Whether it should have been seen as a psychiatric disorder in the first place is a separate and interesting question. The point is that medicine is being dictated to by political agendas rather than by scientific discovery.) It concerns us even more that parents whose children have shown no previous signs whatsoever of gender confusion, are discovering their children parroting lines straight from Internet chats to them. Why are teachers, social workers and psychologists cheering on confusion that involves providing complex surgery and drugs to adolescents who do not have the maturity to make life-altering decisions? We do not tell the parents of anorexic girls that they must provide liposuction for their daughters if they don’t want their daughters to commit suicide. Yet parents are being threatened with their children’s suicide if they don’t use the demanded pronoun. Does this really suggest a road to building healthy family and individual lives or does it hint at a mad hysteria that has taken hold of American culture and that in a few years will be viewed as a bizarre artifact of the early 21st century? Do you really think that future generations will view positively that the California Teachers Association began in January 2021 to push a rule that will allow children of age 12 to leave school premises for transgender hormone treatment without parental permission? We find it hard to believe that as a pediatrician, you support this madness.
For a bit more learning on this subject, may we recommend Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. Come to think of it, we feel sure that as an open-minded scientist, you have already read this book as well as the numerous articles on the topic, despite the strong-handed attempts to suppress information like this. Perhaps you have come to share our concern that peer and adult-generated pressure is leading teens to actions that have a great probability of increasing suicide and unhappiness in the coming years. It is one thing to want to be popular and “with it” by wearing the same clothing as your friends. It is quite another thing to undergo surgery and take body-altering drugs to fit in or be happy. Parents of boys, in particular, find that their less psychologically stable sons are most prone to announcing they are actually girls. These identities are often relatively short-lived when these boys get help from professionals who put the boys’ welfare ahead of their own agendas. Sometimes they discover, for example, that the boys’ impetus to change comes from having been falsely taught that all white males are irredeemably evil and racist.
We are concerned about girls getting hurt playing sports with male teammates and rivals who have a body mass and strength that the biological female body does not match. And what about girls’ mental state at knowing that no matter how hard they work and train, they can never win?
The question we would ask you is whether we are doing a great deal of psychological damage to our children in many areas, including sexuality, starting at a very young age. Perhaps fewer children would be in the emergency room if the adults in their lives acted like adults rather than trend-setters.
Thank you for your letter,
Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin
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This commentary, this response from the Rabbi is just what “the doctor ordered!!”
I am a pastor and I am soooo very done, up to my gills, to the point of ad nauseam with all of this conversation on sexuality, as it pertains to the little ones. What, in God’s name is going on?!!! Oh Dear God Have Mercy!!
I can only thank and give the Lord God a shout of praise for “people like y’all” who have put the pediatrician in his place, Rabbi & Mrs. Daniel & Susan Lapin!! Love it!!
Thank you Pastor
You and we are all standing shoulder to shoulder astride the railway track of what they call ‘progress’.
God bless our efforts
Blessings
RDL
Could it be that Dr. M is not the pediatrician she claims to be? Her grammar and manner of expression did not seem to be that of an educated person. “Did more learning” in particular seems to me to be odd, coming from a person who spent 8 years in higher education. I hope it is not lashon hora to question her truthfulness, but so many things in our world seem to not be what is claimed these days.
Just for the record, the teachings of Ancient Jewish Wisdom have made my life a little slice of Heaven. Every mitzvah that we take on has made our lives happy in a way we would never have believed possible a few years ago. So thank you with all of our hearts!
Rabbi Lapin
I “wondered” whether Betsy Martin here has it exactly right. I “wondered” whether the way is just too long for the unwilling pilgrim to even begin to progress. I “wondered” whether Dr M would spend any time transmitting experience with the Tacoma Narrows to a 9 yr old girl who has decided to design a new bridge across Hell’s Canyon.
Skip G.
Ha ha,
Yes, Dear Skip–
I too think she’s right. One has to know when people are asking you a question and when they are ‘telling’ you a question and in this case the Seattle pediatrician is clearly telling me.
Needless to say, I love your analogy having driven over the replacement bridge frequently.
Warmly
Daniel Lapin
Rabbi Lapin,
I “wondered” about whether Betsy Martin has it exactly right. I “wondered” about whether the hill is way too steep for “people like” Dr. M. I “wondered” about whether Dr. M would spend the time to transmit the experience with the Tacoma Narrows bridge to a 9 yr old girl who has decided to design a new bridge across windy Hells Canyon?
Skip G.
Although I’ve never met you, you are my Rabbi. Thank you for investing in my spiritual growth with this insightful response. I do pray for your (Mrs Lapin’s too) continued strength, resilience, and courage in the face of adversity.
Your rabbi. My rabbi. Everyone’s rabbi if they only accept that offer.
Absolutely Timothy!
Blessings
RDL
I have prayed and asked God to help me with this as I don’t know enough about the subject of transgender nor mental disorders to be sure. I don’t have an informed opinion on them but I know I must be kind to people no matter what. But I DO have a strong opinion on people allowing their children to tell them what they are at an age where the kids are not even sure what differentiates a boy from a girl. Example is actress Charlize Thereon whose 3-year old son told her he is a girl and she’s been dressing him in girls’ clothing ever since. Shouldn’t the response to a 3-year old be “God made you a boy” or “you are a boy” and then a very short explanation (expanded only by questions) of what the physical difference is?
Exactly Beez.
Not that complicated is it? You’re exactly right.
Cordially
RDL
Very well said, thank you. I am proud to be included among ‘the people like you!
Thanks Karla
We’re all proud to be people like us!
Welcome to the crowd
Cordially
RDL
Thank you, Rabbi Daniel & Susan! Spot on response, and very accurate!
Thank you Delfina–
Happy to know you’re following along (From ZA?)
Cordially
RDL
The good doctor is “uneducated” as to why “they” are indoctrinating our children… it is easier to use children who are so emotionally troubled for nefarious reasons.
I am a Christian woman teaching God values to my children since they are young.
One time my 7 years old boy came back from school distressed and agitated. When I asked for the cause, he told me, that he was told at school that he was neither a boy/girl and that he could be attracted to boys.
It took me 1 month to reassure my child, I never though that such doctrines could cause such distress in to my child mind. is the Pediatrician concerned about the distress and damage, that these “gender doctrines” can cause in a little boy, only to please a minority? I am saying this as a mother who witnessed the anxiety on my child because of this indoctrination!!
SO …for my second child, at 7 years old, I was discussing with him this crazy indoctrination (..). I learnt later that he said the obvious before the whole class: boys are born boys and girls are born girls. None of his class became “trans”. Needless to say, this “gender doctrine” is pure indoctrination and is very damaging to children. Thanks for such brilliant answer Rabbi Lapin
The more I have thought about what this so-called doctor said, the madder I have become. First of all, I am so tired of this false care/love that people like him claim to have. What I mean is this; he talks about how our side is making life “hell” for these transgender people (and yes, you CHOOSE to be transgender, you have a CHOICE to live your life normally or as, well, shall we say a not normal person) yet he couldn’t care less about the FACT that people like him do the same to our side. If you dare disagree with people like him, in typical liberal style you get ignorant assumptions like “have you ever met a transgender (or potentially a gay person) person” or you just need to “educate” yourself more. Obviously, the implication is that you’ve lived some sheltered life and you are ignorant and/or uneducated, not to mention a bad person as you are making the lives of certain people “hell” by not agreeing with their lifestyle.
It wouldn’t be such a big deal if it was just limited to his point of view, but when you have a very organized effort to brainwash our country and attack those who disagree (be it legally, financially, physically, or try to destroy their character/lives) via our education system (trust me, I’m a former teacher, I’ve seen it in person), our news media, our social media, the entertainment industry, and even the medical profession, that is a huge problem. It causes me (and probably many others) extreme anxiety and even depression to the point of not caring about going on with life. I’ve watched these things happen bit by bit for the last 20+ years starting from when I was in college in the late 90s and early 2000s. The moral bar just keeps getting lower and lower as the sheeple fall in line with the propaganda and brainwashing they are receiving. It absolutely horrifies me to think about what people like this doctor will support 20 years from now. For anyone who thinks it won’t get worse, I submit to you all of human history as an example of the things people will do and support, especially if their society say it is okay.
I’m sure our good doctor couldn’t care less though how people like me feel or how it greatly affects our daily lives. At the end of the day, he cares if the person in question agrees with his sick and twisted point of view, but if they don’t, I doubt he’d care much, if at all, if someone on our side committed suicide. I could go on and write an entire paper on this, but I’ve said plenty already.
Good job Rabbi and thank you for standing for the truth and what is right. The world desperately needs more people like you and a lot less people like this doctor.
I stand in the company of giants. My Rabbi and yourself. Am I too proud to climb up on your respective shoulders? Hardly. Hardly. Thank you both and all the rest of who feel the same.
Tim
This is a great answer! I kept thinking of this quote while reading: “Today sin is called sickness so people think it requires therapy not repentance.” – John MacArthur
Strongly agree with others, Rabbi. God bless your ministry with wisdom as you’ve been showing. I enjoy your site. Keep it up.
Dear Rabbi Lapin: Amen!
Sincerely,
Ruth
Dear Rabbi & Susan,
I thank God for “people” like you & I. Appreciate your Biblical teachings everyday on TCT.
Praying for your family, friends, foes, and ministry. May God bless.
A very succinct yet comprehensive rebuttal. Nicely put Rabbi Lapin!
WOW- Thank you Rabbi Lapin for an answer filled with such GODLY Wisdom. More of the World needs to be exposed to such informative answers filled with Facts and not corruptive trending speech.
As the young people say … ‘Word’
True Dat, Jeff
I’m not so young anymore (child of the 70’s/80’s), but we used to say:
“Word to your mother, Word to your brother, Word to your sister, who thought she was a Mister.”
I miss the days when fun was allowed!
Wow! This is not a warning. This has been one of the family destruction-tools that has washed ashore for decades, rampaging through the world.
As the megaphone gets bigger, focused discussion at family dinner table is one of the tools that our rabbi (Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin) has given to us. It’s working for my family.
A lesson here: be careful with those “scientists” that are floating around your family!
Well said, Rabbi. Thank you for speaking common sense, as usual. Too many people nowadays are frightened to speak of these things for fear of offending someone, but you have never shied away from speaking your mind on ‘difficult’ subjects. The whole world is in desperate need of some ancient Jewish wisdom and I for one am truly blessed by what you say. If only the education and health systems had teachers and practitioners who dared to speak the truth to the young people – it might lead to less confusion and greater feelings of self worth and stability which are so important for youngsters and sadly absent in these ‘enlightened’ times.
Well answered Daniel and Susan. 👌 Thank you for fighting for our children around the world. Me and my wife are fighting this madness in Australia. Also, thank you for the good content information when I get into heated debates with these type of people.
It’s amazing how quick to violence they get and they can’t even discuss a topic at an intellectual level. My wife feels sorry for them.
Your truly,
Happy warriors
Stay strong there in Australia–
Don’t let ‘people like them’ ruin a good country.
Cordially
RDL
Excellent response!
Outstanding response Rabbi. Our colleges have let the family down. It all started when prayer was removed from the schools. A people rose up that did not know G-d. Lord help us and help this so call professional that wrote in to the Rabbi.
Excellent response to a very pertinent subject!
Thank you David,
Susan and I greatly miss seeing you
Regards
Daniel Lapin
Sad he’s a doctor
Thank you, Rabbi. More people need to start speaking up to the madness that we see everywhere around us. The harm being perpetrated upon our children is absolutely evil, specifically because it seems purposeful. (Since I don’t have children myself my opinion is deemed irrelevant, nor would I handle the situation as well as you have. I get far too angry.) These are children. They count on adults to act in their best interests and we are failing them spectacularly. How or why so many people cannot or do not want to see this is beyond my comprehension.
Every time I think the madness has peaked, and the pendulum will begin to swing back to a modicum of sanity, the media takes up the cry for justice for a newly-defined victimhood. I can’t even imagine where this will all end. The doctor is treating symptoms of a much greater problem and seems unaware that by doing so he is abetting those who devote their lives to building sand castles on the beach at low tide. Your very thoughtful response seemed to radiate a steely resolve to shield the innocents among us who have not chosen victimhood but are being thrust into the role of martyrs to a sick agenda. My prayers go out for you, and others like you, who fight for the redemption of humanity and call on us to do better.
Great response,JimB to Rabbi and Mrs Lapin’s
very authoritative letter.Clearly,touched with
the Aura of God but at the same time measured and restrained.
Regarding “People like you”,I try to see the
good in people and take it to mean the use
of this well-meaning platform which does so
much,like no other,to spread the Word of God.
Spot on!!
I love listening to you and reading this reply is not disappointing. Very well put. Should we all learn such eloquent verbiage to converse with.
Thank you for sharing!
A very interesting exchange. This is part of the problem. This person is a pediatrician who believes being a transgender or homosexual youth is not a choice?! It is amazing we have professionals who are espousing these views which in days gone by would have rightfully been seen and treated as child abuse. The American Academy of Pediatrics just came out with an edict that all children over 2 years old should wear masks even though the CDC says they do not need to wear masks! Absolute madness. We can only hope that saner views will prevail. Love your books and CD’s. Robert Wilson
Great response! Rabbi and Mrs. Lapin, great response! I couldn’t have said it better.
Thank you for sharing the truth as always.
“and that in a few years will be viewed as a bizarre artifact of the early 21st century”
It seems to me that you are wildly optimistic, Rabbi.
I think the politically correct nonsense is deeply ingrained into the campus groupthink, and will be around for a long time.
Unfortunately.
Thank you for your answer to this letter. This started 10 + years ago with the Day of Silence allowed in our schools. Why do Christians have to pray at the flagpole before school but they can take their agenda straight into the classroom.
Excellent answer and great logic. Thank you, Rabbi. Being a “tomboy “ does not mean one is actually a male and vice versa. Women’s and girls’ sports will suffer greatly after it took years to get funding for women’s events.
Hear ye! Hear ye! Thank you, Rabbi Lapin, for this well-informed, factual answer for which you did not even have to refer to Biblical teachings: Just straight up, my-eyes-are-wide-open, truth that anyone can obtain if they are really interested in the truth. It is both a travesty and a tragedy what is happening with our youth who, as you said, are not mature enough to make such life-altering decisions. Their brains are not even fully developed until age 25, and my understanding is, specifically the part of the brain responsible for taking risks.
Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and former psychiatrist–in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, who has studied transgendered people for 40 years, said it is a scientific fact that “transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men.”
All such people, he explained in an article for The Witherspoon Institute, “become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they ‘identify.’”
Dr. Paul McHugh, who was psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital for 26 years, the medical institute that had initially pioneered sex-change surgery – and later ceased the practice – stressed that the cultural meme, or idea that “one’s sex is fluid and a matter of choice” is extremely damaging, especially to young people. The idea that one’s sexuality is a feeling and not a biological fact “is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges,” said Dr. McHugh in his article,
“Think, for example, of the parents whom no one—not doctors, schools, nor even churches—will help to rescue their children from these strange notions of being transgendered and the problematic lives these notions herald,” warned McHugh. They rarely find therapists who are willing to help them “work out their conflicts and correct their assumptions,” said McHugh. “Rather, they and their families find only ‘gender counselors’ who encourage them in their sexual misassumptions.”
However, there is plenty of evidence showing that “transgendering” is a “psychological rather than a biological matter,” said Dr. McHugh. “In fact, gender dysphoria—the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex—belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder,” said McHugh.
When prepubescent boys are given hormones to block male puberty, they will be rendered sterile. They wil never be able to have their own biological child. This is a societal calamity in the making.
‘Well said’ Rabbi !
Thank you dear Darrell,
stay strong,
RDL
The doctor is not a Bible reader because if he was he would never written what he did. Thank you for your response but I fear your answer went on deaf heart. The doctor wrote to you not for an answer but to put you down to show you are not woke whatever that means. Thank you for trying but when someone writes the likes of the doctors show off , just take big intake ,the doctor just wanted to bully you for a second in the limelight He needs to grow up glad I am not his mother as I would know I did not do a great job training him for life.
I wonder if the good doctor can explain why there was not so much suicide ‘back in the day’ when LGBTQ stuff was not promoted and condoned as a healthy lifestyle or even more – pushed onto children! You can find many articles detailing how suicide rates have increased in USA. As we begin to stray from God’s designs for us the worse things get! When he says “People like you” I may take offense as well, as a Christian I place my faith on some of the same biblical teachings as the Jews.
Wow. Spot on.
I couldn’t have said better myself. Obviously, I agree with you and I thank you for speaking so consummately about the subject. And so fearlessly.
Keep up your good work and your ministry. The Lord bless you richly.
Your answer was spot on.
Applauding your response! I appreciate your class, respect, integrity, and knowledgeable responses!!
excellent response to the pediatrician. It hard to believe sane adults doing things to children which they will later regret.
Anthony
Bravo! What a cogent response. I have been concerned for years at what I viewed as the unwarranted sexualization of our children at younger and younger years. I hope the good doctor will take your response to heart. Restoring stability to family relationships begins with open, honest discussions and, beyond the family, who better to help initiate such discussions than the medical personnel charged specifically with providing healthcare to our precious children (hopefully with the help of spiritual advisors such as yourselves).
Dear Rabbi & Susan Lapin,
Thank you so much for such a concise and educated responce to Dr M. I only wish I could be so articulate. My question is did Dr M respond back? Keep up the great work!!! Also I love my my New Koren Jerusalem Bible! It has enhanced my personal study of Torah. Some day we would love to come to one of your conferences. However, living on the back side of the wilderness here in Wyoming it is difficult to get away. Until then we will listen to the pods casts and read your books.
Until then,
Ken & Jan Ewing
So true… we have done a disservice to our children and future generations when we think we are helping by catering. We need the truth- the Word of God –
Dear Rabbi and Rebbetzin Lapin~
Thank you for speaking up in such an organized, cogent fashion. In my case I worked in an OB-GYN office from 7th grade through high school and saw some of the babies you spoke of… thankfully there were few. And I have always had compassion for them, because back in 1967 decisions were made for them by the Drs. A little sunlight never hurts. And discussion should help. But I believe that we have gone way too too far the other direction when I have to worry about being beaten up when a 16 year old girl comes to me and gleefully tells me how she and her friends beat up some people here in Spokane who did not agree with them about transgender etc. She was so thrilled with herself, and wanted my approval for her strong reaction and hurting people. Terrifying.
So, thank you for speaking up.
Rabbi and Mrs. Lapin,
As always, you give a thoughtful and heroic response. I am neither a Jew or a rabbi 🙂 but I imagine Dr. M would lump me in with “people like you.” I am happy to be among people who swim against the current.
God’s best blessings, today and always,
Kristyn