Utah study on trans youth care extremely inconvenient for politicians who ordered it
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/05/utah-study-on-trans-youth-care-extremely-inconvenient-for-politicians-who-ordered-it/
By Madison Pauly (27 May 2025)
In 2022, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox was the rare Republican governor who seemed to truly care about the well-being of transgender kids. "I don't understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live," he wrote in a letter that year... "All the research shows that even a little acceptance and connection can reduce suicidality significantly."
Meanwhile, nationally, Republican politicians were making opposition to trans rights a core tenet of their platforms, filing hundreds of bills attacking trans kids at the doctor's office, at school, and on the field. Early in the 2023 legislative session, Cox capitulated, signing a bill that placed an indefinite "moratorium" on doctors providing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to trans kids with gender dysphoria. The bill ordered the Utah health department to commission a systematic review of medical evidence around the treatments, with the goal of producing recommendations for the legislature on whether to lift the moratorium.
Now, more than two years later, that review is here, and its conclusions unambiguously support gender-affirming medical care for trans youth. "The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data" on gender-affirming pediatric care, the authors wrote. "However, results from our exhaustive literature searches have lead us to the opposite conclusion."
But according to the Salt Lake Tribune, legislators behind the ban are already dismissing the findings they asked for.
"The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant."
~ Albert Einstein
Quote from: Jessica_Rose on May 27, 2025, 07:34:23 PMBut according to the Salt Lake Tribune, legislators behind the ban are already dismissing the findings they asked for.
OMG....why am I not surprised...
Quote from: Lori Dee on May 27, 2025, 08:33:07 PM"The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant."
A long time ago, I was the editor of my college newspaper. My mantra was: don't let a fact get in the way of a good story. Finally, someone's listening to my advice.
Interesting article. I was just thinking about this exact thing recently.