TRADITIONAL VALUES COALITION ADVOCATES MUTILATING INFANTS AND CHILDREN
by Natalie “Shahrazad” Russell
March 19, 2005
Would you want someone else coming into your life and deciding your gender for you?
Do you want your children’s genitals mutilated for no good reason?
The Traditional Values Coalition supports this concept. The TVC, a Christian organization alleging to hold fast to “traditional values” and with addresses in both Washington D.C. and Anaheim California (where the local major league baseball team calls itself the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim - go figure out who is really mentally confused), wants to surgically mutilate the genitals of children.
Let me repeat that, just because they are serious and because it is such an outrageously inhumane position to take regarding human beings:
The Traditional Values Coalition advocates surgically mutilating the genitals of some children for cosmetic purposes.
In its discussion of infants, children and adolescents born with anomalous, ambiguous or mixed primary and secondary gender characteristics, the TVC has announced its desire to have such children surgically mutilated in order to prevent the children from choosing their gender. The TVC wants to be the determining factor in what gender an intersex child will be assigned.
Let’s look at one such type of person, for example: cloacal exstrophy - sometimes called “micropenis”- patients. More than one recent study has found that these patients when left as they were and raised male did best overall. Those that were surgically mutilated, testicles removed as infants, and then raised as females almost unanimously chose to change to male as they aged. One study by William G. Reiner, M.D. and Associate Professor in the Division of Pediatric Urology of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, included participants representing 20% of all children in the United States and Canada with cloacal exstrophy (age range of 5 to 16 years). In Dr. Reiner’s study, none of the children - not one - showed female-typical behaviors or typical female heterosexual interests. Even more striking, most of the children who had been surgically reassigned and then forced toward female socialization stated they were actually male and more than 50% had already reassigned themselves as male. You just can’t fool kids, even when you mutilate their genitals.
Go figure. I can’t imagine why the males reassigned to female for cosmetic reasons (based on a theory with social comfort purposes) as infants would change back to male. Likewise, I have absolutely not one iota of a clue as to why those males who were not mutilated and were raised as males did better overall. I am at a complete loss. Could it be that mutilating the genitals of infants isn’t good, sound medical practice? The TVC advocates for continued mutilations despite medical research that demonstrates the vast majority of such mutilations are not in the children’s best interests.
The TVC, in its “special report,” calls the people who have had their gender so assigned and who disagree with such assignments as “part of the Homosexual Revolution.” There’s a good way for a Christian organization to discount and discredit people who are complaining about having had their genitals mutilated when they were children. Tell everyone they are gay.
Methinks the “revolution” is the concept that decent, moral, thinking people don’t tend to like folks mutilating the genitals of children. Call me silly on this, but face value, no research necessary, two or three seconds to think of the answer:
Do you think it is okay for people to mutilate children’s genitals?
Again, call me silly on this one, but I’ll dive right in and provide my answer:
Uh, no, it isn’t okay. In fact, I think if some wing-nut comes along with scalpel and scissors and wants to reassign a child’s gender because they “look male” or because they have too small a penis, then a good traditional value to hold fast is “over my dead body.” What’s next? Child molestation, necrophilia, and bestiality?
Have you ever talked to someone who at puberty was dragged to the doctor by scared parents and had their genitals surgically mutilated in order to conform to some religious fanatic’s idea of gender conformity?
I have.
I realize it just might be a stretch for some at the TVC, but didn’t it occur to whomever wrote their “special report” that children are human beings? The TVC wants to do WHAT to intersexed children? The folks at the TVC want to control other people’s bodies by surgically mutilating them to fit into a gender-conformed role predefined by the TVC.
They want to control people’s bodies - back home we call that slavery - and they are happy to mutilate children in order to control their bodies. Not much to think about on this, is there?
These are obviously lunatic times. Remember to hold fast to traditional, moral, and upstanding values. I don’t think I have to ask this, but I will anyway - just in case:
Please. Don’t let the TVC or anyone else mutilate any more children. Call your congressmen and senators and ask them to investigate the TVC for advocating such a radical position. Who knows what other heinous activities the TVC is engaged in doing, besides mutilating infants and then calling them “gay” when the children grow up and complain.
It may be some bizarre tradition to the TVC, but it is still wrong, heinous violence perpetrated upon children, not to mention the immorality of promoting the idea that it is actually good to mutilate children. Such practices have absolutely no value to anyone except the TVC and such ilk, and these practices are overwhelmingly harmful to children everywhere on this planet.
Thank you.
Copyright March 19, 2005, by Natalie “Shahrazad” Russell. All rights reserved, except that free distribution via any medium is permitted as long as author's credit is given and no profit is involved.
The TVC Propaganda Piece is located here.
