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Anti-LGBT Think Tank’s New ‘Study’ Says ‘No Evidence’ People Are Born Gay, or Trans Kids Are Real

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Right-Wing Think Tank Claims Study Shows No Scientific Basis for Believing LGBT People or Treating Transgender Children With Appropriate Medical Care

The New Atlantis, a so-called Journal of Technology and Society, released the results of a new, anti-LGBT “study” today. The study, which is over 140 pages and analyzed data from over 200 peer-reviewed studies, is said to show that there is no evidence that people are born gay, or that transgender kids are more successful in life when treated with compassionate and inclusive care.

Among their “findings“:

  • The understanding of sexual orientation as an innate, biologically fixed property of human beings — the idea that people are “born that way” — is not supported by scientific evidence.
  • Compared to heterosexuals, non-heterosexuals are about two to three times as likely to have experienced childhood sexual abuse.
  • The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be “a man trapped in a woman’s body” or “a woman trapped in a man’s body” — is not supported by scientific evidence.
  • Compared to the general population, adults who have undergone sex-reassignment surgery continue to have a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes. One study found that, compared to controls, sex-reassigned individuals were about 5 times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.
  • Children are a special case when addressing transgender issues. Only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.

To be fair, most modern scholars do agree that we don’t know nearly enough about sexual orientation or gender to determine what its root causes are. (And the “trapped in someone else’s body” hasn’t been a pro-trans argument for decades now.) However, the anti-LGBT right has turned this study into a battle cry for a renewed push against rights for transngender children, a return to fighting marriage equality, and – this seems to be one of their most important goals – a reason as to why they need not treat LGBT people with care and respect. 

To fully understand where this study came from and what’s really going on, let’s take a look at its authors and who’s funding it.

The New Atlantis is published by the Center for the Study of Technology and Society in partnership with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. 

The Ethics and Public Policy Center has been at the center of anti-LGBT activism for years. They’ve spoken out in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), in favor of keeping Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,  and in favor of using religion as a weapon to discriminate.

In their own words, the EPCC describes itself as an “institute dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy. From the Cold War to the war on terrorism, from disputes over the role of religion in public life to battles over the nature of the family, EPPC and its scholars have consistently sought to defend and promote our nation’s founding principles—respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, individual freedom and responsibility, justice, the rule of law, and limited government.”

On their “About” page, The New Atlantis says,

We also seek to stir things up — to challenge the general public and policymakers who know too little about science, and to push scientists who often fail to think seriously or deeply about the ethical and social implications of their work.

Paul McHugh (photo), one of the authors of the study, has dedicated his life to anti-LGBT scholarship. His work has been debunked time and time again. McHugh has a distinguished track record of anti-LGBT bigotry and harm. He fully believes homosexuality is a choice and has compared hormone therapy for transgender children to “liposuction on an anorexic child.” Simply, there is no possible way anyone can argue that his “scholarship” is unbiased and objective.

Lawrence Mayer focuses on interpretation of experimental and observational data and is the primary author of the study, which analyzed existing research – and reinterpreted it to fit the outcomes they desired. By incorporating many different studies, they had the freedom to pick and choose which pieces of data to use and how to spin them. Mayer also believes that McHugh is “one of the leading psychiatrists in the world.”

In the preface to the study, Mayer writes, without any irony: 

As citizens, scholars, and clinicians concerned with the problems facing LGBT people, we should not be dogmatically committed to any particular views about the nature of sexuality or gender identity; rather, we should be guided first and foremost by the needs of struggling patients, and we should seek with open minds for ways to help them lead meaningful, dignified lives.

Perhaps he should listen to actual LGBT people, get to know us, learn from us, and realize just how harmful his own “science” can be.

Unlike almost any other nonpartisan real scientific study, this new “study” comes complete with a slick, well-produced video from The New Atlantis, further suggesting far right wing monied interests are behind it:

 

Image: Screenshot via YouTube 

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‘Close’: Trump Claims World War III Could Erupt if He Does Not Become President Again

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July 26, 2024

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Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, Donald Trump declared World War III is “close,” and issuing a warning suggesting if he does not win re-election in November it could erupt.

Video of his full remarks was published by Florida’s WPTV. A shorter clip is below.

Trump’s meeting, criticized by some as a violation of the Logan Act, comes at a critical time for the U.S. and Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu, a Trump-supporter who is considered by some to be refusing to end the Gaza War, addressed Congress on Wednesday at the invitation of House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Netanyahu on Thursday.

In May, The International Criminal Court (ICC) filed to obtain arrest warrants for Netanyahu, alleging war crimes.

READ MORE: JD Vance Suggested America Should ‘Punish’ People for Not Having Children

Trump quickly launched into an attack on Vice President Kamala Harris, who is his likely 2024 presidential opponent, telling reporters she is, “a radical left person, San Francisco, destroyed San Francisco. She’s really a destroyer. She isn’t a builder.”

“I actually don’t know how a person who’s Jewish can vote for her. But that’s up to them,” Trump added.

“Now she’s taken over and she’s worse than him. She’s actually worse than him. So we’ll see how it goes. But if it all works out. If we win, it’ll be very simple. It’s all gonna work out and very quickly.”

“If we don’t we’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a Third World War. You are closer to a Third World War right now than at any time since the Second World War. We’ve never been so close because we have incompetent people running our country,” Trump claimed.

Watch video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Said Some Disabled People – Including His Young Relative – Should Just ‘Die’: Nephew

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JD Vance Suggested America Should ‘Punish’ People for Not Having Children

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14 hours ago

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July 26, 2024

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Trump vice presidential running mate JD Vance, under fire for his 2021 remarks calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” and saying parents should be given more voting rights than those without children, is now being criticized after video resurfaced of him suggesting people who don’t have children should be punished, because not having kids is “bad.”

Vance, closely tied to the “broligarch” class of right-wing tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, is a venture capitalist whose memoir catapulted him to national attention, which he parlayed into a successful U.S. Senate run with the backing of his uber-wealthy mentors.

Before announcing his 2022 Senate run, Vance made numerous public appearances, including sharing his extremist views with powerful talk show host, far-right wing activist, and Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk.

“So JD,” Kirk, a member of the highly-secretive Council on National Policy asked, according to ABC News, “what are you going to do to change this conversation? Everything we have to do should be about moving ideas from unthinkable, to sensible, to popular, to policy.”

READ MORE: Trump Said Some Disabled People – Including His Young Relative – Should Just ‘Die’: Nephew

“In response,” ABC News reports, “Vance, who at the time had not yet officially launched his 2022 Senate campaign, suggested that the country needed to ‘reward the things that we think are good’ and ‘punish the things that we think are bad’ — before suggesting that individuals without children should be taxed at a higher rate than those with children.”

The full quote, contained in video (below) posted Friday by the liberal super PAC and opposition research firm American Bridge, which comports with ABC News’ reporting, is, “we need to reward the things that we think are good and punish the things that we think are bad. So you talk about tax policy, let’s tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good. If you’re making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you’ve got three kids, you should pay a different, lower rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don’t have any kids. It’s that simple.”

In that same year, 2021, Vance called universal child care, “a massive subsidy to the lifestyle preferences of the affluent over the preferences of the middle and working class.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump’s Sudden Debate Withdrawal Linked to Looming Criminal Sentencing: Legal Experts

 

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‘Extraordinary Weakness’: Trump ‘Pulling Out’ of Debate Shows ‘He’s Afraid’ Buttigieg Says

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17 hours ago

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July 26, 2024

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Pete Buttigieg says Donald Trump’s decision to “pull out” of a previously agreed presidential debate is an “extraordinary show of weakness,” especially for a candidate whose “calling card” is being a tough guy. The Transportation Secretary also observed the Trump campaign has been unable to adapt to President Joe Biden withdrawing from the race and endorsing his Vice President for the top of the ticket.

“Former President Donald Trump’s campaign on Thursday said it will not commit to a debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, at least until the Democratic Party makes a formal decision on its nominee,” Forbes reports.

Trump earlier this week had said he was uncomfortable with the debate being hosted by ABC News, despite having agreed to it back in May. But late Thursday night the Trump campaign served up a different reason when announcing the ex-president’s decision: “it would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds.”

MSNBC’s Sam Stein Thursday night described it as “backing out.”

“It’s extraordinary,” Buttigieg said on MSNBC Friday (video below), “tough talk is this guy’s calling card and now there’s this extraordinary show of weakness. He agreed to, you know, he said, ‘anytime, anyplace.’ But more than that, he agreed to this specific debate on this specific network on this specific date. And now he’s pulling out, and of course it shows that he’s afraid, it shows that he knows if the two of them are on a stage together, it’s not going to end well for him.”

RELATED: Buttigieg Top Choice for Harris VP Among Available Candidates: Poll

Buttigieg, one of about a dozen candidates being vetted to be Kamala Harris’s vice presidential running mate, added that Trump’s campaign “really has struggled to be about anything but Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and I think that’s the bigger pattern that you’re seeing here and part of why the Trump campaign is having such a hard time adapting.”

“Think about it: just in a matter of two or three days her campaign adapted to literally the biggest possible change, which is a change in the top of the ticket and yet, you know, within a couple of days that support consolidated and that message was clear.”

By comparison, Buttigieg said, the Trump campaign has “been flailing in a way that shows they’re unable to adapt. And to me, it’s not just that their entire strategic apparatus was built around tearing down Joe Biden. I think there’s something deeper, which is Donald Trump cannot conceive of a campaign that isn’t about the candidates.”

Earlier this week, Buttigieg targeted Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance, for his widely-criticized “childless cat ladies” comments from 2021. Vance, in part, had also claimed that the “entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

READ MORE: ‘Super Creepy’: Vance and Masters’ Belief Politicians Have to Have Kids Called ‘Repugnant’

Buttigieg had responded, saying, “it’s not about his kids, or my kids, or the vice president’s family. It’s about your family, people’s families, whose well-being will depend on whether we go into a future led by somebody like Kamala Harris, who is focused on expanding the prosperity, the freedom, the well-being of our families.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

RELATED: Trump’s Sudden Debate Withdrawal Linked to Looming Criminal Sentencing: Legal Experts

 

 

 

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