Debating the gender identity issue

THE Reuters report “Global backlash against conversion therapy gathers pace” ( Sunday Star, Aug 19) is very onesided. This is because at the other extreme of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issue, there are the socalled gender transition clinics, notably at Seattle Children’s Hospital, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Monash Health, Melbourne and various National Health Service Hospitals in the United Kingdom.

At these clinics, children as young as five years old who do not identify with the traditional definitions of male or female (gender nonconformity) are facilitated in their gender transition in a direction opposite to their biological sex.

Gender nonconformity is recognised as a mental health disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fifth Edition (DSM5).

People who are struggling with this issue should therefore be accorded access to unbiased, nonjudgemental, professional counselling and treatment.

I agree partially with the practitioner who said that conversion therapy was a term coined by LGBT activists to demean licensed professional therapists. However, counselling services may also have detrimental effects when hijacked by religious bigots.

The effort to ban judgemental conversion therapy must not cause the pendulum to swing to the other extreme of pandering to the voices of LGBT activists to set up gender transition clinics. In any issue of public debate, like the antivaccination movement, we often hear the opinion of the vociferous minority. Now is the time to hear the voice from the silent majority.

PEACEMAKER Melaka