While I’m writing about things that need fixing, how about the roughly half of the states with laws against “conversion therapy.” That is, counseling whose goal is reconciling unhappy young people with the biological sex into which they were born.
The laws were passed because real abuses occurred. Some “boot camps” basically terrorized poor confused kids, often with parental approval.
Unfortunately the mental health professions have been prevented from trying to help these youngsters at all. The laws enable a zealot to swear out a complaint against counselors and ruin their livelihood or jail them. Laws preventing coercive programs but permitting counseling should be possible.
Surely there is a non-coercive middle ground where counselors can help kids see the world has plenty of room for “tom boy” girls and guys who aren’t Hulk Hogan. Famous examples abound. Will they, as adults, thereby receive universal approbation? Sorry, almost nobody gets that.
At least some evidence suggests many sex-confused kids, who can get through the peer harassment of adolescence without medical intervention, become well-adjusted gays and lesbians. As such, they are as comfortable in their own skins as most of us are, which is to say, mostly but not completely. Life is like that.
