Forsyth County Georgia Board of Education - Jere Krischel - 12/13/2022

Tonight I'd like to share the story of Chloe Cole.

Chloe began identifying as transgender at age 12. Although alarmed, her family, friends, school, and medical care providers, all supported her gender identification, and worked to affirm her as a boy as quickly as possible.

At age 13, Chloe was put on puberty blockers. At age 15, Chloe had her healthy breasts removed.

At age 16, Chloe realized it was all a mistake - a mistake with now irreversible consequences.

Before the affirmation care Chloe got, she had a perfectly healthy body. Her mental perception, was that she required hormonal and surgical intervention to fix her gender dysphoria. But as we all know, our mental perceptions change over time, especially as we pass through the turbulence of adolescence.

Sadly, in the case of Chloe, she now faces infertility, or, even if she is able to have a child, she'll be unable to breastfeed, because of the radical mastectomy that she underwent.

One might blame Chloe's parents for allowing this damage to be done to their daughter, but they were caught in a terrible emotional blackmail - "would you rather have a dead daughter, or a living son?" Given that kind of threat, it's easy to understand how loving parents, can be convinced to put their children through all kinds of risky and dangerous medical interventions.

Let me be clear - people with gender dysphoria deserve our compassion, respect, and most importantly, mental health support. They are real people, with real pain, and as children of God, deserve our love.

But in the name of endless compassion, we are doing severe, irreversible physical damage to children, when we affirm the delusions of those who are suffering from mental health issues. The vast majority of children who experience gender dysphoria, end up growing up as healthy, intact, gays and lesbians. A policy of affirmation only puts these homosexual children in grave danger of great harm.

Whenever school staff discover students who identify with gender dysphoria, parents should be informed, and those students should be immediately referred to mental health professionals, who can help them overcome their dysphoria without doing permanent physical harm to themselves. They should be protected from bullying, both in and out of school, but they also desperately need responsible adults, to help them overcome their mental health issues through reliable therapy, rather than through violent hormonal and surgical procedures.

I humbly ask the Board to consider making it district policy to prioritize getting our youth with gender dysphoria the mental health treatment they need, so that they don't ever suffer the same irreversible damage that Chloe Cole has suffered. Partnering with LGBTQ clubs and organizations in our schools may be especially helpful, so that gay and lesbian children who experience temporary gender dysphoria are helped to grow up whole and healthy.

I know that this is a sensitive topic, and people who support affirmation-only for gender dysphoria, will feel very defensive about alternatives to hormones and surgery. But we cannot change boys to girls, or girls to boys, and pretending that we can makes everything worse.

And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.