Prof suing university after being fired for saying young children should NOT undergo ‘gender dysphoria’ treatment

By Jon Dougherty

A professor who was demoted then fired by the University of Louisville (Kentucky) claims the school took retribution against him after he criticized “gender dysphoria” treatment for young children and is now suing the institution.

Dr. Allan M. Josephson was hired by the university in 2003 to be its chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology. According to the lawsuit, which was filed on his behalf by the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, Josephson turned the department around and bolstered its national reputation.

However, he ticked off the institution’s LGBT Center — apparently, that’s a real thing — in the fall of 2017 when he dared to state the obvious during a panel discussion on gender dysphoria hosted by the Heritage Foundation: Young children have nowhere near the life experience necessary to ‘decide’ they want to be a different sex.

â€œWhen you think of it, children donâ€™t know much about anything â€” and I say this with respect â€” Iâ€™ve raised threeâ€¦but they donâ€™t know anything at the age of 7, 8, or 9. Why should we listen to a 9-year-old about what time theyâ€™re going to bed?” Josephson said.

“We donâ€™t let them vote, we donâ€™t let them drive, and so are we going to let them at the age of 8 or 9 decide they are no longer male or female? Unbelievable!â€

Watch:

Well, that upset the PC Gods at the LGBT Center. Shortly after Heritage posted the video of the session, the university (including members of the center) allegedly retaliated against Josephson for expressingÂ his views (First Amendment alert!), “even though he did so on his own time and off-campus,” according to the suit.

TheÂ lawsuitÂ says the prof was “wrongly viewed…as hostileâ€ to the treatment of patients experiencing the condition.

Instead of just putting young children on meds that block puberty development and cross-sex hormones, Josephson recommends a ‘go-slow’ approach (to, you know, let the kid grow up a little and get some more life experience).

“In actuality, Dr. Josephson never refuted the existence of gender dysphoria; he simply advocated a different method for treating individuals experiencing it,” says the lawsuit.

Josephson, according to the lawsuit, has warned that trying to change one’s sex “often involves permanent social, medical, psychiatric, and other consequences that cannot be fully appreciated until adulthood (e.g., psychopathology, suicidal behavior, peer rejection, and permanent sterility).”

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He also noted that some kids and even teens who go through gender dysphoria will cease to experience it by late adolescence.

The prof was informed in February that the university wouldn’t be renewing his contract after June.

“Public universities have no business demoting or firing professors simply because they hold a different view than their colleagues or the administration, but thatâ€™s exactly whatâ€™s happened here,â€ said ADF Senior Counsel Travis Barham.

Follow Jon Dougherty on Twitter at @JonDougherty10

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