A 7-year-old boy cannot be transgender.

At least, not with anywhere near the certainty necessary to justify taking steps toward life-altering, potentially irreversible physical changes such as hormone therapy or puberty blockers.

This stance — against chemically castrating young children — is now considered radical and abusive, rather than obvious common sense, at the fringes of the transgender movement.

A Texas court has denied father Jeffrey Younger custody of his children, after he sought to be granted legal rights, in part due to plans by his children's mother to allow their son James “Luna” Younger, who is confused about his gender, to eventually chemically transition and live as a female.

A jury in Texas returned a verdict that will prevent a Texas dad from intervening in the gender transition of his 7-year-old son.https://t.co/zKuldCAo4a — Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 22, 2019

The mother plans to do this, a few years down the road, even though her son is only 7 years old and despite the fact that expert witnesses testified there is still “fluidity” in his thinking. As reported by the Washington Examiner, “Anne Georgulas, the mother of the two boys, has advocated for James to transition into Luna and has strongly backed the idea of chemically castrating her son and beginning hormone replacement therapy. The ruling on Wednesday ... paves the way for Georgulas to proceed with the procedure.”

This is insane and has understandably led to conservative backlash and widespread denunciation. As Kaylee McGhee observes, “[T]his is the logical conclusion of the transgender movement: Affirm our agenda or lose your rights to freedom of speech, association, conscience, and even your parental rights.”

McGhee is exactly right, which is why gay people should denounce transgender radicalism and separate ourselves from a movement that would strip away parental rights and force confused children into radical, life-altering decisions, all in the name of adults' ability to show off how "woke" they are.

First, let’s dispense with the narrative that a 7-year-old can even be transgender at all. Such a young child cannot even truly understand what sex and gender are, let alone sexuality or gender identity. Of course, a child can experience gender confusion: Many children do, and if James wanted to go by the name Luna, wear dresses, or so on, his parents would be wrong to shame him or otherwise stifle him. But that’s a very far cry from making radical, permanent physical changes based on the whims of a young child who, as McGhee notes, doesn’t even meet the medical criteria for a gender dysphoria diagnosis.

Moreover, numerous studies show “that a substantial majority [of gender-confused kids] — anywhere from 65% to 94% — eventually ceased to identify as transgender.”

Even if the real number is lower, as critics claim, it is still far too high to start performing irreversible physical transitioning for James anytime soon. Of course, if James's gender confusion continues late into his teenage years, he might make such a choice at that point. But to push him down this path to where he could be chemically castrated as early as age 11? Come on, people, it's just irresponsible. (Initially I thought the medical intervention would occur now, at age 7 -- sorry about the error in my initial post, but is age 11 really any better?)

I'd also like to point out that many men, who as adults have come out as gay (and are perfectly happy with our biological sex), liked dolls or preferred to play with girls as children. This does not, as modern transgender orthodoxy would suggest, mean that we were truly women and should have been transitioned. What a strange, backward, and stereotypical view it would be to say otherwise. It just meant that we expressed our boyhood in an unorthodox, but perfectly acceptable, way.

Do gay people really want our rights tied to a movement that would mutilate any child who strays from gender stereotypes? If this is what the “T” in “LGBT” advocates for, I want absolutely nothing to do with it. In fact, such an association clearly undermines the very case for gay equality.

The case for gay rights is simple: Leave us alone, let us be, and have the government treat us equally. We lose the ability to credibly make the case for gay rights if we let our cause be tied to this kind of insanity — to a movement that does infringe on others' rights, such as parental rights in the case of James.

It’s on us to reject this radicalism and make it clear that while the transgender movement might be on board with the tragedy of James Younger, we gay people are not. Otherwise, we’ll be caught in the inevitable backlash to this insanity, and frankly, we’ll deserve it.