As was recently reported in the Gazette, a group of LGBTQIA+ activists was on hand to greet students arriving for their first day this year at Amherst Regional Middle School. According to the report, it was all smiles, hugs and bubbles. To the parents of these innocent children, the reaction should have been horror, followed by demands that no such thing ever happen again.
It is well past time to put an end to the abusive practice of influencing our children to question their sexuality at an age when they are extremely vulnerable to persuasion. According to child psychiatrist Dr. Miriam Grossman, author of the invaluable book “Lost in Trans Nation,” the number of children identifying as transgender has increased some 5,000% in the past decade, with the most significant increases to be found in populations such as adolescent girls where gender dysphoria had been virtually unknown. This is clearly not a natural phenomenon but is instead a social contagion that has led a tragic number of young people, egged on by activists and by medical professionals corrupted by greed and ideology, to rush into harmful permanent “solutions” for what is usually a temporary and treatable mental confusion, and for which there is no solid evidence of benefit — all in the Orwellian guise of “gender-affirming care.” See the Cass Review and the recent HHS Comprehensive Review for the current state of the science. Don’t let the critics of these reviews dissuade you — read them for yourselves.
Our daughter, a 2007 graduate of Amherst Regional High School, received an excellent education in the Shutesbury and Amherst schools. Were she of school age now, there is not the slightest chance that her mother and I would subject her to the predations of those attempting to “affirm” her into a life of misery, sterility and constant medical intervention. It is now up to the current generation of parents of all political persuasions to put a stop to this before other precious young lives are blighted.
John Montanari
Shutesbury