“On Friday, Fox News Channel aired a story praising a family who allowed a five-year-old girl to begin transitioning to the opposite sex, claiming that the move was inspired by their ‘conservative faith,’ and that God ‘created’ the child transgender. The segment wrapped extreme gender ideology in heretical religious verbiage. Fox News highlighted the story of Ryland Whittington, a girl who now identifies as a boy. The report noted that the family supported Ryland’s transition to a boy at age five and strongly implied that children whose parents ‘push back’ against their gender identity will commit suicide. In reality, multiple studies show that 80 to 95% of children with gender dysphoria accept their birth sex by age 18 [“Gender Dysphoria in Children,” American College of Pediatricians, Nov. 2018]. “The good news is: They’re going to grow out of it. Don’t mess them up,” said John Whitehall, professor of pediatrics at Australia’s Western Sydney University. The segment, which was produced by Melissa Chrise, aired Friday morning on ‘America’s Newsroom’ as part of a Fox News Channel series titled ‘America Together: LGBTQ+ Pride Month,’ indicating several similar stories will follow over the next 20 days. Fellow Fox News reporter Alicia Acuna praised the ‘excellent piece’ while using the hashtag #Pride2022. The segment’s most offensive aspect came not from its embrace of infants choosing their own sex, nor from Llenas’s condescending remarks. It occurred when Fox News told its viewers that the decision to transition a preschool-aged child stemmed from his mother’s ‘conservative faith’ in God. Hillary said, ‘For me, it’s just a deep spiritual belief that we believe in God, and He created us the way He wanted us. Well, then yes, He created Ryland just the way [she] is.’ There are numerous reasons why this is false. Affirming that God ‘created us the way He wanted us’ would not necessitate years of hormone treatments, the removal or artificial creation of breasts, eventual sterilization, and the complete surgical reconstruction of the reproductive anatomy. On the contrary, it is precisely the decision to insist on a man-made identity, a ‘modern notion of self,’ which rejects God’s sovereignty as expressed in His created order.”
Ben Johnson, Washington Stand, June 11, 2022