One of the world’s loudest and most successful cheerleaders for gender ideology has been forced into a tactical retreat in an ongoing U.S. court case.

Anyone mildly familiar with the controversy over “gender affirming” care will be aware that proponents for this medical scandal have insisted that there is to be no debate on trans health care — and that debate is not only tantamount to heresy, but could end the lives or very existence of transgender identified persons. Critics are often met with the refrain, “the science is settled,” when they ask questions about the wisdom or safety of transitioning gender-confused minors.

Well, that’s over now.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), in an application to dismiss a lawsuit, has finally admitted that the debate over gender ideology is very real — and that their guidelines are not so sacred, after all.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with the states of Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas, filed a lawsuit against WPATH in June. In a news release announcing the lawsuit, the FTC alleged that WPATH “has provided the means for medical providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents in order to sell pediatric medical transition services.”

“In 2022, WPATH omitted all mention of age limitations for breast amputation or penis removal from the ‘Standards of Care’ document providing the organization’s official recommendations for treating sex-trait-related dissatisfaction or distress in children,” continued the FTC’s statement. “As alleged in the complaint, WPATH did not base this decision on medical evidence.”

WPATH has for years been treated as the global authority on transgender care, including in Canada. In fact, WPATH names Canada in its court filings as an example of a country that agrees with its “Standards of Care.” These care guidelines contain no lower age limits for surgical treatment and include an entire chapter on the “eunuch” gender identity.

Over the years, WPATH attracted criticism that threw its expertise into question. In March 2024, for example, a non-profit group named Environmental Progress released the “ WPATH Files ,” which were a series of documents that exposed WPATH members’ uncertainty over informed consent and treatment risks for minors, and the incidence of untreated mental health conditions among patients seeking trans health care. In light of the findings within the WPATH Files, Environmental Progress made a similar argument to the FTC: that WPATH “does not meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, and members frequently discuss improvising treatments as they go along.” It also argued that “WPATH-affiliated doctors are knowingly violating bedrock principles of medical ethics and informed consent.”

It wasn’t until the FTC lawsuit, however, that WPATH had to go on record and admit that it is not the one true arbiter of science.

Sprinkled throughout WPATH’s motion to dismiss the FTC’s suit are references to its activities as “policy and opinion work,” and written “opinions about subjects on which there is ‘medical and scientific uncertainty.’” The submissions concede, at long last, the existence of “intense medical debate” about pediatric gender care. Put differently, WPATH is now admitting that the framing of critics as anti-trans bigots is false. There is a legitimate discussion to be had over science and evidence.

In its application to dismiss, WPATH claims to defer to U.S. federalism, that is, each individual state’s authority to create health-care legislation. After admitting that “variation exists among views on transgender health-care for youth,” WPATH states that “such policy disagreements are federalism in action.” It goes on to argue that the FTC lawsuit is a violation of state legislative power.

This is contradicted by several public statements WPATH has issued over the years, including in 2023, when WPATH said that it and its U.S. branch “vehemently oppose the broad and sweeping legislation being introduced and ratified in states across the country to ban access to gender-affirming health care to transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people” and “condemn any legislative actions to restrict or prohibit access to gender-affirming health care.”

Of course, the motion to dismiss makes no mention of the inconsistency between WPATH’s conflicting legal and public positions on the right of states to legislate transgender health care.

Admittedly, WPATH appears to have a good chance of getting the lawsuit quashed based on its legal argument that the FTC is attempting to infringe upon the non-profit’s First Amendment right to free speech. Americans have excellent speech protections, and it will come as no surprise if WPATH wins on this basis alone (the organization makes several other, less persuasive, arguments as to why the FTC’s lawsuit should be dismissed).

No matter, though. WPATH has been forced to back away from its “no debate” mantra, revealing the organization as a crumbling edifice of gender ideology.

“WPATH is contributing to the public medical debate regarding transgender healthcare. If Plaintiffs disagree with WPATH, the ‘remedy to be applied is more speech,’ not enforced silence,” reads the motion to dismiss, quoting another court decision.

It’s difficult to feel sympathy for WPATH, which, along with other gender activists, has dominated the culture war by silencing dissent for years. Now, the organization invokes the old plea of its ideological enemies: to be heard, and to be countered with opposing speech, rather than censorship. The temptation to gloat — at length — is strong.

The FTC lawsuit shone a light on WPATH, and, no matter the legal outcome, WPATH was caught with its pants around its ankles. Every physician who follows its guidelines should immediately step back and reconsider the evidence. This is a major win for vulnerable youth who are at risk of being caught up in this medical scandal.

National Post

One of the world’s loudest and most successful cheerleaders for gender ideology has been forced into a tactical retreat in an ongoing U.S. court case.

Anyone mildly familiar with the controversy over “gender affirming” care will be aware that proponents for this medical scandal have insisted that there is to be no debate on trans health care — and that debate is not only tantamount to heresy, but could end the lives or very existence of transgender identified persons. Critics are often met with the refrain, “the science is settled,” when they ask questions about the wisdom or safety of transitioning gender-confused minors.

Well, that’s over now.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), in an application to dismiss a lawsuit, has finally admitted that the debate over gender ideology is very real — and that their guidelines are not so sacred, after all.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with the states of Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas, filed a lawsuit against WPATH in June. In a news release announcing the lawsuit, the FTC alleged that WPATH “has provided the means for medical providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents in order to sell pediatric medical transition services.”

“In 2022, WPATH omitted all mention of age limitations for breast amputation or penis removal from the ‘Standards of Care’ document providing the organization’s official recommendations for treating sex-trait-related dissatisfaction or distress in children,” continued the FTC’s statement. “As alleged in the complaint, WPATH did not base this decision on medical evidence.”

WPATH has for years been treated as the global authority on transgender care, including in Canada. In fact, WPATH names Canada in its court filings as an example of a country that agrees with its “Standards of Care.” These care guidelines contain no lower age limits for surgical treatment and include an entire chapter on the “eunuch” gender identity.

Over the years, WPATH attracted criticism that threw its expertise into question. In March 2024, for example, a non-profit group named Environmental Progress released the “ WPATH Files ,” which were a series of documents that exposed WPATH members’ uncertainty over informed consent and treatment risks for minors, and the incidence of untreated mental health conditions among patients seeking trans health care. In light of the findings within the WPATH Files, Environmental Progress made a similar argument to the FTC: that WPATH “does not meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, and members frequently discuss improvising treatments as they go along.” It also argued that “WPATH-affiliated doctors are knowingly violating bedrock principles of medical ethics and informed consent.”

It wasn’t until the FTC lawsuit, however, that WPATH had to go on record and admit that it is not the one true arbiter of science.

Sprinkled throughout WPATH’s motion to dismiss the FTC’s suit are references to its activities as “policy and opinion work,” and written “opinions about subjects on which there is ‘medical and scientific uncertainty.’” The submissions concede, at long last, the existence of “intense medical debate” about pediatric gender care. Put differently, WPATH is now admitting that the framing of critics as anti-trans bigots is false. There is a legitimate discussion to be had over science and evidence.

In its application to dismiss, WPATH claims to defer to U.S. federalism, that is, each individual state’s authority to create health-care legislation. After admitting that “variation exists among views on transgender health-care for youth,” WPATH states that “such policy disagreements are federalism in action.” It goes on to argue that the FTC lawsuit is a violation of state legislative power.

This is contradicted by several public statements WPATH has issued over the years, including in 2023, when WPATH said that it and its U.S. branch “vehemently oppose the broad and sweeping legislation being introduced and ratified in states across the country to ban access to gender-affirming health care to transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people” and “condemn any legislative actions to restrict or prohibit access to gender-affirming health care.”

Of course, the motion to dismiss makes no mention of the inconsistency between WPATH’s conflicting legal and public positions on the right of states to legislate transgender health care.

Admittedly, WPATH appears to have a good chance of getting the lawsuit quashed based on its legal argument that the FTC is attempting to infringe upon the non-profit’s First Amendment right to free speech. Americans have excellent speech protections, and it will come as no surprise if WPATH wins on this basis alone (the organization makes several other, less persuasive, arguments as to why the FTC’s lawsuit should be dismissed).

No matter, though. WPATH has been forced to back away from its “no debate” mantra, revealing the organization as a crumbling edifice of gender ideology.

“WPATH is contributing to the public medical debate regarding transgender healthcare. If Plaintiffs disagree with WPATH, the ‘remedy to be applied is more speech,’ not enforced silence,” reads the motion to dismiss, quoting another court decision.

It’s difficult to feel sympathy for WPATH, which, along with other gender activists, has dominated the culture war by silencing dissent for years. Now, the organization invokes the old plea of its ideological enemies: to be heard, and to be countered with opposing speech, rather than censorship. The temptation to gloat — at length — is strong.

The FTC lawsuit shone a light on WPATH, and, no matter the legal outcome, WPATH was caught with its pants around its ankles. Every physician who follows its guidelines should immediately step back and reconsider the evidence. This is a major win for vulnerable youth who are at risk of being caught up in this medical scandal.

National Post

Can we, in Quebec, exclude certain citizens from public facilities because of their political views?

This type of discrimination, common under authoritarian regimes, “has no place in a free and democratic society like Quebec,” the province’s Superior Court said on July 31, in deciding a case involving a Christian group, B.C.-based Harvest Ministries International (HMI) and the former Quebec minister of tourism Caroline Proulx.

The drama began in 2023, when Proulx forced the termination of a lease agreement because she disapproved of HMI’s views on abortion. Her communications team tried to frame this cancellation as part of the abortion debate despite the fact the event in question, called “Faith, Fire and Freedom,” had nothing to do with abortion.

Freedom of expression is one of the fundamental rights recognized in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The state may infringe upon these rights only in rare cases and within strict limits established by case law, such as a violent situation. But that is not what happened here.

First, the evidence presented did not indicate that HMI hosted an “anti-abortion event,” but a gathering that “had as its primary objective to unite Canada’s two founding peoples.”

Second, it was not the nature of the event that prompted the minister to cancel its holding at the Québec City Convention Center, but rather the organizer’s beliefs regarding abortion which she discovered by visiting the organizer’s website.

Finally, the minister claimed to have acted entirely within the law to protect the “fundamental rights and freedoms” of Quebec women.

On this point, the ruling could not be harsher: the Superior Court found that she acted “without legislative or regulatory authority,” meaning she lacked the legal authority to force the termination of the lease.

The court found that Proulx acted “in an arbitrary and abusive manner, without any regard for (HMI’s) rights.” It further emphasized that “her interference” was “motivated by considerations of an essentially political nature and her contemporaneous public statements based on personal convictions.”

It was not the minister of tourism who acted here in her capacity as a minister. It was Caroline Proulx who abused her position to stifle the freedom of expression of a group with which she disagreed.

That is why the court held her liable for all compensatory and punitive damages in the amount of $60,000 . This kind of censure is severe and should lead to an equally severe political response.

It is regrettable that, following such a harsh ruling, Ms. Proulx refuses to admit any wrongdoing and is once again attempting to shift the focus of the case to the issue of abortion by claiming to defend Quebec’s “fundamental rights and freedoms.”

These so-called fundamental rights do exist, but it is not up to a minister to redefine them. They are already enshrined in the Charter.

If, after such a harsh ruling, the minister can simply reiterate her narrative and reject the court’s conclusions outright; if media attention shifts elsewhere; if citizens shrug it off — this signals that this kind of anti-democratic behavior can pay off politically. One can find some comfort in the fact that, notwithstanding the ministers’ claims, the government of Quebec will not be appealing the decision according to the lawyer for HMI.

It is important to remember that the real issue is whether we accept that a member of the government can trample on the rights of a group because of their own personal beliefs. A democracy that answers “yes” to this question is already beginning to forget why it adopted a Charter in the first place.

National Post

Jean-Christophe Jasmin is the Québec director at Cardus, where he draws on his background as a federal public servant and his training in political philosophy and theology to foster collaboration between faith communities, policy-makers, and the broader public.

• Jesse Kline: Trump’s anti-vaccine order is a health disaster in the making
• Geoffrey Moyse: B.C. NDP behaving as if it can do anything it wants with land

Can we, in Quebec, exclude certain citizens from public facilities because of their political views?

This type of discrimination, common under authoritarian regimes, “has no place in a free and democratic society like Quebec,” the province’s Superior Court said on July 31, in deciding a case involving a Christian group, B.C.-based Harvest Ministries International (HMI) and the former Quebec minister of tourism Caroline Proulx.

The drama began in 2023, when Proulx forced the termination of a lease agreement because she disapproved of HMI’s views on abortion. Her communications team tried to frame this cancellation as part of the abortion debate despite the fact the event in question, called “Faith, Fire and Freedom,” had nothing to do with abortion.

Freedom of expression is one of the fundamental rights recognized in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The state may infringe upon these rights only in rare cases and within strict limits established by case law, such as a violent situation. But that is not what happened here.

First, the evidence presented did not indicate that HMI hosted an “anti-abortion event,” but a gathering that “had as its primary objective to unite Canada’s two founding peoples.”

Second, it was not the nature of the event that prompted the minister to cancel its holding at the Québec City Convention Center, but rather the organizer’s beliefs regarding abortion which she discovered by visiting the organizer’s website.

Finally, the minister claimed to have acted entirely within the law to protect the “fundamental rights and freedoms” of Quebec women.

On this point, the ruling could not be harsher: the Superior Court found that she acted “without legislative or regulatory authority,” meaning she lacked the legal authority to force the termination of the lease.

The court found that Proulx acted “in an arbitrary and abusive manner, without any regard for (HMI’s) rights.” It further emphasized that “her interference” was “motivated by considerations of an essentially political nature and her contemporaneous public statements based on personal convictions.”

It was not the minister of tourism who acted here in her capacity as a minister. It was Caroline Proulx who abused her position to stifle the freedom of expression of a group with which she disagreed.

That is why the court held her liable for all compensatory and punitive damages in the amount of $60,000 . This kind of censure is severe and should lead to an equally severe political response.

It is regrettable that, following such a harsh ruling, Ms. Proulx refuses to admit any wrongdoing and is once again attempting to shift the focus of the case to the issue of abortion by claiming to defend Quebec’s “fundamental rights and freedoms.”

These so-called fundamental rights do exist, but it is not up to a minister to redefine them. They are already enshrined in the Charter.

If, after such a harsh ruling, the minister can simply reiterate her narrative and reject the court’s conclusions outright; if media attention shifts elsewhere; if citizens shrug it off — this signals that this kind of anti-democratic behavior can pay off politically. One can find some comfort in the fact that, notwithstanding the ministers’ claims, the government of Quebec will not be appealing the decision according to the lawyer for HMI.

It is important to remember that the real issue is whether we accept that a member of the government can trample on the rights of a group because of their own personal beliefs. A democracy that answers “yes” to this question is already beginning to forget why it adopted a Charter in the first place.

National Post

Jean-Christophe Jasmin is the Québec director at Cardus, where he draws on his background as a federal public servant and his training in political philosophy and theology to foster collaboration between faith communities, policy-makers, and the broader public.

• Jesse Kline: Trump’s anti-vaccine order is a health disaster in the making
• Geoffrey Moyse: B.C. NDP behaving as if it can do anything it wants with land

My arguably obsessive files on the state of the world, a.k.a the mess we are in, include one labelled “You Have Mistaken Me For Someone Else,” as a repository for offers to curate this, moisturize that, and improve my “email deliverability.” It is evident that many people live in ways I could not emulate and do not wish to. And also that marketers have surprising trouble telling me from our libertine liberal elite.

For instance the moisturizer from the New York Times “Wirecutter,” a sometimes-useful guide to “lifestyle hacks” if I had a lifestyle or were into hacks. Instead they lost me at hello, a.k.a. “Do you need a different moisturizer for each season?” to which my response was “No, the tap works year round.” But evidently they had something different in mind. And someone different. As so often.

I won’t dwell on the demoralizing offer to “Improve Your Chess Rating” that arrived right after achieving my lifetime peak. But hot off the presses here’s another Times item, Canadian-girl-makes-good , where “She Makes the Impossible Happen for Her Ultrarich Clients.” To mistake me for the ultrarich would take some doing. But it’s also weird that they thought I’d get a vicarious thrill from this debauchery. And that “they” were the New York Times .

If you get the joke about the preacher who read the Bible and the Times every day to know what both sides were thinking, you’re aware that the “Grey Lady” is the sober, reputable voice of wacky woke liberalism. It favours DEI, loathes Donald Trump, and wants higher taxes, Net Zero, income redistribution, an anti-fun nanny state and blah blah blah progressive orthodoxy. Yet it also celebrates grotesque displays of hedonism among those whose rank and wealth bring privileges. And it’s no coincidence.

I won’t wallow in the horrifying details. You have the Interwebs on your computer, your phone and possibly also your watch and can read it for yourself if you find high-flyers with pointless lives and huge bank accounts bathing in champagne alluring. As many people apparently do, since the influencer or whatever she is in question has some two million followers online and a contract for a “scripted series” to somehow push her over-the-top existence over another top or something.

Suffice it to say that one featured event she created, or possibly curated, for a client evidently determined to prove money can’t buy class, involved spending six figures just on Dom Pérignon sprayed on party-goers by … um … sexy young women in revealing outfits. Not exactly Woke 1.0 , is it? Or is it? Ideas are not random. As philosopher J. Budziszewski observes, people disinclined to obey natural law are inclined to deny its existence.

The piece calls it “pointless excess” with apparent glee, revelling in the final cost of all this wasted high-tone booze, including “artisanal” tequila , being “$226,000 and change” and quoting the facilitator of this sinful display that “Honestly, (the client) would have spent more. But he got hit hard at the casino the night before.”

Not hard enough, I say. (Cue the opening scene of Diamonds are Forever .) But the Times , and the entrepreneur, know their audience: nearly 3,000 people “paid anywhere from $1,500 to $25,000 for a table at the outdoor club” without even knowing the host. “But that hardly mattered. What the glossy strangers provided was an appropriately uproarious backdrop when the inevitable reels of the blowout would stream on social media.”

So there was a point, hidden in plain sight: obscene excess that would have had Caligula talking like Cato the Elder. But surely the Times too should declare censoriously that the money could have been better spent on the homeless, the carbon footprint was the size of the Chicxulub crater and as ominous that Narcissism inhibits compassion and so on. Instead the piece is celebratory to the point of parody, chortling that our heroine “has flown to Paris to retrieve the largest croissant in that city to please the daughter of a Miami billionaire.” “Luxury Beliefs Go Wild” for your private public pleasure.

If you’re wondering how the rich can roll about in cash and wasted luxury foodstuffs cackling in ways Marie Antoinette would have found disquieting while Times readers savour the frisson, consider that one of this panderer-to-conspicuous-consumption’s working mottos is, “Our job is to execute, not judge.” Voila. Non-judgementality gives you licence to bask in privileged excess while flaunting your social conscience. If you care to.

Yet again, they appear to have mistaken me for someone else. I’d be out back hosing off the tequila with municipal moisturizer muttering “O Tempora O Mores.” But with a client list who “must fork over an annual fee of $100,000 and agree to book $1 million in yearly travel,” the mere planning of which would kill me, I don’t suppose they care.

National Post

My arguably obsessive files on the state of the world, a.k.a the mess we are in, include one labelled “You Have Mistaken Me For Someone Else,” as a repository for offers to curate this, moisturize that, and improve my “email deliverability.” It is evident that many people live in ways I could not emulate and do not wish to. And also that marketers have surprising trouble telling me from our libertine liberal elite.

For instance the moisturizer from the New York Times “Wirecutter,” a sometimes-useful guide to “lifestyle hacks” if I had a lifestyle or were into hacks. Instead they lost me at hello, a.k.a. “Do you need a different moisturizer for each season?” to which my response was “No, the tap works year round.” But evidently they had something different in mind. And someone different. As so often.

I won’t dwell on the demoralizing offer to “Improve Your Chess Rating” that arrived right after achieving my lifetime peak. But hot off the presses here’s another Times item, Canadian-girl-makes-good , where “She Makes the Impossible Happen for Her Ultrarich Clients.” To mistake me for the ultrarich would take some doing. But it’s also weird that they thought I’d get a vicarious thrill from this debauchery. And that “they” were the New York Times .

If you get the joke about the preacher who read the Bible and the Times every day to know what both sides were thinking, you’re aware that the “Grey Lady” is the sober, reputable voice of wacky woke liberalism. It favours DEI, loathes Donald Trump, and wants higher taxes, Net Zero, income redistribution, an anti-fun nanny state and blah blah blah progressive orthodoxy. Yet it also celebrates grotesque displays of hedonism among those whose rank and wealth bring privileges. And it’s no coincidence.

I won’t wallow in the horrifying details. You have the Interwebs on your computer, your phone and possibly also your watch and can read it for yourself if you find high-flyers with pointless lives and huge bank accounts bathing in champagne alluring. As many people apparently do, since the influencer or whatever she is in question has some two million followers online and a contract for a “scripted series” to somehow push her over-the-top existence over another top or something.

Suffice it to say that one featured event she created, or possibly curated, for a client evidently determined to prove money can’t buy class, involved spending six figures just on Dom Pérignon sprayed on party-goers by … um … sexy young women in revealing outfits. Not exactly Woke 1.0 , is it? Or is it? Ideas are not random. As philosopher J. Budziszewski observes, people disinclined to obey natural law are inclined to deny its existence.

The piece calls it “pointless excess” with apparent glee, revelling in the final cost of all this wasted high-tone booze, including “artisanal” tequila , being “$226,000 and change” and quoting the facilitator of this sinful display that “Honestly, (the client) would have spent more. But he got hit hard at the casino the night before.”

Not hard enough, I say. (Cue the opening scene of Diamonds are Forever .) But the Times , and the entrepreneur, know their audience: nearly 3,000 people “paid anywhere from $1,500 to $25,000 for a table at the outdoor club” without even knowing the host. “But that hardly mattered. What the glossy strangers provided was an appropriately uproarious backdrop when the inevitable reels of the blowout would stream on social media.”

So there was a point, hidden in plain sight: obscene excess that would have had Caligula talking like Cato the Elder. But surely the Times too should declare censoriously that the money could have been better spent on the homeless, the carbon footprint was the size of the Chicxulub crater and as ominous that Narcissism inhibits compassion and so on. Instead the piece is celebratory to the point of parody, chortling that our heroine “has flown to Paris to retrieve the largest croissant in that city to please the daughter of a Miami billionaire.” “Luxury Beliefs Go Wild” for your private public pleasure.

If you’re wondering how the rich can roll about in cash and wasted luxury foodstuffs cackling in ways Marie Antoinette would have found disquieting while Times readers savour the frisson, consider that one of this panderer-to-conspicuous-consumption’s working mottos is, “Our job is to execute, not judge.” Voila. Non-judgementality gives you licence to bask in privileged excess while flaunting your social conscience. If you care to.

Yet again, they appear to have mistaken me for someone else. I’d be out back hosing off the tequila with municipal moisturizer muttering “O Tempora O Mores.” But with a client list who “must fork over an annual fee of $100,000 and agree to book $1 million in yearly travel,” the mere planning of which would kill me, I don’t suppose they care.

National Post