Homophobia on My Mind

A Whistleblower's Response to the HHS Report

I’m on page 247 of the new Health and Human Services Report, exhausted from days of nonstop reading, when I pause to get ready for my friend’s wedding. The Psychotherapy chapter, said to be the weakest, weighs on me as I dress.

The report is heavy—Chapter 3, The History and Evolution of Adult and Pediatric Gender Medicine, is hard to process. The information isn’t new, but seeing homophobia so clearly tied to trans medical care slows my reading. It’s on my mind as I curl my hair and my girlfriend dresses in her suit.

I woke up and tweeted about last night’s rehearsal dinner, still troubled from the moment:

The Question

A young adolescent in a blue dress and boots approaches me at the appetizer line. “When’s the cake served?” she asks, simple and shy. I say, “After dinner.” She grins: “You’re the only adult I want to talk to.” Her shorn hair catches the light.

At dinner, she’s back: “Where’s the dinner line?” My girlfriend catches my eye, noticing my new friend. We share a look—we know. At her age, we knew we were different. I knew I loved girls, thought I should’ve been a boy.

Two hours later, on the dance floor, she blurts, “I don’t want to be homophobic, but are you a lesbian?” “Yes,” I say, “that’s my girlfriend. And that’s my friend, a gay man.” She whispers, “I think I am too, but I say I’m pan.” Later, I hear she has told some people to use they/them pronouns.

“I’ve never seen anyone like you two,” she says, “and I like your necklace.” Why is this so hard? Proto-gay kids exist, and they see two paths: lesbians like us—monogamous, kind, healthy—or trans, the pathway to changing everything about their physical bodies.

We have no shame. We dance. We kiss. Just like the heterosexual couples. It’s a beautiful night.

At the end, as she’s leaving, she runs up for a big hug. “You’re an awesome kid,” I say. “You’re an awesome grown-up,” she replies, kissing my cheek.

My girlfriend says, “You just changed her life.” I can only hope.

How Much Time Do You Have

Three days later, I finish the report, the therapy chapter a slog. Glenna Goldis discusses the therapy chapter on the podcast, “you must be some kid of therapist” with Stephanie Winn, “its really dangerous for the government to be saying, ‘send your gender dysphoric kids to therapy’ because a big segment of those are gay kids, possibly with internalized homophobia, and you are throwing them to the wolves.” I agree, until the official guidelines deal with how most of the therapy addressing gender dysphoria is harming gay kids, then no intervention is better than a bad one.

I reread 13.2.4, titled Justice, as well as reading all of the footnotes, finding small jewels and even some of my friends noted. It is surreal to find myself in this document, but at this point, that woman no longer even feels like me. She has learned so much even since that fateful day in February 2023 that I can barely see her anymore. She was so naïve, so full of hope for quick changes. I tweet that I have finally finished reading the report.

Alone in a Michigan hotel that evening, I crawl into bed and try to forget for a moment why I am here alone in a hotel room in another state that is still hurting kids.

An X user replies to my tweet, “Explain how being trans is homophobic.”

How much time do you have? I think, ready to unravel the truth.

Let me see if I can break it all apart and put it back together.

A Whimper and Not a Bang

In the 1950s, homosexuality wasn’t just a sin—it was a crime, a mental illness in the DSM, lumped with “sociopathic” deviants like pedophiles and rapists (McHenry, 2022). This homophobic world birthed the modern concept of gender. During a three-year Johns Hopkins study on intersex kids led by Drs. John Money, Joan Hampson, and John Hampson, Money coined “gender role” to describe social and psychological behaviors of being male or female, distinct from biology:

For the general public, gender came into the world with a whimper, not a bang. To be precise, it arrived between parentheses, used as an alternative term for psychologic sex (Eder, 2022, p. 110).

In 1963, Robert Stoller and Ralph Greenson coined “gender identity,” the inner sense of being male or female (Byrne, 2023). Both terms fueled a system to “fix” kids like me, erasing our same-sex desires.

These three ran a team seeking to treat those with intersex conditions (DSDs), primarily congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). This is right about the time when cortisol is developed, so there is now a medical ‘cure’. Hopkins addressed the CAH children as a problem that required a quick determination and a ‘sex assignment’, this assignment led to surgical interventions, usually of the genitals, and instructions to the parents in what sex they were to rear their children.

No penis? Make a girl. But the real fear was homosexuality, “far from a desired outcome in 1950’s America and implicitly and at times shaped the decision making process in sex assignment. (Elder, 2022. p. 115).

A Glandular Imbalance

The HHS report points to 1952, when George Jorgensen returned as Christine, a gay man “fixed” by a surgery only legal in Europe at this time. George faced a world that despised homosexuals, with medicine using Money’s “gender role” to “fix” bodies and prevent kids from growing up like me. This framework, enforcing social norms, evolved with Stoller’s “gender identity”(Byrne, 2023) medicalizing the inner sense of being male or female, yet both targeted same-sex attraction.

Dr. Christian Hamburger, whose lesbian sister knew discrimination’s pain, performed George’s surgery. Letters poured in, begging for the same, and his analysis revealed the truth:

Homosexuality predominated among the men and was universal among the women (HHS)

All the women seeking to be transed were lesbians, desperate for a path beyond society’s hatred. This is where trans began, with Money’s “gender role” concept, pushing parents to cut clitorises off toddlers.

Seriously:

in all but one of the sixteen cases…where ‘enlarged clitoris’ was listed as one of the ‘complaints,’ surgeons performed a clitoridectomy at the earliest possible time after admission”; in one child, “her clitoris was ‘completely dissected out’” to ensure reconstructions met “heterosexual standards such as penetration” (Eder, 2022, pp. 156–162).

It was clear then and remains clear now:

Childhood gender-nonconformity is strongly associated with later homosexuality. Because childhood- or early-onset gender dysphoria (GD) involves extreme gender-nonconformity, young children distressed by their sexed bodies will likely grow up to be same-sex attracted (HHS).

The children with real distress regarding their sexed bodies, the ‘true trans’ have been homosexuals all along.

No Relation Between Stage and Happiness

In 1968, homosexuality was still a DSM disorder. By 1973, the APA voted it out, but it was no landslide, I’m sad to report.

In the adults transed in the early Dutch studies:

Did medical transition at least alleviate gender dysphoria? Interestingly, there was no relationship between reported happiness and stage of transition (HHS).

I believe this was because these were homosexuals who finally found a way forward, relieved to escape society’s hatred of their same-sex attraction.

This study found that women seeking to be seen as men fared better. The Dutch researchers overlooked one reason:

FTMs were doing better because their romantic relationships were easier to preserve after transition (HHS).

Hamburger noted in 1953:

No less than 10 women say, in so many words, that they want their sex changed to marry their female friend or to have the relationship legalized (HHS).

Reading this, I cry. What would I have done?

The Dutch’s first child was FG, a lesbian who didn’t fit gender stereotypes, attracted to women from a young age (HHS). I hate to say this, because it seems gratuitous, but I am so tired of tiptoeing around what it means to be a lesbian. A healthy sex life is all about breast stimulation, genital contact, digital penetration. ‘Naked hip to hip contact.’ All the parts of the body that are targeted by transition: removal of breasts, degradation of vaginal tissues, making them friable, sensitive, and prone to tearing.

From age 5, FG “had made it very clear that [she] was supposed to be a boy.” It later transpired that FG was sexually attracted to women. FG’s father, an Italian with traditional views on gender, disapproved of his daughter’s masculinity, and serious conflict ensued (HHS).

So, the Dutch transed this lesbian, and 68 other young homosexuals.

They transed 68 young homosexuals and hurt them in ways very specific to their same-sex attraction: in the boys they cut off their penises, in the girls they cut off their breasts. They physically altered the very erogenous areas of the body that homosexuals (like heterosexuals) use for sexual pleasure. They stole a core part of who they were.

In my testimony I used to say that a young person died in the Dutch cohort. From now on I’m going to say: a young gay man died because they cut off his underdeveloped penis.

The Justice Principle Has Been Rightly Invoked but Wrongly Applied

I read this chapter twice, feeling at home in my clinical research skills. My Master of Science in Clinical Research was years of diving into ethical medical scandals, driven by human subject research. So, when the chapter opens with the Belmont Report, the Tuskegee Study, and pediatric gender medicine, I’m in my element.

Seeing pediatric gender medicine framed this way feels right.

Compared to their age-matched peers, same-sex youth are significantly overrepresented among patients presenting to gender clinics (HHS).

In other words, when the DSM removed homosexuality, gender took its place. The change made everything far worse and now sanctioned medically the following: chemical blockades to ensure underdevelopment in the genitals for boys and breasts for the girls, chemical endocrine disruptions to alter the body out of the presentation of sex, and later surgical steel to literally excise and remove the sexual body parts.

That X user asked, “Explain how being trans is homophobic.”

It’s a process born from homophobia, targeting homosexuals, erasing their relationships, and stealing their sexual lives.

So you tell me—how is it NOT homophobic?

I dare you.

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References

• Byrne, A. (2023). The Origin of “Gender Identity”. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52, 2709–2711.

• Eder, S. (2022). How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea. University of Chicago Press.

• Health and Human Services (HHS) Report (2025). Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices.

• McHenry, S. (2022). “Gay is Good: History of Homosexuality in the DSM and Modern Psychiatry.” American Journal of Psychiatry Residents’ Journal.