REGINA — Longtime radio broadcaster and former MP John Gormley says that medicine, law and sport are reversing course on “gender‑affirming” doctrines rooted more in ideology than science.Gormley made his comments in a segment of an hour-long address at the annual gala of the Regina Civic Awareness and Action Network.“The transgender issue… has become, as you know, a complete doctrine of pronouns, approved language, gender identity, inappropriate interrogations of small children to choose their gender,” he said.“This issue intimately touches like very few others do upon a parent's obligation to safeguard, to inform and make health decisions for their kids and to help their children through mental health challenges that many kids face,” he said. “You can be sympathetic and understanding and caring, but you don't have to surrender to a modern day orthodoxy that ultimately is harmful for anyone who's awake.”Gormley situated the transgender debate as one of three “vibe shifts” made over the past 20 years: the environment, racial politics, and “a revolution over gender” that began with legitimate concerns but were taken over.“The issues were appropriated by activists, then distorted, exaggerated, amplified beyond perspective, and then ultimately weaponized into silencing anyone who dared question the Orthodox,” he said. The playbook, as he described it, was to “find the issue, make it a crisis, gin up support among a very sympathetic media, label anyone who disagrees with you to be an extremist or a hate monger, and then de‑platform your critics.”.According to Gormley, many “good and reasonable people” withdrew from public debate because speaking plainly became too risky.“It was just safer not to talk out loud,” he said. “With this silence, which is then interpreted by the activists to be at least acquiescence, if not support, then the activists had an open path to getting the issue even bigger.”Gormley noted significant recent developments in other countries regarding gender medicine. He pointed first to the closure of Tavistock, the UK’s now‑defunct Gender Identity Development Service, long regarded as the world’s largest clinic for gender‑dysphoric youth.“Two years ago, after the high‑profile lawsuits for malpractice and negligence, the world's largest childhood gender treatment program, Tavistock in the UK, was shut down,” he said. “And it was shut down for a reason.”Gormley highlighted the conclusions of Dr. Hilary Cass, the British pediatrician tasked with reviewing gender services for children in England.“One month [ago] final conclusions of Dr. Hillary Cass’s report were released,” he said. “She's a pediatrician who found, among other things, there is very little evidence to support gender affirming care for children — and that's an orthodoxy, except there's no evidence to support it.”Gormley stressed that countries once hailed as pioneers of gender‑affirming care for youth are now among the most cautious. .“Scandinavian countries, which at the very early days, decades ago, were the leading edge of childhood gender treatment today no longer subscribe to gender affirming care and the early prescribing of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery for children,” he said.“If you are in Finland, Norway or Sweden today, and a youth presents with gender dysphoria, they will receive therapeutic counseling, support and watchful waiting, which was the initial advice 20 years ago of gender experts.”Gormley connected these medical reversals with emerging litigation in the United States, including the first jury verdict involving a detransitioner named Fox Varian.“A teenage girl beset by mental health issues, anxiety and depression and diagnosed, of course, with autism. She tells her psychologist she's got gender distress. He says, this is the source of the trouble. A double mastectomy at age 16 would help,” he said.Varian, now 22, sued her psychologist and surgeon.“The $2 million lawsuit she won against that psychologist and the surgeon [who] removed her perfectly healthy breasts,” Gormley noted. “It was heartbreaking in both her testimony [and] in the interviews after — physical pain, knowing she will never nurse a baby and, quote, ‘nothing will ever bring back what I lost.’” .Gormley, who has returned to legal practice, said detransitioners have filed 30 cases and suggested this “highlights significant legal jeopardy for physicians [and] surgeons, including a few physicians right here in Regina and Saskatchewan who are ‘experts in gender.’”The trial, he argued, exposed a discipline driven more by ideology than by rigorous science.“What that trial revealed was there is so little expertise and actual science‑tested evidence,” Gormley said. “This is a field with much ideology and very little science.”Gormley said some authorities have been quicker to respond appropriately than others.“It took four days for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons after the [Fox] lawsuit to say, quote, ‘Refrain from performing all gender transition related facial, chest or genital surgery for any patient under age 19,’” he said.He quoted further from that statement:“‘There is little quality research on the long‑term consequences of performing transition surgeries on young people, and there is a burgeoning evidence of treatment complications and harm.’”Gormley said perspectives are changing in sport, also. The International Olympic Committee has announced that starting in 2028 only biologically genetic females will compete in women's sports.“The reason was to ensure fairness, the integrity of women's sports and physical safety for the participants,” he said. For most people, he suggested, this was “not particularly controversial.” He contrasted that with the reaction from the CBC, which he referred to as “Canada's left‑wing state broadcaster.”.“The CBC… had to helpfully point out, quote, ‘the term biological female is problematic because it can be used to deny the identities of trans, non‑binary and gender diverse people,’” he said.“Yes, CBC, it can, and yes, CBC, it should,” he said. “No matter how much a trans, non‑binary or gender diverse person wants to be a woman… no matter how much we should sympathize, empathize and understand somebody in a state of gender dysphoria, no matter how much they want to compete against women, they aren't women.”Gormley closed his discussion of gender by invoking the English writer G.K. Chesterton.“This entire gender debate — I'll leave it now — but G.K. Chesterton said it best… ‘Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies just because they've become fashions,’” he said.Gormley believes a broader cultural turn is underway, led by parents, clinicians, athletes and ordinary citizens.“This new vibe shift is underway,” he said, “and it's starting to reverse many of these excesses in modern culture. Those good and reasonable people who went quiet trust their instincts, their experience, their judgment, their knowledge informed by common sense, and they've said ‘enough.’”“You can be sympathetic and understanding and caring,” he told his audience, “but you don't have to surrender.”
