Bill, you're in a position as a noted philosopher and a Christian leader that makes people want to hear from you on topics that are not necessarily in your area of expertise or areas of expertise, but sometimes you'll put on your pastoral hat to comment or you'll apply philosophy and theology where warranted.

So before we get into this topic on gender, authoring, surgery, transgenderism, what is your policy or guiding principle when it comes to commenting on social issues like this?

I try to stay away from political issues, Kevin, unless they intersect with either ethical concerns or with religious concerns.

And when that intersection occurs, then as a Christian philosopher and theologian, I do feel at liberty to address these ethical and spiritual issues.

So let's get your thoughts on an ongoing issue, probably the number one social issue today, transgenderism.

Data are coming in and we have studies reported in this article by the Epoch Times that research shows very bad news concerning gender altering surgery.

And this research is published by a facility that performs this kind of surgery.

Their study shows that surgically altering one's gender does not help mental health and in fact can make the person lonelier and more depressed than those who avoided surgical intervention altogether.

Bill, I thought that gender altering surgeries were supposed to prevent loneliness and depression in those with gender dysphoria.

Apparently, yes, this was the euphemism of gender affirming care.

And this study or studies speak directly to the issue that you and I raised, Kevin, in a previous podcast about state laws which have been adopted to try to protect minors against this sort of medical abuse.

And these new studies, I think, really vindicates the wisdom of those laws that are trying to protect minors from these kinds of surgeries and drug induced alterations.

Yeah, in fact, we have a late breaking study that I'll pull up here in just a moment, but in the meantime, two separate studies published recently indicate the same things.

Life satisfaction is not increased by gender altering procedures and in fact decreases it.

And another finding is that people who have had these surgeries and play at least four hours of sports per week experienced, quote, higher loneliness levels.

In quote, then those athletes who have not had gender reassignment procedures.

And so Bill, this comes on the heels of significant backlash against biologically male athletes who identify as female and when when competing against biological women.

Yes, that seems on the face of it so unfair.

And what we now discover is that those athletes who have had these procedures actually have higher degrees of mental health problems than those who don't undergo them.

And as I said on our previous podcast, Kevin, it seems to me this solution is so easily available instead of classifying sports by gender, just classify them by biological sex, have male and female sports, and that would solve this problem.

The most recent study finds that people who identify as transgender have lower overall life satisfaction than the general population and young people suffering from gender dysphoria have worse mental health than older people.

The study found 31% of transgender identifying people felt dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied with life.

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