As a culture and society, we should do everything in our power to protect children. Whether that is protecting the unborn in the womb, or ensuring child predators are stopped, protecting the children of our nation should be a top priority.

For this reason it is alarming to see a well-known publication promoting the dangerous political ideology of transgenderism.

National Geographic recently made the decision to display the image of a 9-year-old boy named Avery on its January 2017 edition. Avery, according to his parents, identifies and lives as a girl.

The sexual and cultural revolution has decided that gender is not fixed at birth but is, instead, a social construct. Armed with this piece of idealism, the revolution marches on, sounding the trumpet that boys can be girls and girls can be boys. To this end they celebrate young Avery for telling the world that he is, in fact, a girl.

But, what this shows us is that the revolution that has decided that gender is not actually a matter of biology, hormones, or sexual organs, is willing to permanently harm children in order to achieve their political goals. The issue of transgenderism is far from decided, far from settled, far from mainstream. It is an issue in its infancy that no one is quite sure how to approach. It, unlike homosexuality, involves children as young as 5 and 6 years old. That particular reality has made it more challenging.

The American College of Pediatricians (ACP), for example, rejects the idea that children are capable of making an informed decision to be transgender. The group recently took National Geographic to task for their willingness to promote a political agenda at the risk of innocent children. ACP president, Michelle Cretella recently commented:

“Affirming so called transgender children means sterilizing them as young as 11-years-old. Puberty blockers plus cross-sex hormones causes permanent sterility. And biological girls who ‘transition’ to male by taking testosterone may have a double mastectomy at age 16. The life time use of cross-sex hormones also puts these children at risk for stroke, heart disease, diabetes, cancers and more…When academic, medical and other public institutions propagate the lifetime use of toxic hormones and the surgical removal of healthy body parts as healthcare for children, they are engaged in institutionalized child abuse.”

Cretella’s words ring true in light of how our society treats children and the decisions they make.

If a child of 8 or 9-years-old says they want to start smoking, we don’t buy him cigarettes. We understand that the child is not capable of making an informed decision about the short and long-term affects of that decision. The health risks are far too great to allow the child to follow through on that decision. The same can be said of drinking alcohol, driving a car, joining the military, getting married, dropping out of school, and many other decisions. We inherently recognize the fact that children cannot make wise and healthy decisions before certain ages. So, we protect them.

But, in the sexual and cultural war we are now engaged in, it has become appropriate to celebrate the decision of a child to take measures medically and biologically that will permanently alter their body. Forget political ideology regarding transgender rights, this makes no sense from a purely moral perspective. It is, as Cretella said, nothing less than child abuse.

Cretella isn’t the only one sounding the alarm over the disturbing National Geographic magazine cover. A former transgender, writing at The Federalist, says that “crossdressing a young boy is emotional and psychological child abuse and should be stopped, not celebrated on the cover of magazines.” He writes:

“Studies have shown that childhood gender dysphoria does not inevitably continue into adulthood. An overwhelming 77 to 94 percent of gender dysphoric children do not become adults with gender dysphoria. Given this, it’s social, medical, and psychological malpractice to push young children to lop off or sew on body parts and take highly charged cross-sex hormones that can further destabilize their prepubescent bodies and minds, especially when they are highly likely to regret what grown adults pushed them into before they were able to sort through such life-altering decisions.”

Walt Heyer is a male that lived as a female for many years. With the encouragement of a grandmother at a young age the he began wearing girls clothing and eventually began living as a female. But after years of unrest and confusion, along with hormone therapy and surgeries, he realized it was all a lie. He says that transgenderism is “a surgical masquerade to superficially project a change of gender. Like others who elect to live the transgender life, I painfully discovered it was only a temporary fix to deeper pain.”

Heyer goes on to share the truth behind feelings and how they can change:

“Young people are told transgender feelings are permanent, immutable, physically deep-seated in the brain, and can never change. That’s simply not true. Anyone past age 25 knows that even very strong feelings can change. During my time of gender distress, I consulted with the leading gender experts to find relief. I was told that the only way I would ever find peace was to change my gender. Yet me and many other former transgenders have discovered the truth: the peace that comes from changing genders is temporary. Feelings change. At some point, which may take years, reality penetrates the fog and living as a superficial female no longer ‘feels’ right. I hear from transgender people who write, ‘I feel duped. How can I undo this and return to living in my birth gender?’”

The point that needs to be understood here is that being transgender is all based on feelings. There is nothing scientific, nothing biological about wanting to be anything other than your birth gender. It is an emotion, a feeling that, as Heyer says, can and often does change. This is why allowing children to undergo hormone therapy and a surgery to permanently alter their biological gender is and should be declared child abuse.

The bottom line is that gender is fixed at conception. It’s not a matter of feelings it’s a matter of biology. The chromosomes inside our bodies determine our gender and there isn’t anything that can be done about that. Sure, hormones can be taken, surgeries can be done, but, in the end, a person is still just the male or female they were born as. It is, as Heyer notes, “an empty promise,” to try and realistically change genders.

I’ll be called a bigot for making these statements. Science and biology aren’t nearly as important as feelings and politically correct ideology. But truth is truth regardless of how popular it is or how anyone feels about it. And the truth is, the scientific truth is that gender is fixed. It’s far more unloving to indulge a delusion and help people live a lie than it is to care enough to speak the truth.