A judge in Cincinnati has granted legal custody of a 17-year-old transgender boy to his grandparents, paving the way for the teen to potentially undergo hormone therapy, reports the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Judge Sylvia Hendon determined that the teen’s maternal grandparents, who accept their grandson’s gender identity, were better suited to make decisions for the teen, who experienced depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation after his parents refused to acknowledge his feelings of gender dysphoria.
The boy’s parents had previously taken him to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in November 2016 to seek psychiatric help for feelings of anxiety and depression. But they were shocked when the hospital diagnosed their child with gender dysphoria, and tried to seek out “Christian-based” treatment rather than gender-affirming counseling and therapies offered by the hospital.
When the teen began backsliding and expressing suicidal thoughts, hospital staff contacted Hamilton County Job and Family Services, which eventually placed the teen with his grandparents.
The boy’s parents partially relented, allowing him to receive traditional therapy and psychiatric counseling at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
Reportedly, the teen has been excelling both academically and musically since receiving that therapy. But his parents continued to fight the hospital’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria and attempted to block the hospital from offering hormone therapy to aid their son’s transition.
The son’s attorney argued in court that his client felt unsafe in the home, and had accused his parents of attempting to subject him to forms of conversion therapy, including being forced to sit in a room and listen to Bible scriptures for more than six hours at a time.
The teen’s parents had previously noted that they wanted their child to continue living with his grandparents even if they were granted decision-making power. But Hendon eventually decided that that power was best left to the grandparents.
However, Hendon has set forth several conditions before the boy can receive hormone therapy. One of those conditions is that the teen must be evaluated by an independent psychologist not affiliated with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. That evaluation, Hendon said, should look at “the issue of consistency in the child’s gender presentation and feelings of nonconformity.”
Hendon also expressed alarm — and a degree of skepticism — around a statement by the director of the hospital’s Transgender Health Clinic, who had told the court that 100 percent of patients seen by the clinic are considered “appropriate candidates for continued gender treatment.” As such, she sympathized with the teen’s parents, who, she noted, were surprised and confused over the hospital’s diagnosis.
Hendon called on Ohio state lawmakers to craft legislation that would allow juvenile courts to evaluate whether a juvenile should have the right to consent to transition-related therapy, noting that similar family disputes are likely to arise in the future.
Living with Change, a local pro-transgender organization in the Cincinnati area, praised Hendon’s decision “to put the safety and medical care of the child first.”
“Forty-one percent of transgender youth attempt suicide in their lifetime, making access to medically necessary care an incredibly important part of living a healthy and complete life,” the organization said in a statement.
In late November, the University of Oklahoma placed Mel Curth on administrative leave after the transgender graduate teaching assistant gave a student a zero on an essay about gender roles.
The essay cited the Bible to defend traditional gender roles and described transgender people as "demonic." Curth and the course's instructor, Megan Waldron, said the paper failed to meet basic academic standards due to a lack of empirical evidence. Both noted that the paper cited no scholarly sources and failed to offer an evidence-based critique of the assigned article, which argued that children who do not conform to rigid gender stereotypes are more likely to face bullying and negative mental health outcomes.
Federal Judge Victoria Calvert has permanently blocked a portion of Georgia’s law banning prisoners from receiving gender-affirming care, ruling on Dec. 3 that the state’s blanket ban on hormone therapy violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in May and implemented in July, the law bars prisoners from receiving hormone therapy or other treatment for gender dysphoria -- even when a doctor deems it medically necessary. It prohibits the state from funding such care and blocks transgender inmates from paying for it themselves. Non-transgender prisoners, however, may still receive hormone therapy and other gender-affirming treatments so long as the care is not related to gender transition.
A recent study of injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis found that twice-yearly injections of lenacapavir -- marketed as Yeztugo by Gilead Sciences -- do not have clinically significant interactions with gender-affirming hormone therapy.
"In the most gender-diverse Phase III PrEP trial conducted to date, lenacapavir had no clinically significant impact on feminizing or masculinizing gender-affirming therapy concentrations," the study’s researchers concluded, as reported by POZ.
The study, led by Dr. Jill Blumenthal of the University of California San Diego, examined whether lenacapavir interacts with gender-affirming hormone therapy, including estradiol (a form of estrogen) and testosterone. Because those hormones are metabolized by enzymes such as CYP3A4 -- which lenacapavir can inhibit -- the researchers analyzed whether the drug altered hormone levels.
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