Homosexuals Win IRS Decision To Give Tax Deductions For ‘Sex Change’

For Publication On Or After
December 13, 2004
by Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition

Washington, DC – The Massachusetts-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) has recently won a complaint against the IRS over tax-deductions for so-called “sex change” operations. The IRS apparently bought GLAD’s bogus argument that sex changes are medically necessary for individuals suffering from Gender Dysphoria (a mental condition where a person feels like he or she is the opposite sex).The IRS has given the homosexual/transgender activist movement a key victory, but it is my hope that this victory will be very short lived.

The homo/trans movement is currently guided by a belief that concepts such as male and female are simply cultural inventions that can be altered at will by the individual. In 1993, a transgender legal group issued the “International Gender Bill of Rights,” that declares: “It is fundamental that individuals have the right to define, and to redefine as their lives unfold, their own gender identity, without regard to chromosome sex, genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role.” This is a sure recipe for sexual confusion and life-long despair.

By giving tax deductions for unneeded “sex change” operations, the IRS is aiding in the homo-trans effort to undermine the biological realities of male and female. The simple fact is that no one can change sexes. A male who has his sex organs removed and takes hormones for breast enhancement is still genetically a male—not a woman. This is an unchangeable reality. A man can no more become a woman than he can become a Dodge Minivan. A person who thinks otherwise is delusional—and needs professional care.

An individual who suffers from Gender Dysphoria has a serious mental problem—and this cannot be fixed by hormone injections and the mutilation of a person’s body. He needs long-term, intensive therapy, not mutilation.

Dr. Paul McHugh, the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, has just written an insightful—and alarming—essay on “sex change” operations for the journal FIRST THINGS. McHugh saw the long-term results of “sex change” operations conducted at Johns Hopkins. Writing in “Surgical Sex,” he observes: “I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment. … we psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and natures of their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a life in the other sex. We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it [gender confusion].”

The IRS is “collaborating with madness” by giving tax deductions for unneeded “sex change” operations. The policy should be reversed immediately. And, the lunacy advocated by groups like GLAD should be aggressively opposed in the courts and in the court of public opinion. We have no social obligation to normalize a mental illness.

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