With the topic of gender so prominent and even controversial in today's culture, parents of young children are looking for solid guidance and healthy answers.
In his new book "Exposing the Gender Lie: How To Protect Children and Teens From The Transgender Industry’s False Ideology," Summit Ministries president Dr. Jeff Myers, along with co-author Brandon Showalter, aims to reveal the truth behind the current transgender rhetoric to help protect America's kids — and instill faith and solid values into their lives.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Myers suggested that the public’s perception of the "transgender issue" is misdirected. (SEE Dr. Myers discuss these issues in the video at the top of this article.)
"When a lot of people think about the transgender issue, they imagine drag shows or confused children," Myers said.
"But behind all of that is an industry that intends to make a great deal of profit off gender-insecure children — and an ideology that intends to gain a great deal of power from them," he added.
The gender dysphoria "crisis" emerged just as the internet and social media increasingly took hold of young minds, he said.
More than two-thirds of young women who are diagnosed as gender-dysphoric are found to have been excessively exposed to social media, Myers also said.
"The primary [group] who seems to be targeted by the industry are young women — many of whom feel insecure in their sexuality — especially as they move through puberty," he said.
He also said that young girls "may feel that their emerging sexuality is a threat to them."
Myers added, "That would be a pretty sad conclusion, but unfortunately not an uncommon one in a culture that seems to be governed by the sexual revolution, a culture that's ‘porn-ified' [and] a culture in which the abuse of young women is startlingly common."
Summit Ministries, a nonprofit based in Manitou Springs, Colorado, aims to support a "rising generation to embrace God’s truth and champion the biblical worldview," Myers said.
And while America’s youth have tumbled into a time of social media "contagion," the "twisting of language" could also be to blame, he said.
"It’s a given for a lot of young people today that there is no truth that can actually be discovered by us," he said.
"So, the only truth we have is what we socially construct for ourselves."
He added, "If that's the case, then there's no such thing as male or female. Those would be irrelevant categories. They're only meaningful if they are meaningful to you personally."
He also said, "But [then] there's also no such thing as justice or liberty. Those are also concepts that have no meaning if they have no meaning to you personally."
As a philosopher and faith leader, Myers pointed out that science and faith are "not at odds" with one another.
"From a faith perspective, male and female are not things to be avoided or transcended," he said.
"They’re not to be seen as a threat," he continued. "Rather, we’re to see them as harmonious toward one another."
The harmony of gender should be viewed in the same way as two roof pitches, Myers said.
Either pitch would collapse if it didn’t lean on the other; together they create strength when supporting one another.
"The maleness and femaleness of humanity are really important to understanding everything else about why we're here on this planet," he said.
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Myers emphasized how key it is that parents teach this to their children; parents should also openly talk about the influence of social media.
Once children move away from an "over-attention" on social media, he affirmed, this strikes a balance for other areas of their lives, including core needs and the ability to invest in others instead of obsessing over self.
"Regulating social media use is one of the most important things parents can do," he said. "It's a battle, unfortunately, that a lot of parents simply don't want to fight because they know that it will be a battle, at least initially."
Parents should speak with their children about what it means to be "made in God’s image as male and female," Myers said.
He continued, "We want our young men, rather than growing up thinking that they can be predators of those who are weak, to grow up seeing themselves as warriors and defenders and protectors of what is good and true and beautiful," he said.
"We want young women to grow up with the sense that the life-giving ability that God has given to them is not merely biological, it is [also] sociological — that they can breathe life into other people and communities, and that together men and women can work harmoniously," he said.
Every gender-dysphoric child Myers has worked with has had "severe needs that are much deeper" than gender, he also said.
Many of these kids have depression, anxiety and other forms of mental illnesses that deserve treatment, including childhood trauma, he said.
"There are any number of things that can cause that kind of trauma," he also said.
"But if we move people immediately to the gender clinic and say, 'We will medicalize this — we'll use pharmaceuticals and surgery to fix you,' then we are simply saying as a society that we think it's OK to mutilate the body in a futile attempt to heal the mind."
In other nations, there has been a "backing away" from premature gender-transitional surgeries and an emerging focus on resolving underlying mental co-morbidities, Myers noted.
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In 75%-90% of cases in which those mental and emotional needs are met, Myers said gender dysphoric issues dissolve by the time the child reaches the end of puberty.
But this approach is "very difficult" for society to agree to, Myers said, especially when there are "billions of dollars" to be made off gender medicine and pharmaceuticals.
"And sometimes that aspect of the health care industry pushes the agenda," he said.
Standards set by transgender activists 15 years ago insist that it’s "medically necessary" for a child who wishes to transition to do so socially, pharmaceutically and surgically, Myers emphasized.
This includes the use of puberty blockers, such as Lupron, often used to treat prostate cancer and endometriosis.
Hormone blockers are currently used without FDA approval and may result in "severe physical consequences," Myers warned.
"It is almost virtually guaranteed that [the child] will be sterile," he said. "They will also be a lifelong customer, as long as they want the effects to persist."
And the cost of continuing treatment could rise above $30,000 a year per child, Myers said.
Transitional surgeries have become a $2 billion-per0year industry, while pharmaceuticals are raking in "tens of billions of dollars," Myers also said, according to market analyses.
"[That is] the profit that could potentially be gained by pharmaceutical companies by medicalizing young children who are gender-insecure," he said.
Myers suggested that parents across the nation have agreed to move forward with these arguably risky procedures due to fear.
This was uncovered in a January 2023 study published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy that suggests the medical community is hitting parents with the ultimatum of a "standard" sexual transition for a gender-confused child.
If they refuse, they're confronted by the medical community with a "likelihood" of their child committing suicide, Myers said.
"They terrify caregivers," Myers said. "They make them believe that if they don't start by treating the gender issue first rather than the underlying trauma or other co-morbidities, then they are somehow abusing their child."
In his book, Myers debunks the idea that a lack of gender-affirming care increases suicide.
The risk of suicide, he said, "significantly increases" in some cases after transitional surgeries, according to multiple studies.
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"The rhetoric and the reality are very different," he said. "The transgender industry and ideology operate by creating fear. Fear that you will lose your child if you don't submit to their procedures. Fear that if you speak out, you'll somehow be canceled."
Myers feels many Americans "just want to be left alone" — and that they choose to remain silent to prevent offending others.
"We should all agree at the outset that we [should] not have a society that hides behind children and victimizes them under the pretense of trying to help them," he said.
"We [should] not have a society where pharmaceutical companies are able to make billions of dollars off gender-insecure people, especially children."
Myers stressed that society should "reexamine" approaches to therapy and mental health as an alternative.
"Dealing with those things first seems to me to be the sign of a healthy society," he said.
Myers' book "Exposing the Gender Lie" is available for free download at summit.org/protect.
