On line 135, a word is misspelled. “forbearers” should be “forebears."
You are correct that sex is assigned at birth, but I wonder if you might think more about how our society enforces and assigns gender.
Except in the rare family who fights the system daily to give their child space to grow into their own gender, gender is assigned and rigidly enforced from Day 1 (sometimes sooner–I’m sure you’ve heard of “gender reveal parties,” which enforce gender norms based on the presumed sex of the baby). Babies assigned the sex of “female” are assigned the gender of girl instantly, given the pronoun “she,” and subjected to misogyny before they can tell us what their gender is. We paint their rooms pink and decorate them with flowers. When my daughter was born, I was aghast at the ways in which clothing separates boys and girls, and how hard it was to find things that were gender-neutral. Similarly, babies assigned male at birth are assigned the gender of boy, and everything in our society pushes them towards agreeing with that.
It is precisely this rigid enforcement and assigning of gender from birth that causes psychological, emotional, and spiritual harm in those of us who don’t find ourselves fitting into it.
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I consider myself, as my significant other does, gender non conforming. We do not support the tradition of gender as it has been expressed as separate from sex. And, now that we have it distinctly considered more broadly in society as different than sex, it becomes even more important to precisely use the two words gender and sex.
I still recall volunteering at the local Salvation Army, with a nonprofit that worked to address LGBTQ issues along with anti-racism efforts, and asking why we felt the need to separate out the toys into clearly gendered groups. The preponderance of pink in the “girl’s” section loudly made clear the preference of the Salvation Army,a nd tolerance of my own organization as volunteers, for the gender norms of yesteryear. I agree with your sentiment.
Yet, we must be wary of being sentimental in formal articulation of covenant and purpose. If, as was declared in day one of general assembly this year, we respect the beliefs of others, some others still believe such and the distinction is important. We can work to dismantle gender as institutionalized along a binary sexual norm, and arguably should, but we must be careful not to lose the ground gained by separating gender and sex grammatically and ideologically.
Sex continues to be assigned at birth, gender is “enforced” from birth by many, yet not all. I agree, and we have work to do there still. In formal articulation, though… precision matters here.
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Have you read the so-called “WPATH files” (copies of posts to an internal WPATH message board)? There’s no there there.
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The Cass Report’s “debunking” isn’t a debunking. They cherry-picked studies to include in their review to justify the position they already had: that youth should not have access to gender-affirming care. Eg they discarded studies for not being randomized controlled trials when RCTs would be both unethical and flatly impossible to conduct in this context—if a youth is taking puberty blockers or HRT, the study can’t be blinded because the effects will become obvious fairly quickly.
If trans people simply make you uncomfortable, and you don’t like the idea of youth having gender care, and you just think everyone should make their peace with being cis, just say so. Don’t pretend that your concern comes from a place of “following the science.” That’s a bad-faith line employed as a thin pretext for prejudice. I prefer it when people who believe my community shouldn’t have rights are honest about their motivations.
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She is not hard of hearing and does not have difficulty hearing. She resists hearing things that cause cognitive dissonance.
I am having a difficult time with the youth portion. Children are struggling to explore their identity until they have had real world experiences. With that said: it is there right to be free to choose and I would not want their rights taken away because others who have no idea what they are going through make decisions for them.
Yes, youth are exploring their identity but most queer youth know from a very early age that they are somehow different from a very early age. That was the case for me, even though I didn’t realize that I was asexual until I was in my forties! And I’ve been a UU since I was 18.
When talking about trans youth in particular we need to be careful. A lot of talk (and I would say fear-mongering) is around puberty blockers, HRT and surgery, all of which are used by a very small percent of trans youth who are already a very small percent of the youth population (keep that in mind when you hear dismissals of studies because they were performed on a “small population”). For most trans youth they are looking for support to explore and socially transition safely.
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Thank you for your response. even though the percentage is very low. People I know who have been
brainwashed into having an option will not be deterred. I do not want to stand in the way for anyone to make decisions for themselves and their experience. Thank you again for your response. It is greatly appreciated.
I understand the origins of Acts of Immediate Witness and the process by which they become part of the GA Business Agenda. Can someone help me understand the origin of this Business Resolution and the process by which it comes to be part of the agenda? I’ve been to a good number of GA’s and should probably know this but… I don’t.
If objective science, not in alignment with your ideology, just say so. Don’t go around making accusations against people who care about the individuals affected by bad science. I’ve seen too much suffering and dysfunction already.
Accidentally deleted post. Undeleting counted as an edit, too. Still figuring out this platform.
Thank you for articulating this, which I think is a fear shared by many who do not have as much direct experience with trans and nonbinary youth. As the parent of a trans kid, there was a point in the process where those kinds of concerns led me to a “let’s just wait and see” approach that felt very safe and reasonable to me, but NOT to my child. It took me time to process that while I was “waiting and seeing,” the process was not standing still…transition was still happening, in the wrong direction. This can be agonizing for the person whose body it is. I will also add that for many who oppose children’s and youths’ right to transition (and their adults’ right to support that right), there is no amount of convincing that will be sufficient, nor any amount of counseling, second and third opinions, and so on that will cause them to move back. Thus, as you say, it is a matter of trusting trans kids to know themselves, which I believe our UU faith calls us to do.
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Thank you for sharing, Sarah. And I hope I didn’t overstep in answering Terilsmail’s question - I’m not transgender nor the parent of a transgender person. Just trying to be supportive.
For the folks concerned about trans youth healthcare, I have written and researched multiple articles on the topic as a biologist, and have presented them above. They are relatively short and provide the basis of what trans health care looks like. I’ll repost the link for my reply to Dick Burkhart because they are collected as a concise list. These have all been written by me and used in other works too. 
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I may be a parent, but I’m not a transgender person, so we’re both speaking from a position of solidarity rather than lived experience as trans/nonbinary. I trust that if either of our posts lack nuance, we’ll be called in and will answer that call. <3
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Dick, you’re acting like a climate denier. You’ve cherry picked one scientific study that supports your already formed viewpoint and are choosing to ignore scientific consensus.
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fyi background on business resolutions Guide to General Assembly Business | UUA.org
Sasha, great job in the speaker line. I’m sorry I tapped out of the session I couldn’t take in more transphobia and purposeful intentional ignorance. Thank you so much for your labor here. I gotta get my heart out of my throat.
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Thank you Leilani. This is a difficult one to hear and distressing. Please take care of yourself as you need to, however you need to. 
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I just asked for you in Q&A About the GA Questions & Answers category - #2 by LeilaniDavenberry