#105 | Navigating Youth
IDENTITY POLITICS | Mark Boonstra: "Our bodies are changing. Our hormones are raging. Our minds are continuing to develop."
NAVIGATING YOUTH
As singer-songwriter Kid Rock has said:
It was 1989, my thoughts were short, my hair was long. Caught somewhere between a boy and man.
Those adolescent years.
They are not easy. It’s a confusing time.
Our bodies are changing. Our hormones are raging. Our minds are continuing to develop.
We are neither children nor fully adult.
So, at what point are we capable of making major-life decisions?
And at what point should we be held personally accountable for our actions?
Under the 26th Amendment to the United States Constitution, we acquire the right to vote at the age of 18.
In my home state of Michigan (and elsewhere), the legal age of majority is also 18, and a person then has the “duties, liabilities, responsibilities, rights, and legal capacity” of an adult.
There are exceptions.
The legal drinking age in Michigan was changed to 21 in 1978.
The age of consent (for sexual activity) is just 16.
And in 2023, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommended that the age for allowing gender-transition hormones be lowered to 14, and that the age for allowing gender-transition surgeries be reduced to as low as 15.
Our kids are now reaping the consequences of that woke mindset.
But so are the evil purveyors of what can only be described as child abuse.
Lost in the din of the leftist anarchy recently playing out in Minneapolis and Los Angeles was a $2 million jury verdict in the state of New York.
It was the first chink in the transgender armor. But surely not the last.
At the tender age of 16, Fox Varian thought she identified as male. Gender dysphoria, they called it.
As I said, those adolescent years are confusing ones.
And the transgender warriors encouraged her to play God.
To ignore that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” [Genesis 1:27.]
And they instead prodded her to take drastic steps to mutilate her own God-given body. They told her that she could change her gender from female to male.
As if she really could.
She underwent, in addition to life-altering hormone treatment, what is cavalierly referred to as “top surgery”—surgically removing her perfectly healthy breasts. At the age of just 16.
Well, a jury has now declared that Varian’s psychologist and plastic surgeon should be held accountable—to the tune of $2 million.
Varian’s mother, who opposed but ultimately acquiesced to the surgery, described the psychologist as “just so emphatic, and pushing and pushing, that I felt like there was no good decision.” Of the warnings that Varian might otherwise commit suicide, she said, “I think it was a scare tactic. I don’t believe it was malice; I think he believed what he was saying—but he was very, very wrong.”
Now, let’s look at the other side of the Left’s hypocritical coin.
The same woke ideologues—who believe that children are equipped to decide to “change their gender” by mutilating their bodies—also believe that even young adults cannot be held accountable for the most heinous, criminal conduct.
Why?
Because, they say, their brains are not fully developed.
I kid you not.
So, which is it? It simply can’t be both.
Some years ago, the United States Supreme Court (in Miller v Alabama) held that it was unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile convicted of murder to mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But the Court drew the line at the age of 18—the age of majority.
If you are an adult, it said, you may still be held fully accountable for your conduct.
Since then, however, the Michigan Supreme Court has extended the “protected” age to 19. And then it went to 21. With hints that it may extend it further, perhaps to 25!
Why?
Because there are “studies” that say the human brain continues to develop until the age of 25.
So, children are mature enough to make life-altering decisions, including mutilating their own bodies.
But adults are not mature enough to be held personally responsible for the most heinous, wrongful conduct.
As I once wrote (hoping the higher Court might hear me):
I would respectfully suggest that the people of Michigan deserve a clear and cogent articulation of why legal adults (or even minors) are categorically deemed under the law to be of sufficient maturity to exercise decision-making in the most weighty and consequential matters they will confront in our society during their lifetimes—with respect to such matters as voting, entering into marriage, entering into binding contracts, making a will, aborting the unborn, engaging in procreative activity, or taking measures to alter one’s gender—but are not similarly deemed to be of sufficient maturity to be held accountable for the most grievously-imaginable criminal wrongdoing.
We are still waiting for that explanation.
So, in this world of uncertainty and hypocrisy, how do we help our children navigate the difficulties of youth?
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. [Ephesians 6:4.]
Teach them to rebuff the evils foisted their way, and to commit none of their own.
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. [James 4:7.]
Teach them the words of the Apostle Paul:
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. [Romans 12:2.]
It will serve them well, not only during those confusing years of their youth, but throughout their lives.
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. [Proverbs 22:6.]
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