Jordan Peterson asked Elon Musk why he is such an outspoken foe of so-called “gender-affirming care.” Musk countered that “gender-affirming care” is “a terrible euphemism…it’s really … child mutilation and sterilization….”

Then, pain etched on his face, he went on: “It happened to one of my older boys. I was essentially tricked into signing documents [giving permission for puberty blockers and hormones] for one of my older boys, Xavier…I was told Xavier might commit suicide.” He repeated again: “It’s incredibly evil.”

Then Musk spoke softly, haltingly — the way a person in pain speaks when they are just holding it all together—and said, “I lost my son, essentially. They call it deadnaming for a reason. It’s called deadnaming because your son is dead. My son Xavier is dead. Killed by the woke mind virus.”

….Elon Musk’s suffering, unfortunately, is not rare. The families who have gone through the exact same experience say that the pain of watching a child self-destruct, cheered on by gender evangelists (often other family members), is searing, raw, and unrelenting. The anger also runs deep. Anyone with a heart would feel great compassion for Musk, his son, and anyone who faces such pain, loss, and alienation because of a child’s so-called “transition.”

But zoom out from the personal tragedy for a minute and look at this story through a wider lens — and ask some questions.

First, what’s the heart of the problem here?

….When a teenage boy identifies as a woman, our objection cannot be that he’s simply too young and impressionable to decide for himself whether he is a man or a woman. It’s simply not true that, if he waits a few years until he’s more mature and then still claims a female identity, we can relax and say, “you know, he must be right.”

When an adolescent girl seeks a double mastectomy because she has convinced herself that she “feels like” a “man,” and she hates her female body because it doesn’t match her feelings, our best answer cannot be that “Honey, the evidence base is just inadequate right now. Let’s wait until the research definitively shows a lasting emotional benefit to amputating your healthy breasts.” It’s simply not true that a sound study showing some sort of psychological benefit to removing the healthy breasts of a teenager would somehow make it all OK.

This isn’t an age or maturity problem. It’s not an evidence problem either. It’s a deeper problem.

Young people like Xavier have been seduced by an anthropology — a belief system premised on the oldest lie known to man: “You decide. You decide what’s true for yourself.” You decide who you are. You decide what’s good or evil. You decide what makes you happy. You decide what to do with your body. (My body, my choice, incidentally, is the shared slogan of both the abortion movement and gender activists. Their movements are very intertwined, with Planned Parenthood now the second largest provider of cross-sex hormones for “gender transitions.”)

The whispered backdrop, the unstated premise of this refrain, is that “You know better than God what’s right for you.” You can disregard his moral precepts, his design for your bodies and relationships. Or even deny his existence, because you are the master of your universe. You decide….”

From a July address by Mary Rice Hasson at the Napa Institute via Catholic World Report.