Inside the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday, justices heard oral arguments on whether Section VII the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protecting individuals from discrimination because of their sex applies to homosexuals and transgenders.
But as attorneys made their pitches in the courtroom, Walt Heyer was making his own case about the lies being told about gender dysphoria on the steps of the High Court.
Heyer has credibility on the subject: In his 40s he started taking hormones, had gender reassignment surgery and lived as Laura Jensen for eight years.
“It all started when I was four-years-old and my grandmother started crossdressing me and I enjoyed it very much,” Jensen said. “But that cross dressing started a confusion within me about who I was.”
“And it was in 1944 before we had any words like gender dysphoria,” Heyer said.
“I was just a confused kid that was being affirmed by my grandmother who actually caused me to have this tremendous confusion, which started this journey to transgenderism,” Heyer said.
Heyer said it was when he starting studying to be a counselor that he uncovered the truth about his own life.
“I wanted to be a therapist,” Heyer said. “So I studied at U.C. Santa Cruz and realized in studying the books in the stacks that people who identified with gender identity disorder had mental disorders.”
“And I thought we’re not approaching this from the right direction,” Heyer said on the steps of the Supreme Court. “We need to be addressing the co-morbid problems that are causing people to believe they’re a different gender.”
“It seems to be compassionate to me to reach out to those people and actually guide them in the right direction and not fill their bodies with hormones and cut body parts off and rearrange everything in their lives so their lives are totally destroyed,” Heyer said.
Heyer, who has lived as a married man for the past 21 years, has a website, sexchangeregret.com that he said hundreds of thousands of people have visited.
“Today we have a worldwide ministry that reaches over 300 million people a year and people now are de-transitioning in the hundreds,” Heyer said.
Heyer also wrote about his life in USA Today earlier this year:
I was 50 when I had the breast implants removed, but the next few years were spent in confusion and counseling. In 1996, at the age of 55, I was finally free from the desire to live as a woman and changed my legal documents back to Walt, my biologically correct male sex. I still have scars on my chest, reminders of the gender detour that cost me 13 years of my life. I am on a hormone regimen to try to regulate a system that is permanently altered.
Had I not been misled by media stories of sex change “success” and by medical practitioners who said transitioning was the answer to my problems, I wouldn’t have suffered as I have. Genetics can’t be changed. Feelings, however, can and do change. Underlying issues often drive the desire to escape one’s life into another, and they need to be addressed before taking the radical step of transition.
After de-transitioning, I know the truth: Hormones and surgery may alter appearances, but nothing changes the immutable fact of your sex.
Heyer told people gathered at the Supreme Court — many there to protest for homosexual and transgender rights — that he has compassion for people who are struggling with their gender dysphoria but that true compassion calls for telling them the truth.
“I have tremendous compassion for those people who are struggling deeply with their identity and we all need to love them and have compassion for them,” Heyer said. “But compassion isn’t filling them with hormones; cutting off body parts.”
“It’s addressing the issues that are causing them to feel that way,” Heyer said.
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