Dr. Allan Josephson faced yet another hostile environment on Tuesday on the steps of the United States Supreme Court, where protestors held court to push for justices to insert gender identity and sexual orientation into the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect homosexuals from workplace and other types of discrimination.
Josephson, a psychiatrist and professor who led the child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Louisville School, lost his job after speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, in 2017 about treating children and teens for gender dysphoria.
“I found my university turning against me for asking that question,” Josephson said. “And some of my colleagues turned against me.”
“Within weeks my university demoted me despite numerous evaluations from administrators praising my skills and what I had done in my career and my professionalism,” Josephson said. “For the next year I endured a hostile environment and then finally I was effectively fired all for simply asking a question — why is this happening?”
As Josephson spoke, a woman with a megaphone tried to drown him out by shouting repeatedly, “Go home homophobe.”
“Tolerance is very popular these days especially among people who don’t show much of it,” Josephson said.
During his remarks, Josephson said gender dysphoria is real and damaging.
“Many of these children have serious distress, anxiety, depression, and they asked me what’s the best way to treat them,” Josephson said. “As a physician who cares about their patients my answer was straightforward.”
“The best treatment is always based on the understanding of what is causing the child’s distress,” Josephson said. “What does the confusion stem from?”
“Is it a physical problem or is it an emotional problem?” Josephson said. “As a behavioral scientist I could not bring myself to say this is just something that happens.”
“We do not approach any other medical condition that way, and we didn’t need to approach this one that way,” Josephson said. “We need to understand a condition before we plan treatment for it.”
“But I soon found out that ‘why’ is not a question a doctor can asked these days at least when it comes to gender dysphoria,” Josephson said.
The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal reported that Josephson said academia is failing in its purpose of educating students.
Josephson said in the Daily Signal report:
Universities are supposed to be places where you can exchange ideas and vigorous discussion, go back and forth. This marketplace of ideas as a metaphor is great, and that’s how science proceeds. That’s how we make progress. Unfortunately, many academic settings, including my own, are becoming more of an activist setting—meaning you’re not testing ideas, promoting the results of research; you’re asking for someone to agree with you, essentially.
“Josephson cautioned that universities need to stop being about groupthink and instead embrace debate and differences of opinion,” the Daily Signal reported.
“Today’s social activism is overriding academic inquiry and the search for truth and worst of all its overriding the well being of many patients,” Josephson said on the steps of the High Court, where several women held signs to support him that read “Protect Fairness for Women” and “#SexNotGender.”
Josephson warned Supreme Court justices of the gravity of their decision in three cases, one by a man who was fired from his job at a funeral home when he told his boss he was going to change his name and dress as a woman and two others by homosexual men who said they were fired because of their sexual orientation.
“If the Supreme Court reads gender identity into federal law, a lot of people will be silenced or punished for their views,” Josephson said. “I’m living proof of that.”
These cases are Bostock v. Clayton County Georgia, No. 17-1618; Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda, No. 17-1623; and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. EEOC, No. 18-107 in the Supreme Court of the United States.
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