GLAAD lashes out over study showing child sex changes are not 'life-saving'

On Monday, Senior Director of Communications for the GLAAD organization, Tony Morrison, lashed out at journalist Benjamin Ryan for reporting on a new study that found sex changes for minors are not "life-saving."

In a post on X, Morrison wrote, "It’s awful to hate yourself so much to write about junk science just to make yourself feel good." He added, "And as if writing for the [The New York Post] is 'journalism.'"

"I invite everyone to read my reporting and to offer substantive criticisms of it if they see fit," Ryan wrote in response. "But I do stand by my reporting."

Ryan's report in the Post was on a new study out of Finland which determined "that providing cross-sex hormones and gender-transition surgeries to adolescents and young adults didn’t appear to have any significant effect on suicide deaths."

It noted that the high suicide rate in gender-questioning youth was "tied to the fact that they had a higher rate of severe psychiatric problems, not to their gender distress."

The study, published February 17, looked at individuals under the age of 23 who entered Finland's centralized gender clinics between 1996 and 2019. Of the deaths in the population, 36 percent of them were due to suicide.

It notes, "the proportion of suicides was higher in the gender-referred group," but "when specialist-level psychiatric treatment was controlled for, neither all-cause nor suicide mortality differed between" the gender-referred group and the control.

Trans woman and psychologist Erica Anderson told The Post that the study is "going to make a big splash."

President of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Marci Bowers said, "Suicide is and has always been a poor way of measuring the efficacy of gender-affirming care," and advocated to refocus the conversation on medicalizing young people.

In recent years, the GLAAD organization has pushed back against any journalist who has reported the facts on sex change interventions on children. Last year it rented a truck in New York City that claimed the science on the matter "is settled," and demanded that The New York Times "Stop questioning trans people's rights to exist and access to medical care."

As for Ryan, his bio notes that he has received multiple awards from the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists for his dedicated HIV/AIDS coverage.