Protesters hold placards during a rally against gender-affirming care in Nashville, Tennessee at the War Memorial Plaza on October 21,2022. (Photo by SETH HERALD / AFP) (Photo by SETH HERALD/AFP via Getty Images)
A Toronto psychologist has become one of the most in-demand expert witnesses helping U.S. states defend laws that ban gender-affirming care. He says he's just sharing the science, but major medical associations disagree.As some U.S. states work to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth, a Toronto psychologist has become one of the most in-demand witnesses called on to question mainstream medical opinion under oath.
By the end of the rally, the politicians had vowed to ban what's known as gender-affirming care for minors, which usually involves hormone treatments rather than surgery.Members of the Proud Boys stand behind Tennessee state troopers at the rally against gender-affirming care in Nashville. The state's Republican legislature passed a ban on such care for minors in 2023, now being challenged in court.
Cantor is one of the most in-demand witnesses for states defending their transgender policies in court. "I will give the science to whoever it is that asks," Cantor said in a recent interview at his Toronto office. Older teens who wish to pursue transition can be given estrogen or testosterone in order to develop sex characteristics in line with their gender identity, according to the standards of care from medical organizations such asIt's already a record year for anti-2SLGBTQ bills in the U.S. Here are some of the rights rolling backMost major medical associations have since come to consider gender-affirming care as medically necessary, and with the expansion of gender clinics in the U.S.
"Homosexuality in the biblical scripture is an abomination. And our constituents, in majority, believe that," said Sabi Kumar, a Republican representative in Tennessee who has sponsored several bills considered anti-trans, including the state's recent ban on gender-affirming care. "If another child my age needed life-saving health care and it was denied to them, people would lose their minds," said Zane Batts, a trans 15-year-old from Knoxville.
"They can't get up in court and say the reason for our laws is because we are ideologically opposed to transgender people," said Block, who is representing the ACLU in its case against Tennessee.Cantor, who holds a PhD in psychology from McGill University, is in some ways an unlikely ally for the Christian right.He compares his alliance with social conservatives to the U.S.
It wasn't until 2021 that Cantor began testifying about transgender issues, after being asked by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group known for opposing LGBTQ rights.He also suggests that many teens who identify as trans are really just insecure about pending adulthood.
In Georgia, he also acknowledged that he only recently began authoring articles about gender issues and doesn't collect original data. Cantor's understanding of the science around gender care was forged during the years he worked at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health . "It challenges the conceptualization of male-to-female trans as normal, ordinary women who happen to have been born in the wrong body," Blanchard told the Daily Caller, a conservative news site, earlier this year.
Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist, is pictured at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto in 2006. He was fired in 2015 after an external review, then sued for wrongful dismissal and settled out of court. In a 2008 NPR story centred on a mother concerned about her effeminate son, Zucker is described counseling her not to let him play with girlish toys or draw pictures of princesses.Though the review did not reach a conclusion about whether conversion therapy was being practised at the clinic, CAMH said it was not meeting the needs of trans children and
Quentin Van Meter, a former president of the American College of Pediatricians, at his office in Atlanta. The American College of Pediatricians is a conservative lobby group that has taken positions against abortion and gender-affirming care. In a statement, CAMH said that amid a rise in "global anti-trans legislation," the centre is committed to "improving access to gender-affirming care and health outcomes for trans people." It has not reopened its youth clinic for gender care.Despite his own involvement with conservative lobby groups and politicians, Cantor doesn't see himself as culpable for the surge in anti-LGBTQ sentiment in the U.S.
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