Anti-LGBTQ industry relying on fake expert to amplify medical anti-transgender lies

The anti-LGBTQ industry is relying on 'professionals' such as Michelle Cretella to give out false information about trans people.

Like I've shown many times, when it comes to gay men, the anti-LGBTQ industry generally amplifies false experts in their attacks. A recent article in the American Family Association's American Family News shows how this tactic is being used against the transgender community.

The article Christian doc: Biden's 'mimicking' of lies endangering kids cites a physician by the name of Michelle to criticize President Biden's support of transgender Americans:

Biden, a long-time supporter of transgenderism, went so far as to mention it in his State of the Union message on March 1. Specifically, he used the occasion to promote the Equality Act, which has lost support even among Republicans who had backed it. 

 . . . Dr. Michelle Cretella of Advocates Protecting Youth tells AFN that she's convinced the president was simply mimicking what others are saying. "He's just parroting the lies of many public institutions that really are placing children at grave physical risk. No child is born in the wrong body," she argues. Cretella says the president proclaimed his support despite the growing evidence that transgender treatments are dangerous, irreversible, and divisive. 

"When someone like President Biden stands up there and actually gives credence to the lie that children could be trapped in the wrong body, that's psychological abuse," she states. In a recent interview, Cretella – a past president of the American College of Pediatricians – made the same charge against educators. School staff who encourage a transgender self-identification, she said, are "guilty of psychological abuse" for putting children at risk for embarking on a medical path that includes such long-term consequences as permanent sterility, depression, impaired memory, strokes, and heart attacks.

There are two things you should know about Cretella. 

First of all, the group she led as past president, the American College of Pediatricians,  has been called a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center:

The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group that masquerades as the premier U.S. association of pediatricians to push anti-LGBTQ junk science, primarily via far-right conservative media and filing amicus briefs in cases related to gay adoption and marriage equality.​ ACPeds opposes adoption by LGBTQ couples, links homosexuality to pedophilia, endorses so-called reparative or sexual orientation conversion therapy for homosexual youth, believes transgender people have a mental illness and has called transgender health care for youth child abuse.

In 2017, Cretella herself was called out by the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) for a piece she wrote criticizing trans health care. SAHM said that the argument she made was based on medical omissions, circumstantial facts, hateful interpretation and peripheral context: 

Earlier this month, the Adolescent Health News Roundup, compiled by Multiview and distributed by SAHM, included the article “I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse”. While SAHM welcomes opposing views and tries to include other perspectives in its weekly digest of news culled from around the internet, SAHM does not condone misinformation and hurtful, ideological opinion, not rooted in science or evidence-based medicine. 

The above-referenced article does not meet these standards and was included as “news” in error. It not only promotes a biased agenda, but does so with outright disregard for the facts. We sincerely apologize for including this alongside legitimate news stories and are currently revising our procedures to ensure this does not happen again.

SAHM refuted all of the points Cretella made in her piece and showed how she may have deliberately played loose with the facts. It also ended its piece with words Cretella and the entire anti-LGBTQ industry should take to heart:

One cannot claim to be an unbiased medical professional writing for the greater good when one’s entire article is predicated upon gender dysphoria as a choice. It is time to listen to our young people and help them be who they are.

(Editor's note -  SAHM's refutation deserves a read and a save for more than one reason. I have no doubt that Cretella's distortions have been copied by other transphobic groups and personalities. One thing about the anti-LGBTQ industry which I know for certain is their constant repeating of  the same lies and cherry-picked points.)