Helena, Cat, and Grace will be labeled transphobic and hateful for speaking up, but their transparency offers a message of warning and of hope for real care that parents, policymakers, and people all around the world need to hear: Mangling healthy bodies is a sickness, not a cure.

The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters” is a cautionary tale that exposes not only how influential the spread of trans ideology is on social media and in doctors’ offices, schools, and therapy sessions, but also how that same ideology weaponizes vulnerable young women’s identity struggle against them.
The film from the Center for Bioethics and Culture documents the testimonies of three women — Helena, Cat, and Grace — who went through various forms of so-called “gender-affirming” prescriptions and procedures only to discover that the wrongly named “treatments” marketed to make them feel better about their bodies did more harm than good.
The featured women do not shy away from mentioning the irreversible procedures and damage this mutilative movement had on their bodies and souls, but they also don’t leave viewers feeling hopelessly doomed in a world that works overtime to normalize the destruction of healthy bodies.
Social Contagion
The documentary starts with the women explaining not just how they learned about transgender ideology but why it appealed to them.
“I don’t think anybody would have described me as gender nonconforming, or a tomboy or anything like that,” Helena admitted.
Though Helena said she never would have been considered “gender nonconforming” or even a tomboy, after hours of scrolling Tumblr, the social contagion of transgender ideology took root in her mind and began fueling her mental health problems.

“By the time I was about 13, I started to feel really depressed. I started self-harming. I started developing an eating disorder. That kind of isolation led me to go on Tumblr because I was spending a lot of time online generally,” Helena said. “I was introduced to a belief system that it had a lot to do with gender, but it was more like, ‘If you don’t fit in, that’s a sign that you’re trans. If you don’t like your body, that’s a sign that you’re trans. And if you transition, all these problems will be fixed.’”

Similar to Helena, Cat’s interest in “transitioning” was piqued when she was 13 after she visited a website boasting all things trans, prompting her to determine she had gender dysphoria.
Grace testified that she had “a lifelong like preoccupation and discomfort with my body” that turned out to be a “very normal sort of young adult female issues.” It’s not uncommon for children and young adults like Grace to feel uncomfortable in their growing bodies, but the vast majority outgrow their sex-related woes if left alone. For instance, in one Canadian study of boys with gender-identity disorder released last year, over time, nearly 88 percent of the subjects “desisted,” or abandoned their desire to identify as the opposite sex.
Grace, however, wasn’t left alone. After years of feeling “lost,” suicidal, and depressed, she jumped at the opportunity to alter her body. Grace also attributed her eventual decision to take testosterone and go through with a double mastectomy at 23, something she said she regrets, to “trans influencers” online.

“I was looking at trans influencers who had the body that I wanted and reading all of that stuff like the happy testimonials, also feeling the hysteria of the online trans community which was really freaking out because Donald Trump was president and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be illegal to transition.’ It felt like it was a little bit of time pressure,” Grace said.

How could vulnerable young women not entertain the idea of “transitioning” when it is marketed as the end-all to their mental distress? Especially since it is plastered all over social media, and “doctors” advertising castration and mutilation get endless positive press coverage.
There’s plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that kids, especially girls, are heavily influenced by this shameless online trans peddling and the ideology’s popularity among their friends. That’s why “transition” procedures on U.S female adolescents alone quadrupled between 2016 and 2017.
The online world of trans ideology is so pervasive that when Grace began to question whether amputating her breasts was a wise decision, she admitted that she believed she was experiencing “internalized transphobia.”
As Helena explained, it was easy to get swept up into the world of “social justice ideology” with just a few taps on a screen:
In this social justice ideology, there’s kind of a hierarchy of who is the most oppressed versus who is the most privileged. The further along you are on the oppressed scale, that means you know that your opinion is listened to more. I found myself in this place where I had found the only community of other girls who are more like me in terms of personality.
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As Christians look to upcoming elections and consider vital issues facing our public square, we must not be found silent nor unintelligible in our ethical convictions. Silence and underdeveloped theses for the verity of our moral vision are both an affront to our mandate and the duties of discipleship. At a bare minimum, Christians must express our biblical convictions in the voting booth, electing candidates that will uphold justice and promote the good. Christians must also articulate our convictions on abortion, marriage, and why the entire array of the LGBTQ rainbow revolution spells disaster for any nation that hopes to achieve flourishing. We also need Christians contending for the rights of children against the onslaught of “gender medicine.” In short, evangelicals must be more political, not less.“If the church fails to apply the central truth of Christianity to social problems correctly, someone else will do so incorrectly.”[1] The twentieth-century theologian Carl F.H. Henry (1913-2003) made that argument in 1964. Regrettably, his thesis has held true over the past sixty years. But this doesn’t have to be. The moral decadence of American politics and culture can be reversed, but only through a God-given combination of spiritual graces. Theological conviction, moral clarity, and public courage on the part of American evangelicals are what is needed, and in this essay I hope to show how Carl Henry’s public theology is a good model for engaging our secular world.

The Disconnect Between Profession and Voting Practice
Consider, for example, the November 2023 elections. The various electoral contests in that year revealed a disturbing insight into the state of American society: our cultural consciousness has been discipled by a resurgent neo-paganism. Indeed, ever since the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the pro-life movement has endured significant setbacks and legislative defeats; and these failures occurred in what we thought to be deeply conservative states with high church attendance. In 2023, Kentucky reelected its Democratic governor who supports little to no restrictions on abortion. The residents of Ohio, where 73% of adults claim some manner of Christian faith (and 29% are evangelicals), passed a constitutional right to abortion in 2023.
These developments were captured in Ligonier’s 2022 “State of Theology” survey, which uncovered troubling realities not only about society, but amongst those who called themselves evangelicals. On the question of whether gender identity is a matter of choice, 42% of Americans agree that it is. Amongst evangelicals, that number is only slightly better at 37%. While 91% of evangelicals believe that abortion is a sin, exit polls from Ohio’s recent vote to enshrine abortion access as a constitutional right show that at least a quarter of white evangelicals support unfettered access to abortion. There is clearly a disconnect between what evangelicals believe to be unjust and their actual vote for unjust practices.
That same Ligonier survey also revealed the following about evangelicals: 43% believe that Jesus is not God; 26% say the Bible is not literally true; and 38% contend that religious belief is mere opinion rather than about objective truth. Is it any wonder that secularism triumphs when those who apparently bear witness to the truth of God’s revealed will have strayed from their obligations as disciples of Jesus Christ and have departed from the authority of God’s Word?
There is no Middle Ground
Our minds will either be conformed to this world or transformed by the Word (Rom. 12:2). In this scheme, no neutrality exists. The absence of obedience and the lack of abiding in Christ spells disaster for the Christian. We will find ourselves imaging this world, looking less and less like Christ with minds contorted by godlessness and worldliness.
This principle extrapolates into the broader culture. The Christian worldview rejects the myth of moral and ethical neutrality in the public square. Carl Henry stood upon that conviction, declaring that every contour of society—from its customs and culture to its legal structures—would either abide in the verity of God’s created order or conform to something else. Either the central truths of the Bible and its comprehensive moral framework would guide our civil and political communities, or a neo-paganism would nourish a national collective consciousness.
Indeed, Henry believed that “the fate of the Bible is the fate of Christianity and even of civilization itself.”[2] The eviction of the Bible and a biblical worldview as the ballast for society means the abandonment of the only stable source for societal flourishing. Dislodging the binding authority of God’s eternal law and his Word coincides with the embrace of ethical relativism and moral malleability. The result of this condition, Henry warned, was “society’s inevitable theological, spiritual, and moral suicide.”[3]
Failure to relate God’s revealed will to the broader society means surrendering our neighbors, communities, states, and nation to the ravages of a humanistic paganism. True human rights and human liberty, rightly understood, will disintegrate under the corrosive acids of moral relativism. Indeed, the democratization of ethics created the conditions for suffocating the vitality of families, the life of the unborn, and the recognition and respect of ontological reality in sex and gender. The stakes could not be higher.
Carl Henry’s Clarion Call
Carl Henry dedicated much of his career to the issue of public theology. The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, published in 1947, called for a renewed evangelical engagement in the public square. He cast a vision for an evangelical movement that avoided the isolationist tendencies of fundamentalism while also providing a theologically orthodox alternative to Protestant liberalism and the social gospel.

In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days.  Here are numbers 21-30.

In 2021 The Aquila Report (TAR) posted over 3,000 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read.
TAR posts 8 new stories each day, on a variety of subjects – all of which we trust are of interest to our readers. As a web magazine TAR is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will inform the church of current trends and movements within the church and culture.
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 21-30:

The Tormented Decision on Homosexuality of The Presbyterian Church in Canada

The old distinction of 1985 in the PCC between an acceptable homosexual orientation and the forbidden homosexual practice did not last. On June 7, 2021 wide ranging changes were adopted. The old policy was labelled as exclusion, the sort of attitude unknown to a loving God. This has been replaced, or so they say, by God’s covenantal embrace. This means that in love the Lord now includes the “sexually immoral” who, according to Revelation 21:8, will be eternally excluded from the New Jerusalem.

Thoughts on the Present State of the PCA: A Series of Theses Presented by a Concerned Member—Part One

That the foremost sufferers of our present deeds are those that are tempted with homosexual lust. For they need to be encouraged diligently with the assurance that their sin belongs to the old man that was crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:6), and that they are new creations (2 Cor. 5:17) who have been cleansed of their sin and who can and will finally overcome it (Rom. 6:12-14). And yet we set before them as leaders and models men who proudly claim their sin as an essential part of their identity, and who name themselves by it.

Cru Chose Critical Race Theory Over Christian Unity

Cru Elevated Ethnic Identity over Christian Identity. Of particular concern is Cru’s Cultural Training called the Lenses Institute. Lenses was an in-depth “cultural competency training for Cru staff. However, it functioned as an ideological re-education camp where Christian unity was replaced by the primacy of ethnic identity.

God’s Ordinary Deliverance from the Sin of Homosexuality: A Testimony

If something like the positions espoused by Revoice were being articulated in 2005, I almost certainly would have gravitated to them. Though I was no longer interested in dating, I think that if I had been told it was okay to identify as same-sex attracted and even to pursue celibate friendships with other women who identified that way, I would have been very receptive to the arguments.

A Response to the “Open Letter” to the PCA

Instead of expressing sympathy towards the legitimate concerns of thousands around the PCA, the Open Letter highlights a slanderous claim that “the PCA is ordaining practicing homosexuals,” a claim that I’ve never heard. Not even once. Rather than give attention to the real pressing issues facing the PCA, the Open Letter regrettably diverts the reader’s attention to a Red Herring.

The Vote Tally of PCA Presbyteries On Overtures 23 and 37

Thus far, 51 of the 88 PCA presbyteries have voted on Overtures 23 and 37. The remaining presbyteries will begin voting at their respective meetings beginning in January 2022, with 20 presbyteries voting during January; by then, a clearer trend will become obvious as to whether these amendments will receive the required 2/3 votes of the presbyteries.

A First-Time Commissioner on SSA and CRT At the PCA General Assembly

Lastly, to those thinking this response lacks compassion toward the sexually broken and frustrates our ability to counsel those struggling with SSA, I would suggest that clarity is more compassionate than confusion. Equivocating on homosexual sin hinders our witness. SSA is a heinous sin (Colossians 3:5). It is unacceptable to adopt a gay Christian identity (Galatians 2:20).

The Three “U”s and PCA Overtures 23 and 37: Part 1

There is a world of difference between identifying our sin so as to mortify it and identifying by our sin as a component part of our Christian identity. Every Christian is called to identify his sin, take it to the cross in faith and repentance, and ask God for an increase of grace to war against the desires of the flesh. Far from singling out our brothers and sisters who struggle with SSA we are simply calling on them to join the rest of us who are no less committed to being renewed in the whole man after the image of Christ.

Ravi Zacharias was a Liar, Sexual Pervert and Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. This Report Proves It

The evidence is clear.  Ravi Zacharias was a liar, a sexual pervert, and an abusive, deceitful manipulative, greedy hypocrite.  This goes way beyond one incident, one fall.  It reveals a lifestyle and pattern over many years.  He fooled many people, shamed his family and brought disgrace upon the Church. He was someone of whom the Scripture warns us – a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

A Final Plea to the 48th PCA General Assembly

As a denomination, you men of God will face a major issue this year that has already caused many congregations to leave the PCA, and may very well cause a major split in the PCA.  Will teaching elders (and ruling elders) who identify as gays (or homosexuals) be allowed to hold office in this branch of the Lord’s Church?  The answer should be clear.  Absolutely not!  Action must be taken now.  It must be taken this year.