Articles and Videos – Page 33

Texas Hospital Opens First-Ever Detransition Gender Clinic

Jun 1, 2026Jerry CoxLGBTLGBT, SAFE Act, Transgender

A Texas hospital has opened a “detransition” gender clinic following a $10 million settlement with the Trump Administration.

Over the past 20 years, the number of children who identify as transgender has skyrocketed — especially among biological girls. Many hospitals have opened “gender clinics” that prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones kids or even perform sex-change procedures on children. But public health experts and policymakers in the U.S., the U.K., Sweden, Finland, and other nations have found that science simply does not support these “gender transitions.”

These drugs and procedures carry serious risks — including infertility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density, and cardiovascular problems. Whistleblowers have come forward to testify about how they were rushed through gender transitions as children without understanding the procedures’ risks, consequences, or alternatives. Stories like these have prompted investigations and legal action.

Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston has agreed to stop performing sex-change procedures on children, pay $10 million in penalties, and open the first-ever detransition clinic in the country. The settlement comes after a joint investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Texas Attorney General’s office.

This is good news. Today we know pro-LGBT activists and medical organizations have been citing each other’s work in a circular pattern for years, manufacturing a fake consensus about performing sex-change surgeries on kids.

Recently, a jury awarded one detransitioner $2 million after finding that doctors committed malpractice when they performed a double mastectomy on her at age 16. Twenty-eight similar lawsuits are already working their way through courts across the country.

In 2021, lawmakers in Arkansas passed the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act. This good law generally prohibits doctors from performing sex-change procedures on children or giving them puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

A federal court upheld the SAFE Act last year — meaning it is protecting children in Arkansas at this very moment.

Arkansas was the first state in America to enact a law like the SAFE Act, but since 2021 lawmakers in more than half the country have passed similar legislation. These measures are on the books, protecting children. That’s something to celebrate.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

Young Soccer Athletes Especially Vulnerable to Gambling Problems: New Study

Jun 1, 2026Jerry CoxGamblingGambling, Sports Betting

A new study confirms what many have been saying for years: Gambling is a serious threat to young people — and the problem seems to be getting worse.

Most states in the U.S. have legalized sports betting, and more than half of men ages 18 – 49 report having an active sportsbook account online. Arkansans wagered a record $86.5 million in March alone this year. But this type of gambling is having a corrupting influence on athletics in the U.S. and around the world.

Researchers from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet studied 741 male junior elite soccer players from Sweden’s two highest national leagues.

The study found 32% of the players had gambled in the past year.

Among players 18 and older, that number jumped to more than 60%.

Nearly one in ten players showed signs of problem gambling, and even more alarming, more than one in five underage players reported gambling despite legal age restrictions.

The data is clear: Sports betting is corrupting sports and ruining lives.

The NCAA has opened investigations into dozens of student-athletes for sports betting violations. Federal prosecutors have announced indictments in connection with an alleged bribery and point-shaving scheme to fix college basketball games. Nearly half of Division I men’s basketball players have reported harassment from bettors on social media.

MLB players have been accused of rigging pitches to defraud sports betting platforms. The NFL and the NBA have also dealt with corruption and scandals tied to sports betting.

On the whole, most Americans do not believe sports betting has been good for society or good for sports.

Arkansas families need to understand that sports betting isn’t harmless entertainment — it’s predatory, and it’s growing.

As powerful corporations try to make gambling part of everyday life, it’s important for Arkansas to protect its citizens and families from predatory gambling. Otherwise, gambling addiction will simply continue wrecking lives and hurting families in our state.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

Looking for God at Disney: Guest Column

Jun 1, 2026John StonestreetCultureChristianity, Culture

Disney Adults are an example of the new festivals, games, and liturgies invented to give life meaning without God.

In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche famously proclaimed “God is dead” in The Parable of the Madman. In it, Nietzsche warned that the modern zeal to rid the world of the divine would not turn out the way that the skeptics and utopianists hoped. In fact, the deed of killing God, Nietszche wrote, was far beyond what they imagined.

. . . how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?

Then, Nietzsche asked:

How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?

As far-seeing as he was, it is unlikely Nietzsche could have guessed all the ways this prediction would play out. John Calvin called the human heart a “factory of idols,” and our creativity in inventing “festivals of atonement” and “sacred games” knows no limits.

For example, a recent essay in The New Yorker described the rise of “Disney Adults,” who take multiple trips to the various parks each year, even taking on serious debt to do so. One young woman who was described in the article spent over $15,000 on six park visits in two years. That’s why, author Amelia Tate wrote,

So-called Disney adults have become a subject of online fascination, with many people now questioning how much it costs to be one. … It’s a genre of content that has become more popular, recently, with critics seizing on it as evidence that the Disney-obsessed are not only culturally but financially bankrupt.

Of course, Americans spend a lot of money on vacation, with many wanting to visit the same place over and over each year. But that is not what drives Disney adults. According to a pop-culture historian quoted in a New York Post article about Disney adults, the parks are “very appealing to childless adults who’re looking for a way to recapture or keep alive that feeling of delight and comfort.” One woman told The New Yorker, “It’s the nostalgic feeling of what brought you joy when you were little and you didn’t have the stressors of adult life.”

Anyone who has visited a Disney park can attest to remarkable attention to detail in creating an alternative world. The safety, cleanliness, rides, and even the smells are perfectly calibrated to produce an experience that is unmatched. One can walk through the gates and step back into childhood, and that’s nice sometimes.

And Disney is not even close to being the only way people seek meaning and fulfillment. From youth sports to fast cars to carefully built social media platforms to politics, humans can turn virtually anything into a focus of worship. What we live for become our gods. The practices we build to honor these things become our religion. And, as the Psalmist said, we will see ourselves in the image of whatever it is we worship.

The yearning of Disney adults is just one example of the new festivals, games, and liturgies invented to give life meaning without God. But in the end, even the good things of this world are only vanity, if not built on what is ultimately true and good.

Like all human beings with eternity in their hearts, Disney adults are creatures of longing. They may not know it, but nostalgia will not fill the God-shaped hole in their hearts. Neither will a scholarship or a Lexus or a million new followers. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” Indeed, but Disney parks, though fun places to visit (at least on days that are not too hot or crowded), is not the world for which we were made.

Even the most committed and indebted Disney adults aren’t necessarily crazy. But they are looking for God in the wrong place. Better instead to listen to St. Augustine, who, after many different attempts to fill his own longing, concluded: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”