A psychiatry professor at Johns Hopkins University says children should not be allowed to medically change their genders because the treatments are similar to a “frontal lobotomies.”

“[Doctors] don’t have evidence that [the treatment] will be the right one,” said Dr. Paul McHugh, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Many people are doing what amounts to an experiment on these young people without telling them it’s an experiment,” CBN News reports.

“You need evidence for that, and this is a very serious treatment. It is comparable to doing frontal lobotomies.”

McHugh said there could be longterm negative impacts in using the hormonal treatments used for gender transitions, which McHugh says are “reckless and irresponsible.”

McHugh said he believes that children struggling with gender dysphoria are likely dealing with mental health issues or “being driven by psychological and psychosocial problems.”

“I think their mental problems, often depression, discouragement, are the things that need treatment,” he said. “I’m not positive about this. It’s a hypothesis, but it is a very plausible hypothesis, and it would explain why many of the people who go on to have treatment of their body discover they are just as depressed, discouraged, and live just as…

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (RNS) — Poor people have often told pastor Brian Combs that the hardest thing about standing at highway intersections holding up a cardboard sign and begging for money is not watching the windows roll up or hearing the click of automatic doors locking.

It’s seeing people avert their eyes.

So when Combs, pastor of Asheville’s Haywood Street, and his friend artist Christopher Holt began talking about collaborating on a project, they envisioned a fresco on an entire wall of the sanctuary featuring images of the poor and downtrodden.

When completed later this month, the 27-foot-by-10-foot composition will illuminate in bright colors the faces and gestures of the people who visit Haywood Street Church’s principal ministry — The Welcome Table, a dining room with a reputation as one of the best places to eat in this mountain town known for its creative spirit.

To Combs and to the hundreds of poor who stop in for a meal each week, the fresco is intended to make the invisible visible.

“The primary intent of church, in my opinion, is to communicate something about sacred worth,” said Combs. “In God’s sight, you are anything but a throwaway. You’re priceless. You’re royalty. That’s one task of urban ministry we take seriously.”

The fresco’s composition is loosely based on the Beatitudes, the nine blessings recounted by…

RNS) — The United Methodist Church’s deadline for petitions for its next global meeting passed Wednesday (Sept. 18), setting the terms for a final reckoning with LGBTQ issues that have divided the denomination for more than 40 years. 

The UMC’s General Conference 2020, to be held in May in Minneapolis, will consider the structure of what church leaders hope can be an amicable, and orderly, breakup of a worldwide church that is the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States. The various plans come in response to a vote earlier this year by the church’s decision-making body to strengthen language barring LGBTQ United Methodists from ordination and marriage.

That decision came in February at a special session of the General Conference that approved the conservative Traditional Plan, which centrists and progressives in the church have rejected and adamantly resisted. The resulting chaos has led some churches to withhold money from the denomination or to call for schism.

Bishops in areas that are growing within the denomination and widely seen as conservative, such as the Philippines and African countries, have urged unity in recent statements, even as moderates, most of whom are based in the United States, are optimistic about the prospect of formal separation.

“It’s not a divorce. It’s giving life to expressions of the church that are now…

Parts of Texas are underwater as Tropical Depression Imelda dropped more than 40 inches of rain in some counties around the Houston area.

The storm moved into the area on Tuesday with gusts of wind up to 50 mph. 

On Thursday evening, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced on Twitter that he had declared a state of emergency in 13 counties so that counties could have access to state resources.

I’ve declared a state emergency amid amid flooding from Tropical Storm Imelda.

This gives counties counties access to state resources as they respond to the flooding.

This adds to water rescue squads already deployed by TX.#txlege

https://t.co/jBe7GCn2Vi via @TexasTribune

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 19, 2019

According to ABC News, at least two people have been killed as a result of the flooding. One man, 19-year-old Hunter Morrison, was “electrocuted and drowned” while trying to move his horse during a thunderstorm, the Jefferson County sheriff’s office reports. 

Another man from Harris County reportedly died after he drove his van into floodwaters, and it became submerged. 

The Huston Fire Department also responded to a building collapse. According to a statement on the HFD Twitter, “The flat roof of a post office facility mail distribution area collapsed. The building was occupied at the time, but everyone made it out.” Three people were…

Four Christian students from popular evangelical college Wheaton are suing the city of Chicago over rules which they say restrict their ability to share the gospel in public parks.

The students, who are part of a Chicago Evangelism Team, overseen by the Office of Christian Outreach at Wheaton College, claim they have been prevented from evangelizing by security personnel working at the downtown “Millennium Park.”

Frustrated by the fact that they are being constantly blocked from sharing the good news of Jesus, these courageous students are now fighting back with a lawsuit.

“We desire to exercise our constitutional right to free speech through sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” said student Matt Swart in a press release, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “For the sake of every citizen who desires to make use of the rights our forefathers bled for, we pray that the City of Chicago amends their unconstitutional code.”

Religious freedom law firm Mauck & Baker, LLC, which is representing the students, has filed a motion in federal court requesting an injunction against the rules that restrict certain activities in Millennium Park.

“By its nature in history, public parks have always been completely open to speech activities,” associate attorney Sorin Leahu explained to the Christian Post.

One of the contested rules that city officials say…