Family · Nationwide · September 1, 2026
NIH Study Finds Puberty Blockers Don't Improve Mental Health in Kids
What Alinsky tactic is being used
2 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 1
“Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”
The whole edifice here rested on perceived authority rather than counted evidence: "the science is settled" carried hospitals, insurers and employers along while the flagship federally funded outcome study — an observational cohort of roughly 95 children — sat unpublished for years. When the FTC actually sued, WPATH told a federal court its Standards of Care are "opinions" offered amid genuine uncertainty. The consensus was, in part, a phantom army that depended on nobody asking to see the data.
Counter-Rule 1 · Reality Over Perception
Count the actual numbers. The phantom army depends on nobody checking whether it exists.
Count the actual numbers this month. Open the Federal Register text of the CMS rule (document 2026-16508) and the May 2025 medRxiv preprint yourself and note the real figures: about 95 youth, observational design, 24 months, no randomisation. Do the same with the "560 companies still cover it" line in the alert — find the named source before you repeat it in a meeting, and say "I don't have a source for that" if you can't.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
WPATH's "Standards of Care" served for years as the book of rules that everyone else — hospitals, state Medicaid programs, employer plans, courts — was told to live up to. Faced with the FTC suit, WPATH's own filing recharacterises that book as opinion. The tactic only ever worked because the gap between claimed authority and defensible authority went unexamined.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
Close the same gap in your own house before anyone else finds it. Get the actual plan document and Summary Plan Description for your church or employer and read what it pays for against what the institution says it believes — most people have never looked. If there is a mismatch, put it to the elders or benefits committee in writing, ask for the section number and the date the language was adopted, and keep the reply.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
Know where you stand
The free 4-minute assessment identifies your mountain and your institution’s capture phase — so alerts like this one arrive matched to where you actually stand.
Facing this yourself? Ask. Describe what is happening and get what the book, Scripture, and the law of your state say, with the exact words to use. Your first one is free.