CVS Health’s “gender transition guidelines” for employees shows the drugstore chain catering to transgender employees by allowing them to use whichever sex’s restroom they prefer, insisting all others use their preferred pronouns, and providing medical leave for their gender transition, a Fox Business report says.
Fox Business, which reviewed the guidelines exclusively, reported Saturday:
[E]mployees are told they may be entitled to a medical leave of absence “under the Family and Medical Leave Act, state law, and/or CVS Health policy.” Transitioning employees are asked to tell their immediate leaders about their transition so the company “can provide support and to make your transition as smooth as possible.”
“You may also wish to have appropriate medical care to support your transition, including treatments such as hormone replacement therapy and/or gender confirmation surgery,” the guide reportedly also states, and asks transgender employees to “partner with your Leader and your Advice & Counsel representative, and to immediately report any issues that you might have with your employment, your work environment, and/or your Leader, co-workers, clients, and customers.”
According to the report, CVS Health’s “Guidelines for Supporting a Colleague who is Transitioning” urges non-transgender employees “to be an ally by asking colleagues to let them know if they say or do anything that makes them uncomfortable.”
“It says employees should become an ally to make a positive impact on a co-worker’s life, become an inclusive leader, champion and celebrate all aspects of diversity and to show compliance with the CVS Health Equal Employment, Affirmative Action, AntiDiscrimination, Anti-Harassment, and Anti-Retaliation Policy,” Fox Business reported.
Transgender employees are asked to “include their preferred pronouns in their email signatures,” inform others of their pronouns when they are introduced, and inform co-workers that they “won’t tolerate even subtle forms of discrimination or harassment in the workplace,” the report observed.
According to its reported guidelines, CVS states, “Any colleague, customer, or patient—transgender or otherwise–may choose to use the restroom and/or locker room that is appropriate to the gender they identify with.”
In its latest 2021-2022 Strategic Diversity Management Report, CVS states, “All colleagues were invited to participate in an LGBTQ+ allyship training program led by the Trevor Project, the leading LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization, as part of Suicide Prevention Month.”
Our studies show that LGBTQ youth who have at least one supportive adult in their lives are 40% less likely to attempt suicide.
Affirmation matters and can save lives. pic.twitter.com/Ym1CS1hheM
— The Trevor Project (@TrevorProject) April 17, 2023
While the Trevor Project is frequently cited by transgender activists, including Assistant Secretary for Health for the Department of Health and Human Services Rachel [Richard] Levine, M.D., the LGBTQ activist group is highly controversial since its so-called “research,” with its samples that often rely on online self-reports, predictably finds a startlingly high risk of suicide among LGBTQ young people.
Such reporting “frequently conflates suicidal thoughts and non-suicidal self-harm with serious suicide attempts and completed suicides,” observed Dr. Stephen Levine and his colleagues in a study published in March 2022 in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy:
Until recently, little was known about the actual rate of suicide of trans-identified youth. However, a recent analysis of data from the biggest pediatric gender clinic in the world, the UK’s Tavistock, found the rate of completed youth suicides to be 0.03% over a 10-year period, which translates into the annual rate of 13 per 100,000 (Biggs, 2022). While this rate is significantly elevated compared to the general population of teens, it is far from the epidemic of trans suicides portrayed by the media.
Stephen Levine also highlighted that “gender-affirmative care,” i.e., social, medical, and surgical interventions in response to gender dysphoria, is “still based on very low-quality evidence.”
“The many risks of these interventions, including medicalizing a temporary adolescent identity, have come into a clearer focus through an awareness of detransitioners,” he asserted, adding that while the lack of high-quality evidence for the success of these interventions should demand a comprehensive informed consent about their “risks and long-term outcomes,” the process is restricted by “erroneous professional assumptions; poor quality of the initial evaluations; and inaccurate and incomplete information shared with patients and their parents.”
The question of suicide is inappropriately handled,” Stephen Levine and his colleagues continued:
[T]he “transition or die” narrative, whereby parents are told that their only choice is between a “live trans daughter or a dead son” (or vice-versa), is both factually inaccurate and ethically fraught. Disseminating such alarmist messages hurts the majority of trans-identified youth who are not at risk for suicide. It also hurts the minority who are at risk, and who, as a result of such misinformation, may forgo evidence-based suicide prevention interventions in the false hopes that transition will prevent suicide.
The Wisconsin Daily Star also recently reported that TrevorSpace, an “affirming” social networking site for LGBTQ young people, aged 13-25, “is an arm of The Trevor Project.”
The site, the report observed, “allows children and adults (strangers) to communicate directly while encouraging discussions of human sexuality, sexual attraction, and sexual fetishes.”
Among the awards CVS touts in its report is the 2021 Best of the Best Corporation for Inclusion award from the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC).
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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photos courtesy CVS.
