This story was initially printed in Uncloseted Media, an LGBTQ centered investigative information outlet.
James Cantor grew up as a drama child on Lengthy Island, N.Y., the place he served because the president of a student-run theater firm in school. “I do benefit from the stage, I benefit from the music,” he says. “If I might sing, I would be on Broadway.”
Cantor by no means made it to Broadway, however on the morning of Might 5, 2022, he discovered himself exterior an Alabama courtroom making ready to play the very actual function of an skilled medical witness in Boe v. Marshall, a district courtroom case difficult Alabama’s Susceptible Youngster Safety Act, a legislation which bans gender affirming healthcare for transgender youth.
How the courts in the end resolve the case may have intense penalties for the kids concerned. However in an interview with Uncloseted Media, Cantor spoke about feeling like a personality taking part in a task. He says he has “simply the correct amount of age, grey hair, a little bit of an accent,” to make him seem like Central Casting’s concept of a medical skilled.
Cantor isn’t a medical physician, however moderately a psychologist and sexologist whose work has primarily centered on pedophilia, in addition to kink and BDSM. He has drawn controversy for his beliefs, together with advocating for the addition of “P” for pedophilia to the LGBTQ acronym and for the legalization of child-like intercourse dolls. He identifies as homosexual, and lives in Toronto.
Though he has testified underneath oath that he has by no means handled a single transgender baby, he wrote a report in 2019 criticizing the American Academy of Pediatrics for endorsing gender-affirming take care of minors. In courtroom, he typically cites his proximity to former colleagues like Ray Blanchard, whose theories about transgender girls have been extensively criticized; and Kenneth Zucker, whose clinic closed after accusations that it was performing conversion remedy on trans children.
Cantor says his perspective on trans points made him “marketable” to America’s conservative motion. That’s one cause he believes he was first employed in 2021 by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the self-described Christian authorized group that’s well-known for opposing marriage equality, favoring conversion remedy and defending legal guidelines that prohibit sodomy.
Cantor isn’t an uncommon case. Slightly, he’s a part of a slew of docs and psychologists who’re employed by ADF and different far-right organizations and politicians to defend trans healthcare bans in courtroom. For instance, there’s Paul McHugh, who favored shutting down the primary gender-affirming surgical procedure clinic within the U.S. in 1979; and Michael Laidlaw, who doesn’t specialise in gender-affirming medical care, however has said in leaked emails that his final objective is “to ensure that the Endocrine Society is embarrassed, publicly humiliated, and sued mercilessly” for supporting trans healthcare. These skilled witnesses typically have little to no expertise within the discipline of trans healthcare, and infrequently base their testimony on unsound science.
In an e mail to Uncloseted Media, Laidlaw mentioned he had “no remark.” McHugh didn’t reply.
“The ADF is wise,” says Heidi Beirich, the co-founder and chief technique officer on the World Challenge In opposition to Hate and Extremism. “They perceive they’ve bought to create their very own specialists as a result of what they consider isn’t in keeping with generally accepted science,” she says. The group hires individuals who don’t have particular experience relating to trans healthcare, however moderately agree with an ideology because it pertains to transgender individuals.
ADF is without doubt one of the most vigorous supporters of the lots of of anti-LGBTQ payments sweeping by means of state legislatures proper now, 78 of which might prohibit or ban entry to healthcare for transgender youth.
ADF was based in 1993 by Alan Sears, who co-authored “The Gay Agenda: Exposing the Principal Risk to Spiritual Freedom In the present day.” In 2016 it was designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Regulation Heart. During the last decade, ADF, with income of practically $102 million in keeping with its 2023 990 tax return, has promoted specialists like Cantor to assist argue their circumstances.
Harnessing pseudoscience has lengthy been a tactic of conservative actions, from arguing that Black individuals really feel much less ache to claiming that children with same-sex mother and father usually tend to battle later in life. “The far proper, and notably the anti-LGBTQ motion, have been perfecting this mannequin for many years,” says R.G. Cravens, a political science professor at California Polytechnic State College, San Luis Obispo.
Cantor’s function in lots of of those circumstances—together with Alabama’s Boe v. Marshall—is to offer scientific experience in assist of state legal guidelines which ban trans children’ entry to gender affirming healthcare, which incorporates entry to puberty blockers and hormones. The legal guidelines additionally ban gender-affirming backside surgical procedure, which is nearly by no means carried out on minors, and prime surgical procedure, which is carried out in very uncommon circumstances on minors aged 15 and older.
After ADF employed Cantor as an skilled witness on a trans-focused lawsuit in Kentucky, he says he was invited to ADF conferences the place he spoke to lots of of individuals—together with politicians and lawmakers from Lawyer Generals’ places of work—about his views on gender affirming healthcare and different trans points. Whereas he wasn’t paid for his speeches, Cantor says it was value it “for the networking with the individuals within the viewers.”
These appearances paid off. Since 2021, he has been employed by greater than ten state Lawyer Generals to function an skilled witness in dozens of circumstances that concentrate on trans points. He’s been flown from Canada to testify in West Virginia, Tennessee, Idaho, and past.
“ADF is sort of intelligent with this, as a result of by getting the AGs to take these points up, they’re even additional within the background,” says Beirich. “It makes the circumstances look extra reputable, as a result of they’re coming from an legal professional common on the state stage.”
ADF didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Cantor, a self-described “loudmouth New Yorker theater Queen,” compares his testimony to Marisa Tomei’s feisty character in “My Cousin Vinny,” and references “Ally McBeal” and musical comedy “Schmigadoon!”
“The primary time I used to be getting into courtroom, we have been simply laughing,” says Cantor. “It was simply teasing about how I really like being a performer on stage, having fun with an viewers, and right here I’m doing it in a courtroom.”
Cantor says he makes $400 an hour, which has garnered him a wage round $150,000 a 12 months—sufficient for him to largely shut down his non-public apply in Toronto.
“It’s simply dumb luck on my half,” he says, referencing the alternatives to testify in these circumstances.
Within the Alabama case, the state spent practically one million {dollars} on attorneys and greater than $500,000 on skilled witnesses like Cantor. These are taxpayer {dollars}. A number of specialists obtained $75,000 contracts for his or her testimony.
Gender-affirming healthcare for adolescents has been endorsed by the main U.S.-based healthcare group, together with the American Medical Affiliation, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychiatric Affiliation
“I’m actually not saying that this isn’t a sophisticated challenge and that there aren’t reputable medical discussions available, however what ADF is doing is stacking the deck with junk science,” says Beirich. “Their objectives are to not have a complicated dialog about gender transitioning care. Their objective is to move horrible punishing legal guidelines that harm trans children and their households.”
Along with hiring specialists like Cantor, ADF has commissioned notoriously anti-LGBTQ teams to supply research which they use to oppose gender-affirming healthcare.
In a leaked e mail from 2014, they requested the American Faculty of Pediatricians (ACPeds)—additionally a Southern Poverty Regulation Heart designated anti-LGBTQ hate group that was fashioned in 2002 in an effort to cease homosexual {couples} from having the ability to undertake kids—to supply analysis “written in a fashion that most of the people can simply digest” that may “substantiate the psychological hurt that may befall each sexes (however ladies/girls particularly) by having their proper to bodily privateness invaded by males,” and “that it’s regular throughout adolescence for youngsters to undergo a part once they determine (to some extent) with the alternative intercourse.”
In addition they requested a paper that exhibits that “those that have undergone hormone remedy and genital change surgical procedure… are not any happier despite the fact that they took these drastic measures.”
“This isn’t science, that is an agenda,” says Beirich. “In science you hypothesize about issues and also you check them with an open thoughts, regardless of the final result is.”
The ACPeds didn’t reply to Uncloseted Media‘s request for remark.
In response to a 2023 report by the Southern Poverty Regulation Heart assessing anti-LGBTQ pseudoscience, a lot of the analysis cited by these skilled witnesses was written by the identical small community of scientists, together with Cantor and quite a few members of the American Faculty of Pediatricians and different SPLC designated anti-trans teams.
“These teams have deliberately sounding scientific names as an effort to attempt to ensure that they’re capable of disguise the ideology that motivates them,” says Cravens, the California Polytechnic professor and editor of the SPLC’s report.
Many research cited to show that almost all trans youth finally cease being trans have been based mostly on information collected as early because the Seventies, which regularly embody contributors who weren’t confirmed by the researchers to really be trans within the first place. The report additionally discovered that half of probably the most generally cited papers by skilled witnesses testifying in favor of those legal guidelines weren’t major research however moderately commentaries, editorials, narrative critiques, or perspective items. “Whereas such output is a vital a part of the scientific file,” the report defined, “it ought to nonetheless not be conflated with research or systematic critiques, as these types of contribution usually characterize the subjective (nevertheless knowledgeable) positions of their authorship.”
“It was wonderful to us how regularly letters to the editor of scientific journals confirmed up in case briefings,” says Cravens. “Members of this anti-LGBTQ community will write a letter to the editor of one other scientific journal and it’s mainly a press release of their opinion. It has nothing to do with scientifically confirmed proof.”
One of many extra commonly-cited sources, for instance, is a six-page criticism of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ coverage on trans healthcare, written by Cantor himself, which cites solely two research and was initially printed on Cantor’s private weblog. One other is a 2018 research that means children develop a trans identification by means of so-called “Speedy-Onset Gender Dysphoria,” the place they change into trans by being uncovered to trans individuals on-line. The research has been extensively criticized for being largely based mostly on interviews with mother and father contacted by means of anti-trans web sites. “Speedy-Onset Gender Dysphoria” has been extensively discredited by mainstream scientists, and the paper’s writer has since issued corrections to a few of its conclusions.
“They have been recruiting individuals from web sites that have been mainly mother and father not wanting their children to be trans,” Cravens mentioned. “Whenever you go searching for a solution, you are in all probability going to search out it.”
Despite this, Cantor nonetheless firmly believes on this analysis.
“We have now 5 % of the complete inhabitants [who are transgender] which got here out of nowhere when smartphones have been invented,” he says. “They don’t seem to be trans, they simply hate their very own our bodies.”
Cantor says he was personally suggested by his ADF “coach” on the best way to testify successfully. One in all their key suggestions was to concentrate on casting doubt on the opposing skilled witnesses’ testimony, moderately than attempting to persuade the decide.
“It’s actually in all probability not going to occur that the decide listens to me and decides, ‘Oh, that’s the scientifically superior argument,’” says Cantor. “Normally, it simply boils right down to specialists on the one aspect, specialists on the opposite aspect, and everybody else is aware of they don’t know. So actually, the job is to tie myself up with dynamite and throw myself on the opposite skilled and neutralize us each.”
This scientific manipulation is without doubt one of the key elements—alongside testimonials from detransitioners—of a authorized technique which has introduced ADF a lot success. After over a 12 months of authorized battles, a federal decide allowed the state of Alabama to implement its Susceptible Youngster Safety Act. Whereas LGBTQ advocates have continued to attraction this resolution, the legislation has been in impact since August 2023.
Cantor continues to be very lively. Two months in the past, he testified in favor of an Ohio legislation that bans gender-affirming healthcare for teenagers and prohibits transgender athletes from competing in ladies sports activities. The state—and Cantor—received that case on the trial courtroom as effectively, although the ACLU says they plan to attraction the choice.
And whereas numerous Ohio youth misplaced entry to what many scientists describe as essential healthcare, Cantor nonetheless bought to benefit from the highlight.
“In Ohio, there was a tv digicam for the information on the courtroom. The subsequent day on social media, all I stored listening to was what an excellent hair day I used to be having.”
This story has been edited since its unique publication in Uncloseted Media.
