No, Vaccines Are Not the Primary Cause of LGBTQ+ Identities

And I'm not convinced they're the *primary* cause of rising autism rates either

Over the past couple of weeks, a handful of prominent vaccine-critical Substackers have put forward the argument that vaccines are the primary cause of the rising rates of young people identifying as LGBTQ+. The argument, in its most (over)-simplified form, is that vaccines are the primary cause of rising rates of autism and autistic traits, and that autism and autistic traits increase the likelihood that someone will identify as LGBTQ+ (the latter point is indisputable—I do not think there are many people who would deny that autistic traits are highly correlated with LGBTQ+ identification, gender nonconformity, and homosexuality, bisexuality, and asexuality).

First,

A Midwestern Doctor

posted this article:

How Vaccines Alter Intimate Relationships and Gender Identity

This was followed by a couple articles by

Toby Rogers

which discussed

A Midwestern Doctor

’s essay. Last week, he wrote:

“A Marxian take on trans would go something like this:

The state is poisoning the population on an unprecedented scale.

This is causing widespread endocrine disruption that is alienating people from their own bodies.

Corporations take advantage of this alienation by pushing dangerous treatments and surgeries that leave people infertile, scarred, and dependent on the fascist Pharma state for life.

This is what the ruling class does — it exploits any opportunity to increase its wealth, power, and control.”

Then, most recently,

Steve Kirsch

jumped in with a survey (sent to his subscribers) and these results (published later the same day):

Survey indicates sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender dysphoria are all primarily caused by vaccination

Now, at the risk of haemorrhaging subscribers, I’ll make a probably not-that-startling confession. Over the past few years I’ve become, ah, “vaccine questioning”, after a lifetime of never really thinking twice about vaccines and just getting injected with whatever I was told I needed to be injected with. But slowly, over the course of 2020-2023, my longstanding skepticism of psychiatry had expanded into a deep distrust of Big Pharma, allopathic Western medicine, and public health in general.

It started with the slow realization, in spring 2020, that the public approach to the Covid-19 pandemic was almost certainly going to increase the amount of death and illness in the longterm. It escalated with I took several hero-doses of magic mushrooms and multiple chronic health problems—some which I’d had my whole life—miraculously improved or all but disappeared.

At some point between seeing my provincial government tweet that believing Vitamin D can “prevent Covid-19” was “dangerous misinformation”¹ and watching my husband’s sense of taste and smell return hours after taking the Ivermectin I’d purchased over-the-counter at a Mexican pharmacy, I was pretty much done with trusting mainstream medicine, government, and media. I realized, as Christian scholar Paul Johnson once aptly put it; “The louder the abuse, the bigger the lie.”²

Ivermectin is an inexpensive, relatively safe, and effective treatment for Covid-19. I saw it with my own damn eyes. That’s why the mainstream went after it so hard and abused anyone who publicly admitted to taking it (e.g. Joe Rogan). Because it posed a serious risk to Big Pharma profits … from the vaccines …

There are few groups more vilified and mocked by the mainstream than the vaccine critics.

The louder the abuse, the bigger the lie.

So this is why I’ve started to watch documentaries I’m not supposed to watch, subscribe to accounts I’m not supposed to subscribe to, listen to podcasters I’m not supposed to listen to, and follow “crunchy” moms and functional medicine doctors on Instagram.

In other words, I’m very open to reading evidence that certain vaccines are not as safe or effective as advertised. That’s why I follow the accounts I mentioned above. And I really mean no shade to them, in particular to

A Midwestern Doctor

, who has published extensively researched essays on a variety of interesting topics, such as why the sun is actually good for you, why synthetic clothing and bras are bad for you, and how conventional osteoporosis care can make things worse.

I’m even open to the idea that vaccines might be partially contributing to the rise in LGBTQ+ identities, by partially contributing to the rise in autism. But to claim, as

Steve Kirsch

has, that vaccines are the primary cause of rising rates of homosexuality, gender nonconformity, and gender dysphoria based on a sample of 750 people who subscribe to him on Substack? That’s obviously ridiculous.

Kirsch gives an example of a clinic with 5,000 patients over 25 years, all unvaccinated, none of whom are what he refers to as “gender/sex cases.” Interesting, absolutely, and improbable, but seems to assume that lack of vaccination is the only difference between the patients at this clinic versus others. It does not seem to cross his mind that the kinds of parents who take their children to clinics such as this might parent differently in other ways too.

I wrote this long comment in reply to the survey³, which I’ve copied below, unedited (the last couple paragraphs are removed but I’ll share them at the end of the post).

“[T]hough there may be a virtually infinite number of causes of a complex system’s malfunctioning, there are only so many ways in which that malfunction can manifest itself.” — Iain McGilchrist, regarding autism not being a "unitary" condition (The Matter with Things, page 325)

The same goes for the various LGBTQ+ identities. There are a virtually infinite number of causes. Another commenter mentioned that all of her sons are unvaccinated, but the youngest is gay. That's not surprising because "the older brother effect" has consistently shown that the more older brothers a boy has, the more likely he is to be homosexual.

It makes some sense to me that vaccines could be *contributing* to the rise in LGBTQ+ identification and gender dysphoria, just as they most likely are *contributing* to the autism epidemic, but I think it's ridiculous to infer from correlational data like this that vaccines are the primary cause. No, there's too many confounding and intersecting variables. To give a well-established example, giving a child Tylenol before or after vaccination significantly increases the risk that they will later be diagnosed with autism, as Tylenol depletes glutathione and impairs the body's ability to detox heavy metals. Tylenol became the go-to painkiller for children right around the time the autism rates really started to skyrocket (the early 1980s). (No, I am not claiming Tylenol is the *primary* cause of autism or anything else either; it's *a* factor, and I have no idea how great of one compared to others).

I know a handful of anti-vaccine parents. Here's some *significant* confounding variables I've observed:

- Anti-vax parents are more likely to be skeptical of Big Pharma in general, and thus are less likely to use other pharmaceuticals on themselves and their children that might contribute to developmental disorders, mental illnesses, physical illnesses, and LGBTQ+ identification (e.g. birth control pills, Tylenol, SSRIs, or heck, I'm pregnant right now and not using PRE-NATAL VITAMINS because I've read enough about heavy metals in them and the problems with synthetic nutrients to be like, hey, I'm going to gulp down beef liver, cod liver oil, blackstrap molasses, and moringa leaf powder instead, wish me luck).

- Anti-vax parents are more likely to feed their children healthy whole food diets, avoiding highly processed foods and refined sugar and refined flour. More likely to buy organic and avoid pesticides, more likely to worry about glyphosate. Glyphosate is also implicated as a contributing factor in autism and various other chronic health issues.

- Anti-vax parents are more likely to have a stay-at-home or working-part-time mother; parents are more likely to practice attachment parenting, and are less likely to use early daycare, to sleep train, etc. Early daycare use, childhood emotional neglect, and poor parent-child attachment are implicated as risk factors for autism, ADHD, and other mental and physical health conditions. It's also quite obvious to many of us that this is a significant contributing factor in LGBTQ+ identification, in particular gender dysphoria.

- Anti-vax mothers are more likely to avoid baby formula and to breastfeed longer.

People who "follow the science" (follow mainstream journalist, government, and medical advice) are more likely to be "by the book" people in general. My Substack has a handful of essays about how left-brain thinking, parenting according to popular parenting books, and pushing academic achievement on children prematurely while neglecting right-hemisphere development (e.g. play, music, spirituality/religion, nature, being in one's body, socializing) are likely contributing to the rising rates of autism/ADHD and gender identity issues.

Assuming vaccines do cause injuries in some people (at this point, I believe they do) ... we should also ask what are the risk factors that make this more likely? The harsh truth is that children with nutritional deficiencies, children with higher stress levels (e.g. from being prematurely put in daycare, having the cry-it-out method used on them, or just straight-up parental abuse and/or neglect), children who are exposed to other harmful pharmaceuticals (e.g. Tylenol, or SSRIs or birth control pills via the mother), and children who are formula fed instead of breastfed are all more likely to become vaccine injured.

It's multifactorial. Incredibly multifactorial. Children who are born prematurely are more likely to be diagnosed with autism (some combination of less time in the womb and NICU trauma). Premature male children are more likely to be homosexual, bisexual, or asexual (perhaps something to do with missing testosterone exposure in the third trimester ... these boys are also more likely to become transgender). But again, lots of confounding variables here too, including that premature children are more vulnerable to vaccines, breastfeeding might be disrupted, and various causes of premature birth are likely confounds (e.g. maternal stress; why is mom stressed?).

There is research and anecdotal evidence that LGBTQ+ children are more likely to have parents (in particular mothers) with a Cluster B disorder. There is evidence that narcissism has been rising in the population for DECADES, in particular among elite college students, and work by Abigail Shrier, Lisa Littman etc all indicate that affluent children with elite, college-educated parents are one of the major at-risk groups for gender dysphoria. (Again, so many confounds, including that many of these parents might be undiagnosed autistic).

Similarly, the "refrigerator mother" theory of autism was *never* actually debunked. Find me the study debunking that cold parenting can be *a* cause of autism. It doesn't exist. I looked. There are studies finding *other* causes of autism, but that only proves that cold parenting is not *THE* singular cause, and that it's probably not a cause in every case or the only cause in any one case. It's still *a* cause, *a* contributing factor. But again, autism is *not* one condition. See the quote I opened with.

I’ve stated this before but I think it’s worth emphasizing again: regardless of your sexual orientation, your gender identity, or how your brain is wired, I wish for you to be as happy and healthy as possible.

There are currently over 400 comments on this post, many pointing out some of the same issues I did. Kirsch ends his piece on his survey results by writing: “If I’m wrong, you need to show us all the data showing this is not the case.” Normally, the onus is on the researcher to prove his hypothesis, not on his readers to provide evidence that it is wrong. Controlling for potential confounding variables is integral, and he makes zero attempt to do this.

Most of my readers (those of you who are still with me!) are probably not anti-vaccine or even, as I am, “vaccine questioning.” Ridiculous claims such as this quite reasonably lead most sane people to think anti-vaccine activists are insane. Which is why this bothers me so much. Because I am suspicious that Big Pharma’s profits-over-people model has led companies to flood Western healthcare systems with less-than-safe vaccines, and this stance has become considerably less controversial after the proliferation of stories of people who believe they were injured in some way by the Covid vaccines.

While I’m fairly convinced at this point that vaccines can trigger autistic development in some children, in combination with other risk factors, I’m not convinced that vaccines are the primary cause of autism. Yes, the number of vaccines children receive has skyrocketed since the 1980s, as have autism rates. But over the same period:

• Glyphosate use became widespread

• Seed oils replaced animal fats

• Use of prenatal vitamins became widespread

• People, particularly children, started to consume more processed foods and refined sugars and flours (here’s an interesting essay arguing that autistic traits first appeared in the upper classes when refined sugar and flour were luxuries)

• Related to this, the sugar industry paid off scientists to vilify fats and Western governments released guidelines discouraging the consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol

• Soy consumption increased, and soy baby formula has become “increasingly popular”

• More children were put in daycare at younger ages

• The number of children raised in single-parent families dramatically increased

• TV took off, then computers, then the Internet, smartphones, and social media

• Use of pharmaceutical drugs, in particular psychiatric drugs, increased, including in pregnant women and parents

• Tylenol became the go-to painkiller for children and pregnant women

• The sun was vilified and sunscreen use became more widespread, leading to Vitamin D deficiency

• Exposure to EMFs (electric and magnetic fields) has dramatically increased

• Exposure to microplastics increased (e.g. disposable coffee cups really took off, and these leach microplastics and heavy metals into hot drinks)

• Rates of narcissism have been steadily rising, according to social psychologists⁴

• Social stigma around alternative sexual orientation and gender identities and neurodiversity has decreased and definitions have expanded to include more people

This is just off the top of my head. It’s not an exhaustive list. But you get the idea.

There’s an annoying trend where people insist that their pet “cause” of the rising rates of various psychological maladies and diagnoses must be the primary cause. To give two other recent examples: Abigail Shrier did this with iatrogenic “bad therapy”, and Jean Twenge is doing this when she insists it’s smartphones and social media and “debunks” other proposed causes. This latter one is particularly frustrating because Twenge made a name for herself about 15 or so years ago by sounding the alarm about rising rates of narcissism in elite university students, and now seemingly refuses to make the connection between that and the rising levels of poor mental health in children of highly-educated elite parents.

Here’s how I ended my comment on

Steve Kirsch

’s post …

There's no simple narrative here. None. It's not just vaccines, or social media, or smartphones, or school indoctrination, or "bad therapy", or Tylenol, or glyphosate, or daycare use, or pushing your child to be a baby Einstein at the expense of their childhood, or *anything*. It's a bunch of stuff. To some extent, unique in every case.

I've been wandering through books and articles trying to untangle this puzzle since 2019. My Substack (started only in December 2023) is where I'm sharing the research. Slowly, because the long-form, heavily-researched essays take a long time to put together and I'm a STAH mom to a toddler and pregnant with my second. And if I have any major takeaways from all of this, it's put your children first. But I'm also scared people don't want to hear this. Simple explanations are easier. Blaming vaccines, or teachers, or therapists, or social media is easier than examining your family history, our broader culture, the waters we swim in. I'm not judging anyone, I'm not trying to assign blame. I care about the puzzle, and our children.

I’ve been feeling ideologically homeless, and frustrated. As I said in my introductory essay, I’m attempting “reality tunnel collage”, “assembling different perspectives to help piece together clearer pictures of some elephants in the (proverbial) room.”

I’m grateful to everyone who has been reading my essays here, and in particular to those who have engaged in the comments.

Stock photo by Anna Shvets (Pexels)

1. https://twitter.com/bcndp/status/1389302499966861314
This drives me nuts. The Vitamin D thing wasn’t “misinformation” but even if it were, how on earth is it “dangerous”? What’s the worst thing that will happen? People will buy and take some of the least expensive supplements on the planet or start eating more seafood or, heaven forbid, go outside and stand in the sun?! Stuff like this is why I no longer support the NDP. (As an aside, I’m also skeptical of Vitamin D supplements now and personally am getting my Vitamin D from the sun, cod liver oil, and eggs).

2. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (1976), pages 51-52.

3. It should be noted that I accept the premise that being autistic or high in autistic traits increases the likelihood that someone will come out as LGBTQ+, and thus that the various “causes” of autism are potential “causes” of sexual orientation and gender identity divergence, at least in a subset of cases.

4. I haven’t had a chance to watch this episode yet, but

Josh Slocum

of the Disaffected podcast just dropped an episode which apparently addresses the question “Does child abuse cause homosexuality?” My opinion on this, based on research and observation, is that child abuse is one of the causes of homosexuality in some cases but it is not a cause in every case. I also suspect that a lot of the correlation between disordered parents and homosexual children can be explained by maternal stress during pregnancy and other confounding factors.

As with the birth order example I gave above, there are also known factors which increase likelihood that someone will be gay which have nothing to do with environmental toxins or family environment. Gay people always have and always will exist.