Gerald Posner vs. transgender people

Gerald Posner is an American writer, plagiarist, and anti-transgender activist.

Anti-transgender activism is a family business; Posner’s spouse Patricia Denise Levene “Trisha” Posner (born March 10, 1951) is also involved in the anti-transgender movement.

Background and plagiarism

Gerald Leo Posner was born May 20, 1954 in San Francisco. Posner’s parent Jerry was raised Jewish and was a shipping executive. Posner’s parent Gloria L. Posner was Catholic, and Posner was raised Catholic.

Posner attended St. Ignatius College Preparatory and earned a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1975. Posner earned a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1978. Posner practiced law until 1986.

Posner’s books include:

Mengele: The Complete Story (1986)
Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret Societies: The New Mafia (1988)
Hitler’s Children: Sons and Daughters of Leaders of the Third Reich Talk About Their Fathers and Themselves (1991)
Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993)
Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998)
Motown: Music, Money, Sex and Power (2003)
Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11 (2003)
Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Secret Saudi-U.S. Connection (2005)
Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth, and Power–A Dispatch from the Beach (2009)
God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican (2015)
Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America (2020)

Posner was Chief Investigative Reporter for The Daily Beast, until resigning over serial plagiarism charges in 2010. Posner’s excuse at the time was:

in the quick turnaround I then obviously lost sight of the fact that it belonged to a published source instead of being something I wrote.
Posner (2010)

It later emerged that The Daily Beast was the tip of the iceberg. Posner’s books also had extensive instances of plagiarism, most notably Miami Babylon. Author Frank Owen demonstrated in court filings that Posner plagiarized liberally from Owen’s 2003 book Clubland. Via the Miami Herald, a publication that was also one of Posner’s many plagiarism victims:

Earlier this week, Posner, who holds a law degree, told The Associated Press that a flawed research methodology caused him to put passages from Clubland in Miami Babylon without proper credit. Last month, Posner quit as chief investigative reporter of The Daily Beast after a Slate.com writer noted several instances in which Posner used material from Miami Herald articles.
Rothaus (2010)

In 2013, Posner was named in a complex federal lawsuit brought by Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, against Posner’s book agent Samuel Pinkus. Via Vanity Fair:

Filed in New York District Court, the suit names Pinkus, his wife, former TV-news writer Leigh Ann Winick, and Gerald Posner, a Miami-based attorney and investigative journalist with a questionable reputation, as defendants. […]

When Posner filed the incorporation papers of Philologus Procurator, Inc., [PPI] in 2011, he was digging out from a journalism scandal. In February of the previous year, he had resigned as chief investigative reporter of the Daily Beast Web site following allegations of serial plagiarism. Later that same year, he was sued for copyright infringement by the Miami writer Frank Owen, who charged Posner with such pervasive plagiarism in his book Miami Babylon from Owen’s book about Miami, Clubland, that, as Owen said in his lawsuit at the time, Posner should be “eligible for the Guinness Book of World Records for copyright infringement.” (The lawsuit was settled out of court.)

By the end of 2012 it seemed Posner wanted out. He filed an amendment stating that he was no longer associated with PPI: “As of December 31, 2012, Sam Pinkus is the full and only owner of all shares of this corporation.”
Seal (2013)

Posner was later dismissed with prejudice from Lee’s suit, and the case was ultimately settled.

Posner and spouse are officers of the non-profit Antisemitism Watch, Inc, a Florida Domestic Non-Profit Corporation filed on November 22, 2022. Miami DJ Oren Nizri is also an officer.

Anti-trans activism

In 2023, Posner joined his wife in attacking healthcare for transgender children and adolescents. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about “transgenderism,” he criticized the legal off-label use of puberty blockers to halt unwanted puberty.

As an example of how Posner spins things, he mentions that puberty blockers are FDA approved to delay puberty, but he claims it is only for “a rare childhood disease caused by a genetic mutation.” He deliberately avoids saying “precocious puberty” because it undermines his entire thesis.

Delaying puberty, including in trans children and adolescents, is usually done to appease parents in addition to helping young people experiencing unwanted puberty. Most gender diverse youth (at least 19 in 20 in one study) continue transition, and many would prefer to go directly to hormones without delay. Posner concludes:

Ignoring the long-term dangers posed by unrestricted off-label dispensing of powerful puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, combined with the large overdiagnosis of minors as gender dysphoric, borders on child abuse.
Posner (2023)

If a minor wants to halt unwanted puberty for whatever reason, and their family and healthcare provider agree after weighing the potential risks and benefits, that option should be available to all Americans.

Posner and spouse revealed their affinity with an array of other anti-trans activists, including J.K. Rowling, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Abigail Shrier, Christopher Rufo, Heterodorx, Julia Mason, Genspect, Sharron Davies, Charles Gasparino, Wesley Yang, Rich Zeoli, Lorelei/hatpinwoman, Tom Fitton, Mike Opelka, Rick Ferri, Lisa Selin Davis, Michael Shermer, and the global ringleader Stella O’Malley.

References

Nolan, Hamilton (March 30, 2010). Gerald Posner May Set World Plagiarism Record. Gawker https://www.gawker.com/5505620/gerald-posner-may-set-world-plagiarism-record

Nolan, Hamilton (September 7, 2010). Superplagiarist Gerald Posner Sued by Plagiarism Victim. Gawker https://www.gawker.com/5631819/superplagiarist-gerald-posner-sued-by-plagiarism-victim

Shafer, Jack (February 5, 2010). Plagiarism at the Daily Beast. Slate https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/02/plagiarism-at-the-daily-beast-gerald-posner-concedes-lifting-from-the-miami-herald.html

Shafer, Jack (February 8, 2010). More Posner Plagiarism. Slate https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/02/case-reopened-reviewing-new-examples-of-plagiarism-by-the-daily-beast-s-gerald-posner.html

Shafer, Jack (February 11, 2010). The Posner Plagiarism Perplex. Slate https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/02/making-sense-of-the-blog-statement-by-former-daily-beast-reporter-gerald-posner.html

Rothaus, Steve (Mar 20, 2010 ). Authors confront each other amid book scandal. Miami Herald https://www.miamiherald.com/living/article1935676.html [archive]

Staff report (February 28, 2010). Gloria Posner. San Francisco Chronicle https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sfgate/name/gloria-posner-obituary?id=21926876

Elfrink, Tim (May 10, 2020). Posner Plagiarizes Again. Miami New Times https://www.miaminewtimes.com/2010-05-20/news/posner-plagiarizes-again/ [archive]

Seal, Mark (August 2013). To Steal* a Mockingbird*? Vanity Fair https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/08/harper-lee-dispute-royalties

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (2013). Lee v. Pinkus et al. (1:2013-cv-03000) https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/1:2013cv03000/411469 https://www.sdnyblog.com/files/2013/07/13-Civ.-3000-2013.05.03-Complaint.pdf

Brush, Pete (September 6, 2013). Harper Lee Settles With Agent Over ‘Mockingbird’ Copyright. Law360 https://www.law360.com/articles/470604/harper-lee-settles-with-agent-over-mockingbird-copyright

Posner, Gerald (June 7, 2023). Opinion: The Truth About ‘Puberty Blockers.’ Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-truth-about-puberty-blockers-overdiagnosis-gender-dysphoria-children-933cd8fb