God’s good design for marriage, family, gender, and sexuality faced attacks from every side this year, leaving a trail of victims. Here are the top stories we covered in 2019 on the family and sexuality fronts.

How much testosterone?

Various amateur regulatory bodies and professional sports leagues grappled with who should compete in women’s sports this year.

The United States has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent homes, according to a Pew Research study published last week.

Lawmakers in Washington are pushing the U.S. Department of Justice to tackle the beast in the basement: hard-core online pornography. Last week, four Republican U.S. representatives sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr urging him to enforce dusty federal obscenity laws against the creators and distributors of graphic, violent, and deviant online pornography, an exploding and illegal industry.

Mormon leaders in Utah last week announced their support for a ban on so-called conversion therapy for minors who identify as LGBT. The proposed state regulation would prohibit licensed therapists from providing counseling that might result in minors renouncing their homosexuality or transgender identity.

Individuals who experience childhood trauma have poorer health and life outcomes as adults, sometimes repeating the same unhealthy behavior they witnessed, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released earlier this month. The findings underscore the importance of family stability for children.

A federal appeals court has agreed to reevaluate a 40-year-old law used to justify removing abused and neglected Native American children from safe, healthy foster homes.

Nine male students at the University of Southern California have died so far this semester, at least three from suicide and four from suspected overdoses. Three of them died over four days, starting Nov. 8.

“Students are pleading for answers from the university,” said Natalie Bettendorf, managing editor of The Daily Trojan student newspaper. “There’s a sense of desperation from within the student body. There have been too many deaths and not enough answers.”