For the last three months there has been a wave of bans on gender “treatments” for minors in the United States. A total of 19 states have already introduced bills banning or severely restricting “sex reassignment” procedures and puberty blockers for persons under 18 years of age. In Arkansas and Alabama, bills have been rejected by court order, in Oklahoma suspended by the attorney general’s decision, and in Louisiana, they are awaiting the Governor’s signature.
Virginia and South Carolina banned gender “treatment” until age 21; Oklahoma’s bill banned it until age 26. Texas characterizes the procedures as “child abuse,” and an Alabama bill rejected by the court sought up to 10 years in prison for physician-assisted “sex reassignment” of a teenager. In Florida, North Dakota, and Idaho, such medical care is now a criminal offense.
The MAP Project commented that “the ban on advanced health care represents one of the most radical and coordinated political attacks on transgender people in recent years. These bills target transgender youth by blocking their access to advanced medical care – care whose effectiveness is backed by years of rigorous research and endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and other leading health authorities.”
Zooey Zephyr, a man who identifies as a woman, called Montana’s new law “tantamount to instituting torture.” However, when reading testimonials of detransitioners (e.g. HERE, HERE and HERE), we can’t help but feel that the very procedures that gender ideologues are advocating are nothing less than torture, which inevitably includes genital mutilation and removal of healthy body parts.
On June 5, the Louisiana State Senate voted in favor of Bill 648, designed to keep health care providers from performing gender transition procedures on patients under the age of 18 under threat of revocation of professional licenses. The bill passed by a vote of 29 to 10. Republicans have been adamant that such legislation is critical to protecting children from making potentially dangerous medical decisions.
On Monday, Republican Senator Jeremy Stein defended the bill, saying, “It’s all very simple. Children should not have access to lengthy medical procedures to confirm their identity that they may outgrow.” The bill is awaiting approval by the House of Representatives and Democratic Governor John White Edwards. Notably, Edwards has previously opposed laws deemed discriminatory to the “LGBT community”.
Expert Luis Lozada, IFN author and CitizenGO campaign manager, writes, “These procedures have irreversible consequences. Prudence requires us to be patient. Recent experience has already shown that an extremely large percentage of the gender ’confusion’ experienced by adolescents resolves naturally as they mature. Children’s confusion is understandable: hormones are raging, it’s hard for kids to understand themselves.
It is unwise to allow a person who is in such a rush to be subjected to the hormonal cocktail of transition, and who finds it difficult to understand and accept himself, to decide on his own about the most important issue of gender identity. Starting ’treatment’ just because of self-perception issues is criminal. This is the opposite of looking out for the best interests of the child.
And the highest degree of abnormality is the persecution of parents trying to prevent their own children from being ’treated’. This is about the direct and gross ‘expropriation’ of other people’s children by those who did not bear, give birth to, raise or educate them.”
The Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma, Paul Coakley, expressed his opinion on the transgender issue. On May 1, in a pastoral letter, he warned against misunderstood charity and called for a distinction between people who truly suffer from gender dysphoria and those who impose a radical gender ideology on society.