Protecting children from radical transgender ideology and procedures continues to grow as a priority among influential conservatives. And even if some of these politicians potentially view support for such policies as a utilitarian way of advancing their elective prospects, the growing mainstream rejection of transgender madness represents a significant win in the culture war.
This can be seen in the fact that arguably the two biggest names in the Republican Party — former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — on the same day publicly voiced their advancement of plans to protect children while punishing healthcare professionals who perform sex-change procedures on minors.
Trump, who is already officially in the race for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election, put out a Truth Social video on Tuesday that quickly went viral across social media in which he outlined a set of policy proposals designed to “protect children from left-wing gender insanity.”
His measures would include an executive order “instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” promoting legislation that would ban the use of tax dollars for sex-change procedures, and outright ban such procedures “in all 50 states.”
In addition, the 45th president said he would direct the Justice Department to investigate whether hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry have “deliberately covered up horrific long-term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich.”
Furthermore, under Trump’s plan, doctors involved in transgender treatment on minors will be kicked from Medicaid and Medicare. And there will be a “private right of action” so that individuals who had sex changes as children and have come to regret it can sue the physicians who performed the procedures on them.
In the realm of education, Trump vowed “severe consequences,” including civil violations and cutting federal funding for schools, for educators and school administrators who teach children that they “could be trapped in the wrong body.”
Instead, Trump said, a new credentialing entity for teachers would instill “positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers and celebrating rather than erasing the things that make men and women different and unique.”
“No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender,” Trump said, promising that “Under my leadership, this madness will end.”
This would go further than his administration did while he was in office. While president, Trump approved a ban on transgenders serving in the military, saying that their presence provokes “tremendous medical costs and disruption.”
DeSantis, who has not announced an entry into the presidential race but who is widely popular among the GOP base and who many believe would be Trump’s biggest competition in the primary if he were to run, made similar assurances for the state of Florida during a Tuesday news conference.
“This is sad, but this is going on in our society. They’re giving teenagers, kids puberty blockers … they’re doing sex change operations,” DeSantis said during the conference, as reported by Breitbart News.
Panning such procedures on minors as “not evidence based,” the governor warned that “in the state of Florida, if you’re performing those procedures, on these minors, you’re gonna lose your medical license here in Florida.”
As Breitbart notes:
“So when you’re talking about publicly funded institutions, you know, those are not things that I think are an appropriate use of your tax dollars, and I do think unfortunately, you have seen this done at some publicly funded things,” he said, highlighting that this movement — pushing transgender ideology — is relatively new, at least in the public sphere.
Further, DeSantis cited research in places such as Sweden “and other places,” which he said have reversed course on this topic. Many times, the governor continued, these gender dysphoria issues resolve themselves by the time the child reaches adulthood.
“The way to deal with that is to provide whatever counseling is needed, not to hack off their body parts. That is not a solution to the problem. That is mutilation, and it is wrong,” he added.
This is in contrast to the Democratic Party, which has increasingly adopted transgenderism as a “given” within its policy platform. Joe Biden, for instance, has called on America’s parents to “affirm” the transgender claims of their children, calling it a “powerful” thing they can do for their kids’ health.
This is simply another step in the Left’s effort to completely eradicate all traces of the West’s Christian moral heritage, tossing out basic truths and concepts like right and wrong, male and female.
Similarly, the Left continues to assault traditional institutions like marriage and the family across the Western world, even doing so from the pulpit.
The Church of England is the latest to fall prey to wokeism. Under pressure from LGBTQ activists to publicly endorse homosexual marriage, the Church of England’s (CofE) Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, recently said that, although the church will not officiate at homosexual weddings, the behavior itself, when in the context of a “stable, loving, committed” relationship, is not necessarily sinful.
Since at least 2017, the CofE has been facing increasing pressure to simply accept the gay lifestyle in the church. When Cottrell was asked specifically if “gay sex in the context of a loving, committed lifelong relationship” was a sin, the archbishop clearly stated that, in the eyes of his church, it is not.
For far too long, conservative “leaders” have been too afraid to take the fight to the Left on the cultural front. Although it must be pointed out that many of Trump’s “solutions” would be unconstitutional, the attitude of individuals like Trump and DeSantis demonstrates that a rising generation of public figures on the right is increasingly willing to take the risk of inevitable attacks from the media — knowing there will be payoff in the form of gratitude from conservative middle America.
