Thursday, August 03, 2023

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Will The Committee Come To Order!

Last week the Republicans in the House held a committee meeting on us, and it was a royal hatchet job! Complete with court jesters.
Detransitoner Chloe Cole testifies, 'puberty is a rite of passage to adulthood, not a disease to be mitigated'
Fox News
By Danielle Wallace
July 27, 2023


Detransitoner Chloe Cole made a desperate plea for Congress to act against gender treatments and surgeries, testifying on her 19th birthday Thursday that, "My childhood was ruined." 

"What message do I want to bring to American teenagers and their families? I didn't need to be lied to. I needed compassion. I needed to be loved. I need to be getting therapy to help me work through my issues. Not affirmed to my delusion that by transforming into a boy, it would solve all my problems," Cole said in her opening statement before a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing slated to discuss the "dangers and due process violations of 'gender-affirming care'." 

"We need to stop telling 12-year-olds that they were born wrong, that they are right to reject their own bodies and feel uncomfortable with their own skin. We need to stop telling children that puberty is an option. That they can choose what kind of puberty they will go through just they can choose what clothes to wear or music to listen to," she continued. "Puberty is a rite of passage to adulthood, not a disease to be mitigated. Today, I should be at home with my family, celebrating my 19th birthday, and instead I'm making a desperate plea to my representatives learn the lessons from other medical scandals like the opioid crisis to recognize that doctors are human too. And sometimes they are wrong."

"My childhood was ruined." how was it ruined? She seems like a well adjusted young lady. Could it be ruined because people tell you it was? So you spent a few years exploring your gender, what harm did it do you? Or is it because all these adults are telling you that you ruined your life?

Cole, who had a double mastectomy at age 15, described to lawmakers how discomfort with the changes of puberty, being intimidated by new male attention and looking up to her brothers ultimately resulted in her coming out as transgender in a letter placed on the dining room table at just age 12. Her parents responded by seeking help from medical professionals.

[…]

Cole said that she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and fast-tracked onto puberty blockers and testosterone, of which she received her first injection of at age 13. 
I don’t understand why at 15 did she had surgery? According to standard medical procedures she should have been on puberty blockers which would have prevented breast growth and not on “T” which is usually administered around around the age of 16 or 17 when they can make an informed decision. It doesn’t make sense and it is not according the Standard of Care.

Curiouser and curiouser
At one point a Republican equated gender-affirming care for kids to giving them ice cream for every meal.
The Advocate
By Christopher Wiggins
July 27, 2023


Republicans in the House of Representatives continued their assault on transgender Americans Thursday morning by making outrageous and offensive claims about gender-affirming care.

Billed as a hearing on “The Dangers and Due Process Violations of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Children,” GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government sought to paint established and necessary health care for children and adolescents who are transgender as fringe and damaging, despite a plethora of evidence proving otherwise.

“No parent has a Constitutional right to injure their children,” committee chairman Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana said as he opened the hearing.

Gender-affirming care improves children’s lives, the vast majority of doctors agree. Every major medical association in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for trans youth. The American Medical Association even strengthened its position supporting the care for all transgender and gender-diverse people back in June.

Johnson then criticized the concept of inclusivity, harking back to a time when they say America was better.

“The reach of radical sexual identity politics isn’t limited to young children alone,” he said, conflating sexual orientation and gender identity, which are two separate things. He then politicized transgender people with outrageous and delegitimizing language in the next breath.
It seems to me that the Republicans want to drive us back to the 1950s.

The Democrats replied back,
Democrats refuted the bigotry spewed forth by their colleagues on the right.

“Holding a hearing to substitute far-right ideologies over parental judgment exposes the rank hypocrisy of the party claiming to value individual freedom and small government,” ranking committee member Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania said in her opening statement.

[….]

Minter [NCLR legal director Shannon Minter] summed up the reason Democrats have stood firmly behind families with transgender kids.

“Decisions about children’s medical care should be made by the parents who love them, not by politicians who know nothing about a child’s life or history or circumstances, and who won’t be the ones having to watch a young person they love suffer the devastating consequences of going without needed medical care.”
Not some Congressional committee.

 In an article in the Washington Post on the hearing,

Conservative activists have said after their success at the state level, they plan to focus on federal policy. And with the 2024 presidential campaign underway, Republican candidates, including former president Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have begun campaigning on curbing transgender rights.

The hearing Thursday before the House subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government focused on gender affirming care for minors, but also touched on trans athletes’ rights to participate in sports. It featured many of the same witnesses who have testified repeatedly in favor of state bills restricting transgender rights.

[…]

Out of the six people testifying on Thursday, only one identified as a transgender person, Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Many of those testifying, including Chloe Cole, an activist from Florida who has traveled across the U.S. to tell her story about detransitioning, and Jennifer Bauwens, a director at Family Research Council, have appeared at state legislatures earlier this year.
They paraded the same players that testified in state hearings.
Democratic lawmakers said that parts of the hearing were distressing, especially for trans people and their families. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.), part of the subcommittee, described the hearing as a “gut punch.”

She said that when Hunt tried to minimize the issue of gender affirming care by comparing a young person with gender dysphoria to a child who is demanding ice cream, she felt that some of her Republican colleagues at the hearing were being “unnecessarily mean, thoughtless, and belittling.”

Escobar, however, said she was unsurprised by the GOP taking up the issue of gender affirming care on a federal level.

“Everything that has been happening in Congress since House Republicans gained the majority has been about dividing our country as deeply as possible,” she said. “They are fighting the culture war through committee work and appropriations process.”
The HRC writes on a press release,
As the nation sees an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year — including more than 220 bills targeting transgender and non-binary youth — extremist leaders of the House Judiciary Committee are preparing to double down today by convening a hearing on gender affirming care, featuring a panel of witnesses that includes individuals notorious for spreading anti-trans disinformation and perpetuating hostile rhetoric toward LGBTQ+ people.

Despite the fact that every major medical organization disagrees with extremist leaders of the House Judiciary Committee — recognizing that age-appropriate, medically necessary, gender-affirming healthcare for transgender adolescents and teens is critical — the committee today will continue embarking on a reckless, unprecedented misinformation campaign to justify harmful policies to prevent transgender children from being able to access important and lifesaving healthcare. Below is background information to set the record straight on what is and isn’t true about gender affirming care.
The Republican states brought their dog and pony show on the road to Washington and they want to make the animosity against nationally.

We have to get out the vote! We can’t sit this one out, our lives and the lives of the children depend on it upon maintaining at one chamber in Congress and the presidency.



Good news from Michigan!
It's the 22nd state to do so.
The Advocate
By Trudy Ring
July 26 2023


Michigan has just become the 22nd state to ban the use of conversion therapy on minors.

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed two bills into law Wednesday — House Bill 4617, defining conversion therapy, which seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and House Bill 4616, which bars licensed therapists from subjecting minors to the practice and lays out penalties for violation, including discipline by public health regulators.

[...]

“Today, we are banning the horrific practice of conversion therapy in Michigan and ensuring this is a state where you can be who you are,” Whitmer said in a statement. “As a mom of a member of the community and a proud, lifelong ally, I am grateful that we are taking action to make Michigan a more welcoming, inclusive place.”
In another HRC press-release they write,
Sen. Omdahl’s appalling suggestion that transgender people be subjected to so-called “conversion therapy” comes as jurisdictions around the country are banning the incredibly dangerous and discredited practice... 

They want to twist the meaning of conversion therapy to allow it for us and consider treating gender dysphoria as conversion therapy.

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