Maryland Governor Wes Moore chose a rather unfortunate turn of phrase while defending pornographic and gender ideology-infused books for schoolchildren.

Restricting access to these books in schools, he argues, is “castrating students.” Read Beege’s take on the matter from yesterday, and then follow me to find out what you should really think. (Actually, Beege and I basically agree, with slightly different takes).

Maryland Democrat Gov. Wes Moore says restricting certain highly sexualized and racist books from school libraries is "telling other kids that they shouldn't understand their own power. It's castrating them." pic.twitter.com/FnJmMn1i7w

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 19, 2023

The entire conversation is profoundly dishonest, of course. Even his “sympathetic” characterization of why conservatives object to some books being provided to elementary and middle-school students is utterly bogus. We don’t object to these books because they make students feel “uncomfortable;” we object because they are pushing an ideology that sexualizes and grooms students into doing horrible things to themselves.

As I have pointed out before, some of these books are genuinely pornographic. School Boards won’t let parents read them aloud; TV stations blur out images to avoid getting FCC fines; Google will demonitize pages that feature the images and make them more difficult to search for, and YouTube will slap age warnings on images that are meant to be seen by third graders in schools.

That is insane. Schools literally give children books explaining how to find “tricks” on Grindr–an adult gay dating app. “Tricks” are the clients of prostitutes. And no, I am not exaggerating.

But what was most striking about this interview was not the gaslighting. We have come to expect the most ridiculous gaslighting from Leftists.

No, it is the use of “castrating” as a bad thing. These alphabet ideologists are in fact constantly telling us that chemically and then physically castrating children is a good, even necessary thing.

Now suddenly it is bad? The governor literally just signed a bill promoting the castration of children! Getting castrated as a child is your right! Except perhaps, just maybe, it is also bad? I can’t keep up.

Frankly, I think it would be progress if we could all start from this baseline: castrating children is a bad thing. That seems like a rather good starting point for any conversation about how to treat children, but we all know that Governor Wes here would backtrack in a second if called out on this point.

Castrating kids who WANT to be castrated is a good thing, perhaps? This begs the question of whether any kid could possibly make that kind of decision rationally. Which, of course, they cannot. If a child has a problem with their self-image, we need to help them become happy with who they really are.

By choosing this rather common phrase–although it is more commonly referred to as “emasculating” them–the governor has acknowledged a basic fact that in a rational universe, everybody would acknowledge: castrating people is a bad thing.

That we have to argue this point is absurd and solely due to the sheer idiocy of the world in which we find ourselves. A world where instructing kids that getting AIDS is no big deal (yes, there is a book that argues that), that hooking up with adult “tricks” is a normal and healthy part of life as a gay kid (it isn’t; it is dangerous and abusive to the child); or that we can make all our troubles go away with pills, shots, and surgery (it is harmful and won’t work).

There are children who are genuinely suffering from dysphoria–not just gender dysphoria, either, but a wide range of dysphorias that cause them great distress. It is our role as members of society to embrace these children and help them find a way to be comfortable with who they are in a healthy way. We don’t affirm an anorexic’s self-image as too fat. That would be cruel and harmful. We help them find a way to be healthy and accept themselves in a healthy manner.

This shouldn’t be controversial.

Yet instead we argue about absurdities. Which brings us to the point where a governor claiming something is as bad as castration turns into a “gotcha.”