Perhaps a long-awaited wave of sanity is beginning to wash across the United States after all. This week, Louisiana’s veto-proof GOP state legislative majority passed a bipartisan bill that will ban transgender hormone treatments, puberty blockers, and surgery for children. The measure received support from several Democrats as well. Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards may veto the bill, but the state legislature will be able to easily override it. The bill’s Republican sponsor framed the issue in the best possible way during the debates and after its passage. Rather than turning this into some sort of a culture war, he said that the law is intended to protect children from harm. Other states could learn a thing or two from this successful campaign. (National Review)

Louisiana lawmakers have passed legislation that would ban sex reassignment for minors claiming to be transgender. Hormone treatments, puberty blockers, and surgeries intended for children would be outlawed under the legislation.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican state representative Gabe Firment, said in a statement, “The people of Louisiana have made it clear that our children are worth fighting for.” The bill received supporting votes from several Democrats.

Supporters of the bill argue that the measure aims to protect children from risky, unnecessary, and unproven medical treatments. Critics claim that the bill denies necessary care and could “harm the well-being of transgender youth.”

Louisiana isn’t attempting to tell adults what they can or can’t do to themselves or what names or pronouns they can choose. (Other states have extended such restrictions to adults, likely subjecting their laws to successful court challenges.) If you are old enough and able to provide informed (even if severely misguided) consent, you can undergo whatever medical procedures you can convince a doctor to perform.

But most of our blue states are run by people who have fully bought into the transgender social contagion. This raises a broader issue that I’ve been struggling with for a couple of years now. How did we reach the point where major medical associations and large children’s hospitals have adopted the idea that a condition that was long recognized as a mental illness is now the definition of a new type of human being? We’re talking about insanity here in both the figurative and literal senses.

Governments and medical associations all across Europe have recognized that there is no science offering any rationale for these “transition” procedures and have put an end to them. How is the United States so far behind the curve? There won’t be a quick or easy fix for this, but perhaps we can at least get off the starting line.

I realize that the GOP House majority is busy putting out any number of fires at the moment, but this is vitally important. I would like to propose the formation of a new House committee. They could call it the Committee on Responsible Medical Care and Science or something along those lines. Failing that, perhaps the questions could be taken up by the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health. Either way, they should open up hearings and bring in the heads of the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and every other professional association that has started issuing “guidelines” approving such “care” for transgender patients. Force them to show their work. Demand to see the studies that show that puberty blockers, hormones, and genital mutilation surgery actually help anyone, particularly children. They won’t be able to, because no such studies exist. Bring in competent doctors to testify in favor of the opposite point of view.

The government doesn’t exert direct control over these professional associations so they can’t simply issue new marching orders. But they can drag them out of the shadows and expose them to the burning sunlight of transparency. If they can’t be shamed into doing the right thing, such hearings could serve as a basis for new regulations banning these procedures at the federal level. We can’t afford to keep allowing the wheels to fly off of the national wagon in this fashion. Surely we have the ability to come together and put an end to this form of child abuse once and for all.