Score another one for cooler heads prevailing against the forces of anything-goes in Florida: On Sine Die Eve, legislators delivered on yet another of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ priorities, banning minors from receiving transgender medical treatments.
Some fads simply must be assigned an expiration date. Florida, through DeSantis, sensibly put paid to that.
Cue the left-wing meltdown:
Florida genocide under Ron DeSantis. https://t.co/6MVyvLz8O3
— Lesley Abravanel 🪩 (@lesleyabravanel) May 5, 2023
And this:
The actions of DeSatanhood has decimated nearly everything positive once known about Florida.
His behavior is only worsening, and it's disgusting.
While he continues to go further into the gutter, yet, he's pulling the entire state, along with the citizens with himself.
— Adam B. Bear (@democraticbear) May 5, 2023
As well as this:
The very idea that you would craft a strategy to get elected president by leading a manufactured “culture war” just makes me very sad for this country.
— FloralesReboot (@FloralesReboot) May 5, 2023
And also this:
#ReichstagRon is pouting because all his performative culture warring backfired and destroyed his presidential campaign before it was even legal and official. Ron DeSantis destroys Florida and destroyed himself and we love to see the latter. https://t.co/QRVHbqjUjc
— Lesley Abravanel 🪩 (@lesleyabravanel) May 5, 2023
Our offerings here are merely representative, rather than exhaustive. The anguish and seething were — oh, what is the word — gratifyingly widespread. Never mind, according to a hot-off-the-presses Washington Post-KFF poll, how the public overwhelmingly supports the position staked out by DeSantis and the Legislature’s Republican supermajority. To recap: Don’t abuse children.
Stipulated: In debates weaving together issues of morality, lifestyles, social conventions and medical intervention, the majority opinion is not always correct.
On the other hand, we know how this plays on the left, amplified by the media (insert repeat-self reference here). You know the game:
- A majority of Americans favor women having access to abortion? Well, you can’t argue with the wisdom of the American public.
- A majority of Americans disapprove of “gender-affirming care” for children and minors? Just goes to show how America has become a fascist state.
The Post’s presentation of its survey was practically funereal, providing as it does “political jet fuel for Republicans in statehouses and Congress who are pushing measures restricting curriculum, sports participation and medical care.”
Yes, patient readers, “Republicans have seized the issue.”
Remarking on the apparent complicated feelings and contradicting answers provided by those surveyed, the Post notes:
Nearly 7 in 10 adults said they oppose allowing children ages 10 to 14 access to medication that stops the body from going through puberty, and nearly 6 in 10 oppose giving 15- to 17-year-olds access to hormone treatments. (There was, however, majority support for gender-affirming counseling or therapy, with more than 6 in 10 supporting this for both age groups.)
OK. We’ll bite. What’s confounding, complicated, or contradictory about that? Americans would rather youngsters who are viewed as insufficiently experienced and mature to decide about buying alcohol, voting, entering a casino, applying for a loan or serving on a jury also to not make lifelong decisions about permanently altering their bodies.
Does that mean they also want to deny access to professional counseling to kids anxious about their gender identity? Almost certainly not.
Florida’s bill neatly threads that needle, banning hormone treatments, puberty blockers and surgeries for minors (and making it a felony to provide such services) while attaching no limitations to counseling.
DeSantis is expected to sign the bill at any moment. Here he is addressing the media in Tallahassee Friday:
WATCH: DeSantis interrupts reporter on sex transition for minors
"Seriously? … I know people in your industry will dress it up with a euphemism, and they'll say it's 'healthcare' to cut off the private parts of a 14 or 15-year-old. That is not healthcare, that is mutilation." pic.twitter.com/Nok2YuYmbk
— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) May 5, 2023
“Honestly, it’s like, seriously, some of this stuff is just totally manufactured. And when you talk to people — and I know like people in your industry will dress it up with a euphemism — and they’ll say it’s healthcare, to cut off the private parts of a 14 or 15 year old,” DeSantis said.
“That is not healthcare. That is mutilation and we’re standing up against that,” DeSantis said Friday — the last day of the state’s legislative session.
Here’s a useful summation:
Ron DeSantis is signing a bill to ban doctors from performing double mastectomies and other irreversible surgeries on children. It also bans sterilizing kids.
The wokes are, of course, upset that they will no longer be allowed to mutilate children.
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) May 4, 2023
Again, 70% of American adults think — whether they know it or not — DeSantis is on their side of this not-unimportant issue. They also line up with him on banning biological males from girls and women’s competitive sports, as well as keeping gender-fluidity and other LGBTQ+ discussions out of classrooms, (only slightly peeling away from his position when talking about high schoolers).
DeSantis’ determination to tap the brakes on transgender mania is just one of assorted campaign platform planks supplied at his urging by the Florida Legislature, each of which should appeal to Republicans voting in presidential primaries next year.
It’s up to DeSantis, now, to sell the merits of making America more like Florida. As to all the self-satisfied chortling over DeSantis’ pursuit of the presidency being over before it begins, there’s a meme for that.
