DOJ Says States Cannot Ban Treatments to Change Child’s Gender—but Just Fine With Bans on Treatments to Keep It

DOJ Says States Cannot Ban Treatments to Change Child’s Gender—but Just Fine With Bans on Treatments to Keep It
The Department of Justice (DOJ) logo is pictured on a wall in New York on Dec. 5, 2013. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
James Breslo
5/3/2022
Updated:
5/3/2022
Commentary

The left’s hypocrisy has been spiraling out of control lately. As long as the left controls the speech on social media, they say nothing. When someone they perceive as being from the right threatens to take over one site, suddenly we need a “Disinformation Governance Board” to control it.

In a letter recently issued to all state attorney generals, sent on the new “Transgender Day of Visibility,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) asserted that minors have a constitutional right to what they call “gender affirming care,” and they will go after any state that attempts to limit those rights.

“Gender affirming care,” as most are aware by now, is actually gender-changing care. It involves hormone treatments and surgeries so a man can become a “transwoman” or a woman to become a “transman.” Or, more appropriately, for a boy to become a “transgirl,” or girl to become a “transboy.”

President Biden’s DOJ, in a letter from the head of its Civil Rights Division, Kristin Clarke, expressed concern about states considering laws limiting minors access to such care. It says this could infringe on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses. Hypocritically, it expresses no concern about the twenty states and over a hundred cities which have already passed laws preventing minors from getting what would be actual “gender affirming care”—that being care designed to help children resolve their gender dysphoria in a way that allows them to accept and live comfortably within their biological sex.

In 2012, California became the first state to ban so-called “conversion therapy.” The law prohibits “any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation.” Specifically, it “includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”

In a sweeping statement, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law, noting that “parents do not have a fundamental right to choose for children medical or mental health treatment that the state has deemed harmful.”

Incredibly, these states have deemed harmful simple counseling to help a child resolve his or her gender dysphoria in order to avoid prescription drugs and surgeries. Yet the court had no problem with California banning it. Not harmful, according to California, is counseling to help convince children they were born in the wrong body.

In its letter, the DOJ states, “State laws and policies that prevent parents or guardians from following the advice of a healthcare professional regarding what may be medically necessary or otherwise appropriate care for transgender minors may infringe on rights.” But this concept does not apply to states banning counseling to maintain gender, only to states banning medications or surgeries to change gender! According to the DOJ, if a medical professional recommends counseling instead of drugs and surgeries, parents have no right to follow that advice.

The letter goes on to state, “All persons should be free to access the services, programs, and activities supported by federal financial assistance without fear that they might face unlawful discrimination for doing so.” Well said, but why does that not apply to counseling to resolve dysphoria?

Their position is based upon the phony premise that babies are born transgender. LGBT activists have successfully highjacked the major medical associations, coercing them to embrace their agenda or face scorn and ridicule. These institutions include the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) and the American Psychological Association.

Put succinctly, the agenda is that LGBT individuals are “born this way.” But it simply is not true. There have been numerous identical twin studies which reveal that the majority of time, when one twin is LGBT, the other is not. Same DNA, different outcome. Scientists have now mapped the entire human genome. No transgender gene has been found.

The most likely explanation is that it happens in early childhood due to some form of trauma, just like so many other conditions which manifest later in life. Gender dysphoria can be treated in the same way as other disorders through traditional psychological counseling. This is not shaming or “pray away the gay” as some seek to label it.

It is time to expose the left’s hypocrisy, phony science, and phony logic. And it is time to end their grand experiment with our children’s lives.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
James Breslo is a civil rights attorney and host of the “Hidden Truth Show” podcast on TuneIn. He was formerly a partner at the international law firm Seyfarth Shaw and public company president. He has appeared numerous times as a legal expert on Fox News and CNN.
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