With President Donald Trump‘s approval ratings in the tank, all Democrats have to do is offer a sane alternative that normal Americans feel they can trust. With a few exceptions, they have done the opposite.
The latest example came after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was finally able to get a vote on her legislation, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, on Wednesday, which seeks to ban the medical transition of gender-confused minors. It would outlaw giving gender-confused youth puberty-blocking medications, cross-sex hormones, and gender-transition surgeries, threatening doctors and parents with up to 10 years in jail if they facilitate what Greene called the “mutilation of minors.”
Now, the legislation is unlikely to clear the Senate, making the vote largely symbolic. But the messaging Democrats have sent is extreme: They, in near-uniform, have stood by these unproven treatments — and are not shy about saying so. In the House, 211 members voted against the bill, including four Republicans, while just three Democrats broke ranks to support the legislation.
Left-wing Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) accused Republicans of trying to force “children to go without life-saving care.” Rep. Kim Schrier (D-WA) called the legislation “dangerous and an absolute slap in the face.” Meanwhile, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) said it would criminalize “medically necessary, evidence-based life-saving care.” Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) offered her support for “trans kids” and called the legislation part of “cruel, despicable attacks on their existence.”
These are just a few examples, but you get the idea. Almost the entire House Democratic caucus stood up and proudly defended keeping child medical transitions legal — disgracing themselves and spreading rampant misinformation in the process.
First, they repeatedly say this is “life-saving” care. This is a lie. As health reporter Benjamin Ryan has explained, the only study ever to measure directly the effect this “care” had on suicide rates found no effect on suicide deaths. The most comprehensive, nonideological review of the research into youth gender treatments, the Cass Review, concluded, “It has been suggested that hormone treatment reduces the elevated risk of death by suicide in this population, but the evidence found did not support this conclusion.”
Even the American Civil Liberties Union’s transgender litigator, Chase Strangio, was forced to admit during a Supreme Court hearing on the matter that “there is no evidence in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide.”
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So, the entire Democratic narrative on the matter is based on a fundamentally false premise. Democrats are defending often-irreversible treatments, which routinely leave youth sterile or sexually dysfunctional for life, based on false claims about the supposed mental health benefits of these treatments. And yet, they are somehow trying to take the moral high ground over Republicans who actually want to end these barbaric practices.
Polls overwhelmingly show huge majorities of the American public oppose minors accessing these unproven treatments. Democrats are not just on the wrong side of this matter politically; they are on the wrong side of history.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.
