A South Carolina Democrat is pushing a bill that would ban sex reassignment surgeries for minors.
“What I am about is protecting children, and I think that in South Carolina, you have to be 18 years old to get a tattoo. So, how is it that you can get an irrevocable procedure performed on you at any age during your adolescence? It’s ridiculous,” state Rep. Cezar McKnight told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on Tuesday evening.
McKnight, who serves as a member of the Legislative Black Caucus, added that Democrats have yet to acknowledge and need to “understand” that “African American Democrats are very much more conservative than their white Caucasian counterparts.”
He said he’s not anti-gay, a homophobe, or anti-transgender because of the bill, and that he resents people describing him as such.
“It was just this last week that I fought to put in protections in our new hate crime bill legislation that would protect gay people, transgender, lesbians. I fought to put that in there … I don’t hate anyone,” he said.
McKnight added that there are “gay people [and] transgender people who support this bill and who have reached out to me.”
“At first I was really scared because I was like ‘OK, they are going to primary [me]’ and what have you. But I have people from my community, very conservative people. who told me, ‘I have never voted for you before, but I will vote for you now,” he said.
The segment comes after Sen. Rand Paul grilled President Biden’s assistant secretary of health nominee Rachel Levine, who is transgender, on genital mutilation and minors receiving sex reassignment surgeries in February.
“American culture is now normalizing the idea that minors can be given hormones to prevent their biological development of their secondary sexual characteristics,” Paul said during Levine’s confirmation hearing. “Dr. Levine, you have supported both allowing minors to be given hormone blockers to prevent them from going through puberty, as well as surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia.”
Levine sidestepped the question, prompting Paul to continue pressing the nominee.
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“The specific question was about minors, let’s be a little more specific since you evaded the question,” Paul shot back. “Do you support the government intervening to override the parents’ consent to give a child puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and or amputation surgery of breasts and genitalia. You have said that you’re willing to accelerate the protocols for street kids. I’m alarmed that poor kids with no parents who are homeless and distraught, you would just go through this and allow that to happen to a minor.”
McKnight’s bill, called the South Carolina Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, would make it a felony for medical professionals to administer treatments or perform surgeries on minors that would alter gender or delay puberty. It would carry up to a 20-year prison sentence.
