From the Valdosta Daily Times:

GOP lawmaker looks to ban trans related health care

Oh God, what horrible, transphobic bigots.

This is the start of the article:

Sam Schexnyder may be just 15 years old but he wants a serious sit down with state Rep. Ginny Ehrhart about his health care.

The Republican Marietta lawmaker is proposing legislation that would ban trans related health care for minors in Georgia — leaving transgender youths and their families reeling.

Ummm…

Sam is one of an estimated 4,950 youths in Georgia who identify as transgender, according to a 2017 study.

So we’re not talking about adults here, we’re talking about transitioning children.  The writers of the Valdosta Daily Times need to take a step back from the extreme Left for a second and see just how Americans feel about this.

“The reality is, not giving kids the therapy and hormone treatment and puberty blockers to kind of give them a pause to see if they want more time to make up their mind about what their gender identity is — all those are life saving,” Clare said. “And not giving children access to that and parents access to that option for their children, it can kill kids and it can cause them to be suicidal.”

This is “self hostage-taking.”  Threatening suicide, if you don’t get what you want, shouldn’t be the standard for gender transition, it should be the standard for being institutionalized.

The legislation, she said, is blatantly “unconstitutional.”

Chanel Haley, gender policy manager of Georgia Equality, said it should be the responsibility of parents and medical professionals to decide medical treatment a child should receive.

“Parents in conjunction with health care professionals,” she said, “over time making decisions for a child is absolutely normal and what every parent does.”

Except that this trans-child thing seems to be a case of Progressive Munchausen by Proxy.  The parents who support and “gender affirm” their children get all sorts of publicity and accolades from the “right” people.  They can even get Elizabeth Warren to applaud them at a debate.

Maybe this is necessary to curb parental driven child abuse.

Ehrhart is among GOP lawmakers in three states targeting trans related health care for minors including treatments like puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery.

Conservative lawmakers in Texas and Kentucky announced on social media their intent to introduce legislation blocking medical treatment like puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy.

The legislation has followed a custody battle in Texas between two parents who disagree regarding whether their 7-year-old is transgender and should receive treatment — the debate extended into the state’s politics.

Some transgender advocates speculate that the sudden appearance of similar legislative agendas in three states is a tactic to rally a conservative base of voters ahead of the 2020 election.

Damn those Conservatives, wanting to protect children from making life-altering decisions too early and without sufficient maturity to understand the gravity of the act.

Ehrhart’s bill, titled the “Vunerable Child Protection Act” for the upcoming 2020 session, would make it “ a felony to perform radical surgery on, or administer drugs to, a minor child for the purpose of attempting to change a minor’s gender.”

Pass the bill.

Moehlig wants to believe the bias of conservative GOP members proposing this legislation comes from a place of good intentions, she said. But she added legislators are not experts on medical conditions.

“It’s a very disturbed world if legislators get to be doctors,” Moehlig said.

Sam Schexnyder told his mom that Ehrhart needs to meet a young transgender person. She’s going to have to hear from him, Clare said.

Forgive me if I don’t trust a special interest advocate to be totally objective about their pet special interest.

It’s understood that the primary rule of medicine is “first, do no harm.”

Giving endocrine system poison to a physically healthy child seems like a lot of harm.

Rarely do I say “the government needs to do something” as a response to some social trend.  The history of government reacting to moral panics in oppressive and reactionary ways is horrendously destructive.

This, to me, seems different and is worthy of intervention.

In the UK, where people are actually keeping watch of this, it has been noticed that kids immersed in Tumblr, YouTube, and other social media about gender transition have started to identify as trans leading to a 4,400% increase in the number of trans-identifying children in only a few years.

Putting a hold on a child making a life-altering decision to separate those that have been exposed to the emotional health-destroying effects of social media from those who really do have a rare and specific psychological condition seems like a good thing to me.

Not to the Valdosta Daily Times, though.