Idea: The General Assembly should try not to make difficult situations more difficult.
SB 480, prohibiting gender affirming care passed out of the Senate Health Committee on an 8-5 vote. It prohibits doctors from providing necessary medical assistance to transgender kids who need their help. I suppose its proponents fancy that they are taking bold action to stop a rash of doctors recklessly cutting off penises and otherwise mutilating the genitals of momentarily confused children while their approving parents look on. But: a) that’s not what is happening in the real world (surgeries on minors aren’t happening in Indiana); and b) this legislation prohibits a lot more, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
I’m no expert, but I trust the General Assembly even less than I do myself with these decisions. I’m told puberty blockers are generally reversible and, while hormone therapy might be less so, whatever risks there are have to be weighed against the benefits of action and the risks of inaction. The mental health problems and suicidal ideation rates among transgender youth are appalling. Preventing these kids from getting medical help is cruel. The kids, their parents, and physicians need to navigate the costs and benefits of action and inaction. Getting the General Assembly involved and tying the hands of physicians isn’t going to help anyone.
This is cut and paste legislation being promoted by national groups. Why? Some of it is surely cynical. Divide the country with easily understood culture war issues that provoke an emotional response and profit. Liberals are emasculating our boys and making our girls masculine! Well, shit. That’s horrifying. Better vote for the real Americans who will put a stop to this hippie-dippy nonsense. Some of the politicians and a lot of their supporters likely believe in their cause. Men are men. Women are women. And “science” which says otherwise is against God and Nature. I think it’s also partly another manifestation of the nostalgia-sickness from which we suffer. Through the lens of nostalgia, the past was a simpler time where, among other things, gender roles were clear and the world was better.
Only they weren’t, really; and it wasn’t. In the past, there were still gay people and transgender people. Mostly, I think they just hid and suffered. And, in so many ways, the world was objectively worse in the past for almost everyone. But, it was especially worse for people who didn’t conform to the cultural defaults. We should aspire to make the world a place where people can take joy in their lives. This legislation is decidedly not that.
Edited to add link to a good article by Whitney Downard, writing for the Indiana Capital Chronicle. She notes that this is part of a nationwide effort to dictate how parents raise their transgender children. However, the number of children pursuing this treatment is small – 0.001% according to one measure.” Supporters mostly did not justify their committee votes; though Dennis Zent, R-Angola, shared his thoughts, “saying testimony about changing ideals in Europe influenced his affirmative vote.” Changing ideals in Europe?
Meanwhile the potential harm from this bill is very real:
“My child is 16 and I can tell you before he started in hormone therapy he was withdrawn, he didn’t have friends… there was a point when he didn’t leave the house,” Westville parent Alisha Hunter told the committee. “This (ban) will be life altering for my child… He’s happy and that will all change.”
Hunter shared her son’s multi-year journey, saying that her family was considering leaving the state — a sentiment shared by multiple other families who testified against the proposal.
I’ll share what I wrote on Facebook when this bill first passed out of the Senate committee:
Even if Governor Holcomb vetoes the bill, there’s a good chance that the General Assembly will have the votes in both chambers to override. This leaves me in a position to have to onsider uprooting my family so that when the time comes, I can give my child the medical care that they need.
I’ve lived in Indiana my whole life. I’ve loved it despite it’s (and my) flaws. I realize now that it does not love me back.
For the last decade, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to work from anywhere. I’ve chosen to remain in Indiana, despite several opportunities to go elsewhere. I’ve become deeply rooted in Lafayette. It’s now a part of my personality. The idea of having to live somewhere else is a loss of self-identity in a way I’ve never felt before. And yet it’s something that I have to assume will become my reality, whether I want it or not.
My job is very much rooted to this place, so moving out is likely not an option for me personally until Amy’s business is sufficiently profitable to keep me as a Man of Leisure.
But, I will not be at all surprised if my kids find their way to less benighted areas of the world. I’m unquestionably biased, but I think they are among Indiana’s best and brightest. West Lafayette has given them a fantastic education that they will almost certainly take elsewhere. So, this kind of thing very much contributes to Indiana’s brain drain.
Agreed – legislatures should probably not practice medicine. I could go off on left and right here, as I think the prevalence of “alternative facts” has run rampart, but I shan’t here – it’s not my blog! However, I would offer this tidbit for those who have the “nostalgia-sickness” you mention. It seems as though what is old is new again:
Hymns on the Celestial Country (Paris: Order of the Golden Age, [1890]), quoted in The Source of “Jerusalem the Golden” Together With Other Pieces Attributed to Bernard of Cluny. In English Translation by Henry Preble. Introduction, Notes, and Annotated Bibliography by Samuel MacAuley Jackson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1910), p. 85:
The reader is requested to read Dhey, Dheir, Dhem, for “They, Their, Them,” wherever this pronoun is so used to express the Duality in the Deity…
Source:
http://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2023/03/gods-pronouns.html