First, for all the lovers among our Gentle Readers, Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope you’re with that special someone and enjoy an affection-and-chocolate-filled day completely free of the sudden impulse to murder her. Easter, our other chocolate-intensive holiday, falls on April 20 this year. That’s a long way off, so get your fill of empty calories and central nervous system stimulants while you can.
Second, I have no doubt you’ve been following both the initiatives of the Trump Administration and the resulting apoplexy of the Democrats. What’s struck me most powerfully is the attempt to use the judicial branch to impede the implementation of presidential Executive Orders: a realm over which, in the absence of violations of specific laws, the courts have no legitimate jurisdiction. This most recent sally challenges the heights of leftist hubris:
BALTIMORE — A federal judge Thursday blocked parts of two executive orders issued by President Trump that collectively seek to restrict gender-affirming care.
U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson at the conclusion of a hearing found a group of transgender teens and LGBTQ organizations that sued were likely to prevail on all of their claims that the orders are without authority and amount to illegal and unconstitutional discrimination.
“Stopping care in the middle of receiving it, any care, really, casts doubt on whether in fact the goals are to protect the recipients of the care,” said Hurson, an appointee of former President Biden.
It adds to a series of court orders across the country in recent days temporarily blocking Trump’s actions, ranging from orders restricting birthright citizenship to transferring incarcerated transgender women to male facilities to Trump’s firing of the head of a whistleblower office.
Under Hurson’s new ruling, various federal agencies are temporarily prohibited from withholding or conditioning funding based on a health care facility providing gender-affirming care anywhere in the country.
The plaintiffs — a group of transgender teens, their parents and two organizations, PFLAG and GLMA — raised alarm that hospitals across the country quickly moved to cancel appointments after Trump issued two executive orders as part of what his administration has called a crackdown on “gender ideology.”
Not too long ago, what the article calls “gender-affirming care” was called by the more accurate name of child mutilation. At that time, it was a felony to which a severe punishment was attached – and rightly so. The transition – pun intended – is among the most dramatic in recent years. Indeed, I can’t think of anything that would challenge it for the top spot.
The transgender craze is largely a social contagion. While there are some adults whose attempts to present themselves as being of the sex opposite to their biology can be tolerated, the notion of doing this to children – in many cases prepubescent children – is insane. It would not be happening were activists not doing their damnedest to push it on all of us, especially our kids.
We do not live in John Varley’s world. There is no way, at least at present, to transmigrate one’s consciousness into another body, whatever its provenance or sex. Today, and for the immediate future, one’s identity is indelibly linked to his natal biology. Pushing the counterfactual notion onto impressionable, vulnerable children ought to be a foul crime… as it was a few years ago, before the lunacy reached its current level.
Yet a federal judge has ruled that there’s a right to a “gender transition” – children included – and more, that the federal government is obliged to finance it.
Why the parental enablers of this madness aren’t being horsewhipped through the streets simply escapes me. That a federal judge should rule that the federal treasury is compelled to finance it on the grounds of “discrimination” boggles the mind.
I suppose I should simply regard it as one more indication of how completely unmoored we’ve come from objective reality. The proliferation of “rights,” especially “rights” to have someone else pay for one’s whims, has destroyed our ability to reason across social and political divides. But that it should have gone this far, such that innocent children are being fed into what amount to medical abattoirs, subjected to life-altering pharmacological and surgical “treatments” for what’s plainly a disease of the mind, makes me wonder how far off Armageddon can really be.
2 comments
Isn’t it time we we enforce the constitution and keep judges in their lane? The Congress created this mess and the Congress should be forced to fix it. The first fix should be no lifetime appointments. The second fix should be a judicial review board. We have let these pompous prigs exaggerate their self given power for far too long.
My response to these delusional creatures’ insistence that I “accept them the way they are” is “Why should I, when you couldn’t accept you the way you were?”
There is also the economic fact that “anything that requires specialized assistance from a third party to accomplish is not a Human Right, it is a commodity.” This remains true from the simple delivery of potable water to your home, to extensive medical intervention requiring chemical aid and skilled surgeons. You want water? Set out the apparatus necessary to collect, store and purify it, and you have the right to collect all you can legally reach. You want to chop off your penis? Here’s a knife, have fun. Better come up with that homemade pain killer and antibiotic blend first, though.