Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz issued a decree March 8 underscoring that his state is a “refuge” for those who seek and provide confusion-affirming genital mutilations and irreversible hormone therapies to kids and adults alike.
Walz suggested that his admittedly symbolic executive order, which comes amid legislative efforts by red states to protect children from irreversible and dangerous procedures, secures the “rights” of “LGBTQIA+ community members” to “affirming their gender identities through safe and scientifically proven treatments.”
John Helmberger, CEO of the Minnesota Family Council, criticized the move, stating, “People who struggle with their gender identity deserve compassionate care that will help them become comfortable in their bodies, not mutilate them.”
The order
The Democratic governor recently signed the “Protect Reproductive Options Act” into law, establishing abortion as a “fundamental right” in a state where the practice of killing the unborn was already legal. Similarly, while largely symbolic, Walz’s latest decree further codifies his administration’s commitment to executing LGBT activists’ agenda.
“All state agencies must, to the fullest extent of their lawful authority, pursue opportunities and coordinate with each other to protect people or entities providing, assisting, seeking, or obtaining gender affirming health care services in Minnesota,” wrote Walz.
While protecting those seeking and providing irreversible confusion-affirming procedures, Walz’s executive order requires the Minnesota Department of Health to:
- prepare a report by Dec. 31 “summarizing the literature on the scientific evidence about the safety and effectiveness of affirming care and its public health effects”;
- “refuse to approve any health maintenance organization contract or
evidence of coverage that discriminates against individuals on the basis
of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression”; - take action “on any complaints of unfair or deceptive acts or practices by a health maintenance organization related to the denial of medically necessary gender affirming health care services,” which may have implications for religious health care providers unwilling to violate the Hippocratic Oath or their consciences; and
- “accept health maintenance organizations’ determinations that medically necessary gender affirming health care services are comprehensive health maintenance services.”
Walz admitted that nothing in Executive Order 23-03 “should be construed to change Minnesota law or to require coverage of services that are not considered medically necessary” and that the radical procedures he reckons may be necessary for some Minnesotans to live as “authentic versions of themselves” are already “legal and protected.”
The context
Walz’s decree comes just days after Tennessee Republicans joined others around the country in passing bills to protect kids from genital mutilations.
TheBlaze previously reported that HB 1 passed in a 26-6 vote along party lines on Feb. 13 in the state Senate and again in the state House on Feb. 23 in a 77-16 vote. Despite threats and protest, Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed the bill into law, thereby establishing more concrete and sweeping prohibitions on the mutilations of youth in the state.
Wyoming’s state Senate also passed a bill last month prohibiting child sex-change surgeries and the use of puberty blockers on children.
Senate File 144 was titled “Chloe’s Law,” after the 18-year-old woman Chloe Cole, who raised alarm about her gender transition and the consequences transsexual activists often ignore or downplay.
Chloe’s Law bans “physicians from performing procedures for children related to gender transitioning and gender reassignment,” which if performed, are “grounds for suspension or revocation of a physician’s or health care provider’s license.”
ABC News reported that at least eight states — Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah — have passed laws or policies prohibiting or restricting confusion-affirming procedures for minors. Local legislatures in 23 other states are mulling over similar legislative protections for children.
The consequences
Walz intimated in his decree that by enabling children to go under the knife or to take sterilizing drugs as a remedy for gender dysphoria, he is ensuring “members of the LGBTQIA+ community, are safe, celebrated, and able to live lives full of dignity and joy.”
The report he has commissioned the MDH to produce may turn up some evidence at odds with his suggestion.
For instance, the MDH may come across the the study published on September 19 in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy that explained how puberty blockers, also known as luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone agonists or GnRHa drugs, are not just creating sexless adults, although GnRHa is a drug “licensed to chemically castrate men.”
The study underscores how the drugs Walz believes to be safe keys to dignity and joy are depleting victims’ bone density, hampering their cognitive development, and producing a myriad of harmful emotional effects.
Dr. Michael Biggs, a professor of sociology at the University of Oxford, noted in his study that among the irreversible side effects of the puberty blockers was a halting of critical bodily growth, including that of genitals. Upon the introduction of GnRHa to men, the penis would cease to grow, and growth would not resume upon terminating treatment.
The American College of Pediatricians reportedly indicated that GnRHa drugs “arrest bone growth, decrease bone accretion, prevent the sex-steroid dependent organization and maturation of the adolescent brain, and inhibit fertility by preventing the development of gonadal tissue and mature gametes for the duration of treatment.”
“Clinicians need to explain how they are sure that some of the adolescents being prescribed GnRHa would not have grown into gay or lesbian adults, with their sexuality and fertility intact,” wrote Biggs.
The MDH may also come across the warnings issued by Nobel prize-winning sociologist Dr. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, who told Germany’s leading feminist magazine that “taking hormones is inherently dangerous.”
Nüsslein-Volhard stated that hormones “add something to the body that is not intended there. … The body cannot handle it in the long run.”
As for the consequences of genital mutilations, the number of victims decrying those persons and policies who helped subject them to a “lifetime of irreversible physical and psychological damage” appears to be ever growing. Among those for whom Walz’s promise of refuge would no doubt ring hollow are Chloe Cole, Michelle Zacchigna, Navy SEAL Chris Beck, and Prisha Mosley.
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