Forgive Me if I’m Not Sad to See Gender Clinics in India Close Because They’re Finally Losing My Tax Dollars

Did you know that the very first gender clinic—established to pump people full of experimental drugs to make their bodies resemble those of the opposite sex—in India opened thanks to your tax dollars?

Meanwhile, “independent media outlets” in Ukraine have been forced to shut down because President Donald Trump froze U.S. foreign aid.

Don’t buy the Democratic hype—this foreign aid pause isn’t about blocking food from starving children in Africa. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has signed an emergency humanitarian waiver to ensure that “life-saving humanitarian assistance” continues when it comes to medical services, food, and shelter.

Unfortunately, Trump’s pause in foreign aid is essential because the leftist bureaucrats at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development directed funds to woke priorities in the name of humanitarian aid. This makes it difficult for Rubio to determine which humanitarian assistance is truly necessary and which merely funds the Left’s ideological priorities.

Perhaps the most egregious example involves that gender clinic in India.

You see, back in 2008, President George W. Bush established the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, better known as PEPFAR. The program aimed to combat the spread of a deadly disease—a true humanitarian goal. (Though, of course, it remains debatable how much this funding advances America’s interests abroad.)

Yet in January 2021, USAID under President Joe Biden directed PEPFAR funding to establish the very first gender clinic in India. This fact is itself significant because transgender activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign have often argued that gender ideology isn’t new, by pointing to the ostensible presence of “transgender people” in Hindu culture.

While Hinduism does have a complicated approach to gender, chemically forcing male bodies to appear female and vice versa is a horrific Western invention, and that’s why it took USAID funding in partnership with Johns Hopkins University to create the majority-Hindu country’s first gender clinic.

Not only did the State Department celebrate the establishment of the Mitr (the Hindu word for “friend”) Clinic and its two subsequent offshoots, but it also organized a November 2021 premiere for a documentary film celebrating them.

“All the staff including doctors, counsellors, and outreach workers are from the transgender community,” the Biden State Department bragged.

In other words, these clinics effectively operated as a jobs program for activists who identify as transgender, and occasionally they might provide a service or two that might qualify under PEPFAR. This program is classic leftist ideological colonialism.

According to the State Department and the Indian Express, the funding amounted to around $2,290 in Indian currency per month.

These clinics closed in February amid Trump’s foreign aid freeze, which the Supreme Court has allowed to remain in place despite lawsuits.

Far be it from me to celebrate when people lose their jobs, but when a “clinic” that pumps people full of experimental hormones and performs surgeries to remove healthy body parts closes, I consider that a win for science and health—not to mention for the U.S. taxpayer.

Of course, the clinics are far from the only example of something closing because it suddenly lost the ill-gotten gains of your hard-earned tax dollars, dear reader.

According to the European media network Euractiv, ostensibly independent news outlets in Ukraine will have to shutter their doors due to the funding freeze.

“Many Ukrainian media are very much reliant on USAID funding and some media had to cease operation,” Sergiy Sudorenko, co-founder of European Pravda, told Euractiv. European Pravda, named after the infamous mouthpiece of the Soviet Union, relies on funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. The National Endowment for Democracy has received at least $67 million in grants from the State Department.

“For now, we haven’t been directly impacted, but many Ukrainian media outlets that depended on these grants are in serious trouble,” Sudorenko said. “I expect that it affects anti-corruption media the most, but the exact details are hard to confirm.”

In what sense are these outlets “independent” if they rely on American foreign aid in order to exist? Sure, the Ukrainian government does not control them, but the federal bureaucrats who determined U.S. foreign aid have their own agendas—agendas that often align with far-left donors like George Soros.

According to a survey from the Institute of Mass Information, 59.2% of Ukrainian media professionals say a complete cut-off of U.S. funding could have catastrophic consequences and lead to the closure or reduction in work of independent media outlets.

Again, far be it from me to celebrate when people lose their jobs, but is it really our duty as taxpayers to foot the bill for Ukrainian media outlets? I’m a journalist, too, and I don’t receive Ukrainian tax dollars to stay in business—nor would I demand them were it in my power to do so.

In fact, I’m more than a bit perturbed by the idea that my own tax dollars went to support a Ukrainian outlet named after the Soviet Pravda, no matter how indirectly. Journalists should rely on revenue through ads, subscriptions, or private donations, rather than letting foreign governments strong-arm their citizens into funding them at the end of a gun.

Yes, that’s what it means when the government uses its monopoly on force to tax us, and that’s why I don’t take kindly to the idea of the IRS demanding I pay up for transgender surgeries in India and to bankroll my own competitors in Ukraine.

While my heart breaks for people ground down by poverty across the world, I’m also not quite convinced that it’s the job of my tax dollars to feed them. As a Christian, I should give to charitable causes fighting hunger and poverty. I also support cheap and reliable forms of energy because these have helped lift people out of poverty. Ironically, I have been forced to foot the bill for climate boondoggles that openly compete against the cheaper energy sources that will help alleviate this poverty.

Until the Left stops abusing the American people by forcing our tax dollars to fund climate initiatives that harm the poor in other countries, perhaps our elite betters should tone down the hectoring about how much suffering it will cause when our tax dollars remain at home for a little while.

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