‘Moderate’ Democrat Twists Christian Compassion to Defend Transgender ‘Treatments,’ Even as Medical Associations Reconsider

As medical associations are reconsidering transgender “medicine” for minors, Democrats—even “moderate” ones like Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear—seem to be missing the memo.

Just a few days after a jury awarded $2 million in damages to a detransitioner woman who underwent surgery at 16, and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons subsequently recommended against surgeries for patients under 19, Beshear decided to double down on transgender “treatments” and tie the issue to his Christian faith.

Beshear said on “The View” Monday that “the most authentic thing” that “drives” him is his faith.

“My decisions are based on ‘we love our neighbors like ourselves’ and the parable that says everyone is our neighbor,” he explained. “When I vetoed one of the nastiest pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation that came through my state, I described it in those terms.”

“I said my faith tells me that all children are children of God and I didn’t want people picking on those things,” the governor said.

I find that position rather ironic.

Beshear is right on the basics: Jesus does teach us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and while not all children are children of God, they are made in his image. But when it comes to protecting children, he has the policy exactly wrong.

His policy isn’t about protecting children, it’s about making them vulnerable to the transgender agenda.

Beshear’s Veto

As the Democratic governor of a red state, Beshear has vetoed many bills, although the Legislature often overrides him.

During a speech last year, Beshear touted having vetoed 2023 Senate Bill 150, which he then called “the nastiest piece of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that this state had ever seen.” The Legislature overrode his veto, so the bill became law, protecting parental rights, preventing boys from entering girls’ restrooms in schools, and forbidding transgender medical interventions.

In his 2023 veto message, Beshear said the bill “allows too much government interference in personal healthcare issues,” that his “faith teaches [him] that all children are children of God and Senate Bill 150 will endanger the children of Kentucky.”

Yet he had no qualms about government interference in health care issues in 2024, when he signed an executive order forbidding “conversion therapy.” In defending that order, Beshear wrote, “as leaders and policymakers, we should be in the business of protecting our citizens and kids from harm, not subjecting them to discredited methods that jeopardize their health, wellbeing, and safety.”

His “conversion therapy” order involved a double standard: allowing therapists to encourage a minor toward LGBTQ identities, but preventing counseling in the other direction, assuming that any such counseling is harmful. While LGBTQ activist groups have claimed “conversion therapy” is dangerous, data shows that thoughts of suicide decrease after counseling.

The governor’s reasoning about protecting kids isn’t entirely baseless, however. He just applies the protection to the wrong issue.

How to Actually Protect Kids

The theory goes like this: “conversion therapy” is so dangerous for kids long term that they cannot consent to it until they turn 18. Therefore, the government should protect them.

I agree with Beshear that minors face a threat to their health from which they should be protected, because they cannot give informed consent. The problem is, Beshear’s executive order explicitly protected the counseling that encourages the truly dangerous practice.

Beshear’s order states that therapy “that assists an individual seeking to undergo a gender transition” does not count as “conversion therapy.”

Activists push minors along a child mutilation pipeline, which begins with the anodyne-sounding “social transition.” Even just using names and pronouns that align with a kid’s stated “gender identity” acts as a “powerful psychotherapeutic intervention that radically changes outcomes,” according to psychologist Dr. Stephen B. Levine.

This often leads kids to undergo increasingly intrusive “treatments” to alter their bodies. Pre-pubescent kids take “puberty blockers,” the same drugs authorities use to “chemically castrate” sex offenders. A Food and Drug Administration study found an “increased risk of [suicidal thoughts] and depression” among minors using these drugs.

During puberty, minors take cross-sex hormones, which can carry increased risks of infertility, diabetes, and cancer. Then, of course, came the most irreversible “treatment”—the surgical removal of otherwise healthy sex organs, rendering patients infertile and dependent on the medical industry to maintain their Frankensteinian facsimiles of the opposite sex’s organs.

America’s medical institutions, which rushed to embrace most of this insanity in recent years, have started moving in the opposite direction. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons recommended against surgery for patients under 19, and even the American Medical Association stated that it “generally” agreed. The society also cast doubt on hormone “treatments.”

This comes after the Department of Health and Human Services released a peer-reviewed study finding “extremely weak evidence” that these interventions have any beneficial effect for children, and that the risks for these interventions are becoming “increasingly undeniable.”

What Does Christianity Have to Do With It?

As a Christian, I believe in loving my neighbor, and that entails protecting kids from experimental medical interventions. Minors cannot give informed consent to interventions that will likely leave them stunted, scarred, and infertile, and we should protect them from the sex-rejecting procedures euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care.”

Christianity also teaches that God made us male and female, and I can think of no worse form of “conversion therapy” than lying to a boy that he can become a girl or vice versa.

It is the exact opposite of compassion to gaslight children and drive them toward institutional medical self-harm.

It infuriates me to see Andy Beshear twist the Bible to endorse this cruel ideology. Luckily, the medical industry is seeing through the charade.

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