President Joe Biden on Wednesday issued an executive order promoting transgender procedures for children, calling them “gender-affirming care.”
In a White House background call to the news media, an unnamed senior administration official said the order was designed to “fight back against the onslaught of hateful anti-LGBTQI+ legislation that we’re seeing in the states.”
“President Biden always stands up to bullies,” the senior administration official said. “And that’s what these extreme MAGA laws and policies do — they bully kids. Hateful, discriminatory laws that target children are out of line with where the American people are. And President Biden is going to use his executive authority to protect kids and families.”
The official accused states of passing “un-American policies.”
The order gives the Department of Health and Human Services the lead role in ensuring that minors can undergo “gender transition” surgeries, according to Fox News.
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The order puts Biden and the federal government squarely against Republicans such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis is seeking to ban Medicaid — funded jointly by the state and federal governments — from funding transgender treatments, including puberty blockers, hormone therapies and “gender-reassignment” surgery, according to Newsweek.
“I would ban the sex-change … operations,” DeSantis said last month.
“You can’t get a tattoo if you’re 12 years old. When they say gender-affirming care, what they mean a lot of times is you are really — you’re castrating a young boy, you’re sterilizing a young girl, you’re doing mastectomies for these very young girls.”
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“For these young kids, 80 percent of the cases resolve themselves as they grow up. And so you’re doing things that are permanently altering them, and then they’re not gonna be able to reverse that,” DeSantis said.
According to a White House fact sheet, Biden will seek to prevent federal programs from funding conversion therapy.
“President Biden is also encouraging the Federal Trade Commission to consider whether the practice constitutes an unfair or deceptive act or practice,” the fact sheet said.
The fact sheet claimed that “over 300 anti-LGBTQI+ laws have been introduced in state legislatures over the past year, and many of them specifically target transgender children and their parents by banning access to medical care and support at school.”
The fact sheet said Biden has charged the Department of Education “with releasing a sample school policy for achieving full inclusion for LGBTQI+ students.”
Biden also wants to review how “current eligibility standards for federal programs impact LGBTQI+ and other households, and issue recommendations for more inclusive standards,” according to the fact sheet.
