He might be well on his way to being the second-most-hated man among the establishment media, but Ron DeSantis doesn’t back down.
The Florida governor has made that clear over and over again while handling being baited, smeared and outright lied about on liberal media outlets.
And during a news conference on Tuesday, the Republican delivered a message that even the most liberal elites will have trouble ignoring.
The attacks on DeSantis have come on multiple fronts — his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his outspoken opposition to critical race theory in public schools, his advocacy for parents’ rights in the education of their children.
(That last one has been falsely branded as an attack on homosexuals and the rest of the LGBTQ2S-plus-and-so-forth-divide-by-two universe of the sexually aggrieved.)
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It was on the last topic and how it relates to the practice of medicine — under the euphemism “gender-based care” — that he was questioned Tuesday during a news conference at the State College of Florida Manatee-Sarasota in Bradenton.
And DeSantis didn’t hold back.
Check it out here:
Governor DeSantis will NOT allow legacy media euphemisms to go unchallenged:
“What do you mean by ‘gender based care’? You mean sex-change operations? … I don’t think we use that term. You used it, so I’m asking you to define it. Do you include puberty blockers?” pic.twitter.com/Uwzi9jcAGS
— DeSantis War Room (@DeSantisWarRoom) January 31, 2023
The question itself is inaudible in the video, but its gist can be gleaned from the governor’s answer. And that answer should worry every doctor in the Sunshine State who thinks being “woke” includes the right to warp young patients with unfortunate insecurities about their sexual development.
DeSantis’ particular target in the exchange was physicians who prescribe puberty blockers, chemical methods of delaying a growing body’s natural course.
“What do you mean by ‘gender-based care’?” he asked the reporter. “You mean sex-change operations? … I don’t think we use that term. You used it, so I’m asking you to define it. Do you include puberty blockers in that?”
The response too is inaudible, but DeSantis’ answer came through loud and clear.
“You have — and this is sad, but this is going on — you’re having, in our society, they’re giving teenagers, kids, puberty blockers,” the governor said. “They’re changing their — they’re doing sex-change operations. And so we actually have, you know, young adults who went through this when they were minors, and they’re saying this is a huge mistake.
“And in fact, it’s not evidence-based, when you start talking about sex changes and puberty blockers. So we’ve worked through our … medical licensing board to say that you, in the state of Florida, if you’re performing those procedures on these minors, you’re gonna lose your medical license here in Florida.”
It was an unmistakable warning shot that drew a round of applause at the news conference — and it deserved it.
While there’s no denying there are some young people who go through rough times — adolescent confusion has been a hallmark of human literature essentially since there’s been human literature — the contemporary obsession with making those periods a permanent part of an individual’s life is unprecedented.
And whatever the woke words of the moment, it’s transparently wrong.
For starters, it’s all new. Homosexuality has been around forever, of course. Given that it’s condemned in both the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible, it was pretty well understood back then. And by all accounts, the Hebrews weren’t exactly the swingers of the ancient world.
But the transgender craze is different.
Should doctors performing sex-change operations on children lose their license?
Yes: 100% (15 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
No matter what the current philosophical fad is, no honest person can seriously believe that the same humanity that has survived and propagated for millennia suddenly finds itself in an existential crisis of sexual dysphoria among its young in the early 21st century.
(The fact that that crisis seems to be widespread mainly in Western countries where it’s trumpeted by shotglass-shallow celebrities, as well as cultural, educational and media institutions, should make any serious person suspicious.)
The more obvious explanation is that young people who are already going through a period of rapid physical and emotional change naturally (it’s called “puberty,” for those who might have forgotten) are being assaulted on all sides by messages aimed at undermining their understanding of their own bodies.
What these young people need is not devastating drugs or a surgeon’s scalpel but profound sympathy, understanding — and time to grow up. (Almost everyone does at some point.) They can make decisions then.
Then there’s the fact that it requires a kind of intervention into nature that leftists who think mankind’s industrial development is destroying the world would scream about in any other context.
Amid a rise in “gender clinics” nationally, cutesie names such as “top surgery” to refer to the removal of a confused young girl’s breasts don’t change the medically abhorrent fact that transgender surgery involves the removal of healthy bodily organs — when if there’s any illness present (and that’s a big if), it’s one of the mind.
Puberty blockers aren’t surgery, but they are powerful — of necessity. The human body generally doesn’t take well to being unnaturally constrained in its course.
In boys, according to the Mayo Clinic, they limit the growth of facial hair and genitalia and prevent the voice from deepening.
In girls, they stop menstruation and inhibit breast development.
That’s an obscenity.
When humans reach adulthood (which isn’t to say maturity), they can do as they wish with their God-given free will (and be prepared to accept the consequences). It’s a different matter for children — and those under 18 are children, even if they think otherwise.
Can any reasonable person seriously think inflicting those kinds of life-altering consequences on a teenager too young to vote — or even too young to drive — is a good idea?
DeSantis, who noted that his administration is aware of adults who went through such “gender-based care” and now regret it, clearly doesn’t.
The governor who just won re-election by almost 20 points, and had plenty of coattails in November’s election, has already proven he has support in Florida. Given his national prominence and potential as a Republican presidential candidate, he’s behind only former President Donald Trump as the man regarded as the enemy by Democrats and their propaganda arm in the establishment media.
But news about his statement Tuesday showed his support isn’t limited to the Sunshine State.
It’s funny how the left uses the terms “gender” and “affirming” completely opposite of their definitions.
To affirm one’s gender would be to “state as a fact” (definition of affirming) that they are the gender they were born as.
— James Mitchell (@Jamitche8080) January 31, 2023
Dr. Frankenstein would be appalled at these paaid mutilators of troubled youths. After all, he only operated on adult bodies.
— Troy Rose (@TroyRos12854484) January 31, 2023
If doctors are giving kids puberty blockers or doing sex-change procedures on them “you’re going to lose your medical license here in Florida.” 👏🏼
DeSantis and his team are the model to follow.
Please make him President. https://t.co/QGwxfmcPhx
— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) January 31, 2023
It’s a tragedy that borders on a crime that there are physicians willing to either pander to children or their parents, or indulge their own ideologies by doling out drugs aimed to act as an obstacle to human growth over what is, almost by definition, an imagined necessity.
Fortunately, it’s not allowed in the Sunshine State, just as it shouldn’t be allowed in any state or country that even pretends to call itself civilized.
And for that, Floridians can thank themselves for electing Ron DeSantis.
The rest of the country should be paying attention.
