Faux populist Sen. JD Vance has been in the Senate for half a year now, and he’s not drafted or sponsored any major legislation that would make life better for those “hillbillies” he elegized to fame and fortune. Instead, he’s shamelessly promoted the culture wars, because that’s where the right-wing grievance money is.
Tuesday, he pitched a grenade at transgender Americans who want nothing more than to live freely as themselves. He’s introduced the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, and whenever both “children” and “innocence” are included in the same bill, you know it’s open season on civil liberties.
The openly anti-trans legislation would ban gender-affirming care for minors nationwide. Sorry, all you states that at least try to act like a functioning democracy, the freshman senator from Ohio has other ideas.
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Vance’s bill would criminalize gender-affirming care as a Class C felony. Taxpayer funding for these critical procedures would end, including under the Affordable Care Act.
The bill would also ban higher education institutions from instructing anyone on the procedures, as well as prohibit anyone who’s performed gender-affirming care procedures from obtaining a visa or entering the United States.
So, yes, this is a straight-up trans eradication bill.
“Under no circumstances should doctors be allowed to perform these gruesome, irreversible operations on underage children,” Vance said. “With this legislation, we have an opportunity to save countless young Americans from a lifetime of suffering and regret.”
Actual trans Americans, their loved ones, and medical experts have tried explaining to these bigots that gender-affirming care is literally life-saving, but neither listening nor basic empathy are especially prominent traits among outright monsters.
Unlike this nation’s regularly scheduled school shootings, gender-affirming care doesn’t have a rising body count. However, these bans would endanger trans youth. Of course, we can thank useful idiots in the mainstream media for helping the anti-trans movement stoke fear in otherwise normal people who have limited experience with this issue. Republicans have seized on this media-driven narrative, disguising their venomous hatred in the familiar black robes of “concern for the children.”
“I want to thank Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for leading on this issue,” Vance said, “and I look forward to working with my Senate colleagues to protect children from these life-altering procedures.”
He’s just vice signaling here, as no serious person believes Marjorie Taylor Greene is capable of leading anything but a disorganized Klan rally. She doesn’t care about anyone, but simply wants to grind anything the slightest bit different into the dirt. She’s a less charming Dalek.
Republican-controlled states have passed multiple anti-trans bills, which has sent trans people and their families fleeing to more hospitable states. That’s not good enough for the enemies of freedom, though. It never is. This legislation, as well as efforts to ban abortion federally and even seize the medical records of citizens who seek reproductive health care in states where that’s still legal, has its roots in the infamous Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
It’s never about states’ rights or local control. The members of the supposed “party of limited government” will never rest until they’ve limited the freedom of everyone who isn’t like them.
[ABC]
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