Florida passed legislation in 2023 to protect children from the ravages of the sex-change regime. In addition to banning the execution of genital mutilations on minors and the prescription of sterilizing puberty blockers to children, the Sunshine State also made the provision of such transmogrifying procedures or drugs a felony.
The work by Republican lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis to protect children was temporarily undone Tuesday by Robert Hinkle, a Clinton-nominated federal judge.
Hinkle claimed in his ruling that “gender identity is real” and argued that the provision of drugs long been used to chemically castrate sex offenders amounted to “proper treatment” — despite the growing understanding among medical professionals in the West that so-called gender-affirming care is a barbaric and unscientific practice whose victims rarely if ever can provide proper consent.
Hinkle’s arguments were reminiscent of those made by fellow Clinton Judge B. Lynn Winmill, who in December prevented Idaho’s ban on child sex changes from going into effect. Winmill, whose decision was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, cited as legitimate the guidelines provided by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which was exposed earlier this year in leaked internal documents as a purveyor of destructive pseudoscience.
Hinkle concluded that Florida’s protections for children were “unconstitutional.”
When Gov. DeSantis made clear that Florida would appeal the decision, a reporter concern-mongered about the potential cost of the appeal.
The reporter said, “Your office told us that you plan to appeal the gender-affirming ruling from yesterday. So my question … since we’re talking about the budget of taxpayer dollars, why should taxpayer dollars go to this case for the appeal?”
DeSantis did not mince words in his reply.
‘You’re basically saying the people of Florida shouldn’t govern themselves.’
“Because it’s wrong to mutilate minors! It is wrong,” said Gov. DeSantis. “It is wrong to perform a sex change on a 16-year-old. You’re not allowed to get a tattoo but somehow you can have your privates cut off?”
“Give me a break,” continued DeSantis. “This is wrong. And I would also say this has already been decided by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. They upheld Alabama’s law, which was almost identical to Florida’s law.”
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Jan. 11 that Alabama’s ban on adolescent sex change mutilations could remain in effect. The state’s Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall said at the time, “This is a significant victory for our country, for children, and for common sense.”
DeSantis stressed, “This will be reversed. There’s no question it’ll be reversed.”
The governor then invited the concern-mongering reporter to think on the mindset of the Constitution’s authors:
When the Founding Fathers were creating the Constitution and when the first Congress passed the Bill of Rights, or even when they passed the Reconstruction Amendments in the 1860s, do you think a single person involved in that thought that there was a constitutional right to do this genital mutilation? It’s ridiculous.
After indicating there is no question of whether states are within their rights to protect children from losing their genitals in unscientific rituals, DeSantis took the reporter to task for his suggestion that Florida shouldn’t fight back against activist judges.
DeSantis said that by suggesting the Sunshine State should not spend money on appeal, the reporter was effectively saying that “any liberal judge should be able to veto the policy of the State of Florida because they go to the same judges every time, we lose almost every time, and then we win on appeal almost every time.”
“So if you’re not willing to defend Florida’s duly enacted statutes against liberal jurisprudence, then you’re basically saying the people of Florida shouldn’t govern themselves and that we should just turn over our destiny to some trial judge somewhere,” said DeSantis. “That I refuse to do.”
According to the governor, appealing the decision of the Clinton judge is not simply a matter of protecting innocents and taking the fight to those who would profit from their misery, but signaling that Florida refuses to embrace ideological fads over timeless truths.
“Are we going to be rooted in truth as a society or not?” said DeSantis. “If we’re rooted in truth, then you would say, ‘Of course you can’t do these surgeries because it’s not going to take and transform somebody that’s a male into a female.'”
DeSantis reiterated for the reporter’s benefit, “I am not going to turn over the destiny of this state to liberal judges.”
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Source: TheBlaze
