Sometime this week, possibly by the time this post hits the Internet, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly will have vetoed a bill designed to stop abusive parents from paying diabolical medical professionals to surgically mutilate the genitals of and chemically retard the normal sexual development of their children under the age of 18 who have a mental condition known in medical circles as gender dysphoria.
At least that was the medical diagnosis for the condition until about 20 minutes ago, when modern leftist culture mandated the professional crucifixion of any doctor or researcher who refused to accept this illness as a protected entitlement for a newly annointed alternate sexuality group pursuing the social benefits of its own proclaimed victimhood.
The governor’s doubtless impending veto of SB233, which would prohibit doctors and medical professionals from physically or chemically changing pointers to setters and vice versa if they’re minors, will hopefully will be subject to an override in the Kansas Legislature. It comes on the heels of national furor this past weekend over President Joe Biden’s presidential proclamation last Friday of Easter Sunday as the “National Day of Trans Visibility.” This redundant day of recognition has been pushed by the alt-sex community since 2009, but Biden is the first president ever to use the chief executive’s bully pulpit to promote it. But, it’s par for the course.
Rarely in political circles has such an extreme position garnered so much awareness at the behest of the anti-traditional members of the progressive left, and never has such a position been embraced and promoted by a sitting U.S. president. Biden’s move is yet another clear illustration of the degree to which his originally promoted moderate, centrist position – “the adult in the room” compared to Donald Trump – was little more than a smoke screen obscuring his obedience to the most radical elements of modern American society. What Biden does from the White House, Laura Kelly emulates from Topeka.
One can easily make the assumption regarding Kelly’s impending veto of the anti-child abuse measure in SB233 because Kelly herself is a microcosm of the incompetence and subterfuge of the Biden presidency. Kelly still admonishes Republicans and self proclaims her position as “middle of the road,” even as she throws Kansas women’s rights under the bus in her attempts to thwart laws preventing men from competing in their sports. She still withholds tax relief for Kansans for fear of letting a $3 billion spendable tax surplus nest egg slip through her fingers – even though Kansas tax payers furnished it. She followed the lockstep template of the nation’s radical Covid reactionaries to shut down the schools, churches and businesses of her state and tried to force a useless mask mandate statewide. Only action by Republicans in the legislature ended Kelly’s disastrous and elongated pandemic “reopening” plan and scuttled her authoritarian chokehold to put the state on the path to normal again.
Kelly’s veto will come not only as a contradiction to common sense and morality but also in the face of overwhelming medical data that repudiates any value in such surgical and chemical measures. Studies show individuals who have undergone what proponents paradoxically refer to as “gender-affirming” medical care are no less likely to show symptoms of depression and mental illness and no less likely to engage in self-harm like suicide. In fact, the lifetime of physical complications associated with such measures – hormonal imbalances and never- healing open wounds requiring constant manipulation and treatment – are more likely to contribute to depression and anxiety.
The absurd notion that such sex change measures can be somehow beneficial for anyone – much less gender confused children – negates logic, not to mention parental responsibility. People suffering from gender dysphoria need mental health treatment, not irreversible surgical or chemical castration. The fact that leftist-indulging popular culture has pursued extortion measures to force compliance from business, media, education and government sectors to herald this horror as some kind of a noble pursuit of civil rights is preposterous and immoral.
In continuing to allow this butchery, the final illuminating contradiction is revealed in this blatant disregard for the physical and mental health of dysphoria-afflicted Kansans – all while Governor Kelly lobbies for Medicaid expansion under the guise of bringing the benefits of better health to more Kansans.
Once again, it is up to the Kansas Legislature to protect the state’s residents from the unscrupulous, ignorant and follow-the-leader actions of Kansas’ chief executive.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
