Now for our recurring feature, Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages. I only have time for one of each this time out, so let's start, as usual, with the Clown.Earlier, I noted that various states are considering bills to restrict or ban medical treatment for transgender youths. One in Kentucky merits a special mention. It employs the right-wing's latest go-to excuse, the "conscience" exemption, where a medical professional can refuse to act in the best interests of the patient based on a claim that it violates their convictions.
I am a sincere and deeply committed advocate of the right of conscience, but of course this has nothing to do with conscience and everything to do with enabling anti-trans bigotry. To see that, we need only look at the words of the bill's sponsor and our Clown, one Rep. Stephen Meredith. Quoting him:
You have a 12-year-old girl who's a tomboy. And her parents, who are misguided, think that she's really a girl trapped in a boy's body. And they don't want to see her go through the rest of her life miserable. So they're going to go and transition her.So not only does he not even understand the terms of the discussion, since the parents would be seeing her as a boy trapped in a girl's body, not the other way around, his vision is that of parents taking a 12-year-old girl to be forcibly surgically altered to male without her desire or consent.If that wasn't insane enough, in the real world transitioning is a long and complex process even if there is no surgery, which only occurs about 25% of the time, a process which involves counseling and years of hormone therapy, across all of which time we are supposed to think that neither parents nor counselors nor surgeons would notice that she doesn't want to do this.
That, according to him, is the sort of realistic scenario that we must allow for bigotry in order to guard against.
If it is true that ignorance in bliss, Rep. Stephen Meredith of Kentucky must be one extremely happy Clown.
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