Progressives Freak Out after Arkansas Bans Gender Transitioning for Kids

In what should have been non-controversial legislation, the Republican-dominated Arkansas state House and Senate overturned the veto of Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson which attempted to block a measure to prevent doctors from providing hormone treatment, puberty blockers, or surgery to anyone under the age of 18 for the purpose of transitioning genders.

The measure was passed and the veto overturned 72 to 25 in the house and 25 to 8 in the Senate, on the basis that children and teenagers below the age of majority should not be allowed to make body-altering decisions with the use of powerful drugs or non-reversible surgeries. 

For context on how uncontroversial this legislation is, even the typically more centre-left United Kingdom recently banned puberty blockers for children under the age of 16 arguing that people younger than that age cannot consent to such medical treatments.

Despite the reasonable moral objections to allowing gender transitioning operations and drug treatments for children the political left was enraged by the decision in Arkansas and immediately took to social media to lie about the restrictions put in place.

The far-left political commentary site Mother Jones pushed the lie that the Arkansas legislature had “banned lifesaving care for trans kids” despite the publicly available studies that have proved time and time again that suicide rates among gender dysmorphic people do not improve after transitioning. The activists at Mother Jones likely could care less as they never cite any information to back up their “life-saving” claim. 

In a video produced by another far-left activist group Now This, they use a father of a trans child to say that it is “unacceptable for the state to bully children based on the fact they’re transgender” with again no reference to how the restrictions on minors pursuing body-altering non-essential treatments are wrong.

It is now just a well-worn leftist talking point to simply claim that all conservative lawmakers are acting in a vicious manner when they oppose any of the radical LGBTQ+ activist agendas, it is also a rhetorical strategy that seems to be failing as more Republicans are pushing back in red states.

Whenever conservatives in the West push back on the radical social progressives the same old insults get rolled out instead of real arguments tied to data and logic. Instead, it’s just that Republicans in Arkansas are somehow unkind, bigoted, malicious people despite the fact they too are looking out for the wellbeing of children in this case and at least have the data to back up their concerns. 

There is no point in trying to play to the progressives. Even when Governor Hutchinson had vetoed the Arkansas legislature’s measures because he had recently signed off on a measure to prevent biological males from competing in women’s sports the progressives still considered him an absolute enemy. 

It just goes to show progressives act like political supremacists and anything less than exactly what they want will guarantee you get pilloried, so why bother trying to meet them halfway. 

The good news is that with Arkansas being the first state to ban these gender transitioning medical treatments more states may soon follow, helping to slowly roll back the spread of experimental progressive social policy and gender theory.