Florida is right: Taxpayers shouldn’t fund transgender surgery

Should taxpayers have to fund transgender ideology in their state? Florida’s leaders say no.

The state’s Agency for Health Care Administration has finalized rules that will prevent Medicaid from covering transgender “healthcare.” The new rule, which goes into effect next week, will ban funding for things such as sex reassignment surgery, puberty blockers, and hormone therapies.

Florida is right: Taxpayers should not fund the delusion that men can be women and women can be men, and the government shouldn’t promote it.

Biology makes someone a man or a woman. Women have XX chromosomes and female genitalia, while men have XY chromosomes and male genitalia. And 75% of the country believes that there are just these two genders.

While liberals like to use the term “sex assigned at birth,” sex is an unchangeable reality. A man can wear lipstick, wear women’s clothes, pump himself full of hormones, get laser hair removal, change his voice, and so on. But he’s still a man, and it’s biologically impossible for him to become a woman. Florida deserves credit for acknowledging this.

Unfortunately, some people suffer from gender dysphoria. These people deserve our compassion and should receive professional help for depression, anxiety, and substance abuse associated with this mental disorder.

However, that doesn’t mean that society should treat such men like women. Men don’t belong in women’s-only spaces such as bathrooms, beauty salons, locker rooms, showers, and sports teams.

The cosmetic surgeries that people get to pretend to be members of the opposite gender are a waste of taxpayer money, just as it would be a waste of money to expect taxpayers to fund chiseled jawlines, nonsurgical rhinoplasty, and breast enhancements. If someone wants to change their appearance, they can pay for it without government help.

Such surgeries are also a waste of money because these so-called cures for gender dysphoria do not work. Research from the University of Birmingham reviewed more than 100 medical studies of post-operative transgender people and found that surgery made no improvements to their mental health, including their desire to commit suicide, according to the Heritage Foundation.

Funding transgender surgery would cost taxpayers money, fail to help the people it purports to help, and make others uncomfortable. Florida made the right choice, and other states should follow suit.

* Article from: The Washington Examiner