I wonder if someone born with a heart defect thinks they should have a working heart? I wonder if someone born with a deformed limb thinks they should have access to health care that would solve that issue and give them a better life. Should a child get an operation so they can fit in, play, laugh, love and pursue happiness as guaranteed in our constitution? Should I, born with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and depression feel like I have a right to be happy?
People think decisions about gender affirming care, or whatever, are made lightly, but the decisions are made when someone feels they are in a 'deformed body'. That is...to them... they should have the body they know they should have. One that matches them. One that lets them live as who they know they are meant to be.
Some think without really looking at the issue, or are being misinformed to blow it off as a 'fad', a cry for attention, or some kind of game. They think that the kids will grow out of it.
Some kid might like another kid of the same sex, and then not. Some might experiment with wearing clothes of the opposite gender. I'll bet a huge number of people have had feelings for someone of the same sex but would never admit it. Maybe they even tried it or experimented. So much of this is on a spectrum. It is not either/or.
This is not the same thing. The people affected by laws against Gender Affirming care are not 'having a weekend we won't talk about'. They are living day to day, year in and year out, in a deformed body.
I'd like to know how many are in this minority, because we feel we can make them a political football and legislate an issue that takes away the happiness of a few, rather than fixing the power grid so that people don't end up dead like the last time we had a blizzard in Texas.
Gender Affirming care does not need to be legislated.
And if we really cared about kids we'd open up that $56B education fund, build schools, buy the best textbooks, and have the best educators in the country. Not rank 35th. We can change and amend our Texas constitution if that funding is not available. Ask yourselves why our legislators are not doing so.
And maybe the reason is that they want us un-educated, or only the ‘right’ segments educated, so that they can retain control and feed us a bunch of tripe and pablum that we’ll believe. Then they can steer us onto the next nonissue and make us think they are doing their jobs instead of fixing the problems that we face.
Our legislators will ‘protect’ us and work hard to keep us wallowing in ignorance and stoking indignation with rare or bizarre anecdotal cases not considering what denying care means to those affected. Their media cohorts support them. They don’t want us to understand gender dysphoria but will make the treatment of it the tool of the devil, greedy doctors and perverts. Sounds like they need to read up on the concepts of projection and transference.
If we fail to question everything and read from multiple sources, we are ripe for being manipulated on the next nonissue.
You can take that reasoning one step further with school vouchers. We complain about defunding the police, but here we are defunding our public schools and forcing people like me who never had kids to fund religious private school education for the select few. If you want to send you kids to private religious schools, more power to you, but not on my nickel. I am proud to pay school taxes. I want people to be educated.
And if we really cared about kids we'd fund mental health to help the very kids with these issues to make sure they got the counseling and medical care they need. And that care would extend to those who might grow up angry, depressed, self-medicating, suicidal and gain access to weapons to be the next Uvalde school shooter.
And that same mental health care would help kids with anger issues. We could teach kids and have public services messages at all times reminding people that violence and bullying are never acceptable and never the answer. Then we'd relieve childhood trauma and kids would have a much better chance to grow up happy.
If we were really pro-life, and every life was really precious to us then we'd fund mental health care and support those who’s care is expensive.
We'd make sure those who are most likely to have a short life, would have the best life possible. But then we'd have to let go of "No way - someone's kid or someone got something I didn't get".
What kind of parent doesn't want better for their kids? Or better for all kids? What is wrong with you? You need the access to the mental health care I am talking about. Better for those in need does not mean less for you who is not in need.
We need to seriously reconsider 'means' tests when we have a system that forces a divorce or causes a family spends away ever dime of savings in order to get help.
We are pro-family and pro-life, but our laws make it that we have to destroy the family to afford care. Our laws add strains to the family unit and add to the divorce rate, which we also complain about.
We'll make your family planning decisions for you and then when we make your life impossible. That child in need then either brings out the best or worst in the family, the child grows up with the guilt of that, and we create more dysfunctional adults because we say invalids are invalid. And that is what we are doing and saying.
Roe V Wade has been almost completely repealed. Are we happy now? Are the strains that I just talked about making our lives, marriages, children, happier? Are we providing the support for better lives?
Kids are not bigots by birth. We teach them bigotry. Homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Turns out the only mental illness associated with being gay was trying to deal with a society that said you are wrong, you are invalid (an invalid - there it is again, an interesting choice of words eh?), and that you have to be 'us'. God willing, I will live to see the day when being transgender is a nonissue.
Then again that same society decides you are invalid if you are not of a social class, religion or skin color. There are a whole bunch of people who feel we should have a multi-ethnic uni-cultural country. And worse are those who feel we shouldn't even have multi-ethnic. That invalidity is also on a spectrum.
Are we going to pass legislation and really help the children of Texas? Or are we going to ignore statements from mental health professionals and their academies because, like President Trump, we 'know far more than our Generals'?
Are the only laws we pass going to be the ones against care? Against knowledge? Against Science? Is that who we are?
In having these discussions people will argue with the facts telling me 'they know what they know'. And what they know is that to change, to accept new information and be open to different people and cultures, would require a repudiation of the ‘values’ they think they have when in fact, they did not 'love others as I have loved you'. And they never did.
I hope that can change. I hope that can improve. We've made progress.
I see a lot of signs trying to go back to the 1950s, but how about we don't do that. Let's move progressively forward rather than be conservationists of attitudes and concepts that make us comfortable because 'that was what we were taught' rather than open our mind and continue to learn and plan for a better future and a better environment for the planet and our brethren.
Whatever happened to ‘the government should not get in between you and your doctor?’ If that’s the case then let’s make it about mental health.
You say the problem is not gun control but mental health? Then make mental health care available.
You say gender dysphoria is a mental health issue? Then make mental health care available, all of it.
Kids coming to school traumatized and unable to study or succeed? Children being left behind? Then make mental health care available.
Don’t ostracize those who need care, give them the care they need. You say we have a Christian nation? Then act like it: John 13 34-35. Matthew 25:40-45.