Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signs bill banning transgender hormones and surgery for minors

[Alben Barkley]

https://governor.utah.gov/2023/01/28/gov-spencer-cox-signs-education-funding-transgender-medical-bills/

Surprised after Cox vetoed the ban on trans athletes in women's sports, a seemingly more moderate policy overall. And justified it by claiming that the ban would supposedly heighten the risk of suicide for the few youth trans athletes in Utah. Now this bill is going to affect far more people, yet the same argument applies except moreso because trans activists would surely argue that the ability to play in women's sports is less essential than the ability to medically transition at all.

Interestingly, Cox seems to allude to the fact that increasingly research has called into question the efficacy and ethics of this "treatment" in minors, leading certain countries around the world (he doesn't name them, but the UK, Sweden, and Finland come to mind) to pause or limit youth transition as a result. Perhaps this helped sway him, or perhaps this was purely a political calculation.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Good

[the artist formerly known as catmusic]

This is a very complex issue that should not be handled with outright bans on treatment for minors.

[Utah Neolib]

The state legislature had a decent amount over 2/3 and because Spencer Cox wants everyone to sing songs together, he didn’t veto this for the second time. He should have and probably would have vetoed the more extreme version of this that was eventually amended. Guy has no spine to stand up against the extreme legislature if they tell him off.

[T'Chenka]

It seems like puberty blockers are still legal. I oppose banning hormones for teens that are transitioning in consultation with a therapist / psychologist, but this is preferable at least to a ban on puberty blockers. Bad stuff, thankfully not terrible stuff.

[JGibson]

Terrible move on Gov. Spencer Cox's part to sign this into law.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

It leaves puberty blockers legal? I don't see the issue here then.

This law bans trans surgery for minors, which the Atlas trans activists told me wasn't happening anyway.

[7,052,770]

This law bans trans surgery for minors, which the Atlas trans activists told me wasn't happening anyway.

That's not all it does, and not what makes some people here uncomfortable...

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

This law bans trans surgery for minors, which the Atlas trans activists told me wasn't happening anyway.

That's not all it does, and not what makes some people here uncomfortable...

The trans hormones thing? I don't see why messing with hormones for teenagers is a good idea.

[7,052,770]

This law bans trans surgery for minors, which the Atlas trans activists told me wasn't happening anyway.

That's not all it does, and not what makes some people here uncomfortable...

The trans hormones thing? I don't see why messing with hormones for teenagers is a good idea.

Fine, but I don't really know why your opinion (or mine, or anyone else's here) is really relevant. It should be up to the patients, their parents, and their doctors, under the guidance of national medical ethics standards.

It's just not a decision that unqualified government officials need to be prying themselves into.

[Schiff for Senate]

I've found Cox to be one of the sanest and most reasonable prominent politicians in this country on trans rights. A genuine guy who listens to the facts and then makes a reasonable decision, who doesn't fear inciting the wrath of the religious right or the base or whatever.

I agree with him on this as well, as a matter of fact. No serious person can call Spencer Cox a transphobe or some virulently anti-transgender or anti-LGBT person or anything like that, either.

[7,052,770]

. No serious person can call Spencer Cox a transphobe or some virulently anti-transgender or anti-LGBT person or anything like that, either.

Yeah, obviously he's better than the Abbott/DeSantis types who wants every trans person either dead, jailed, or back in the closet, but I still think he got this one wrong. This bill is a solution in search of a problem.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows/
I'm just going to leave this here for all the cis people in this thread who seem to think the positive effects of transition for minors is in doubt.

[the artist formerly known as catmusic]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows/
I'm just going to leave this here for all the cis people in this thread who seem to think the positive effects of transition for minors is in doubt.

New research in 17,151 people who had ever socially transitioned found that 86.9 percent persisted in their gender identity. Of the 2,242 people who reported that they reverted to living as the gender associated with the sex they were assigned at birth, just 15.9 percent said they did so because of internal factors such as questioning their experienced gender but also because of fear, mental health issues and suicide attempts. The rest reported the cause was social, economic and familial stigma and discrimination. A third reported that they ceased living openly as a trans person because doing so was “just too hard for me.”

If a drug for depression, adhd, anxiety, etc. had an 86.9% success rate we would consider it one of the biggest breakthroughs in mental health treatment ever.

[progressive85]

This governor, who had seemed reasonable enough on an issue like gay marriage, is very misguided.  He, like most people, have not the slightest concept on what it is like to be transgender.

It's very sad to see people get swept away and cheer the continuation of what is now a national mass hysteria over trans kids and trans teenagers.

I've never seen this much animus towards the trans community as I have in the past year, and I think people are indeed being whipped up into a frenzy by the conservative and right-wing media establishment.  It seems there are now hundreds of articles on Fox News about transgender people in a week- not a single one of them is positive or supportive, all are filled with lies, misinformation, and down right bigotry.

It's very easy for people to say "I agree with it, It seems reasonable," and then go on with your life.  Unless you are a trans adolescent in the state of Utah, you can go on with your life, but they can't because of these disgraceful laws that take away the right to access hormones and the right of their families to let them be who they are.

It's also worth repeating over and over that the major health organizations in this country SUPPORT hormones for transitioning teens.  That just gets constantly pushed aside because there are people who have an ideological, political (and I feel much of it's religious-based) opposition to it.

So I hope this law and all the rest get sued to hell in the courtrooms.

Also, I want to add that this forum itself has become a pit of hell recently when it comes to anything trans-related and at times it borders on down right bigotry.

I've made attempts to be agreeable on here, but this is the most important issue I can think of for me personally and I'm not going to weakly cower away when it's brought up.

Trans kids should be accepted and embraced.  Trans teens have the right to live their lives... and that's the bottom line for me, and if you disagree with that, then that's your right.

Just don't take away the rights of other people and families (since we hear so much about "parental rights" these days) to give their trans kids a chance in this world.

[Ferguson97]

Evil decision.

[Vosem]

Evil decision.

I kind of agree, actually. The government should not be banning medications that have histories of effective usage elsewhere for this kind of moral concern.

(I think guardians really shouldn't agree to transgender surgery for their children/wards, as a question of parenting. But I agree that the government really shouldn't be prohibiting stuff like this, and it's a slippery slope from this kind of thing to the War on Drugs and the FDA spending the beginning of the pandemic forbidding COVID testing, or killing babies by only allowing certain hospitals to administer Omegaven, or a zillion other evil decisions. That's how this is evil.)

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

This forum is at its cringiest when it discusses transgender issues