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I heavily agree with this post and the one up above about allowing medical procedures.
There is a frustrating modern tendency to either have allowed and encouraged, or discouraged and forbidden.
I'm libertarian and I'd like drugs, gambling, prostitution, plastic surgery, porn, etc to be legal and discouraged.
Seeing them legal and encouraged has really strained my principles here. If I'm absolutely forced to choose between the two realistic options ... I'd pick legal for everything to deny the state the capacity. But if they already have the capacity, I'd be picking illegal for some things. Gender reassignment is probably one of them.
Well do keep in mind that there's also illegal and encouraged. People will just ignore the law and at some point you're stuck fighting a losing battle trying to actually enforce it too much. You haven't actually stopped it, you're just harassing people every once in a while.
Traffic enforcement is at constant odds with this issue, no one wants speeders in their neighborhood but everyone wants to speed in other neighborhoods. People even get pissed at you if you don't speed. We all accept it as technically against the law, but there's no winning the fight here. You can't even automate the process because no one wants it. We will not stop the speeders, so we just give everyone a x% chance of being unlucky and paying a fine each time they drive.
It's the same thing with a lot of drugs, and prostitution and gambling. There's just only so much you can do, because lots of people want it and they want it very much. And enforcing against it can just make them pissed. Joe Rogan famously smokes weed on his podcast despite being in Texas. Will Texas authorities ever go after him? No. Actually enforcing Texas's marijuana laws like that is unpopular and they know it.
You can change a fair bit with law, and you can harass random people every once in a while like we do with traffic enforcement and prostitution stings but in general if people want it they'll just do it anyway. The people who really want to gamble will find a way to gamble. The people who really want a prostitute will find some sort of escort loophole. The people who really want drugs will get it. And the markets will respond, the demand pulls in more supply. There's a reason why Trump's drone strikes on traffickers hasn't done much, because markets. If supply goes down then price goes up and there's more reward to providing new supply. Even Singapore struggles.
And likewise people who really want to transition will find a way. People manage it in Russia of all countries, they will handle it here.
I deleted a section on kids, that I think would have completed my post.
Snoop Dogg is effectively allowed to encourage people to smoke weed as a matter of free speech.
Your average school teacher is effectively prevented from doing so as a matter of job security.
I'd probably be fine with gender reassignment surgery being in the same legal category as weed currently is. Some more liberal states allow it. Some require basically a fake doctors note. Everyone agrees to keep it should generally be kept away from children, even if some 16 year olds manage to get access. Cops won't arrest you for it. Banks won't take money from businesses that engage in it. (By the way I'm not saying that I think weed is treated appropriately, I'd prefer it be treated more like alcohol)
I'm not a paternalist, and I was much more not a paternalist when I wasn't an actual father. The way the legal landscape and public school works these days means that I want transition soft banned so schools can't advocate for it and do it behind my back. You might think I'm crazy to be worried about such a thing, the only place that sort of craziness occurs is in like two counties in northern Virginia that keep making national news over those issues ... well I live in one of those counties. And I have three daughters, and one of them already insists on calling herself a boy and she isn't even in kindergarten. So I have worries about how that kid and the school system will interact.
I'm at a stage in life where a lot of my legal preferences are highly selfish. I really don't care if a stranger gets a transition and ruins their life and looks, or fulfills their lifelong dream and never experiences hardship again. I just don't want my daughter being talked into it by an ideologically captured teacher that only feels fulfillment in their life by acting out the most extreme forms of progressive activism. So I want it softly illegal. If I can't get that, at least make motorcycles illegal (guess which daughter really wants to ride one of those).
Let your daughter be a tomboy, by the time she's old enough to ride a motorcycle she may no longer want to 😊
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