Morning Wire XX
[0] The legislative battle over the LGBT agenda is being waged in several states across the country, with some blue states establishing sanctuary status for transgender -identifying minors, while red states move to protect parents' rights and shield children from gender medical treatments and what they describe as predatory behavior.
[1] In this episode, we talk with an expert about some of the more controversial laws like those proposed in Minnesota.
[2] I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Bickley, with Georgia Howl.
[3] It's Saturday, May 25th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
[4] Joining us to discuss the movement in several states to push increasingly radical concepts about gender and sexual orientation as Sarah Partial Perry, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
[5] Hi, Sarah.
[6] First, you recently wrote an article about policies you say expose children to predatory behavior.
[7] What did you see in today's states and schools that prompted you to write this?
[8] Actually, it was set off by a story coming out of Minnesota, Lee Fink, who is a transgender -identified biological male identifies as a woman, a legislator in Minnesota, put together a bill declaring Minnesota not only as a refuge state for the medical transitioning of minors, but actually, and this really caught my attention, proposed an amendment to a current state law that would classify sexual attachment to children as a protected sexual orientation.
[9] I wanted to know exactly how far this went and started looking into other state legislatures, one of which was Colorado, where the Democrats in the House of Reps just voted down, making indecent exposure to minors a felony.
[10] And their justification was that it unfairly targeted the drag and transcommunity.
[11] The International Commission of Juris, which is sort of a purported defender of human rights around the world, actually presented a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council a few months ago, and it was ostensibly a report on human rights -based approaches to criminal law and associated convictions for sex, drug use, HIV, etc. But you have to drill down.
[12] in this particular report, some of the recommendations were jaw -dropping, not the least of which was enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under the age of 18 to make decisions about engaging in sex conduct.
[13] That, to me, goes contrary to Article 34 of the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, which dictates specifically that we have to protect kids from sexual exploitation and abuse.
[14] That is hugely problematic to my mind.
[15] And this is something that the closer we get to in terms of the transgender juggernaut and the more we argue for these, quote, gender affirming medical interventions, if we treat kids as having the capacity to alter their bodies, well, then naturally there are some people who are going to argue they have the capacity to also engage in other life -changing decisions, including having sex with adults.
[16] You mentioned the legislation in Minnesota.
[17] Defenders of that move say that it's actually not enshrining pedophilia as a protected class, that it's just striking unnecessary language.
[18] They say that language is redundant.
[19] But you're saying it actually does pave the way to make pedophilia a sexual orientation that could be protected.
[20] Can you unpack that for us?
[21] Sure.
[22] In fact, gender identity had been previously defined under Minnesota's Human Rights Act, which has been described as the most expansive of categories of non -discrimination in the country.
[23] Originally, there was language that explicitly excluded sexual attraction to children as a protected sexual orientation.
[24] Representative Lee Fink introduced a bill in the appropriations process, so this goes to the whole funding of the government.
[25] Obviously, the way many people get things done is through appropriations if they have pet projects.
[26] It was introduced through appropriations and eliminates that exclusion.
[27] Now, Lee Fink has represented that this is just duplicative of criminal prohibitions, but we have yet to see how this is going to play out with a criminal prohibition or whether or not the criminal prohibition up to this point has ever been enforced.
[28] What we do know is by removing language, that explicitly protected children, that raises a red flag.
[29] We also know that this legislator has created a trans refuge state through authorship of a bill creating gender identity protection for minors who are fleeing into the state from other non -supportive locations where families might not want these treatments.
[30] The combination of those two together raises not only a red flag.
[31] flag, but it really does pave the way for the inclusion of sexual attraction to children as a protected category.
[32] Now, Fink's transgender sanctuary bill, which has raised alarms among those who want to protect parents' rights, that's not the only one in the U .S. What have we seen in some of the other states?
[33] Sure, Washington State is the newest of this particular ilk of sanctuary law states.
[34] Colorado is also a sanctuary state, as is now California.
[35] California, but Washington state law gives sort of lip service to the fact that individuals should ostensibly be reunited with their parents and that social services should make every attempt to contact custodial parents except in the case of reasonable cause.
[36] And it's only when you cross -reference a bill that says reasonable cause with other laws on the books that you realize they've shoehorned in descriptions of reasonable cause, including their failure to feel safe and affirmed in an environment where the parents disagree with desired gender modification attempts.
[37] So if this child feels unsafe in any state, not just in the state of Washington, that's a reason to keep these children hidden away from their parents and to create a safe space for them.
[38] As the mother of three teenage children, it is truly eye -opening and it's incredibly damning on the part of those individual legislators in Washington who have made very clear that they have absolutely no appreciation for longstanding parental rights law and what the Supreme Court has said.
[39] There's also a movement to promote some of these policies in schools as well, what activists call protecting children from their own parents.
[40] What are we seeing on that front in education?
[41] Quite a number of federal lawsuits.
[42] And the platform for those lawsuits is almost invariably the same that it is a violation of a fundamental liberty interest on the part of parents to raise, to educate, to oversee the health and welfare of their own children.
[43] This was a principle that was articulated in 1923 with Meyer v. Nebraska.
[44] Now we're all the way a hundred years later and as recently as the year 2000 in a case called Troxylvie Granville.
[45] The Supreme Court said this is among the most vaunted.
[46] Our oldest liberty interests recognize.
[47] So the court has made very clear parental rights are primary fundamental rights to be protected.
[48] So all of these lawsuits taking place specifically in a public school format where these children are being socially transitioned against the express will of their parents, where they are given different names, different pronouns, allowed to use bathrooms and sports teams according to their gender identity, is standing in place of this fundamental parental right.
[49] And I'm hopeful that we'll see some common sense from many of these circuit courts, including the 11th Circuit, where a case is currently pending Little John versus School Board of Leon County, Florida.
[50] That's the most recent one.
[51] It's on appeal currently, and we're hopeful we'll finally see a federal court weigh in and say these types of procedures in public schools are illegal.
[52] Do we see any connection between these issues, between the arguments for gender treatments for minors and those defending so -called minor attraction?
[53] We do, and I'm going to tell you, it is one of the more disturbing elements of where we're seeing this debate on gender identity and transgender status go, particularly because it goes to the issue of capacity for those minors who can say, I feel like a girl or I feel like a boy, and can, with such a representation, get access to cross -sex hormones, puberty blockers, be subject to voluntary mastectomies.
[54] These are huge decisions.
[55] But giving those individuals, those minor children.
[56] The perceived agency, the sense of mind, the maturity to make decisions like that gets us closer to that line for youth attracted people.
[57] Because after all, these minors are themselves capable of entering into such life -altering decisions.
[58] They can also be capable of entering into life -altering choices and having sex with adults.
[59] We know, for example, Mermaids, which is one of the organizations, the top organization, for all LGBTQ corporations supporting transgender children in the United Kingdom, recently had a trustee of their organization have to resign in October because he spoke at a conference openly supporting pedophilia.
[60] The closer we get to this line, I think the more frequently we're going to see the involvement of youth -attracted persons, which is just another name for paedophilia.
[61] Final question.
[62] What about the medical community?
[63] Why has it complied with these new radical gender interventions and treatments?
[64] That's a great question.
[65] Part of it is because money talks, but in the transgender cultural tsunami, it really screams.
[66] We discovered that the human rights campaign's equity index for which they would rate organizations, on their inclusiveness and in specific their treatment of transgender individuals or what are called sexually diverse cultures, that study was being underwritten by Pfizer.
[67] Pfizer, of course, a major pharmaceutical corporation that makes many of the puberty blockers and cross -sex hormones that are being used for these minor children.
[68] The inflection point here is always going to be following the dollar.
[69] It's why we see certain corporations like Bud Light tanking in an effort to make a profit.
[70] People made very clear how they felt.
[71] And it's why I believe Target has taken the precisely identical route.
[72] But all of this can be traced back to money.
[73] There is money to be made in corporate wokeness and specifically in the sexualization of children.
[74] Well, we'll continue to follow the money.
[75] Sarah, thanks for joining us.
[76] Thanks for having me. That was Heritage Senior Legal Fellow, Sarah Partial Perry, and this has been an extra edition of Moneywire.