Ohio Governor Mike DeWine vetoed a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for children and keep transgenders out of girls sports. His excuses are lame and don’t hold up under scrutiny.

Yet there are many out there who think DeWine made the right call, including a Congresswoman representing Ohio. 

HB 68 is absolutely wrong for Ohio families and youth and @GovMikeDeWine was right to veto it. Discriminatory state bills like HB 68 underscore the need for additional federal legislation to protect the rights of LGBTQ+ people nationwide.

— Rep. Shontel Brown (@RepShontelBrown) December 30, 2023

Of course, the media jumped in lockstep style to help ensure the public knows this veto was a great thing!

BREAKING: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has vetoed a bill that would have banned transgender minors from receiving gender-affirming care and prevented transgender girls from taking part in girls' and women's sports. pic.twitter.com/1qIp3PzOXv

— ABC News (@ABC) December 29, 2023

It’s all about CARE you see. And Mike DeWine says the parents should decide! 

Nice nod to parent’s rights isn’t it? Except, as we’ve pointed out many times, this gender-affirming care isn’t caring at all. How can it be when it involves drugs given to minors that the medical establishment still don’t know the impacts of years down the road (except for the suicidal ideations that is), or the surgeries that involve chopping off or destroying body parts. Those surgeries are irreversible. To be blunt, breasts and penises do NOT grow back. Ever. 

We cannot and should not describe this as care, when that so-called care involves permanently mutilating one’s body. 

Yet, according to some, this veto is a win for love, hope, and data. Yes, really. 

Something remarkable happened this week. It was a moment of reason and empathy in a world that sometimes seems devoid of those things. It was a moment when science won. Where data won. Where love won. Where parents won. Where bigotry lost. Most of all, the moment saw transgender kids treated as human beings.

This moment occurred Friday in Ohio when Republican Gov. Mike DeWine struck down legislation that would have banned trans girls from female sports and restricted medical care of trans minors. House Bill 68 would have stopped physicians from prescribing puberty blockers, hormones, or gender reassignment surgery before patients turn 18. The bill would also have stopped trans girls and women from playing on female sports teams in high school and college.

Is it really care if a parent and/or medical professional (and I use that term loosely) just agrees to a child’s assertion that he or she has decided they want to become the opposite sex and jumps right into medical transition instead of getting that child counseling?? That’s not care by any stretch of the definition. 

There are a multitude of reasons as to why Europe, who’s been on this gender-transition kick for over twenty years, is suddenly drop-kicking it to the curb. Especially when it involves minors. 

Yet Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s continues with his lame excuses for this veto.

“These are truly complex issues, and reasonable people draw vastly different conclusions,” DeWine said during a press conference on Friday. “This bill would impact a very small number of Ohio’s children, but for those children who face gender dysphoria, and for their families, the consequences of this could not be more profound.”

Complex??!! Why yes, the issue is complex. That is why the parents and medical professionals should be engaged in getting that child COUNSELING for a very long time instead of going straight to mind-altering drugs and body mutilation. 

As for DeWine’s assertion that it’s the parents who know best… you mean like THIS mother?

Why does she have two transgender kids? What’s going on in that house?

— Opticheart (@_Opticheart) December 27, 2023

So, surgery and puberty blocking drugs are the solution to the suicidal ideations of those two children?? That ‘mother’ is a prime example as to why DeWine’s veto was a very bad idea. BOTH of her children have tried, as she testifies above, to commit suicide. Did she EVER stop to think that the drugs being shoved into their bodies in the name of ‘gender-affirming care’ are a significant driver of their suicide attempts? 

According to supporters of this veto, including the author of the ‘hope won’ essay above, it is discriminatory to keep kids away from mind and life-altering drugs and surgeries. According to supporters, DeWine now sees transitioning kids and LGBTQXYZ advocates as people for the first time ever. 

In other words, don’t question the need for gender-affirming care lest you be labeled as a hateful bigot. Which is, again, why Mike DeWine’s lame excuses for his veto don’t hold up to scrutiny. 

Today’s narrative is that, if you don’t immediately agree to affirming a child’s gender-transition and let him or her get the “care” of drugs or surgical mutilations they supposedly need, it is YOU who is the problem. Not the parents or the so-called medical professionals involved. 

For those IN Ohio who are yelling about Mike DeWine’s veto…

Everybody mad at Mike Dewine today when they should be mad at Ohio Republican voters who were locked down by that tyrant and then ran to the polls to make him the GOP nominee again.

You voted for this. The problem is in the mirror. pic.twitter.com/1XOAJwZIe7

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) December 29, 2023

Yes, exactly. Remember the Covid lottery? That was DeWine’s brainchild.

The other part of this is the narrative that has been spreading across the country. Any parent opposed to immediately gender-transitioning their child and pushes for long-term counseling instead, runs the risk of being labeled a criminal. 

I do hope that the Ohio legislature sees the forest and the trees on this issue and overrides DeWine’s veto. 

Feature Photo Credit: DeWine in September 2020 via Flickr, cropped and modified