(LifeSiteNews) – Franklin County Judge Michael Holbrook ruled Tuesday that an Ohio law banning gender “transition” procedures on minors as well as keeping males out of female-specific athletic programs may take effect, telling challengers that their disapproval of their policy belongs in the arena of public opinion rather than the courtroom.
HB 68, the Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, forbids courts from considering a parents’ refusal to “affirm” a child’s gender confusion as weighing against their parental rights, prohibits physicians from surgically or chemically “transitioning” minors, requires mental health professionals to check for other mental health disorders before diagnosing a minor with a condition related to gender confusion, and bans schools and interscholastic athletic organizations from allowing gender-confused males to compete in athletic teams intended for females.
Moderate Republican Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed the bill in January, claiming it went too far and instead signed an executive order addressing some of the same issues in a more limited way. Later that month, however, the Ohio legislature overrode his veto, making HB 68 state law without him.
The law was originally slated to take effect in April, but the far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued, claiming it violated the Ohio Constitution. This week, Holbrook rebuked the ACLU in a 13-page ruling, the Washington Stand reports, allowing the SAFE Act to begin protecting children.
The judge determined the law did not violate Ohio’s single-subject rule because it “contains a common purpose or relationship; namely, the General Assembly’s regulation of transgender individuals”; that it did not violate the state constitution’s prohibition on any “penalty or fine for the sale or purchase of health care” because that provision does “not affect laws calculated to punish wrongdoing in the health care industry”; and that it does not violate equal protection or due process because it is “rationally related” to the state’s “legitimate interest” in “protecting the health and safety of its citizens.”
Throughout the opinion, Holbrook repeatedly emphasized that “recourse for those who are dissatisfied with the General Assembly’s determinations must be exercised through their vote as opposed to the judicial system.”
A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically-transformative, and often-irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
The Biden administration’s own Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released a since-deleted report last year acknowledging that “lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults are more likely than straight adults to use substances, experience mental health conditions including major depressive episodes, and experience serious thoughts of suicide.”
As for mandatory inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports, it is promoted as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities, as well as undermining female players’ basic safety and privacy rights by forcing them to share showers and changing areas with members of the opposite sex.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be fully negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy;” therefore, “the advantage to transwomen [biological men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Both aspects of the controversy have been highlighted by University of Pennsylvania swimmer William “Lia” Thomas, who reportedly retains male genitalia and is still attracted to women yet “identifies” as female and lesbian. Thomas quickly started dominating women’s swimming after switching from the men’s team, and has caused his female teammates unrest due to sharing lockers with them. Yet the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has reportedly pressured swimmers and their parents against speaking out.