WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Senate voted 85-14 to give final approval to a military spending package for the coming year that eliminates taxpayer-subsidized coverage for “gender transitions” of military children, with all that remains to be seen being whether outgoing President Joe Biden will pick a fight over the provision in his final weeks in office.
Earlier this month, the House of Representatives voted 281-140 to pass the $895.2 billion, 1,800+ page National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), with Republicans who control the chamber including a provision that prohibits the military family insurance plan TRICARE from covering surgical or chemical “gender reassignment” procedures on minors.
The Senate also passed the bill last week, despite being held for a few more weeks by Democrats who adamantly support the LGBT agenda. Lesbian Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) led 20 of her colleagues in pushing an amendment to remove the provision, but were unsuccessful.
As LifeSiteNews previously reported, the NDAA also excluded funding to expand embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization (IVF) for military members.
Because they concern “must-pass” legislation to fund key functions of the federal government, NDAA battles tend to get lawmakers to go along with side details they otherwise wouldn’t, particularly lawmakers on the losing end of an impending transfer of power in Washington. For that reason, Biden may opt to sign the package as-is, despite his own aggressively pro-LGBT record.
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 percent of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that “transition” procedures fail to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored detransitioners attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion in favor of “transitioning.”