Andy Beshear does it again!

Banning conversion therapy for sexual orientating is good.

Banning conversion therapy for "gender identity", something that cannot be clearly defined in law, is very bad.

The only gay conversion therapy being practised is telling "gender non-conforming kids" that they're trans. Otherwise, there was no gay conversion therapy. This whole drive to ban "conversion therapy" - which doesn't even exist - was driven by the trans lobby to stop kids with dysphoria from being given talking therapy and to ensure that they are instead immediately rushed off to be transed.

Conversion therapy for gender dysphoria = psychiatrist questioning whether a patient is truly trans and whether or not surgery is really the best option. Sorry, but this is bullshit. Gays, yes, trans, no. They need to be questioned.

[quote]there was no gay conversion therapy. This whole drive to ban "conversion therapy" - which doesn't even exist

A different view below:

I love Andy. Although Tim Walz was a good VP choice for Harris, I would have preferred to see Andy.

That view, r4, does not give any examples of gay conversion therapy. It's, in fact, an example of how using the emotive words "conversion therapy" - which most people associate with gay conversion therapy - is being used by trans lobby groups such as the Trevor Project to ban talking therapy for kids with gender dysphoria. A lot of those kids are gay, so this will effectively be making distressed gay kids think that the reason they're attracted to their own sex is because they're "trans". Once again, banning "conversion therapy" for "gender identity" is the equivalent of gay conversion therapy.

Good news

Love Andy.

Will this include laws against transing gay children.

It's speculated that one of the reasons Andy wasn't selected for the VP slot is that the party is counting on him to run for Mitch McConnell's Senate seat in 2026. I think he has an excellent chance of winning it.

[quote] Banning conversion therapy for sexual orientating is good

I'm sure this sounded better in its original Russian version.

Like flies to shit, you can always count on the DL anti-trans lunatics to show up.

Transing kids is batshit.

Do you actually deny that is happening, r12?

Are you Jazz Jennings' mother?

When are you going to stop pretending to care about the welfare of children, R14?

"Anti trans lunatics" will always remind the "pro trans lunatics" that the majority of young people who start a medical and social transition as kids would otherwise turn out to be gay, and that the hormone treatment they will be on for the rest of their lives will mean they are unlikely to have any sexual function and will have no fertility options.

But it's not all negatives - the manufacturers of incontinence pads are seeing opportunities in marketing to trans people who have post surgical bladder problems!

The only people practicing actual 'conversion therapy' now would be insane religious fanatics unqualified to practice and unregulated by any statutory body as opposed to licensed trained therapists.

As pointed out above licensed trained therapists being prevented from exploring patients' gender dysphoria in the course of talk therapy is not the same thing, although the people pushing legislation to make this a reality would like you to think that it is.

R17, if a therapist questions a child or adult actually being trans, that is considered conversion therapy under the law and said therapist will lose their license. This has been converted extensively over the last 7 years. You no longer have to go through therapy or live as the opposite gender for a year. You can go right in and demand hormones or surgery and no one can say a thing. Surgeons have rung the alarm about this. They are frightened about losing their license if they don’t castrate someone. Hospitals are making billions off of it. They, hospitals, were caught talking about the need to get more young people for trans surgeries to make money two years ago. In Philadelphia the two largest hospitals in the country now advertise for bottom surgery, like it’s Botox. It’s sick and dangerous as fuck and the backlash is going to be coming in ten years with all the suicides and the regrets.

Andy for president.

Andy will never be president. His collapse is complete.

Ugh, don’t summon the breakfast foodstuffs.

R20 is JD Vance.

Remember, the entire medical establishment and many states have pre-decided that ONLY "Gender Affirming" treatment is legal and moral! This means the dysphoria must be affirmed and be the ONLY allowable treatment route. No one is permitted to say, "Well, give it time, chances are you're just gay". Nope! Trans or bust!

It is analogous to treating anorexics, also plagued by a similar dysphoria, AS IF THEY WERE ACTUALLY FAT!

Think about THAT!

r23, why us "no one permitted"? I suppose you are the same person as r18 who is making up statistics about the billions of dollars that hospitals are making off this, out of thin air First of all, trans-related surgeries on people under the age of 18 are incredibly rare - probably on the order of fewer than 100/year in that age group. Gender affirming care is not initiated by practitioners. Children (mostly teens) come to THEM with questions. The largest part of gender affirming care is talking and listening and reassuring that they are not the only ones with these feelings. There has been much more publicity about trans in the past 10 years than ever before, so many kids who would have made other choices in the past are hearing about this and deciding this model fits the way they feel better than a choice they might have made 20 years ago. But the extreme negativity around this issue, mostly expressed by right-wing politicians and by church groups, has definitely deterred many children from exploring this option. Fear-mongering here at DL, where people actually take the time to research the facts, is a poor choice and a waste of our time. The pendulum is already swinging away from trans as a fad, but there are and will continue to be kids who have gender dysphoria and for some of them, declaring themselves as gay will NOT be the answer. They need support. Their lives will be incredibly difficult as it is. Many gay people have incredibly short memories of lack knowledge about our own history, because it was a scant 55 years ago that the psychological associations removed homosexuality from manuals that described it as a mental illness.

R24 - being gay doesn't require medical treatment that will limit your body's growth and sexual function.

The idea that it's somehow inhumane to restrict puberty blockers to kids until a comprehensive evaluation is completed is pushed by extreme gender fanatics.

R25 You do realize you’re including Tim Walz in that?

So what R26?

It’s an interesting mental exercise. The idea that it’s wrong to tell kids they are the gender they, well, ARE seems Orwell-level batshit crazy to me. I had to read the sentence twice to understand it. My mind said gay conversion = bad, wait, what?

But I suppose there are people who would say it’s crazy for someone with a dick to want to fuck someone else with a dick. “That’s not what the plumbing is designed for. “

I want to have an open mind and I don’t want to be proven wrong (and a bigot) by history, but it gets muddied for me because (1) a boy saying he’s attracted to other boys seems more clear cut than someone feeling like they are the opposite gender but are attracted to some dynamic list of genders and combinations of genders, (2) the negative impact of the hormone therapies and the social and physical difficulties of changing your mind.

Theoretically (because I don’t think this is common), if someone decides they are gay or lesbian but they are really just open to bisexuality and wanting a little attention and to cement their membership in a different friend group there’s no harm done if they later conclude they are really mostly straight.

But then I imagine the parents of a teenage boys in the late 1980’s and 1990’s…

Interesting mental exercise.

[quote] Many gay people have incredibly short memories of lack knowledge about our own history, because it was a scant 55 years ago that the psychological associations removed homosexuality from manuals that described it as a mental illness.

That doesn’t mean we have to accept every single other characteristic that is deemed to be mental illness.

“Oh, don’t say that schizophrenics are mentally ill, remember what they used to say about gay people!”

I’m not discounting what you said before that but this argument is becoming as lame as claiming that all homophobes are secretly not-straight.

[quote] But I suppose there are people who would say it’s crazy for someone with a dick to want to fuck someone else with a dick. “That’s not what the plumbing is designed for. “

There is no “design” it is a result of mutation / chaos and survival of the fittest. Humans can do whatever we want.

[quote]There has been much more publicity about trans in the past 10 years than ever before, so many kids who would have made other choices in the past are hearing about this and deciding this model fits the way they feel better than a choice they might have made 20 years ago.

You're proving my point.

This is the dangerous nonsense of "affirmative" care.

Did TLC's Unpretty and Cristina's Beautiful never happen?

If a 16 year old girl said she was saving up money because she wants her breasts enlarged she would be talked out of it and told she was perfect as she is and doesn't need to conform to a stereotypical view of what a woman is.

If a 16 year old boy started taking steroids to get bigger he'd be told it was dangerous and bad for his body and given the same pep talk.

Both are gender affirming treatments but not TRANS gender affirming treatment. The TRANS gender affirming treatments are fine though.

r32 - again, the majority of gender affirming care consists of talking and listening, not medical interventions. Whether encouraged or not, the number of teen boys using steroids to get bigger muscles exceeds transing teens using steroids by a magnitude of hundreds of thousands. Girls having breast augmentations exceeds transing operations on teens by a magnitute of hundreds of thousands. Both use of steroids by teens and breast augmentations are "discouraged" because of life-long effects, but there aren't laws being assiduously promoted in all 50 states to halt these "dangerous:" practices happening constantly by average teens in the US, and dozens of hand -wringing articles a day on these topics... . Maybe now might be a time to ask why the disparity?

Where are your statistics on this R33?

The use of exogenous hormones in adolescents can result in sterility. This effect is irreversible. I don't care what adults do to their bodies but children under the age of 18 should not be undergoing gender-affirming surgeries or ingesting hormones that will result in permanent changes to their bodies when their brains haven't even finished developing yet.

R34 claims to be a "men luving guy", but according to him (?) men and guys can have vaginas, so who knows what he's on about.

It's not exactly "gender affirming" if all it is talking. What are they talking about? If it's just to check if the young person "really" is trans (whatever that means), then that's not really affirming. In fact, it's what some people call "conversion therapy".

Also, only a moron would equate boob jobs - for which, apparently, the minimum age recommended by the FDA is 18 or 22 depending on the type - with medication to prevent puberty and physical mutilation that completely removes a teenage girl's breasts with the aim of creating a "male" body from a female body. Similar with steroids. Yeah, they are bad but they are nothing compared to completely destroying a child's body, making him/her infertible and unable to enjoy sex.

[quote]Yeah, they are bad but they are nothing compared to completely destroying a child's body, making him/her infertible and unable to enjoy sex.

I don't know how anyone can look at the tragedy that is Jazz Jennings and support medical interventions for trans-identified youth. If Jazz had not been encumbered with a fame-hungry mother and been encouraged to accept himself as a gender-nonconforming child he might have grown up to be a happy healthy gay man instead of a eunuch with an eating disorder.

Sex surgery on kids is abuse.

I want to feel Andy Beshear Governors cock "deep inside me"& force me to eat his yummy babies!!

How dare you call him basic. He's dreamy.