NewsRescue
Judge Robert Hinkle ruled on Tuesday that three Florida children who had already begun taking hormones to transition from one gender to another before Governor Ron DeSantis banned all gender-affirming procedures for minors last month will be allowed to continue with their metamorphosis.
Hinkle ruled in favour of the three children’s parents, who had sued the state so that their children could continue their transitions, arguing that the youths were at greater risk from being forced to discontinue hormone treatment than they were from continuing and completing their transition, and that Florida had no rational basis for interfering.
“There are risks associated with not using these treatments,” the court observed, “including the risk – in some cases, the near certainty – of anxiety and depression, as well as suicidal ideation.” “The plaintiffs’ adolescent children will suffer irreparable harm — the unwanted and irreversible onset and progression of puberty in their natal sex — if they do not promptly begin treatment with GnRH agonists.”
Hinkle claimed that the controversial hormone treatment would “cause the defendants no harm,” and that the new regulation “ignores the benefits that many patients realise from these treatments as well as the substantial risk posed by foregoing the treatments.”
“Gender identity exists. “The record makes this clear,” he declared, slamming the state for its alleged belief that “cisgender people properly adhere to their natal sex and that transgender people have inappropriately chosen a contrary gender identity, male or female, just as one might choose whether to read Shakespeare or Grisham.”
People who believe being transgender is a choice are more likely to “disapprove of all things transgender and thus oppose medical care that supports a person’s transgender existence,” according to Hinkle, who warns that the state’s ban on such care, particularly for children, would simply drive it underground and increase the risk to patients.
DeSantis, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has made the propagation of LGBT ideology targeting minors the centrepiece of his campaign. The governor has clashed with Disney, the state’s greatest employer, and has boasted on multiple occasions that “Florida is where woke goes to die.”
The package of legislation signed into Florida law last month included a ban on forcing children to declare “preferred pronouns” in school, restrictions on drag shows targeting children, requirements that students use bathrooms associated with their birth gender, and a prohibition on using state funds to pay for gender-affirming care even for adults.
