'My God makes no mistakes': Texas Senate OKs ban on gender-affirming care for young Texans

[DonViejo]

Source: USA Today/Austin American-Statesman


Chuck Lindell
Austin American-Statesman

AUSTIN. Texas — After debating the meaning of God's love, the Texas Senate voted along party lines to give final approval Tuesday to a bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender Texans who are 17 and younger.

The 18-13 vote sent Senate Bill 1311 to the House, which has one week to vote on the measure, and it came one day after the Senate gave initial approval to the bill, also with all Republicans in favor and all Democrats opposed.

Sen. Beverly Powell, D-Burleson, opened Tuesday's debate by noting that religion played a role in the previous day's discussion of SB 1311.

"I'm concerned, and I don't want to let this go without saying, that transgender people will hear this argument and will conclude there is no place for them in the church, or worse that God doesn't love them exactly as they are," she said.



Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/19/after-debating-theology-senate-oks-gender-care-ban-young-texans/5161989001

[piddyprints]

1. Well, if God makes republicans,

He certainly does make mistakes.

Turning biology into a religious argument does no good for anyone, but that’s obvious to everyone here.

[TheBlackAdder]

52. Hm. What was the premise of Serpent in the Garden, Sodom & Gamorrah & The Great Flood? 🤔

[TheBlackAdder]

53. Hm. What was the premise of Jesus Christ? 🤔

[-misanthroptimist]

2. 'My God makes no mistakes'

Oh, yeah? Then explain the duck-billed platypus. I'll wait.

[paleotn]

34. "spare parts" species.

Platypus got the leftovers.

A wonderful window genetically into ancient transitional species. A link between ancient reptiles and mammals. Oh, sorry. They don't "believe" in evolution either.

[RainCaster]

3. My God made tonsils, appendix, knee and hip joints

He also gave us the intelligence to fix the problems that happen as we grow and age. Gender is just another one of those things that w we have learned how to fix. But it takes compassion for the patient, because the transition is lengthy and difficult.

[Claire Oh Nette]

16. God put the drippy, runny nose over the open mouth

All kinds of design flaws.

ANd ps. no one voted for his god. Or any god.

Separation of Church and State, FFS.
Let Parents parent their own children.

Fearful, likely closeted, assholes.

[paleotn]

35. And big human noggins...

some of us rarely use, but complicate the hell out of human birth.

[Phoenix61]

4. What is it with Repubs wanting to legislate medical care?

How is that any part of the constitution?

[genxlib]

5. The explain birth defects, still births, cancer, etc.

If your God does exist, he either makes mistakes or he is an evil bastard not worthy of being worshiped.

[Sibelius Fan]

44. God designed the human reproductive system, where 25% of pregnancies

do not come to term, not due to anything humans do, but due to the design of the system.

God is history’s greatest abortionist.

[raccoon]

61. Thank you. Nt

[4Q2u2]

6. Then He/She

Made Baby Killers and Child Rapist on purpose?

[keithbvadu2]

20. Yes

I was taught that God knows all; past, present, and future.

So God knew what everyone was going to do when he created them.

All evil done was pre-approved by God.

[crud]

36. After each plague God brought against Egypt

Pharaoh thought about setting the Jews free and then "God hardened his heart". According to the bible Pharaoh had no choice in the matter.

[nuxvomica]

7. If God makes no mistakes, stop criticizing His work!

God made people of different colors, different sexual identities, different a lot of things, so if you believe in Him, and believe He makes no mistakes, such laws are an insult to His handiwork.

[patphil]

15. I agree! God couldn't be God and make mistakes.

And yet so many people are critical of the results of God's work.
They are, in effect, judging God.
The actuality of the situation is that God provided for the concept of free will. We are dealt a particular hand by God, but what we do with it is our own business.

The real challenge put forth by God is to be loving, kind, and compassionate. That includes accepting people for what they are.
Essentially, life is all about love. The path of love brings you back to God.
All the anger and hate that is part of the process of judging other people for their differences blocks the flow of God's love into a person. And, without love, the light within them looses it's luster; it's shine.
Without love, light begins to take on a dull, lifeless cast. It begins to manifest as darkness.
The darkness of loveless light is prevalent in so many people.

[nuxvomica]

22. "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

Paul laid it out very simply, that charity (agape, unconditional love) trumps even the strongest expression of faith. And even for agnostics like me, the concept of God may just be the embodiment of this universal, unconditional love.

[Loki Liesmith]

8. "gender affirming care" has a lot of meanings

Will have to dig into the bill to see what they are explicitly “banning” before I know how to take this.

[janterry]

18. I see a copy here and it

restricts puberty blockers and surgery to children. So, it sort of brings Texas in line with some of the current thinking that is bubbling up in other countries (most notably Sweden)

https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB1646/2021

[marble falls]

9. If 'gawd' makes no mistakes, he wouldn't have cancer surgery, right?

[SamKnause]

10. It would take hours for me to list all of the mistakes your imaginary friend has made.

Separation of Church and State has little meaning.

[LiberatedUSA]

11. All the commandments in the Bible seem...

...like they were written from a human mind, not the mind of a perfect being; and a really misogynistic mind at that. So I am gonna have to question very existence of this god in the first place.

[Marthe48]

13. There are no commandments about the children

When I read that, I thought about it a lot and came to the conclusion that God thought we'd have enough sense to take care of our kids.


(It is a line from Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, by Richard Powers)

[LiberatedUSA]

19. Yep

No commandments against rape either. A lot of the rules seem to be about making sure you treat your God right. Seems like this god is very sensitive about being the center of attention. Must be why Trump likes to pretend (poorly) that he has any faith whatsoever.

[Marthe48]

12. God doesn't make mistakes

Therefore, each person is made as God wants. But there is free will.

God wants you to win the lottery. But He lets you pick the numbers.

[sanatanadharma]

31. God allows too many small-minded people with too many small-gods

De acuerdo

So much truth in few words
The choices are ours to make
The ultimate gift is our heritage
Uncountable desires divert our denouement

[The Wizard]

14. Saudi Arabia is a theocracy

And so is Texas.

[keithbvadu2]

17. Saying "My God" acknowledges multiple Gods.

Saying "My God" acknowledges multiple Gods.

[greenjar_01]

21. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

Jeez, they're mean as rattlesnakes, aren't they? Fuckssake.

[Paladin]

23. God himself would admit a fuck-up, if he created Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. (nt)

[RussBLib]

24. My God, you're an idiot.

No one should be referencing imaginary beings when constructing social policy.

We need to vote out the religious fanatics, because that's what this guy is.

[Sibelius Fan]

25. Fucking Xian belief in make believe harming the lives of real people.

Disgusting.

[Scruffy1]

26. Then why does your forehead hurt when you eat ice cream too fast?

A neurologist gave me the answer. God fucked up the wiring.

[vercetti2021]

27. Guess what assholes

God didn't make mistakes because he gave us power to become what we truly are. Who we truly feel we are. You'll never stop us from becoming that you fascist fucks.

The GOP endgame for trans kids is not to protect them. It's to fucking kill them.

[Initech]

28. It's shit like this why I'm glad I stopped going to church long ago.

So yeah god hates you, but feel free to come worship us because he needs money. Right.

[jmowreader]

29. "God hates you" is the basis for most religions

“God hates you the way you are, no matter how good of a person you are, and will throw you in a lake of burning tar for all eternity after you die. But if you change everything about yourself so you’re the way we want you to be, and you give us all your money and all your possessions, you might - might, I say, there’s always the chance of burning tar if you slip up just a little - escape the lake and go to somewhere nice after you die.”

War story follows: The printing plant in North Carolina that I worked at, that no longer exists because the owner’s wife caught him in bed with another woman and murder-suicided him, donated a job advertising some big charity event to an extremely hardcore Christian church...who, of course, attempted to convert me while I was designing their piece. They told me that Heaven was this wonderful place where all you have to do is lay around and be waited on hand and foot by sinners who didn’t see the light and join their church. I told the preacher that “being waited on hand and foot” sounds like the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me, and I’d much rather be one of the people doing the serving.

[malthaussen]

30. "God" doesn't get a vote.

He is not a US citizen. Clearly, whether he loves trans people or not, his minions emphatically do not.

-- Mal

[czarjak]

32. Hateful ignorance wrapped in religion is still hateful ignorance.

[IbogaProject]

33. I think the number say otherwise

According to experts, around 1.7% of the population is born with intersex traits - comparable to the number of people born with red hair. Despite this, the term intersex is still widely misunderstood, and intersex people are massively underrepresented.

I have no knowledge about this, other than hearing this statistic. But I did know a surgeon who pioneered a method to move these one way or the other. He had families who were connected and very grateful for his services, so I'd guess the number is correct.

That number means we all know someone who was born somewhere in between. This isn't a rare occurrence. I'm not sure what qualifies making this category.

[janterry]

37. This figure appears to be conflated and then repeated all over the place

It has been scientifically disentangled, though.

The 1.7 comes from Fausto-Sterling
Physician and psychologist Leonard Sax identified the flaw(s):

Many reviewers are not aware that this [1.7%] figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female.

and

Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling's estimate of 1.7%.”

[IbogaProject]

41. God doesn't make faulty scientists!

God doesn't make faulty scientists!

Wow, I will check out your information. One out of five thousand still explains that surgeons busy career.

[Warpy]

38. When they start talking about god, we know they are in the wrong

and so do they, they just want to waggle their weenies around so we'll know who's boss.

[Solly Mack]

39. How very theocratic of them. Legislating the will of some god, by however means they see said god,

is theocracy.

Theocracy is nothing more than labeling your hate and ignorance a religion and then imposing your hate and ignorance on others as the will of some god.

[Chicago1980]

40. If God doesn't make mistakes...

Why did said entity flood the fucking earth?

[They_Live]

42. So therefore

No one needs health care.

[PatrickforB]

43. Ah, the forces of Christian hate and intolerance rear up yet again.

Twenty-first century inquisition, anyone?

[Moostache]

45. Color me as Tommy Lee Jones on this...

I
DON'T
CARE!!!!

And btw, your 'god' does not get a say in the laws of the United States of America, period.
We have no sanctioned religion you putz, so kindly fuck right off.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

46. Reasonable people can debate whether giving puberty blockers to 12 year olds

Is actually a good idea, folks.

I don't trust THESE PEOPLE'S motivation, of course, not in the slightest.

But we generally don't think of 12 and 13 year olds as being 'capable of consent' to much of anything, do we, normally?

And this is not only a lifelong decision, but it's also not all that well-tested.

IMHO, reasonable people can debate the wisdom of allowing such treatments.

It should be based on science though, not imaginary sky daddies.

[Ms. Toad]

50. Reasonable peopld cannot debate it,

Unless the reasonable people are the doctor and the patient. It is no more an outsider's business than abortion is.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

54. Yeah, well I think it should be between my doctor and I whether he Rx's me 1000 Oxycontin's a month

You know ... because I get bad headaches. They are FDA approved after all.

But guess what?

Society has decided that it's really not just up to him and me.

Also ... a 10 year old can't get a C19 vaccine right now.

Would you say that's really up to the 10 year old and the doctor? I'm guessing you wouldn't.

Point is not to make a direct comparison between these 3 treatments, but rather to point out that we make TONS of regulations about what health care providers are allowed to do for (or to) their patients.

I'd also point out that puberty blockers are used off-label in transgender children, this is not an FDA-approved use of these drugs.

As a society, we don't give 12 year olds carte blanche to decide jack shit for themselves (they are not capable of 'consent', are they now?), but for some reason, with this one thing ... they are to be treated like full-blown adults?

Look, I'm pretty friggin liberal, and very trans-friendly, but I'm still not sure how I feel about this treatment, and I think reasonable people can debate the wisdom of allowing it, given these are YOUNG kids, AND we don't have a lot of science on 'what happens to people' if we leverage these drugs for this particular indication. I'm not giving a 'hard no', only saying it's fair to debate it.

Lastly, MANY governments and health agencies around the world are still debating the wisdom and value of such treatments (it's not just stupid wingnuts in Texas) ... should they all just consult Ms. Toad to straight it all out?

As usual, we'll likely have to agree to disagree on this one

[Ms. Toad]

56. You are NOT trans-friendly if you would require trans girls

to go through puberty as males. Period. There is absolutely no wiggle room on this.

Like abortion, this IS a matter between a doctor and their patient. The examples you are giving are ridiculous stretches.

COVID 19 does not have full FDA approval for any use, let alone for children. It is only now being tested for children.

Oxycontin is a controlled substance because the substance is inherently dangerous - particularly at the dosage you suggest.

Yes, puberty blockrs are off-label for use in children - as are most drugs at least initially. My daughter took pentasa for 13 years off-label because it was a (then) new drug not tested on children. Off label use of FDA approved drugs is a matter for the doctor and patient to decide.

Unlike controlled substances prescribed at a dangerous level.
Unlike vaccines that are not yet even fully approved for adult use.

Governments should keep their noses out of it, just as they should with abortions. You don't have to create new oppressive, laws to prevent a 10-year old from decidng on her own with a doctor, without parental consent. Existing laws prohibit children, in all but a few circumstances, from consenting to medical procedures on your own.

If you truly believe you can be trans-friendly AND support government prohibition on the use of puberty blockers, I suggest you go have a heart to heart with your trans friends and ask them. And, if you don't have that level of friendship with any trans individuals - then you should perhaps stop proclaiming that you can be trans-friendly and support government interference with the treatment that is **literally** life-saving.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

58. Agree to disagree :)

To be clear, I do NOT support bans based on currently available evidence.

I'm only saying that there is still reasoned debate as to how good of an idea it is to use these drugs in this way.

And it's happening among health agencies all over the world, it's not just RW dickbags in the USA.

[Humanist_Activist]

57. You seem to believe in a number of myths about puberty blockers...

https://www.gendergp.com/debunking-the-myths-surrounding-puberty-blockers-trans-kids/

[ananda]

47. It's getting to be like the dark ages now.

I am so tired of stupid theocrats.

[catrose]

48. A 5-year-old girl with a Down Syndrome older brother explained to me that "God has His off days."

[Permanut]

49. Sen. Kelly Hancock apparently was absent from Sunday School the day they discussed Genesis 6:6..

“And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart”

If you're going to be a hypocrite, at least try to be a consistent hypocrite. Otherwise you look like a moron.

[angrychair]

51. Why are we having a discussion about "god"

In a debate over a legally binding law?
What if I'm Buddhist? Muslim? Pastafarian? Satanist? Atheist? Does this law apply to me?

This debate and its crafting is very Christian-centric for a world that isn't all Christian.

I would even push back against Democratic state senator Powell quoted in the OP..since there is no "god" I don't care if they love me or not. They are not real. Its like telling me the Santa Claus doesn't love me. Who cares.

This law is as ridiculous and unenforceable in my opinion.

[LudwigPastorius]

59. "My God makes no mistakes..."

So the Holocaust was His plan? The Nazis throwing live children into the crematory fires because they didn't want to expend the bullets or gas to kill them?

10,000 children around the world starving to death every day is His plan?

25,000 people dying of cancer every day?

If those things are 'all part of His plan', then His plan is fucked.

[machoneman]

60. God does make mistakes. Heck, he made Texas Republicans now didn't he?

LOL