In a long and remarkably unpleasant hearing on Monday, the California legislature discussed a proposal to allocate $26 million in state funds to pay for pediatric transgender interventions. Legislators proudly declared their support for “trans” kids, and for the doctors who perform their procedures. But the joint session between two budget subcommittees, one from the Senate and one from the Assembly, had the opposite of the intended effect. The testimony made it remarkably clear that California is doing CPR on a dead fetish.
News coverage of the hearing focused on a second panel of witnesses, made up of pro-trans witnesses. But the first panel to testify, made up entirely of state lawyers and health care regulators, established a less-noticed theme. Facing repeated demands from the chair, Sen. Caroline Menjivar, to explain why they weren’t punishing the many hospitals and health care systems in the state that have stopped providing pediatric trans procedures following changes in federal policy, the state officials kept defaulting to the same answer.