To the editor,
When I was younger, my parents got me my first PlayStation. I would come home from school every day, toss aside my math book, and play Spyro 2 for hours.
Contrary to what some psychologists believed (and still do, depending on where one attends college), playing video games for hours has no adverse effect on mental health. The same cannot be said for puberty blockers and “gender affirming care” for minors.
Recently, a tenured faculty member in the psychology department at BGSU bemoaned the overriding of Gov. DeWine’s veto regarding sex-reassignment surgery for minors. As someone with a family member who taught psychology at BGSU for years, I was shocked at the twilight-zone level insanity I was seeing from someone who calls himself an “ally” for the oppressed. Instead of taking kids to movies, arcades, bookstores, or martial arts classes, deranged parents are taking them to get their genitals mutilated by money-hungry doctors.
Indeed, research has shown that “gender affirming care” for minors is a multi-billion-dollar industry! (source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/lucrative-business-the-child-sex-change-industry-is-exploding-in-the-us/ar-AA17GVEr)
Kids cannot even decide what to watch on Hulu or what to be when they grow up (in the 1990s, that question referred exclusively to vocations), it is absurd to think they have the mental capacity to figure out their “true” gender identity at such a young age. If they, on their eighteenth birthday, still want to go through with such an operation, then by all means the State should let them.
That isn’t enough for some politicians and academics. State Senator Gavarone was right to vote in favor of overriding the governor’s veto and anyone familiar with the issue should agree.
None of this (to repeat) is to say that an adult cannot or should not make decisions regarding their own body. That applies to sex-change operations, contraceptives, and physician assisted suicide. I disagree with State Sen. Gavarone on a plethora of issues, but this is one issue that Democrats and Republicans should find common ground on.
Bill Kennedy IV
Bowling Green
