David French Makes the Conservative Case for Transgender Conversion of Children

Update: I missed a huge point. I stupidly allowed the perverted fictions of David French to infect my thinking and took his framing as the basic parameters of the argument. See end of post for a very, very important correction.

Via Matt Walsh. Worth the listen.

David French pretends to oppose Gavin Newsom's disgusting new law which presumes to terminate the parental rights of out-of-state parents if their children run away to California to get gender reassignment surgery against their parental will.

David French, perhaps surprisingly, thinks this goes too far.

People who just read the Twitter headline where tricked into giving him (weak) praise. And maybe were tricked into clicking on the link and reading the whole thing, thinking it would be a rare conservative piece from French.

But it wasn't. It was another AllahPundit-style Trojan Horse-- a couple of paragraphs about the headline topic, before diving into what it's really about.

And you know what it's really about.

But David French cannot write a column criticizing the Left, which pays his rent and buys his food, without immediately thereafter attacking the right for what he claims is an equal or worse offense.

And therefore, David French then proceeds to attack Texas for investigating whether certain transgender procedures conducted on certain very young children might be a form of child abuse. The plight of transgender children yearning to be free of the Gender Binary is is a form of "true injustice" that cruel conservatives "close their hearts and minds to," he tells us.

Degenerate scumbag grifter.

Last month The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg published a fascinating interview with Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid. The entire interview is worth reading--especially if you have interest in Israeli politics and the prospects for Middle East peace--but two sentences from the prime minister stood out as particularly insightful. "Everybody is stuck in this left-versus-right traditional dynamic," he said. "But today, all over the world, it's centrist versus extremist."

I wanted to stand up and cheer. Now, to be clear, this is a strange position for me. I've always been conservative. In the left versus right context, I've always considered myself a man of the right--the Reagan right. But when the extremes grow more extreme, and the classical liberal structure of the American republic is under intellectual and legal attack, suddenly I'm an involuntary moderate.

No, no, you and your wretched wife are progressive Champagne Shitlibs.

After noting that he supposedly opposes gay marriage and doesn't use people's "preferred pronouns" -- strange that he never writes or speaks about these positions! -- he then gets into what he really wants to talk about. What he always wants to talk about. What he only wants to talk about: How the right is bad and Christians are bad and he is Good because he believes in the good parts of liberal ideology (though he calls this "conservatism," properly defined in a Frenchian way).

That makes me pretty far right, correct?

No.

Not when the right gets authoritarian or closes its mind and heart to the legacy of real injustice. I'm apparently the conservative movement's foremost defender of the civil liberties of drag queens. I'm constantly decried as "woke" in part because I don't discard all of the relevant insights gained from critical race theory, I strongly oppose efforts to "ban" CRT, and also because I believe in multigenerational institutional responsibility to ameliorate the enduring harm caused by centuries of racial oppression.

Reparations, yo.

He then says he disagrees with Gavin Newsom's new law, in which California presumes to take "temporary custody" of children seeking transgender "care" against their parents' wills and becomes their parent for legal purposes, for the purposes of okaying their gender transformation surgery.

Thank God for small favors.

Or: Thank French for small favors.

But, having given a small scolding to his Very Good Friends on the Left, it's now time to show his Paymasters and Pals that he's still very much one of them, and still very much on Team Blue.

This wouldn't be 2022 if the story ran only one way. Just as California has escalated the culture wars by potentially severing the parent/child relationship when parents object to various methods of gender reassignment, Texas now threatens to break families when parents consent to those same treatments.

This is a false equivalency. The law is very clear that the state routinely steps in and contradicts parental decision-making as regards a specific category of parental treatment of children: That category is called "child abuse."

If a parent is molesting a child, David French, should we robotically "respect parental privilege" to sexually enjoy the child?

"Protecting a child" and "mutilating a child" are not equivalent parental choices. The first is good, the latter is evil.

But David French -- ever the "libertarian" who insists we treat all choices as equally valid (except the choices of conservative Christians to support Trump and Republicans over his favored Democrat Party) -- thinks that these are equally valid choices that the state must be neutral as regards favor or disfavor.

David French would agree that pushing a little old lady out of the way of a bus is the same as pushing a little old lady in front of a train. You are both pushing little old ladies around. Posted by: G'rump928(c)

If it was necessary to argue that to hold his brief for his paymasters and palz of the left, he would.

In February Texas attorney general Ken Paxton wrote to Texas representative Matt Krause and argued that certain "sex-change" or "gender-reassignment" procedures, including various surgical procedures and the prescription of puberty blockers "can legally constitute child abuse under several provisions" of Texas law.

Texas governor Greg Abbott followed Paxton's letter with his own directive, stating that "Texas law imposes a duty on [the Department of Family and Protective Services] to investigate the parents of a child who is subjected to these abusive gender-transitioning procedures." In response, DFPS commenced investigations of at least nine Texas families.

The Texas directives and DFPS investigations are currently subject to litigation, and I have little doubt that California will face its own lawsuits. But this is where we are now. It's not enough to disagree over important matters. Now the culture war requires a direct attack on the most fundamental American liberty interests.

Transitioning your children is among "the most fundamental of American liberty interests," French? Really? Ah yes -- it was De Toqueville who wrote about it, yes?

This is a simple-minded rhetorical trick that all simple-minded employ-- whenever what you are defending/championing is too disgusting too defend/champion on its own merits, zoom out to higher levels of abstraction and defend that instead.

Can't defend chopping off your son's dick? Zoom out a couple clicks -- make it about the more abstract issue of parental rights. The Parental Right to chop off your son's dick, but don't mention that last part.

French is also ignorant of -- or, more likely, deliberately conceals -- the reason that Texas would be especially interested in establishing a legal baseline that these treatments are default disfavored -- the case of the non-biological mother of a son who, apparently vindictively, changing that child's gender against the wishes of the boy's actual biological father.

And the judge said, well, it's her decision, right? And all decisions here are equally valid?

Maybe the law should not respect "all decisions as equally valid," French, you disgusting moral monster.

In an excellent, comprehensive piece at Public Discourse, Catholic University professor Melissa Moschella outlines the stakes well. After outlining the risks and side effects of popular "gender affirming" measures like puberty blockers, she writes, "It is clearly untenable to claim that parents who are hesitant to rush their children into risky, controversial medical treatments of unproven efficacy are guilty of medical neglect."

Does anyone suspect David French has a big stinky "but"?

But that's not the entire story. A similar admonition applies to the right. Again, here's Moschella: "Given current divisions in medical opinion, loving and responsible parents may be convinced that such treatments are necessary for their child's health. Thus, "it is clearly within the parents' sphere of constitutionally protected childrearing authority to seek a legal medical treatment for their child following the advice of the child's doctors."

Some pedophile fathers may think it's best for their daughters to learn the actual act of sex from them rather than from some stranger off the streets.

Do we respect that, French, you vile libertine?

Parental authority has never been absolute, which is what this disgusting pervert is arguing for here.

Actually, he almost certainly doesn't mean this; he is just arguing whatever is necessary to be a Good Lawyer for his Very Good Friends on the Left.

Let's finish up with some Both Sides:

I've detailed all this before, but red and blue states are in a process of "can you top this" when it comes to punitive culture war legislation. The Supreme Court has blocked multiple California laws and regulations that, for example, compelled pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise for free and low-cost abortions, mandated unconstitutional donor disclosures, and systematically discriminated against religious gatherings during the pandemic.

Not to be outdone, Texas and Florida have both decided to override the constitutional rights of dissenting citizens. In addition to Texas's attack on parental rights, the state has passed a social media law that the Supreme Court has blocked once already, and Florida has passed a series of laws that take direct aim at the First Amendment, including a social media law that's blocked by the 11th circuit and a so-called "Stop WOKE Act" that's already been partially enjoined by a federal district court judge.

Seems like one of those "Both Sides" paragraphs contained far more serious violations than the other. The Blue States are actually attempting to suppress speech, where the Red States are attempting to stop the suppression of speech -- which this repulsive pervert finds to be Morally Equivalent Actions, of course.

Yet as serious as the constitutional deprivations are, outside of criminal law, it's difficult to think of an exercise of state power more raw, immediate, and devastating than the use of state power to sever the bond between parent and child. It is a power to be exercised sparingly, in the most extreme cases. It is not a power to enlist in the culture war over one of the emotional and contentious contests of our time.

Chopping off a child's sex organ is pretty extreme isn't it, French?

You mewling eunuch bitch.

At a time of profound public division and deep moral conflict, pluralism suffers from a serious disadvantage compared to the illiberal extremes of far-left and far-right. It's not utopian. By design it doesn't "own the libs." It doesn't "own" anybody. It accommodates dramatic differences in world view. The illiberal extremes, by contrast, offer an alluring vision for their partisans--ultimate victory and the vanquishing of their opponents.

But when that "victory" severs parent from child, it's not only unjust, it's destabilizing. States have many ways to express their values, and they can and should strictly limit access to permanent, life-altering medical procedures for minors. For example, states should pass age restrictions prohibiting dramatic medical interventions for children and at an absolute minimum must require parental consent.

Do they require both parents' consent or nah? Because that's a major problem. And if you don't establish one "choice" as the favored one and one as the disfavored one -- one that requires much more evidence to prove, more parental "consent" to push into action -- then we're going to keep on having angry ex-wives transitioning their ex-husband's sons into castrati.

But they can express their values and pass their regulations while still remembering a singular moral and constitutional command--leave loving families alone.

Oh shut the fuck up you Moralist of Satan.

"Aren't we the Best Christians who the Bad Christians should follow?"

Note, there, what he's actually discussing is Being a True Progressive.

So when he's among his fellow progressives, he admits he's a progressive (and claims, of course, that he is Best Progressive).

But he claims to be a conservative (and Best Conservative) on TV and when attacking conservatives.

David French

* Best Humble

Huge Point I Missed:

133 David French and Ace are missing one huge point:

The gender clinicians are not interested in the opinion of the parents.

They state uniformly that there is only one treatment for a child whom they diagnose as gender non-conforming, which is to transition the child.

If the parents object, they are 'educated' to accept the treatment.
Posted by: MJ

Indeed -- once a school or Child Welfare Officer or any other state agent decides a child may be "trans," most decision-making is taken out of the hands of the parents. They can either "affirm" the state-chosen "trans" identity -- or have custody of the child taken from them.

This is not "parental consent." This is parental coercion.

"Given current divisions in medical opinion, loving and responsible parents may be convinced that such treatments are necessary for their child's health."

Why is David "Bros" French such a vile racist? The tranny phenomenon is confined almost exclusively to affluent white liberal families. It's almost unheard of in black, latino, or asian families. So if these are decisions by "loving and responsible" parents, then why is it only affluent white liberal parents making these decisions? Are minority parents not loving or responsible? French must think minorities hate their own kids or at least not love them enough to give them these treatments. RACIST.
Posted by: Elric Blade

Why won't David French support equity in Trans Outreach to Children of Color (COCs)?

Why does David French hate Children of Color? Does he not love CoCs? Because I heard the opposite.

You don't know how much I'd pay to see David French knocking on doors in minority neighborhoods trying to convince black and brown parents to let him talk to their kids about becoming transgender.

(Thanks to Roy for the "loves CoC" joke.)

posted by Ace at 12:01 PM

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