President Biden has claimed states have no right to restrict treatments like hormone blockers or sex change operations for transgender children, claiming that recent measures passed by Republican-led legislatures were based in “fear.”
“I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that. As a moral question or as a legal question, I just think it’s wrong,” Biden told transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney during a NowThis News presidential forum that aired Sunday.
Mulvaney, who has been documenting their transition to more than 8 million followers on the platform, asked the president if he thought states “should have a right to ban gender-affirming health care.”
“It’s really important that we continue to speak out about the basic fundamental rights of all human beings, and the idea, the idea, that was going on, you know, in some states — I won’t get into the politics of it, but, some states, it’s just — it’s outrageous, and I think it’s immoral,” Biden added.
President Biden said he doesn’t think states should have the right to regulate gender-affirming surgeries or treatments.
The GOP-led push to legislate transgender issues began with a 2016 North Carolina bill that required transgender people to use the public bathroom that corresponded to the gender on their birth certificate.
More recently, state and local lawmakers have sought to bar transgender women from playing on girls’ school sports teams, prevent classroom discussions of sexuality and sexual orientation and absolve teachers from using students’ preferred pronouns.
In April, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said minors experiencing gender dysphoria should receive counseling rather than undergo medical procedures, opposing guidelines issued by the Biden administration.
A month earlier, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed an order that designated giving trans children hormone therapy as “child abuse.”
Alabama, Arkansas and Arizona have also enacted measures limiting children’s access to treatment and surgeries.
The president told Mulvaney that he thought fear, driven by “lack of exposure” to the issue, was to blame for the political controversy, most of which he claimed was “pure hyperbole.”
“People fear what they don’t know,” said Biden. “They fear what they don’t know. When people realize, when individuals realize, ‘Oh, this is what they’re telling me to be frightened of, this is the problem, this is’ — I mean, people change their minds.”
