Multiply indicted degenerate Ken Paxton, the panty-sniffing attorney general of the great and insane state of Texas, loves two things: being a galactically corrupt dickweed, and keeping tabs on the genitalia of transgender people. Seriously, the man seems to think about transgender people’s genitals more than transgender people do. Thus he violates one of our cardinal principles for living life: Don’t like gender-affirming treatment for gender dysphoria? Then don’t have any and shut the fuck up.
But where would Texans be without Ken Paxton shoving his whole head into their underwear? They would be going about their lives unmolested by a repressed pervert and the powerful machinery of the state government, that’s where, and Ken Paxton can’t have that.
Paxton’s latest gambit? He is suing a pediatrician for providing gender-affirming care to transgender adolescents in violation of SB 14, the Texas law making such treatments illegal that went into effect after the Texas state supreme court ruled it constitutional this past June.
Dr. Mary Lau, a Dallas pediatrician, is accused of “violating SB 14 by prescribing testosterone to at least 21 patients between the ages of 14 and 17 to transition their biological gender or affirm their gender identity.” Even more specifically, the lawsuit accuses her of giving a puberty blocker to a 15-year-old and then telling the insurance company it was for an endocrine disorder instead of gender dysphoria.
The lawsuit is here if anyone would like to hear the state of Texas declare that “the legality of dangerous and experimental medical procedures seeking to transition or affirm a child’s belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex is over.” Which it is very much not! There is a case pending before the Supreme Court of the United States challenging a similar law in Tennessee. Should SCOTUS overturn that law, Texas might find itself overruled.
Or maybe you want to read a state attorney general calling an experienced and well-regarded doctor a “scofflaw” and “radical gender activist” for the crime of treating her patients as she sees best. Paxton is seeking to have the Texas Medical Board revoke Lau’s medical license and saddle her with $1 million in civil fines and “other costs,” presumably including the cost of procuring the liver bile that Ken Paxton constantly sips from a crystal-encrusted goblet.
Paxton’s office also released a statement reading in part:
Growing scientific evidence strongly suggests that “gender transition” interventions prescribed to or performed on children in an attempt to anatomically or hormonally alter their biological sex characteristics have damaging, long-term consequences.
Name literally any study not endorsed by the sorts of dipshits who write for Bari Weiss’s rag.
Additionally, the prohibited treatments are experimental, and no scientific evidence supports their supposed benefits.
You know who disagrees with that last part? The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, no biggie.
So on the one hand you have two of the largest professional associations of doctors in the nation, with hundreds of thousands of members and untold decades of experience studying gender dysphoria and putting together respectful and thorough treatments for a disorder that affects a tiny percentage of the population.
On the other hand, you have Ken Paxton, an adulterer and alleged criminal with an old timey eight-millimeter porn loop where his heart should be. We know which one we would listen to.
As of Friday morning, neither Lau nor her employer, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, had responded to the lawsuit, so we have no idea what defense she plans to offer. But interestingly, SB 14 included a provision that allowed doctors to continue treating adolescents with puberty blockers and hormones if they had begun treatment before June 1, 2023, so long as said adolescents were being weaned off the medications in a “safe and medically appropriate manner.”
Seems to us like such weaning could take a very long time. Years, even. If not decades.
The Texas courts made undertaking such ending of treatments as difficult as possible while the appeal of SB 14 was making its way through the legal system. First an appeals court in June of 2023 enjoined the law from taking effect while doctors and patients sued the state over its constitutionality. So hooray, treatments could continue.
Then that September, the Texas Supreme Court allowed the law to take effect pending an appeal from the state, which left everyone affected by the law in a sort of weird limbo for nine months until the court ruled in the state’s favor the following June. So the question facing doctors and patients for those nine months was whether to continue treatments while hoping the court ruled in their favor, or ending treatments temporarily and trying to restart them later, something that could cause who knows what sorts of psychological and medical complications.
Lau seems to have opted for the former course of action, presumably because she felt it was better for her patients. We doubt she is the only doctor in Texas who chose that option, and Paxton is making an example of her.
SB 14 may be a medical and moral abomination, but it is working as intended in ruining careers and lives.
[NBC News / Texas AG court filing]
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