Is It 'Authoritarian' to Take Children Away From Parents Who Allow 'Gender Affirming Care'?

I had a debate with a fellow conservative over the issue. Was I wrong?

Parental rights are at the top of my list of liberties to protect because they're at the top of the radical left's list of liberties to attack. "Progressives" truly believe public school teachers and government-provided indoctrination services should be raising our children with parents doing little more than supplying the money necessary to keep the brainwashing flowing.

I recently got into a debate with a fellow conservative about various state laws that are popping up across the nation banning "gender affirming care" for children. For those who are unfamiliar, "gender affirming care" is the woke way of describing hormone poisoning and genital mutilation to permanently change the sex of a child.

The conservative I was debating, who I generally respect, was lambasting me for condemning the actions of states like California while supporting the "similar" actions of states like Florida. The former will take children away from their parents if they do not allow their children to be permanently deformed. The latter will take children away from parents who allow it.

"You can't have it both ways, Rucker," my conservative friend told me. "Either parents have rights over their children's gender or they don't."

It was disappointing to be getting a strawman argument from a fellow conservative, but I'm glad it happened. It alerted me that some things that are black and white to me aren't as clear to others who are otherwise likeminded.

I'll keep my argument simple. Parental rights do not supersede the physical health of the child. "Gender-affirming care" is the practice of permanently deforming a child. Therefore, it is child abuse. This is backed by the plethora of evidence showing later-life regret from "transitioned" children, many of whom end up with major mental disorders. Some commit suicide, though you'd have a hard time finding corporate media stories telling their tragic tales.

Comparing California and Florida laws through the lens of parental rights is disingenuous, especially for a conservative. California endorses child abuse. Florida protects children from child abuse. I see no contradiction in condemning one and endorsing the other.

Let's look at it with a different hypothetical. Let's say there's a movement that promotes hand-shifting. Right-handed people who want to be left-handed because they believe they were born in the wrong bodies decide to surgically remove their right hand and replace it with a prosthetic.

If an adult wants to do it, that's on them. If they do it to their child, it's child abuse. Period.

I'm all-in for parental rights. Those rights do not empower parents to have genital mutilation performed on their kids, millions of whom were confused about sexuality BEFORE the recent push for trans-supremacy. Now that we live in a society that embraces brainwashing children into thinking they're in the wrong bodies, the "gender affirming care" industry is making a killing off woke parents. They are deforming their children permanently and must be stopped.