Elon Musk pledges to lobby for criminalizing healthcare interventions for transgender youth

Apr 27, 2023

Twitter executive estranged from trans child

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Elon Musk started Pride month with a series of transphobic tweets that constitute his most extreme attacks against the community to date and included a pledge on Thursday that he will be "actively lobbying to criminalize" healthcare interventions for transgender youth.

Also on Thursday, Musk responded "totally agree" to a tweet from a trans-exclusionary LGB account that said, "LGB don't even want Pride month anymore. We just want to be separated from the TQ+."

And then on Friday, the Twitter owner intervened on behalf of anti-trans pundit Matt Walsh when the platform took steps to limit the reach of his "documentary" attacking the community, and then he re-tweeted Walsh's video.

The New Republic named Walsh "Transphobe of the Year" in 2022, noting that he stood out in a crowded field of hate purveyors, having "raised his profile by spreading grotesque conspiracy theories about grooming" and pedophilia in the LGBTQ community."

Responding to Musk's promise to fight for the criminalization of gender affirming care, anti-trans conservative media commentator and University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson tweeted, "Prison. Long term. Without Parole. No Mercy. And maybe for the compliant ‘therapists’ and the butchers they enable." Musk replied, "Absolutely."

Medical societies that develop and publish clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minor patients do not generally recommend genital surgeries before the age of 18.

Access to the interventions proscribed in these guidelines, which are supported by every mainstream scientific and medical body, have been shown to dramatically reduce rates of depression, suicidal ideation and suicides among trans youth. Studies show rates of post-treatment regret are exceedingly rare.

Musk has long been known as an online provocateur, often taking aim at institutions like Hollywood, big business and the mainstream news media that he believes promote a left-leaning agenda without providing room for dissenting voices.

However, the tech billionaire has increasingly aligned himself with more extreme right-wing politics and conservative political figures like Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who launched his 2024 presidential campaign last week with a Twitter Spaces discussion hosted by Musk just days after signing some of the most extreme anti-trans laws of any state in the country.

Likewise with his public statements concerning the trans community. A few years ago, Musk courted controversy for mocking and complaining about the practice of calling trans and nonbinary people by their preferred pronouns. This week's anti-trans tirade was markedly more extreme.

Last year, Insider noted Musk's comments about gender pronouns in its coverage of a Reuters report that the South African-born entrepreneur's 18-year-old trans daughter had filed papers in a California court to legally change her first and last name and request a new birth certificate.

Per Reuters, the teen said that she no longer wished to be "related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."

A month later, the elder Musk publicly declared his support for the Republican Party. In an interview with the Financial Times, he said the reason for his estrangement from his daughter was "full on communism" in elite colleges and universities.

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Televangelist was infamous for making outrageous and offensive statements

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Anti-LGBTQ Christian-media mogul, televangelist, conservative political activist, and evangelical Southern Baptist minister Pat Robertson died at 93, representatives from his Christian Broadcasting Network confirmed on Thursday.

A public figure who was active in American politics since the 1960s, Robertson became as known for making Christianity central to the Republican Party as he was for his outrageously offensive comments targeting LGBTQ people as well as Haitians, Black People, Muslims, Jewish people, Buddhists, and many others.

Likely one of the ugliest hate-mongering statements he made, and which especial condemnation was leveled at him, occurred in the aftermath of the June 12, 2016, massacre when 49 LGBTQ+ people were killed at Pulse, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a shooter who’d pledged allegiance to a radical form of Islam.

Robertson told viewers on his religious 700 Club broadcast the following day that Americans should just let LGBTQ+ people and Muslims kill each other:

"The left is having a dilemma of major proportions, and I think for those of us who disagree with some of their policies, the best thing to do is to sit on the sidelines and let them kill themselves," he said.

White House reconsidering aid to Uganda over Anti-Homosexuality Act

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U.S. Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) on Thursday introduced a bill that would require the U.S. to promote LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad through its foreign policy.

The Human Rights Campaign, the Council for Global Equality, the National Center for Transgender Equality, ORAM (Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration), Outright International, Rainbow Railroad and the Trevor Project are among the organizations that support the Greater Leadership Overseas for the Benefit of Equality (GLOBE) Act. U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) will introduce the bill in the U.S. Senate.

Titus on Tuesday told the Washington Blade during an exclusive interview the bill, among other things, would endorse the selective use of existing sanctions to punish those responsible for murders and other human rights abuses against LGBTQ and intersex people. She also said the measure would require the State Department to allow LGBTQ and intersex people to choose their gender marker on passports and other travel documents.

"It's a way of putting into action our attempts to be a leader in the area of LGBTQ+ rights and to be a leader, not just at home, but around the world," said Titus.

President Joe Biden in 2021 signed a memorandum that committed the U.S. to promoting LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad as part of the Biden-Harris administration's overall foreign policy.

Jessica Stern has been the special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights since 2021. She told the Blade in a previous interview the White House's continued support of LGBTQ and intersex rights includes marriage equality in countries where activists say such a thing is possible through legislation or the judicial process.

The State Department last year began to offer passports with an "X" gender marker. The U.S. Agency for International Development and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has delivered millions of doses of antiretroviral drugs for Ukrainians with HIV/AIDS.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield in March chaired a U.N. meeting that focused on the integration of LGBTQ and intersex rights into the U.N. Security Council's work.

Biden, along with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) others, have condemned the signing of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act that contains a death penalty provision for "aggravated homosexuality." The National Security Council has said it will "evaluate" the law's implications in terms of U.S. aid to the country.

Titus is among the lawmakers who have previously introduced bills that are similar to the GLOBE Act.

She noted the Anti-Homosexuality Act when she spoke with the Blade. Titus also discussed Republican-led efforts to curtail LGBTQ rights in Florida and other states.

"It's harder, certainly, to get Republicans on board, but I’m optimistic," she said when asked if she expects any Republicans will co-sponsor his bill. "The more they hear from their constituents and the more they see the backlash to what some state legislatures are doing and the more they hear from members of their own families, I think that we may get some to join us in this."

Move followed pressure from anti-LGBTQ Rep. Gaetz

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U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN's Oren Liebermann during an interview Monday that last week's cancellation of a drag show at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada was "the absolute right thing to do."

The top U.S. military officer said the decision came from U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, but added that he agreed with the move.

A Pentagon source familiar with the matter told the Washington Blade on Thursday that Milley informed Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. that it is not Pentagon policy to fund drag shows on bases and the show needed to be canceled or moved off base.

He echoed those comments during Monday's interview, asserting that the performances "were never part of [Department of Defense] policy to begin with, and they’re certainly not funded by federal funds."

"DoD resources should be used for mission-essential operations, not diverted toward initiatives that create cultural fissures within our service ranks," anti-LGBTQ U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said in a May 23 letter to Milley and Austin.

"I find it completely unacceptable that DoD is using taxpayer dollars to fund DEI programs that are divisive in nature," said Gaetz, referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion – programs typically administered by corporations that have increasingly become targets of conservative outrage.

Milley pushed back on accusations that the military had "gone woke" during the interview, which took place in Normandy, France, marking the 79th anniversary of the D-Day invasion into Nazi-occupied Europe on June 6, 1944.

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