President Joe Biden claimed it was “close to sinful” for states to block minors’ access to “gender-affirming care,” effectively standing between children and trans-activist medical professionals.
Biden sat down with guest host Kal Penn to record an interview for Monday’s episode of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, and the conversation turned to trans-identifying kids and the efforts being made — primarily by Republicans in states like Florida — to prevent children from making irreversible decisions about their bodies when they’re still too young to vote.
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Biden conceded that the issue of “gender-affirming care” was more complicated — “harder” — when there were children involved, but insisted that legislation should prevent states from interfering.
“Transgender kids is really a harder thing,” he told Penn in a clip leaked ahead of the Monday broadcast. “What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful.”
“It’s terrible what they’re doing. It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘You know, I decided I want to become a man’ or ‘I want to become a woman’ or ‘I want to change,’” Biden continued. “What are they thinking about here? They are human beings. They love. They have feelings. They have inclinations that are. … It just, to me, is, I don’t know is, it’s cruel.”
The president went on to suggest legislation as a means to stop states from acting on the issue, arguing that the federal government should “make sure we pass legislation like we passed with same-sex marriage. You mess with that, you’re breaking the law and you’re going to be held accountable.”
As for “what’s going on in Florida” — the efforts Biden was objecting to — state medical boards voted last November to ban transgender surgeries, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones for minors. In addition, the Florida Senate filed a bill in February that would hold businesses responsible for the costs associated with detransitioning — if they had initially covered the medical costs related to the transition.