Xavier Becerra, California’s Democratic Attorney General,
recently banned state-funded travel to the state of Iowa in response to a new
Iowa law that prohibits Medicaid from covering gender transition surgeries.
The website of the California
Office of the Attorney General states that with bill AB 1887, enacted in 2016,
the California Legislature determined that “California must take action to
avoid supporting or financing discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgender people.” It also decrees: “To that end, AB 1887 prohibits a
state agency, department, board, or commission from requiring any state
employees, officers, or members to travel to a state that, after June 26, 2015,
has enacted a law that (1) has the effect of voiding or repealing existing
state or local protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual
orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. In addition, the law
prohibits California from approving a request for state-funded or state-sponsored
travel to such a state.” (Italics mine).
Incredibly, Iowa is just one of at
least 11 states to which California bans state-sanctioned travel. It is one
thing to refuse to discriminate on the basis of gender identity, of which there
are two. Neither men nor women should be the victim or beneficiary of
discriminatory laws or labor practices. Gender “expression,” however, is in no
way a biological or immutable fact. In fact, it is the obverse of race or sex,
in that it is totally fungible. A man can claim to be a woman, but that doesn’t
make it so-- just as a “honkey” can claim to be an African-American, albeit
with no basis in reality. I can claim to be a gerbil or a giraffe, but that
simply does not make it so. If a woman with ovaries and a vagina says she is a
he, that claim has no more veracity than if Oprah Winfrey attempted to identify
as Abraham Lincoln.
When states, nations or societies
begin to take these preposterous claims seriously—and sanctimoniously sanctify
and sanction them—they are saying that nothing matters, truth is only in the
eye of the beholder, there are no absolutes, no constants, nothing real. They
are denying physical reality as well as logic and reasoning. They are stripping
words—and life—of meaning.
Moreover, if every state acted as
California has, the concept and practice of republicanism would be irreparably
harmed. I could see Alabama banning state-sponsored travel to California
because it is hostile to rednecks. Who could then blame Georgia if it
prohibited travel to New York because it is insufficiently welcoming of
evangelical Christians? Decent, God-fearing, pro-life states should long ago
have put the kibosh on travel to those that have permissive abortion laws. And
why should Montana, Wyoming, Texas or even Kentucky put up with the
discriminatory—and probably unconstitutional—gun restrictions in place in
Washington, D.C., Chicago, and other hotbeds of violent crime? Those states
should ban government-sponsored travel to any other state or municipality that
infringes on the rights of its citizens in that manner.
The Constitution and the Bill of
Rights guarantee Americans freedom of speech and the right to self-defense.
They do not guarantee the “right” to pick your own gender.
And the right to life is granted by
the same Creator who determines one’s sex.
California's Attorney General can ban his state's public employees from state-funded travel to other states. Ironically, if California doesn't soon dramatically change course, no one from the other 49 states will want to travel to California.
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