VICTOR JOECKS: Nevada should end child genital mutilation surgeries

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law that banned transgender procedures for minors. This includes bans on puberty blockers and surgeries. Tennessee enacted its law in 2023. More than two dozen states have similar laws.

Writing for the 6-3 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts found the law “does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. Having concluded it does not, we leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives and the democratic process.”

Nevada needs a similar policy. That becomes obvious to most people once they understand what’s hiding behind the euphemism of “gender-affirming care.” If you hadn’t been following this debate, you might assume the term encompasses things such as helping a tomboy embrace her femininity. Nope. Just the opposite.

Those on the left hold that sex and gender don’t describe biological realities. That’s why they claim babies have a “sex assigned at birth.” An individual’s sex is something he or she eventually determines based on his or her feelings. Because it’s based on one’s imagination, gender identity isn’t limited to male and female. It can even change. Individuals should then change their physical appearance to correspond with the gender they select.

See if you can spot the internal contradiction. The left simultaneously holds that sex isn’t based on biology and that a boy who claims to be a girl should seek medical interventions to replicate female biology. This is why so many leftists refuse to answer the question, “What is a woman?”

Trying to override biology isn’t a simple or safe process. Transgender activist groups push teenagers to take cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers. Puberty isn’t something you can turn off and on like a light switch. Potential side effects include negative impacts on bone density and fertility.

Then, there are the surgeries, which attempt to make the private parts of a boy look like a girl and vice versa. For instance, a vaginoplasty is a surgery to create a “vagina” in a male. During the surgery, “the testicles are removed and discarded,” according to Healthline. As the surgery continues, “the skin is removed from the penis. This skin forms a pouch which is sutured and inverted.” Finally, “the remaining parts of the penis are amputated and discarded.”

There’s nothing medically necessary about this. It’s genital mutilation surgery. It’s castration. It’s barbarism. And it’s happening to kids. These are children who are confused about puberty. Children who have no idea what it means to lose their ability to have children. Children who maybe are running from another trauma.

Parents and other trusted adults should gently guide these troubled kids back to reality. Instead, many push them to irreversibly damage their bodies. The horror is almost too much to fully contemplate.

Discarding the testicles and removing the skin from the penis of a physically healthy 14-year-old boy is barbarism, not health care. It’s time Nevada’s law reflected that reality.

Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Opinion section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on X.