(LifeSiteNews) — The Dane County Board of Supervisors voted Friday morning to make Dane County, Wisconsin, a “sanctuary for trans and nonbinary individuals” from the more conservative LGBT laws of other jurisdictions.
The resolution opens by asserting that “state lawmakers across the country have introduced more than 430 bills that restrict fundamentals like health care, education and the freedom of expression for LGBTQ+ people, according to analysis from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),” creating a “hostile environment” perpetuating a “mental health crisis” among “trans youth.”
Accordingly, the resolution affirms the county’s “commitment to protect transgender and nonbinary individuals” and belief in “access” to “gender-affirming care;” urges county law enforcement to make enforcement of any hypothetical future state law restricting “puberty blockers, hormones or surgery” its “lowest priority;” declares Dane County a “safe place, a sanctuary, for transgender children and adults and their families;” and “urges all municipal bodies and school boards in Dane County to join county government in support of our transgender and non-binary residents by adopting similar resolutions.”
In the end, the 37-member board approved the resolution with 25 votes in favor and only one opposed, Channel 3000 reports.
“What’s worse is the resolution specifically offers support to ‘trans youth’ and encourages all School Boards in Dane County to support transgender children,” said 20th District Supervisor Jeff Weigand in opposition. “Encouraging an adult to mutilate their God-determined gender is very sad; but to encourage the mutilation of a child’s body is horrific and is to be condemned and not praised.”
Despite supporters’ language about “protecting trans youth,” evidence shows that “affirming” confusion about one’s biological sex carries severe harms, especially when such affirmation takes the form of physically transformative medical procedures on impressionable children who cannot fully grasp the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
The issue is grimly illustrated in the story of Yaeli Martinez, a 19-year-old to whom “gender transitioning” was touted as a possible cure for her depression in high school, supported by a high school counselor who withheld what she was going through from her mother. The troubled girl killed herself after trying to live as a man for three years.
Many oft-ignored “detransitioners,” individuals who attempted to live under a different “gender identity” before embracing their sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject.
A recent investigation from Wisconsin Right Now found that UW Health, the integrated health system of the University of Wisconsin-Madison located in Dane County, had an estimated 314 patients in its Pediatric & Adolescent Transgender Health (PATH) clinic as of December 2022, roughly 40% of whom were on hormones or puberty blockers.
UW Health said that it carries out mastectomies on five to 10 minors per year. It claims this “chest masculinization surgery for patients under age 18 is considered only after multidisciplinary evaluation, a letter of support from your mental health provider and with informed consent from all legal guardians.”
