On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” CNN Political Contributor and Democratic strategist Paul Begala said that while he disagrees with bans on gender transitions for children, it’s “crazy” for states like California to keep schools from telling parents about their children transitioning.
Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) said, “[T]his is one of the reasons why the Democrats are losing on an issue like this, because, again, if you can’t definitively tell — I have a six, a four, and a 2-year-old. My six and four-year-old, they think that they’re Anna and Elsa and my little boy thinks he’s Lightning McQueen. By the time you’re 18 years old, if you want to change your body, you can live and do whatever you want, as long as you want to pay for it. I fought for the right for you to be able to do that. When we are talking about children and undeveloped human beings and allowing them to make decisions that are going to impact the rest of their life, we must protect them.”
Begala responded, “We’re people of faith, Bill is not. … We believe that God gives children to parents, not politicians in Nashville. The Tennessee Legislature doesn’t give a rip snort about children, or they would address the chief cause of childhood death in Tennessee, which is guns. Why should the politicians decide what parents do?”
Host Bill Maher responded that those are totally separate issues, adding, “And by the way, the issue is quite the reverse. Like, out here in California and in New Jersey, it’s the schools who are not allowed to even tell the parents.”
Begala responded, “That’s crazy. I’m consistent. Parents should decide this, not schools and not politicians.”
Maher added, “I think they’re not protecting the children from people coming in and taking advantage, I think, of young folks who don’t know what’s going on, I didn’t know what the f*ck was going on when I was eight years old. I was unhappy when I was a teenager. If someone offered this as the solution, I might go for it. And they have done studies since then, that’s why America is an outlier country with this. All the other countries pulled back on this, because they said, we don’t know, and, sometimes they’re just gay and sometimes they’re just confused and sometimes they’re just depressed, but once you start taking off body parts, you can’t reverse it.”
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