Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went hard against what he called the “genital mutilation” of minors at the debate against Democrat challenger Charlie Crist on Monday night.
DeSantis has taken a hardline policy against the gender transitioning of children throughout his administration and he defended his record against attacks from Crist on Monday, denouncing the practice as child abuse.
“When they say gender-affirming care, they mean giving puberty blockers to teenage girls and teenage boys,” he said. “They mean doing double mastectomies on young girls. They mean chemically-castrating young boys.”
“That is wrong,” he continued as members of the crowd protested. “We are not going to allow that to happen in the state of Florida. A lot of kids go through a lot of different things. A lot of the dysphoria resolves itself by the time they become adults and we have a number of people that have spoken out in favor of what we’re doing to say you should not do this with minors. They went through it when they were minors. Now they’re adults and they regret it. Other countries in Europe that went down this road have now backtracked.”
“We’re doing the right thing. It’s inappropriate to be doing what’s basically genital mutilation,” he concluded.
Charlie Crist essentially turned his defense of transitioning minors into an argument for abortion by claiming that voters should have the right to choose what they want to do with their bodies. DeSantis torpedoed this defense by pointing out that minors in the state of Florida have to get parental permission to so much as get a tattoo.