Gov. Chris Christie (R) claimed during the fourth Republican presidential debate that outlawing sex-mutilating transgender procedures for minors would take away parents’ rights over their children.
Megyn Kelly, the NewsNation debate moderator and host of The Megyn Kelly Show, asked the former New Jersey governor on Wednesday night if his pro-transgender position, which enables the “cutting off [of] body parts at a time when kids cannot even legally smoke a cigarette” is “too out of step” for him to qualify as the Republican nominee.
“Kids who go from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones are at a much greater likelihood of winding up sterile,” Kelly noted. “How is it that you think a parent should be able to OK these surgeries, never mind the sterilization of a child, and aren’t you way too out of step on this issue to be the Republican nominee?”
“No, I’m not because Republicans believe in less government, not more, in less involvement with government, not more government involvement in people’s lives,” Christie replied.
The former governor proceeded to argue that outlawing cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and sex change surgeries for minors would ultimately disempower parents.
Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy participate in the fourth Republican presidential primary debate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on December 6, 2023. (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
“I trust parents, and we are out there saying that we should empower parents in education, we should empower parents to make more decisions about where their kids go to school — I agree. We should empower parents to be teaching the values that they believe in, in their homes, without the government telling them what those values should be,” he said.
“And yet we want to take other parental rights away. I’m sorry. As a father of four, I believe there is no one who loves my children more than me,” he continued. “There’s no one who loves my children more than my wife. There’s no one who cares more about their success and health in life than we do — not some government bureaucrat.”
Christie conceded that he does not favor transgender procedures for minors personally, calling them a “very, very dangerous thing to do.”
“But that’s my opinion as a parent … and I get to make the decisions about my children, not anybody else,” he said. “And every parent out there who’s watching tonight, you start to turn over just a little bit of this authority, the authority they’re going to take from you next, you’re not going to like. I’ll stand up for parents each and every time.”
Republican presidential candidate former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie participates in the NewsNation Republican Presidential Primary Debate at the University of Alabama Moody Music Hall on December 6, 2023, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) slammed Christie’s position, saying, “As a parent, you do not have the right to abuse your kids.”
“This is cutting off their genitals. This is mutilating these minors. These are irreversible procedures. And this is something that other countries in Europe, like Sweden, once they started doing it, they saw it did incalculable damage. They’ve shut it down,” DeSantis countered. “I signed legislation in Florida banning the mutilation of minors because it is wrong. We cannot allow this to happen in this country.”
Christie is not the only Republican presidential candidate to take the position that the government should stay out of the child sex change industry, which has been tirelessly promoted by the Biden administration. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has been facing renewed criticism because of a June TV interview in which she said the government should not intervene if parents decide to put their children through irreversible, life-altering “transgender” surgery.
“The law should stay out” of matters involving troubled teens who demand sex-related medical treatments because “parents should handle it,” Haley told CBS.
While Haley and Christie claim that the government does not have a role in protecting children from pro-transgender sexual mutilation, Democrats across the country are actively working to disempower parents who oppose gender ideology — the false pseudo-religious belief that one can be born as the wrong sex, be “assigned” a sex at birth, or choose one’s own “gender.”
Gender ideology has notably been promulgated by leading teachers’ unions, school curriculums, social media, and widespread transgender activist campaigns to influence the upcoming generation into believing they can choose their own “gender.”
At the state level, several Democrat governors have sought to disempower parents by making their states “sanctuary states” for transgender youths seeking sex change hormones and procedures, like California and Washington.
Moreover, the Biden administration has outright told parents to “affirm” their child’s “gender identity,” and has promoted sex change hormones and surgeries for minors. Various federal agencies are also side-stepping Congress by proposing rules that prop up gender ideology at every level of the federal government, including rules that would force schools to accept males in female spaces and keep Christians from fostering children who are deemed to be LGBTQ+.