Activist judge forces taxpayers to endorse transgenderism

By Bryan Fischer

In a ruling with disturbing public policy implications, federal magistrate Mikel Williams ruled two weeks ago that ordinary Idaho taxpayers must pay to provide female hormone therapy to an Idaho inmate who is a male in every single cell in his body.

This inmate is so confused about his sexual identity that he has castrated himself. This judge is now ordering the state to make his gender identity confusion even worse by forcing taxpayers to subsidize estrogen injections in his tragic effort to turn himself into a female.

If any taxpayer monies are spent to help this tortured individual, compassion dictates that the money be spent to help him resolve this internal dissonance and bring him to the place where he can embrace and accept the sexual identity he was assigned at birth. He will continue to have a "Y" chromosome, clearly marking him as a male, for the rest of his life, and no amount of estrogen is going to change that fact.

But by ordering hormone therapy, this activist judge is essentially ordering government approval of transgenderism, which is a policy decision that should be made by lawmakers, not judges. Sadly, the article notes that female hormone treatments are already being given to male inmates in the Idaho prison system.

Staggering level of hubris

There is a staggering level of hubris on the part of this judge Mikel Williams at virtually every level. He apparently believes he is more qualified to diagnose gender identity disorder than the mental health professionals who have evaluated this inmate, despite the fact that, to my knowledge, Judge Williams has never even met the man let alone talked with him about his sexual confusion.

In one fell swoop, Williams has appointed himself the director of the Idaho Department of Corrections, as well as its chief medical officer, chief psychiatrist, and chief financial officer.

The mental health professionals who have evaluated this inmate do not believe that gender identity disorder is the correct diagnosis for him, but that apparently is of no concern to this activist and unaccountable judge.

Notice that this judge has granted special rights to this inmate because he is a felon. A law-abiding male citizen who wanted female hormone therapy would have to pay for it himself. Not even health insurance companies will pay for this twisted therapy. But this man, solely because he has committed a felony offense, has now been given the right to taxpayer funded estrogen injections by this out-of-control jurist.

By ordering female hormone therapy, Judge Williams, by judicial fiat, has in one stroke normalized transgenderism and declared that it is an approved and accepted alternative to heterosexuality.

What's next: Transgender prisons?

What no one has yet explained is what is going to be done with this inmate as his treatment progresses. It will not be long before we get pressure from this man's lawyer as well as transgender activist groups to build separate prisons for transgender inmates.

The argument for transgender bathrooms is that a transgendered male does not feel comfortable in a men's room, because he is a female trapped in a male body. But females understandably don't want to share bathroom space with someone who is biologically a male, so transgenders insist they must have their own bathrooms.

The IVA intervened this spring to force BSU officials to admit that they had been calling a new bathroom in the student union expansion a transgender bathroom, and only under pressure did they finally agree to stop calling it anything but what it is, a bathroom designed for the disabled.

If the transgendered must have their own bathrooms, why shouldn't they also have their own prisons?

The Liberty Counsel has pointed out that an appeals court ruled in a 2004 case that "the common meaning of male and female ... [refers] to immutable traits determined at birth."

Said Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of the Liberty University School of Law, "Hormones and plastic surgery do not change a person's sex, which is an immutable trait fixed at birth."

The next step, of course, will be for this Idaho inmate to demand that taxpayers pay for sex-reassignment surgery. Says Staver, "The state should not be compelled to fund so-called sex reassignment surgery, especially when such treatment is not widely accepted, is experimental, and has not been shown to resolve the disturbed mental behavior."

The last thing the state of Idaho needs to do is subsidize this dark, twisted adventure into sexual reconstruction with taxpayer monies. The Idaho Department of Correction either needs to appeal Judge Williams' decision or simply refuse to comply with this unconstitutional, unconscionable, and socially destructive ruling.

© Bryan Fischer