Minnesota Democrat Suggests Allowing Gender Transition Treatment for Kids Is ‘What It Means to Be a Good Parent’

Video of Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan (D) suggesting that providing children with gender transition treatment is “what it means to be a good parent” earlier this month has resurfaced and gone viral.

Flanagan made the comments at an event celebrating Governor Tim Walz’s signing of an executive order rendering Minnesota a “sanctuary state” for such treatments.

Executive Order 23-03 calls for a report to be compiled by the Minnesota Department of Health “summarizing the literature on the scientific evidence about the safety and effectiveness of gender affirming health care and its public health effects” as well as the “approaches” that other entities “have taken to support gender affirming health care services.” Other provisions require various health organizations to provide such services and forbid them from sharing information with other states that have banned such treatment for minors.

“Let’s be clear: This is life-affirming and life-saving healthcare,” declared Flanagan at a press conference. “When our children tell us who they are, it is our job as grown-ups to listen and to believe them,” she continued. “That’s what it means to be a good parent.”

Gov. Walz in his comments said, “In this state, hate has no home. In this state, love and acceptance is what we preach.”

The event also featured a speech from the father of a 6-year-old who has received gender affirming treatment, who a local CBS affiliate reported was “grateful” for Walz’s action.

Walz’s request for a report on how other jurisdictions have supported such care comes amid growing skepticism of the affirmation model by the medical community. In recent years, Finland, Sweden, France and the United Kingdom have all backed away from the quick-to-affirm, quick-to-treat model advocated by Flanagan and Walz.

“Great medical caution must be taken in children and adolescents, given the vulnerability, particularly psychological, of this population and the many undesirable effects, and even serious complications, that some of the available therapies can cause,” argued the French National Academy of Medicine in February 2022