Chris Powell: Mutilation is mutilation; social-service industry complains about fiscal ‘guardrails’
Transsexual woman July Schultz displaying her palm with "XY" written on it at an demonstration.
MAN CHESTER, Conn.
What’s the difference between “female genital mutilation” and “gender-affirming care”?
“Female genital mutilation” is an ancient barbaric practice prevailing in some cultures in Africa and the Middle East. Some adherents mistakenly think that Islam requires it. It is committed against minor females and is euphemized as “purification.”
“Gender-affirming care” is the euphemism for sex-change therapy and is a modern barbaric practice associated with politically correct cultures in North America and Western Europe. It is committed against minors of both sexes and involves anatomy-altering drugs and surgery.
Female genital mutilation is prohibited by federal law and 41 states but not by Connecticut, so last week state legislators, 30 civic groups, and victims of the practice announced that they again will try to have it outlawed in the forthcoming session of the General Assembly. Legislators are rushing to endorse the proposal, though following the dubious practice of states that outlaw abortion, the advocates of outlawing female genital mutilation in Connecticut also want the law to criminalize taking a minor out of state for mutilation.
But meanwhile there is no effort in the legislature to prohibit “gender-affirming care” for minors, though Connecticut law presumes that minors lack the judgment to make such serious decisions, prohibiting them from purchasing alcohol, tobacco, and guns and from entering contracts and getting tattoos.
Medical research increasingly connects bad physical and psychological outcomes with “gender-affirming care,” and many who received it as minors come to regret it.
So in their consideration of female genital mutilation, legislators should ask why surgical and chemical mutilation and alteration shouldn’t be forbidden for all minors, delaying such practices to adulthood. What’s bad for the young goose is bad for the young gander as well, regardless of political correctness and however many other genders there are imagined to be.
DON'T WHINE, SPECIFY: Connecticut's social-services industry is complaining about the "fiscal guardrails” that state government has imposed on itself for the last few years at the behest of Gov. Ned Lamont and leaders of both parties in the General Assembly. The “guardrails” function as the limit on state spending that was promised as an apology for the state income tax in 1991 but was never delivered.
The industry has a point. Paid by state government, the industry provides many services that state government is obliged to provide and does so far less expensively than they would be provided by state government’s own employees, whose compensation is far higher than that of social-service organization employees.
But the industry's complaint is empty, for the industry never specifies any state spending that is less important than its own.
For many years state government has been primarily a pension-and-benefit society for its own employees. By law and union contract the compensation of state employees takes precedence over everything else in state government. Twenty percent of state government’s revenue now is used for government employee pensions, in part because for decades state government bought votes by overpromising while underfunding benefits. The social-services industry didn't object.
Even now much money could be transferred to social services if state government economized with its employees, as by freezing salaries instead of paying generous raises.
But the social-services industry doesn’t press for that either.
Indeed, practically every week brings an announcement from the governor about financial grants from the state to municipalities and other entities for discretionary purposes. Last week’s disbursements included $9 million for roads, sidewalks, and recreation trails in 10 small towns. No one would die if the money wasn’t spent that way. Without the state money the towns might proceed with some of the projects at their own expense.
But the social-services industry could make a plausible assertion that some of its underfunded work is a matter of life and death.
State government is never efficient. It is full of inessential, excessive and patronage spending. The social-services industry should try to earn more money by showing how it could be obtained without more taxes -- that is, by correcting state government’s mistaken priorities.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).