What kind of country forces Marines to scavenge parts to keep their planes flying, but has no problem paying for new parts for the gender-confused? Yours! Welcome to the sick world of the Obama administration, where taxpayer-funded sex changes are just the latest example of a presidency completely off the rails.

Turns out, the White House was pretty busy last Friday after it dropped the bathroom bombshell on public schools. After threatening to pull federal funds from districts that protect the privacy of their students in locker rooms and showers, the administration took its agenda from the principal’s office to the doctor’s office. In a quiet rule change, Health and Human Services lowered the transgender boom on every hospital, physician, and insurer in America. Under these new regulations, which lean on the same radical interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the Department of Education’s order, “sex discrimination” in health care has been unilaterally rewritten by HHS to include “gender identity” — something Congress never intended when it passed the statute a half-century ago. But when has the plain language of the law ever stopped this administration?

Certainly not in this instance, when it’s demanding that the entire health care industry include gender transition treatments as part of their services. Refuse, the president’s team warns, and kiss your Medicare and Medicaid dollars goodbye. And it gets worse: the rule doesn’t include a single religious exemption. In other words, as our own David Christensen pointed out to Breitbart, “this intolerant and unjust rule… forces health care providers to participate in and perform services that substantially violate their consciences.” Heritage’s Ryan Anderson takes it a step further: “They will effectively require controversial procedures, such as ‘sex-reassignment’ surgery, that respected medical professionals argue have not been proven to be effective in treating serious mental health conditions. Rather than respect the diversity of opinions on sensitive and controversial health care issues, the proposed regulations endorse and enforce one view.”

This is exactly what FRC warned about when Obamacare was passed. In the 2,000-plus pages of the “Affordable” Care Act, there are literally 4,156 issues left to the administration’s discretion. (Or indiscretion, as this case would imply.) People everywhere are realizing — too late — that those issues include outrages like contraception mandates and politically-correct surgeries that no Congress would have approved. That’s why the health care law is so dangerous. It empowers the government to practice politics — instead of empowering others to practice medicine. Making matters worse, the price tag of this kind of surgery is estimated at anywhere from $58,000 to $70,000 — a steep price for anyone to pay, let alone taxpayers.

With so many insurers ready to jump ship on Obamacare, this is far from a selling point. Despite the sky-high costs and an even higher controversy quotient, the Obama administration obviously thinks it’s our responsibility to cover an elective body enhancement that only adds to the mental and physical risks for people suffering from gender confusion. In reality, if leaders truly cared about helping these suffering people, it would consider making counseling more accessible — and work to free Americans, not further enslave them, from this destructive lifestyle. As piles of research and personal testimonies confirm, this extreme health care doesn’t help “advance equity,” as the administration insists — but deep emotional and physical turmoil instead. In one of the largest studies of its kind, Sweden discovered that in many cases, the surgery may have actually exacerbated the problems. “… [Ten] years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable non-transgender population.”

Victims like Walt Heyer understand that all too well. In his heart-wrenching story, the man who lived as a woman for eight years (and is now a happily married man) explains the torment of gender confusion.

“I myself suffered greatly to come to terms with my gender. I underwent gender reassignment surgery and lived for eight years as Laura Jensen, female. Eventually, I gathered the courage to admit that the surgery had fixed nothing—it only masked and exacerbated deeper psychological problems. The deception and lack of transparency I experienced in the 1980s still surround gender change surgery today. For the sake of others who struggle with gender dysphoria, I cannot remain silent… The reprieve provided by surgery and life as a woman was only temporary. Hidden deep underneath the make-up and female clothing was the little boy carrying the hurts from traumatic childhood events, and he was making himself known. Being a female turned out to be only a cover-up, not healing. I knew I wasn’t a real woman, no matter what my identification documents said. I had taken extreme steps to resolve my gender conflict, but changing genders hadn’t worked. It was obviously a masquerade.”

Like most patients, Walt would have benefited greatly from a doctor who compassionately went through the alternatives to surgery. Now, others like him will have an even harder time finding a person willing to do so when the administration is strong-arming doctors into performing these harmful procedures. Dr. Jane Orient is one of the many physicians who thinks the profession is seriously compromised by Obama’s orders. “Transgender treatment, especially to minors, inflects irreversible harm on persons too young to consent. It constitutes radical social experimentation. Chemical or surgical castration should be considered a crime against humanity. Affirming a patients’ delusions is considered psychiatric malpractice in other contexts.”

This agenda doesn’t offer parity — but pain. It’s time for the president and his party to recognize that their extreme policies come at the expense of the population he claims to help. For more on this firestorm, don’t miss FRC’s lecture next Monday, May 23, “The Scientific Objectivity and Universality of Gender Difference” at noon.

Originally published here.

Rep. Smith’s Statute of Liberty

President Obama may not be doing anything to protect religious liberty, but thank goodness the House is! Earlier this week, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) made a big splash for our First Freedom by passing his bill out of the chamber — with unanimous support. Essentially, the measure gives some teeth to a 1998 bill that created the International Religious Freedom office and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Both bodies operate under the umbrella of the State Department, but in a world where the threats to liberty are under unprecedented assault, Congress felt some “upgrades” were necessary to the original law.

Among other things, the Ambassador at-Large for International Religious Freedom will report directly to the Secretary of State. According to CNSNews, “The bill would also create ‘a Designated Persons List of individuals sanctioned for participating or directing religious freedom abuses,’ and would create a ‘tier system’ for International Religious Freedom reports on countries of particular concern (CPC) and a special watch list to identify countries with religious freedom violations that do not yet meet the criteria to receive a CPC designation.” Another new feature of the policy would be the “mandatory training on religious freedom for all Foreign Service officers.”

Together, Republicans and Democrats agreed that the U.S. needs to better address a crisis that’s led to global extremism, violence, and conflict. Our congratulations to Rep. Smith, who has been one of Congress’s greatest champions on the plight of the persecuted. Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) had plenty to say about the topic the next day at the Catholic Prayer Breakfast, where he made religious liberty the centerpiece of his keynote.

Touching on topics from the Little Sisters of the Poor case to the abortion mandate, Ryan gave a powerful defense of the priority in American lives and policy.

“Our purpose is to know God, period — whatever your circumstances in life — rich or poor, strong or weak, famous or obscure. It is not that faith inspires you to work hard or raise a family or achieve your goals — though it very well might. Instead, faith is its own reward. The reason I bring this up is, these days religious liberty is under assault. A lot of people think faith is just an odd, colorful mask for the ugly face of intolerance. I am not saying we should feel put upon. I mean, saints were thrown to the lions. By that standard, we have it easy. What I am saying is, we have to advocate for our faith. And we should defend religious liberty not just on material grounds — that is, because people of faith do good things, like give to charity or volunteer. We should also defend it on spiritual grounds — that is, because living out our faith gives us joy.”

Originally published here.