A growing number of Republican-led state legislatures have passed bills in recent months that are designed to protect minors from irreversible surgeries and other medical procedures that LGBT activists euphemistically refer to as “gender-affirming care.”
The long-term effects of such treatments are largely unknown and many teens who have received them later come to regret the decision.
In Louisiana, GOP lawmakers introduced a measure that would ban certain procedures on children, but it failed in a state Senate committee vote when one Republican sided with the panel’s Democratic minority.
Sen. Fred Mills, who is a former Democrat and the owner of a pharmacy, spoke out against the measure by asserting that decisions about conducting gender transitions should be left to the minor patient and his or her doctor.
His decision put him squarely on the side of various activist groups and the ACLU of Louisiana, which called the proposed bill “dangerous” and claimed that it “targeted transgender children and stripped rights from their parents.”
Plenty of prominent conservatives, however, were quick to denounce Mills’ stance, including some who called on his constituents to express their disappointment.
Whoever mans the phones in the Fred Mills office is gonna have a LONG night when The Jesse Kelly Show hits the air.
337-845-4240 is the number if you’d like to get started.
[email protected] if you’d prefer to email. https://t.co/gTlavMbBtM
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) May 24, 2023
Conservative pundit and podcaster Matt Walsh asserted that the state senator “sided with the butchers and groomers” when he voted against the bill.
“He will regret it,” Walsh added. “This is the biggest mistake of his political career, and also the end of his career. He’s going to be infamous and disgraced by his own base. We’ll make sure of that.”
It is unclear whether Mills intends to seek future elected office, but term limits imposed in the state mean that he is ineligible to run for another term in the Senate.
He spoke out against the national backlash his vote attracted, insisting that he does not worry about the opinions of those outside of his district.
“Why should I?” he asked. “They don’t live in District 22. They don’t have a 337 area code. I didn’t run for office to serve those people.”
As for his motivation to cross party lines on the hot-button issue, Mills declared: “My decision was really, really based on the numbers. All the testimony I heard by the proponents that children are getting mutilated, I didn’t see it in the statistics.”
