Senator Rand Paul questions Rachel Levine about puberty blockers

I lived in the US for decades. Rand Paul is as bad as people here have mentioned. He wouldn't understand that women are human beings if Jesus Christ came down in a cloud of glory and told him so. And yet he's 100% right about this.

I watched the clip. He seems genuinely outraged that this supposed assistant sec'y for health doesn't give a flying duck about kids making the dumbest decisions.

And Levine's weird and downright creepy way of rote-repeating the same non-answer.

It's going to take so many broken bodies before enough people start to get it was all a scam.

Another clip of him speaking about women's sports:

So, in a very best case scenario, women and girls have a bill which screws them hanging over their heads for two years like a sword of Damocles. Out of the starting gates before the sun had set on day 1!

Good job they'll have a perfect score putting all those other issues on a statutory footing, tout suite. Is the excuse that it is always too hostile for bills to give women rights, but of extreme urgency to push forward a bill that takes away their rights?

Obama backed all kinds of policies that weren't good for the environment, the senate has zero to do with it.

He had a Monsanto exec, a man who is the antithesis of sustainable agriculture models, as a senior member of his government. That is typical of his approach which was consistently pro-capitalism and pro-development.

The fact is that often when comparing the policy objectives of REpublicans and Democrats, there is little real difference. To act like this creates a huge reason to pick one over the other is very strange.

@Cailleach1
Democrats have to get past the Republican filibuster
and do it within the next 2 years
as you well know.

@SmokedDuck
Obama had a hostile senate for 6 out of his 8 years
as you well know

Anyone who takes environmental issues really seriously could not vote for the Democrats any more than the Republicans.

That's part of the problem with this political tribalism shit, it allows parties to place themselves as better than the other guys, with pretty empty words, or stupid policies, which will in actuality accomplish little more or nothing more than their opponents. Sometimes they just say the words and do zero differently, anyone who looks at Obamas record should be able to see that.

So, are the current Administration and the Democrats actively going to put all those things on a statutory footing so they are not left hanging. As they are in power, if they are not for it and going to legislate for it, then they are agin it. Only empty words otherwise.

are against abortion
are against maternity pay
are against free contraception
are against free nursery care
are against universal health care, particularly ante natal

Maybe one of their wealthy backers might support them. Or, maybe their wealthy backers don't give a toss about the issues which disproportionately affect biological women. In fact, maybe their wealthy backers are funding them to eff over biological women.

I shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore...

I did not vote for Trump.
Because I look at lots of issues before I tick a ballot.
Climate Change being absolutely key.

Maybe in practical terms, his inequality order which disproportionately screws women will render women's sex protections void. Men who identify as transgender and become women don't have to do all that breastfeeding and maternity malarkey.

Wanderin
I am old enough to know that the USA lags behind most countries in key areas of women's rights.

And I will never support politicians who
are against abortion
are against maternity pay
are against free contraception
are against free nursery care
are against universal health care, particularly ante natal

The current GOP is NOT pro women.

I'm old enough to have watched Nixon resign by the way.

I found the ability to dump tribalism and manage cross-party agreement on certain issues came at certain point, for me around 27/29 ish.

Whatever sort of "Christian" Rand Paul is
its pretty unpleasant to the poor and needy

That would be like calling all muslims terrible human beings - for giving credence to practices that as individuals we may have very strong feeling about.

He is a Christian, not a terrible human being.

And yet he's still more moral than the Democrat representatives.

edge

However if you look.at a " I pierced ny babies ears" thread you will see much of the language we aren't allowed to use here freely spoken. As a teen who stabbed multiple holes through their ears and nose , my parents did not hold back...

Store staff have to look.like.dickeads Id'ing 25 year olds because even serving someone.over age can cost them.their job if they were under the challenge age

All this to protect children from causing themselves harm or making themselves sick.

We are somehow then expected to continue to protect children without the words we need to explain the consequences.

We are allowed to express more disgust and disapproval discussing ear piercing on someone.under 9 than we are with major surgery with permanent and irreversible consequences.

Do you support free contraception
Do you support abortion in the case on incest or rape
Do you support Maternity Pay
Do you support preschool

Rand Paul does no

Which is why, these days, we are moving towards a situation where people coalesce around single issues, rather than around generalised ideological poles. There is much that people from across all corners can find some agreement on. And when you do that, and accept that, the blind hatred of the enemy ceases.

I do think the removal of testicles and the inversion of a penis to create a neovagina which requires daily dilation with a dildo in order to prevent it from closing up is on a different level of body modification to ear piercing.

Similarly, I struggle to equate a double mastectomy with getting a tattoo on one's ankle.

Téa Smith summed this up on Twitter quite well:

Why the fuck are you brainless arsehole idiots making me support Rand Paul? Go fuck yourselves for that betrayal of science, common sense and decency as well as everything the so-called left stands for. You Woke gaslighting fuckfaces.

Royal
Do you support free contraception
Do you support abortion in the case on incest or rape
Do you support Maternity Pay
Do you support preschools

Rand Paul does not

Rand Paul is an utter shit and no friend of women but even a stopped clock is right twice a day

I don't think that's quite right - as in, I don't think he's accidentally right on this issue. I think what we have here is a really simple moral issue where all people who have even the most basic moral compass would agree. If you took an opinion poll, for example, on whether female genital mutilation is morally acceptable, I imagine you'd get something like 95-98% of people saying it isn't. And that's regardless of how they stand on other issues like capital punishment or abortion or refugees or climate change.

Similarly, if you asked people whether they think it's OK to perform a double mastectomy on a perfectly healthy teenage girl because she believes she is male, the vast majority of people would say it was wrong. Because it is a very simple, clear moral issue. People know that performing serious, unnecessary surgery on children is wrong.

And yet we are in a situation where the left is now so utterly demented that they are prepared to pretend that the mutilation of children is an acceptable, even desirable, moral position. That's why people like Rand Paul can step in and make the liberal left look as if they are completely without a moral compass - because they are.