Missouri legislators who are trying to substitute their own judgment for that of doctors and parents when it comes to transgender care for minors claim they are just trying to protect kids. That claim came under well-deserved scrutiny last week when one of the legislators pushing the transgender-care ban, Republican state Sen. Mike Moon of Ash Grove, was confronted with the fact that he'd previously voted against requiring Missourians to be at least 16 before they can get married.

In defending that vote, Moon suggested that kids as young as 12 should be able to marry. He later amended that age to 11. And he's the standard-bearer for protecting kids?

The political attacks in vogue among Republicans against transgender youth care today are part of a deeply cynical project that relies on most people's ignorance about the issue, allowing right-wing politicians to use it as especially damaging fodder in the culture wars.

No, doctors aren't willy-nilly surgically mutilating teens who are just going through rebellious phases. Minors who are at genuine risk of suicide for gender dysphoria are getting medical assistance via puberty blockers and hormones to provide stability during youth so they can survive to adulthood and then make rational decisions on the issue. Even those who can't get their minds around such situations should at least respect the proposition that medical professionals as a whole know what they're doing and seek to give the best advice and treatment to their patients that they can.

Yet Moon, whose legislative biography makes no mention of medical training, has taken it upon himself to push legislation to outright ban such treatments for those under 18. He's doing it for the kids, he says.

When he was challenged about that contention in debate last week, because of his 2018 vote opposing the setting of a 16-year-old age minimum for marriage (it was previously 15), he offered an odd defense: "Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12? I do. And guess what? They're still married."

Um, excuse us?

As the Post-Dispatch's Jack Suntrup reports, Moon — whose comment caused an avalanche of public condemnation for seemingly endorsing the idea of children marrying adults — later specified that "the young man was 12; the girl was 11," and that both sets of parents consented. In 2018, he appeared to suggest that a preferable alternative to abortion for underage kids was for them to marry — with parents exercising what believed was their right to decide for the children involved.

Really. And does that principle apply to the parents of an 11-year-old rape victim who want to end the pregnancy but can't legally do that under a dystopian state abortion ban that Moon zealously supports?

Of course not. This is how today's ruling Republicans in Missouri look out for the kids.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Photo credit: NGDPhotoworks at Pixabay