Rantz: Seattle mayor promoting gender surgeries on minors to help his political career

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced new legislation Tuesday aimed at strengthening local protections for gender-affirming care services for minors. It’s as extreme as you’d expect from a mayor trying to undo some political missteps. But it’s also mostly toothless.

Declaring its support for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, the proposed ordinance would extend Washington State’s “Shield Law” into city law and establish additional safeguards for those seeking or providing these services. Those safeguards include protecting people seeking or providing gender-affirming care from arrest or prosecution. It explicitly extends this protection to City employees and creates a local cause of action enforceable by the City.

The legislation says, “across the country, anti-2SLGBTQIA+ legislation continues to be enacted, threatening access to health care, education, and protections under the law, and the City remains steadfast in its commitment to reject such policies and protect 2SLGBTQIA+ residents and visitors.”

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A disingenuous proposal about gender surgeries for children

The proposal comes amid what officials pretend are unconstitutional national restrictions on LGBT rights. But President Donald Trump has explicitly called for the end of gender-affirming care for minors. It’s a position well in line with how the nation views the issue.

Still, Harrell claims protecting minors from life-altering surgeries represents “hateful, dangerous, and discriminatory attacks from the Trump administration and others.”

The legislation also falsely claims gender affirming care is “life-saving,” though apolitical studies have not meaningfully made that claim.

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The legislation won’t actually protect anyone

Ironically, there’s a certain futility to the legislation because it’s not really about protecting people. It’s about virtue signaling, earning social currency among the Radical Left, and normalizing gender surgeries for kids.

Seattle has no jurisdiction on whether or not a different city, county, or state prosecutes someone for seeking surgical interventions in this city. Not participating in an investigation sounds meaningful, but it won’t be. A 13-year-old girl who had her breasts removed because an adult in her life convinced her she’s a boy isn’t likely difficult to prove.

And local legislation wouldn’t trump any national ban on gender surgeries for minors. Nor does it mean there couldn’t be enforcement of the Travel Act, which criminalizes interstate travel with the intent to promote illegal activities.

 What is 2SLGBTQIA+ and why is Mayor Harrell afraid to use it?

If you’re wondering who the “2SLGBTQIA+” community represents, you’re not alone.

2SLGBTQIA+ is the acronym that heterosexual “allies” and gender extremists came up with to be more “inclusive.” “2S” stands for two-spirit, “I” for intersex (even though it’s neither a sexual orientation nor gender), and “A” for asexual. The “+” stands for everything else, which used to cover two-spirit, intersex, and asexual, but… inclusivity and representation!

Notably, Mayor Harrell’s office does not use this acronym in its press release announcing the legislation. It uses “LGBTQ+” likely because the activist acronym signals just how extreme the bill is. So he’s trying to have it both ways: lean into the crazy while seeming mainstream on an issue that he’s purposefully mischaracterizing as being about adults, and not children.

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Mayor Harrell’s political missteps

Mayor Bruce Harrell has repeatedly stepped on political landmines, leaving his team scrambling for damage control.

At a “State of Downtown” event last week, Harrell praised President Donald Trump because he “surrounds himself with some of the smartest innovators around. When we drop names like Andreessen, or Peter Thiel, or David Sachs, or Elon Musk, these are smart innovators.” The mayor’s spokesperson claims it wasn’t praise but “referencing they have an objective reputation as leaders in technology and innovation, and that it is a danger they are in the president’s orbit.”

But before the new year, Harrell appeared to support some of Trump’s immigration enforcement, so long as it’s geared towards criminal illegal immigrants, suggesting an openness to policies “coming out of the White House that we want to embrace.”

“I’ll meet with the US Conference of Mayors,” Harrell said at the time. “There are many mayors dealing with the exact same issues… deportation, ICE raids, families being relocated. All of this stuff that can go into a very aggressive approach and not looking at individuals. No one wants criminals here. I mean, there’s no disagreement on that. We want to make sure that we are protecting everybody, but we need a calibration of policy.”

And during a Washington Technology Industry Association event, the mayor said he was looking “for opportunities no matter who’s in the White House.”

A frivolous piece of legislation to placate gender extremists throws a bone to a progressive base that could make Harrell’s re-election campaign more difficult.

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