SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

State senator: Law allowing teens to change gender without parental consent is ‘insane’

Jan 12, 2022, 2:25 PM | Updated: Jan 13, 2022, 6:17 am

gender...

(Getty Images)

(Getty Images)

Young people in Washington state can’t legally buy cigarettes or vaping products until they’re 21 years old – but teens as young as 13 can now pursue gender reassignment medical procedures now that a Democrat-backed law has taken effect.

Rantz: WA laws now allow teen gender reassignment surgery without parental consent

This is “crazy stuff,” state Sen. Phil Fortunato (R-Auburn) told Dori Monson Show listeners.

Increasingly, Fortunato says, Democratic state legislators are cutting parents out of their children’s lives.

The senator came on Dori’s show shortly after he was escorted out of the state legislative building for failure to produce a negative COVID test. Fortunato calls his removal from his office building “unconstitutional.”

He also cites what he considers contradictions between gender change laws and smoking/vaping age restrictions as “madness.”

In 2020, Washington state moved the legal purchase of smoking and vaping products from 18 to 21 years – “because 18-year-olds aren’t smart enough to make medical decisions,” Fortunato said.

And yet, he continued, this new 2022 law allows children as young as 13 to begin the process for gender reassignment surgery without parental approval.

Equally frustrating for the senator: “Insurance companies cannot deny the treatment,” so even if parents “don’t have to be consulted, … parents are winding up paying for it.”

“If … the 50s were the patriotic period, and the 60s were the ‘free love’ period, and the 2000s were the confused period, then from 2010 on it is the insane period,” Fortunato said.

“This is crazy stuff and it just keeps going,” he told Dori’s listeners. “People don’t understand the consequences of giving the Democrats the large majority in the House and the Senate. They can do whatever the heck they want. I mean, this is madness.”

Listen to Dori’s interview with state Sen. Phil Fortunato below:

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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State senator: Law allowing teens to change gender without parental consent is ‘insane’