Congress gets a clean vote on gender sanity

Common sense versus crazy is the defining feature of today’s politics.On immigration, the choice is between enforcing the law and tolerating policies that burden U.S. workers and communities. On elections, the SAVE America Act has exposed the same divide: More than 80% of Americans support voter ID, yet Democrats continue to resist basic election-integrity safeguards.Do lawmakers recognize biological reality and protect children from irreversible treatment, or do they protect the establishment that branded dissent dangerous?But one contrast between Republicans and Democrats this cycle is even more fundamental: whether government should recognize biological sex as real.That fight now runs through women’s sports, military readiness, and the treatment of children suffering from gender dysphoria. Common sense says boys are boys, girls are girls, and children should not be rushed into life-altering medical interventions. The alternative is crazy.For years, the gender-medicine establishment told vulnerable children that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries could align their bodies with an internal identity. Too often, institutions presented those interventions with more certainty than the evidence justified.U.S. Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) wants Congress to answer that problem with H.R. 7651, the Chloe Cole Act, which targets providers where accountability is most likely to be felt: civil liability.The bill would create a federal cause of action allowing patients and families to sue medical providers that prescribed puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones or performed sex-rejecting surgeries on minors.Chloe Cole, the bill’s namesake, is a detransitioner and activist who says she was pushed toward irreversible treatment without clear, informed consent. Her own malpractice case has made her one of the most prominent critics of pediatric gender medicine.The legislation also arrives as institutions that once claimed broad consensus are facing harder scrutiny. The Trump administration filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, challenging claims about medical necessity and insurance coverage.RELATED: Taxpayers paid $9.6 million for a gender ideologue's puberty-blocker study. She hid it. Now we know why. L-R: Luis Soto/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images; Michael Tullberg/Getty ImagesIn a recent legal filing, WPATH described portions of its guidance as “opinion” rather than binding scientific consensus. That distinction is important. Parents were told for years that the science was settled. Now the institutions involved are emphasizing judgment, interpretation, and professional opinion.Malpractice cases are moving too. In the Varian case, a jury awarded $2 million in damages over a sex-rejecting surgery. Individual lawsuits may expose failures one patient at a time. The Chloe Cole Act would be a major step toward stopping this industrial-scale profiteering once and for all.As Congress returns for its pre-midterm September sprint, the choice is once again common sense versus crazy. Do lawmakers recognize biological reality and insist on caution before children undergo irreversible treatment, or do they protect a medical and political establishment that insisted for years that dissent itself was dangerous?Congress has already seen versions of the same fight. Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) is leading the charge to define men and women clearly under Title IX. Before the August recess, Heritage Action key-voted an amendment from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to codify President Trump’s “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” order requiring service members to serve in accordance with their biological sex.The legislation asked Congress to say something extraordinarily simple: Men serve as men, and women serve as women. Every Democrat who voted on the amendment went on the record against it.The Chloe Cole Act offers another clean vote. Members can side with children and families seeking accountability for irreversible medical treatment or with the institutions like the billion-dollar transgender lobby that told the country for years that common sense had to yield to crazy.