GOP candidates clash on transgender issues at fourth primary debate 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis forcefully denounced transgender surgery for minors during Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate, arguing that the procedure is akin to child abuse. 

“You do not have the right to abuse your kids. This is mutilating these minors, these are irreversible procedures,” the 45-year-old said.  

DeSantis touted sweeping legislation that he signed into law in Florida earlier this year that banned providing minors with puberty blockers or hormone therapy and outlawed performing sex-reassignment surgeries on children. 

“We cannot allow this to happen in this country,” he added, without saying whether he would support similar legislation on a federal level as president. 

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy went a step further than DeSantis, arguing that “transgenderism is a mental health disorder,” and he challenged the Florida governor to support the use of federal funds to ban “genital mutilation or chemical castration” for minors. 

“We don’t let you smoke a cigarette by the age of 18. We don’t let you have an addictive drink of alcohol by the age of 21,” Ramaswamy reasoned, noting that former President Ronald Reagan was able to raise the drinking age in 1984 by conditioning federal funds for state highways on states prohibiting persons under 21 from purchasing or possessing alcoholic beverages.

“On the federal level, I’m crystal clear. That’s where I stand,” he said. 

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie argued that his support for giving parents the final say, rather than government officials, shouldn’t be a disqualifying position for a Republican seeking the party’s presidential nomination. 

“Republicans believe in less government, not more, and less involvement with government, not more government involvement in people’s lives,” he said. “I trust parents.” 

“I stood up every single time for parents to be able to make the decisions for their minor children,” Christie continued, noting that “every once in a while, parents are going to make decisions that we disagree with.”

“The minute you start to take those rights away from parents, you don’t know, that slippery slope, what rights are going to be taken away next,” he argued. 

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was forced to defend her handling of state legislation in 2016 that sought to ban transgender individuals from using restrooms that don’t align with their biological sex. 

DeSantis had accused the Haley of killing the so-called bathroom bill. 

“When I was governor, 10 years ago, when the bathroom situation came up, we had maybe a handful of kids that were dealing with an issue and I said, ‘We don’t need to bring government into this,” she said.  

“Now, 10 years later, we see that this issue has exploded. And this shows how hypocritical Ron continues to be. When he was running for governor [in 2018] and they asked him about that, he said he didn’t think bathroom bills were a good use of his time,” Haley added, referring to an answer DeSantis gave at a Florida Republican gubernatorial forum, where he said would “not pass a law” related to transgender bathroom issues and would rather “stay out of that.”

“I signed a bathroom bill in Florida, so that’s obviously not true,” DeSantis shot back at Haley, referring to a new law in the Sunshine State that mandates separate facilities based on biological sex in public buildings. 

“What I have always said is boys go into boys bathrooms, girls go into girls bathrooms,” Haley responded. “I also say that biological boys shouldn’t be playing girls sports, and I will do everything I can to stop that because it’s the women’s issue of our time.”