Why is big business fighting state efforts to protect kids from irreversible gender transition?
A group of big businesses is fighting against state-level legislation that seeks to ban experimental drugs and irreversible surgical procedures that are being pushed on children who suffer from gender dysphoria.
During debates over a South Dakota bill that would’ve banned the use of puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones and surgeries to remove kids’ sex organs, it emerged that, as with previous bills that resisted the ideological goals of transgenderism, some of the most ardent opponents were not transgender activists, but the Chamber of Commerce and other large corporate entities.
Alabama is presently attempting to move a similar ban through its state Legislature. Last week, the state Senate voted 22 to 3 to make prescribing, dispensing, administering or in any way providing these drugs and treatments to minors a class C felony in addition to banning irreversible surgeries that alter a child's anatomy. The bill is called the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act.
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Yet what many regard as a common sense bill is being opposed by large companies. Over 40 big businesses, some with connections to Alabama, signed an open letter published by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT advocacy group, asserting that Alabama's bill would harm its LBGT employees, AL.com reported.
Some of the corporations that oppose bans on gender transitioning kids include: Amazon, Apple, Capital One, Hilton, Microsoft, Nestle, Nike, IBM, Bayer, and Ben & Jerry's, among many others.
"These bills would harm our team members and their families, stripping them of opportunities and making them feel unwelcome and at risk in their own communities,” these businesses argue in their letter.
“As such, it can be exceedingly difficult for us to recruit the most qualified candidates for jobs in states that pursue such laws, and these measures can place substantial burdens on the families of our employees who already reside in these states.”
The role that specific industries play in collaboration with LGBT activist organizations cannot be ignored, says independent investigative journalist and blogger, Jennifer Bilek, who has extensively researched the billions of dollars fueling the transgender movement across the globe.
In an email to The Christian Post on Thursday, Bilek stressed that transgenderism has created "sexual/medical identities that normalize body dissociation" and its proponents operate with nearly unlimited resources with which to do it, particularly given how these new identities have been presented to the public. The medical industry has effectively colonized the human body in pursuit of dollars, but in a largely hidden, insidious manner, she stressed.
"Since pharma and tech intersect with everything, everyone profits when pharma and Tech profit. They are the largest lobbying entity in Congress, so they rule from behind the scenes with vast sums of money," Bilek said.
"This fuels the profits for the medical industrial complex (pharma and tech as they are inseparable now), from which transgenderism arose."
She added, "As human mammals, we are sexed at root. If this sex is made into a panoply of identities, we become uprooted from who and what we are becoming, the consumed and colonized as well as consumers."
"Elites in the medical industry driving this ideology seek to get businesses on board with this ideology through training and punish dissenters with financial exclusion. Most industries intersect with pharma and tech so it is difficult not to comply," Bilek explained.
Whereas people who identify as among the LGB maintain that their sexual attraction and identities are based on sex, the T and every letter that follows seeks to deconstruct sexual dimorphism, she continued.
"It also opens a floodgate for changing human biology and what it means to be human and creates more individualized consumers for corporations to target, while paving the way for the normalization of more medical identities," Bilek reiterated.
"Libraries have medical data bases. Sports has sports medicine (9.1 billion global profits by 2024). Corporate media conglomerates such as Hearst, Conde Nast, CBS, Disney, etc. have health platforms and investments in pharmaceuticals. Pick an industry and find it’s connection to pharma/tech," she said.
In Arizona, 200 businesses are presently voicing their opposition to a state bill aimed at keeping biological males out of girls' athletics.
Some believe that unlike South Dakota, Alabama has a good chance of passing a bill to protect children.
Becky Gerritson, executive director of Eagle Forum of Alabama, one of the groups comprising the Compassion Coalition — a nonpartisan group formed to resist the movement to transition children and transgender ideology in law — believes that, unlike South Dakota, legislators in Alabama will not be swayed by business leaders' contention that the bill is economically damaging for the state.
"I think what's different about Alabama is that we have very strong Republicans. And we have faith that our Republicans here in Alabama will do the right thing and will support the children," Gerritson told CP in a phone interview on Thursday.
Nothing in the legislation prohibits minors from identifying as the opposite sex or undergoing what is known as "social transitioning," she said, which often involves wearing clothes typically worn by the opposite sex and going by a different name, if they so choose.
"This is solely to stop medical procedures on minors. It's not being unfriendly to that community because they're still able to identify that way. And the business community, they need to understand that we're talking about children who are not adults yet. ..."
Many employees in these 40 companies oppose the push to transition children, Gerritson stressed, adding that Alabama is not afraid to pass bills many on the left might consider controversial.
"This is just common sense. I think they really get it on face value, how this protects children and doesn't impede on their rights. It will actually be helping them in the long run, to have them wait until they're old enough to make these long-term, long-lasting, life-altering decisions," she said. "There are plenty of people who are not religious who still believe this is the common sense thing to do."
Gerritson said she does expect business leaders to push against the bill and believes "there will be a fight," but she will stand behind Republican legislators to keep them strong.
"I think they'll do the right thing," she added.
