US: Peter LaBarbera condemns gender reassignment surgery in on-air transphobic rant
Vocal opponent of LGBT rights, Peter LaBarbera, has extended his attacks against the trans community, calling gender reassignment surgeries “grotesque” and saying that doctors who perform them “need to go to jail”.
He attacked what he described as “transsexual sex-change operations, so-called”, and particularly spoke against the funding of gender reassignment surgeries under national social insurance program Medicare.
“I have seen healthy young girls in their twenties with their healthy breasts removed to appear like men. Now imagine that. I saw that on stage at a so-called transgender conference a long time ago – this was in DC – and it was just shocking to me,” he said.
“These doctors who perform these operations — this should be illegal — these guys need to go to jail. This is almost the most analogous thing to the abortionist on that issue I can think of: these doctors exploiting these gender-confused individuals and making money off of them.
“Imagine a woman in her twenties who thinks she wants to be a man so she doesn’t want her breasts, and to have them removed; isn’t that awful? To pay for [that] as taxpayers [is] shocking.”
He further condemned attempts at policies allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, and protested against transgender people using public restrooms.
He said: “If a woman can’t go into a public restroom without some burly guy in a dress possibly being in the stall, isn’t that violating her privacy, her rights? But no, it’s all about the LGBTs, it’s always gays and transgenders first, and everybody else’s rights – hey, that’s second.”
LaBarbera is known for condemning what he terms “homosexual activists” attacking the “religious freedoms” of homophobic individuals and groups – a topic he returned to during his hour-long stint on the show.
He praised the Supreme Court for its Hobby Lobby ruling, which allowed the company to claim religious exemption as a reason not to supply contraceptives, but condemned any potential Supreme Court national ruling in favour of same-sex marriage.
“I think we need a state like Oklahoma or somewhere,” he said, “where there is a vast, vast majority supporting traditional marriage to say, ‘No, we’re not going to be forced in our state to embrace this counterfeit marriage,’ and I hope that happens, because we cannot be ruled by nine men and women in robes, by the Supreme Court, they are not supposed to be making law.”
Discussing the news that LGBT groups are withdrawing support for ENDA, he said: “All sexual orientation laws and gender identity non-discrimination laws are effectively discriminatory against people of faith or people of the moral persuasion that homosexual behavior is wrong. The homosexual groups are pulling out because ENDA is not discriminatory enough towards people of faith.”
