There are some essays that might be better left unwritten.\u00a0\u00a0This might be one of them, but here goes.\u00a0\u00a0If you live in Ohio, you\u2019re likely to be familiar with the battle between appointed Republican Senator John Husted and former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, you\u2019d have to be near dead not to know about it.\u00a0\u00a0Republicans are spending over $100 million on ads, and Democrats are countering with about $60 million of their own.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this point in the election season, it\u2019s \u201cnegative ad time\u201d. Brown is running ads talking about the First Energy scandal, where a power company put $60 million in the hands of the Ohio Republican Party in return for billions of dollars of state aid. Husted was right in the middle of that, First Energy\u2019s \u201cGolden Boy\u201d, as they called him. Brown is going to remind Ohioans of Husted\u2019s role in the scandal over and over again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Husted is falling back on the \u201ctransgender\u201d issue. Two years ago, when Brown was defending his seat against now-Senator Bernie Moreno, Brown\u2019s supposed stand on the specter of \u201cmen in women\u2019s sports\u201d is credited for taking him down. The fact that Trump was on the ballot in that Presidential year is discounted. Brown lost to Moreno by 3.6%, in a state where Trump beat Harris by 11.21%. But Republicans aren\u2019t giving up on \u201ctalking dirty\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there\u2019s this advertisement running now, showing a young woman, Soren, who has a tragic tale.\u00a0\u00a0She was troubled from the time she was eleven, and at seventeen was diagnosed with gender dysphoria.\u00a0\u00a0In short, she thought she wanted to be a boy.\u00a0\u00a0So she began to take female hormone blockers and male hormones, all under medical supervision.\u00a0\u00a0Two years later, as an adult, she had surgery, a double mastectomy.\u00a0\u00a0After the operation there were long-term complications, and during that recovery he determined to \u201cde-transition\u201d back to a girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now all of this happened in Texas.\u00a0\u00a0Soren has no connection to Sherrod Brown, or Ohio.\u00a0\u00a0Soren had drug therapy at seventeen, but no surgeries were performed until she was nineteen, her second year of legal adulthood.\u00a0\u00a0So Soren, a legal adult in Texas, determined to have a mastectomy.\u00a0\u00a0Now Soren, a twenty-three year old, still in Texas, regrets that decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here in Ohio (and in Texas), it\u2019s illegal to perform gender-affirming surgery on minors.\u00a0\u00a0But that didn\u2019t happen to Soren anyway.\u00a0\u00a0So why are we seeing pictures of her, as a cute, smiling eight-year old in the ad? Or a young looking person with \u201cHarry Potter glasses\u201d and a bandaged chest in bed?\u00a0\u00a0Even more, why are we seeing this ad in Ohio? (Oddly, Republicans aren’t using the ad in Texas where Democrat James Talerico is running a strong race against Ken Paxton for US Senate.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In a 2023 interview, Sherrod Brown said he felt it was best for the parents, the child and the medical team to make determinations about gender-dysphoria treatments, rather than government.\u00a0\u00a0It seemed like a reasonable decision. That\u2019s all it took for Republicans to \u201chook\u201d Soren\u2019s sad story to the Ohio candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Soren\u2019s tells her story, ending in the line, \u201cI was just a kid.\u201d But, of course, she wasn\u2019t a kid, she was an adult, in Texas. Republicans infer that somehow Sherrod Brown is in favor of gender-affirming surgery on children, something that doesn\u2019t happen here in Ohio, and Sherrod hasn\u2019t supported. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Republicans (paid by the Republican Senate Leadership Fund) want to distract from sky-rocketing gas prices, and Husted\u2019s very real involvement in the First Energy scandal.\u00a0\u00a0They want Ohioans to go out and vote to save children from \u201cforced\u201d mastectomies, hysterectomies, and castrations.\u00a0\u00a0But there are no forced surgeries, and those elective surgeries aren\u2019t legal here in Ohio today.\u00a0\u00a0And, by the way, they\u2019re not legal in Texas either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A young adult made a decision, one that she regrets now four years later. I\u2019m sorry for her. Looking with the benefit of hindsight, she can claim that she was given bad advice from her doctors and her parents. But she was wholly responsible as a legal adult in Texas (and would have been in Ohio). <\/p>\n\n\n\n To be blunt: she\u2019s not Ohio\u2019s problem, and former (and hopefully future) Senator Sherrod Brown has nothing to do with her, her decisions, or the laws that controlled them. She did this to herself. And she did it in Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most Ohioans know when they\u2019re being \u201cplayed\u201d. And the Republican Senate Leadership Fund is playing us for stupid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s just one more reason to vote for Sherrod, and against the \u201cGolden Boy\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playing Us Stupid<\/h2>\n\n\n\n