We can both protect the taxpayer and protect our young people with the laws we pass, but we need Republicans to win at the polls this November. Read my column published by the Journal Gazette where I highlight how Republicans are the party of common sense. I wrote on Oct 24, 2026:
Monday marks a “holiday” for the transgender movement – “National Transgender Children Day.” But the newness of the “holiday” underscores the newness of the entire movement. This day was only established in 2019.
We’ve seen rapid changes as culture, medicine and education have embraced transgender policies for children in the past decade.
Hollywood glorifies a transgender lifestyle, medicine proclaims surgery and hormones can change what was established by biology at conception.
Are we surprised that national teachers’ unions push for transitioning children to another gender before they even have a high school diploma?
And don’t believe the Democrats who try to tell you that this is not an issue in Indiana. The only reason it is currently not an issue is because we Republicans voted to ban this barbaric practice, a law that could be changed in a minute if Democrats take control in November.
Nationally, there’s appropriate pushback on this experimental science, too.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration followed through on a commonsense promise to end gender changes for youth on the taxpayer dime. Medicaid will no longer pay for sex-rejecting procedures, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender-change surgeries for minors.
In 2023, I voted for a bill to ban gender-changing medical treatments for children. I actually had medical doctors in Indianapolis tell me before the bill’s passage that toddlers and adolescents could be harmed if they weren’t permitted to pursue a different sex at a young age.
The ACLU sued over our commonsense law, of course. But thankfully this law protecting children took effect in February 2024.
In the same year, I also voted for a bill to bar state dollars from going to gender-change surgeries for inmates.
The poster child for inmate sex changes in Indiana is a murderer who killed an 11-month-old while still a man. More recently, the ACLU fought for this man to have sex-change surgery on the taxpayer dime.
A judge sided with the ACLU and the murderer on the basis that withholding sex-change surgery from an inmate would be “cruel and unusual punishment.” What kind of madness are we living in?
I’m the most vocal advocate in the General Assembly of ridding the prison system of this exact madness.
Last year, I introduced my biological truth bill (Senate Bill 182) to define gender as biological sex throughout Indiana code and keep men out of women’s bathrooms and prisons. My legislation would have absolutely stated that the aforementioned murderer must be housed with men, no matter what sex he thought he was.
I’m planning to reintroduce this commonsense bill.
But to bring back my biological truth bill, I need to win the general election. My Democratic opponent would head to Indianapolis and reject these sane measures protecting children from dangerous transgender surgeries.
She told an Indiana activist network, Hoosiers Rise, that she wants gender decisions to belong with patients, their families and doctors.
That’s just a radical position to hold and out of step with most Americans who believe children should be protected from these dangerous surgeries. In fact, Pew Research found nearly 6 in 10 American adults favor, or strongly favor, a ban on health care professionals providing care related to gender transitions for children.
The election is a clear contrast between the left that just wants to go further left.
You have one party that believes in giving life-altering hormone drugs to young people and having taxpayers fund sex-change surgeries. On the flip side, you have Republicans who believe our Indiana General Assembly was right to ban gender surgeries on minors and who believe the Trump administration is right for ending Medicaid-funded gender-surgeries for children.
We can both protect the taxpayer and protect our young people with the laws we pass, but we need Republicans to win at the polls this November.