Daily Signal Calls Puberty Blocking Implant “Transgender Surgery”
Who are these clowns kidding?
by Evan Urquhart
A stale story about a custody battle involving a transgender girl whose father opposes her gender-affirming care got a new write up from the Heritage Foundation’s pretend news site, the Daily Signal. The site billed their coverage, which is barely unchanged from a February 2022 news story covering the same family, as running “FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL.” The only “new” info? Non-affirming dad Ted Hudacko has slightly changed the wording of his long running complaint over his daughter transitioning as a teenager. A puberty blocking implant his now 19-year-old daughter received several years ago is, and which he failed to stop at the time, is now being referred to as surgery.
This surgical re-wording allowed the conservative propaganda outlet to revisit the story, and to run with the headline “Father Takes Ex-Wife to Court After She Has ‘Transgender’ Son Put Under the Knife in Violation of Court Order.”
screenshot from the Daily Signal
Does the insertion of a Supprelin implant involve the use of a knife? It does not. And the court explicitly okayed hormone treatments for Hudacko’s daughter years ago. But, who needs facts when you’re in a right-wing echo chamber hyperventilating about a then 15-year-old trans kid getting on puberty blockers? The Daily Signal says it’s a surgery, so now it’s a surgery. (They also coyly hide the detail of what type of “surgery” they’re referring to roughly halfway through the article.
His lawyers are now asking the California courts to find his wife and his daughter’s doctors in contempt, based on the theory that the same treatments Hudacko has objected to in court throughout, without success, should now be considered a surgical alteration. By calling it a surgery, supposedly, the same facts in the same state in the same courts will result in a different outcome, one that will finally punish this crank’s ex-wife for supporting their daughter.
screenshot from the Daily Signal
Earlier versions of the story, including one in the Daily Mail and another written by Abigail Shrier that contained the false claim that a puberty blocking implant would cause sterility in a 15 or 16-year-old transfemme youth, complained that the judge in the case couldn’t be objective because she’d expressed public support for her own transgender daughter. Now, apparently, the issue is that inserting an implant counts as gender surgery.
The right-wing media rehashes these same handful of stories endlessly because there are so few of them, and because their thirst for anti-trans propaganda is unslakable. Today we’re re-hearing the story of Ted Hudacko, tomorrow we’ll be re-hashing the complaints of Jeff Younger, by Wednesday there will doubtless be some reason we’re rehashing the detransition of Chloe Cole, and then on Thursday Riley Gaines will attack Lia Thomas for being too tall or wearing the wrong hoodie.
It’s the same players, the same grievances, the same lies, remixed endlessly.