1. Introduction
This article previously contained inaccurate information. Please scroll down, to the other author's note, if you wish to read it before reading the remainder of this article.
The Aquarian Agrarian regrets the error.]
On Monday, May 27th, 2024, the Libertarian Party nominated Chase Oliver to be its presidential candidate, at its national convention in Washington, D.C..
Within the following several days, numerous Libertarian Party members - especially those who didn't vote for Oliver to be the party's nominee - expressed concern and disapproval regarding Chase Oliver's stance regarding puberty blockers for minors.
Oliver has stated that, while he does oppose
giving bottom surgery (i.e., genital surgery) to people under the
age of 18, he does not think that the state should be in the
business of preventing parents from, or punishing parents for, making the
decision that puberty blockers are appropriate for their children.
That interview was published to YouTube, under the title
"What does Chase Oliver believe about trans kids?". That video can be
viewed at the following address:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obFBd8AAMNs
I would urge my readers to watch that video before proceeding, as
the remarks which follow below, are a direct response to the comments made by
Oliver and Liz Wolfe in that interview.
2. The Letter
On June 12th, 2024, I sent an e-mail to Liz Wolfe, to explain why
I agree with her concerns and criticisms regarding Mr. Oliver.
[Notes about the formatting of this
article:
1. The portions of the letter below which appear in brackets,
and/or italics, were added to the text after it was sent.
2. For the reader's convenience, lengthy author's notes have been
placed between brackets and appear in italics, in order to contrast
against the original portions of the e-mail, which appear without either
brackets or italics.]
3. Single words which appear within brackets were either added, or
edited (but without significantly modifying the meaning of the text).
4. Paragraph breaks and spaces between lines have also been added
for the reader's convenience.]
That e-mail read as follows:
Hi Liz.
Thanks for pushing back against Chase Oliver in your recent interview. I
appreciate your trying to get him to be consistent.
I'm a former Libertarian and this is
one of the reasons why I left.
Oliver isn't even correct that bottom surgery is irreversible. Walt Heyer
underwent bottom surgery, and then had it reversed.
Not that that makes it OK, of course! The damage which bottom surgery and
puberty blockers do to the body should not be underestimated, and Oliver was
clearly trying to avoid discussing it.
Some women have described testosterone
as "poison to women", and one of the puberty blockers commonly used
is Lupron, which is used to chemically castrate sex offenders. So
we are treating "gender-questioning kids" like sex offenders,
while ignoring the possibility that they feel that way because they were
sexually abused as children.
Oliver also avoided discussing how these forms of
transitioning re-affirm harmful gender stereotypes (like the stereotypes that
tall people cannot be feminine, and that short people cannot be masculine; and
that if you are a boy who is attracted to other boys then you must really be a
girl inside).
The conversation also got nowhere near entertaining
the possibility that diagnosing a kid with gender dysphoria tends to distract
from any and all prior ailments from which they may be suffering, which may
have overlapping symptoms with gender dysphoria, or which may have caused that
dysphoria. Particularly, Dissociative Identity Disorder, general body
dysmorphia, gender-based bullying and harmful gender stereotypes, and prior
sexual abuse [as well as homosexuality, bisexuality, autism, fear of being sexually
assaulted or abused or objectified, and/or desire to please adults to want to
send the child chest binders]. In my book, ignoring previous sexual abuse is
basically the same thing as pedophile enabling.
Walt Heyer was forced to wear a dress by his
grandmother, and raped by an uncle, and developed gender dysphoria. I suspect
that Heyer internalized that harm, and reasoned that he might have an easier
time getting penetrated by his uncle, if he were to attempt to transition to
female.
[Note: Heyer has stated that he desired to become a
female in order to get away from the abuse, but in my opinion, it's
possible that making the abuse easier on himself could have been a subconscious
additional motivation. And even if he didn't feel that way, it's possible that
other people who suffered similar fates, have felt that way.]
Also, there is a man who is developing a line of
swimsuits, for his gender-dysphoric "daughter", which tucks the
genitals back.
[Source:
http://www.today.com/parents/dad-designs-swimwear-transgender-girls-daughter-t206361]
I would be shocked to discover that that father
did not sexually abuse his child.
Even if he didn't, the sheer amount of attention being paid
to the child's genitals is creepy, and amounts to indirect sexual abuse.
But according to these "pro-trans" people
(such as Briahna Joy Gray), wanting children to remain unmutilated is
the only real form of "obsession with children's
genitals".
Oliver was clearly trying to suggest, indirectly,
that your [i.e., Liz Wolfe's] concerns are motivated by the desire to
paint all pro-trans people and gays as pedophiles and groomers.
He claims to be against tattooing and giving plastic
surgery to minors, but nowhere in his interview did he discuss what to
do about it. I would say that he has a knee-jerk reaction to any attempt,
by the state, to "make decisions on parents' behalf", but he is
clearly biased when it comes to his own community.
[Note: By "his own community", I am
referring to "G.S.M.", an initialization which stands for
"gender and sexual minorities". Oliver is a same-sex-attracted
cisgender male; i.e., a homosexual.]
And his admission that he'd support a "religious
exemption" to a ban on circumcision for minors, is idiotic. There is a
pedophilic cult called the Children of God. They have a [“]holy book[“] that
depicts adults raping minors. I shudder to think what society would be like, if
their book The Story of Davidito could not be legally banned
from children's libraries, or if the Children of God were to receive a
"religious exemption" to a ban on minors having sex.
[Note: The possibility that bans on people under
18 years of age getting married or having sex, could be defeated - based on the
need to account for the supposed need to provide religious exemptions - is not
as far-fetched as some of my readers might imagine. In 2017, New Jersey
Governor Chris Christie declined to sign a law that would have prohibited
marriage for people under the age of 18, saying that it would "violate the
cultures and traditions of some communities" if an "exclusion without
exceptions" for parental and/or judicial consent were to become law.
Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-jersey-chris-christie-child-marriage-ban-fails-religious-custom-a7735616.html
New Jersey is far from being the only state where judicial
and parental permission can override the minor's lack of ability to consent;
other states have this law too. The website of the Tahirih Justice Center has
more information about various state laws regarding this topic. Governor Phil
Murphy signed a law banning marriage for people under 18, without exceptions,
in June 2018.
Source:
http://www.nj.gov/governor/news/news/562018/approved/20180622b_child_marriage_ban.shtml]
Also, his statement that parents should make
decisions about transitioning, because "parents have unconditional love
for their children", is patently absurd. My father raped me when I was
[eight] and [nine] years old. He did not have unconditional love for me (unless
you count lust as love).
If I had been any stupider, or more gullible, or had
become financially independent from my parents any later in life, then there is
a good chance that I would have fallen for the lies told to me by my peers and
family, which is that I seemed gay or effeminate, or that "If you decided
to come out as transgender, we would support you." If I had not begun to
recover memories of the childhood sexual abuse at the age of [twenty-seven],
then for all we know, I might have begun identifying as gay or transgender out
of confusion.
There is a study that says 20% of minors with gender
dysphoria suffered previous sexual abuse.
[Note: The study to which I referred, which says
that 19% (not 20%) of transgender minors experienced sexual abuse, can be found
at the following address:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8344346/]
The same study says that minors with gender dysphoria
are twice as likely as the general population to have suffered sexual abuse.
These studies are out there, and Oliver either
doesn't know about them, or doesn't want to talk about them.
I don't know if Oliver is afraid to look like a
"self-hating homosexual", or maybe he sees that there is a lot of
money in being pro-transition (for example, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker's
"sister" Jennifer is the world's only transgender billionaire, and
"she" has been supporting pro-transition causes).
The following five paragraphs - including the first, which was sent to Liz Wolfe, and the following four, which were not - were based on incorrect information. This article previously claimed that "O
The Aquarian Agrarian regrets the error, and plans to take Sisson to task for his deception soon.]
It's also possible that Oliver is an actual
pedophile. He said that "the age of consent is too damn high". (see
attached image). Which he wouldn't say, if he knew about the "federal
generic age of consent" of 16 years old. He wouldn't say that if he knew
about the case of Esquivel-Quintana v[.] Sessions (which
essentially held that state laws establishing an age of consent of 17 or 18 are
now invalid, giving an incentive for 16-to-20-year-olds
to traffic their victims across state lines, if they're less than four years
younger; because then, it would be a federal case instead of a state case). He
wouldn't say that if he knew that there are reduced penalties for someone
between 16 and 20 if they rape someone less than four years younger than they
are. This is why some people claim that the age of consent is actually twelve
years old.
Libertarians began this discussion, about [five] or
[ten] years ago, by (appropriately) criticizing making teenagers into
registered sex offenders for life, if they sext-message other teenagers and
acquire nudes of other minors that way. But after that, they stopped paying
attention to the erosion of the rights of the child, which ha[s] played out in
the courts since then. He is probably not even aware that there are several
states that have failed to establish an absolute minimum age for tattooing and
marriage, because their laws allow judges and parents to make decisions on
children's behalf. You read that correctly; there are states where an infant could
theoretically get married (and have sex) or get a tattoo, if the parents and/or
a judge are stupid or insane enough to allow it.
[Note: In my opinion, many Libertarians fail to
understand that some activities are so dangerous for children to
engage in, that parental, judicial, and/or physicians' permission, could
not possibly turn that dangerous activity into something that is
safe, or wise, or harmless, as if by magic. I blame Libertarians' adoption of
the idea that adults' permission can safely guide children through something
harmful, on a line of thinking which I heard an approximately 70-year-old man
say to a ten- or twelve-year-old girl at the 2018 Illinois Libertarian Party
Convention: "There's a safe way to do everything".
I suspect that this line of thinking is motivated by
the idea that the approach which the government of the Netherlands takes
towards activities such as drug use and prostitution. This holds true for
adults, but unlimited freedom - and the freedom to take dangerous risks which
carry lifetime consequences - is not for children; it's for adults.
This regulatory approach is arguably
indistinguishable from the approach which the Franklin Delano Roosevelt
administration undertook during the New Deal, when it closed banks and then
opened them back up again just several days later, and then created the
F.D.I.C. (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), in order to create
the illusion that the regulations being passed, were really for
everybody's benefit, and were really working, and were really being written and
enforced by moral and well-meaning people. They weren't. And Libertarians, as
some of the staunchest critics of the New Deal in America, ought to notice
this. But sadly, most of them they haven't.
Early libertarian C. Frederic Bastiat once said that
people should not accuse liberals of wanting nobody to raise grain, simply
because they don't want the state to do it. And that is a valid statement. But
while some Libertarians wisely reason that the state shouldn't be trusted to
solve a problem, they sometimes then fail to explain whom, aside from the
state, should solve that problem, and so, the problem continues, and
festers.]
Please reach out to me if you have any questions or
[need] clarifications. I am so tired of seeing people drastically oversimplify
how age of consent and statutory rape laws work, and treat people concerned
about kids as if they're full of hate.
Thanks for reading and
keep pushing back.
- Joseph W. Kopsick
jwkopsick@gmail.com
618-751-3229
E-mail written and sent on June 12th, 2024.
This article originally published, in shorter form, on June 12th, 2024.
Edited, expanded, and completed - and most notes added - on June 17th, 2024.
Author's notes regarding Harry J. Sisson's fake tweet about Chase Oliver
added to this article on July 15th, 2024.
