News
Featured Image
 Shutterstock.com

ANNAPOLIS, MD, February 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) — Maryland's GOP governor is moving forward with two proposals created by his predecessor to eliminate alleged discrimination against ‘transgendered’ Marylanders.

Last week, newly-elected Gov. Larry Hogan approved a regulation that would prevent companies that receive Medicaid funds from treating transgendered employees differently than other staff.

Hogan has so far allowed an effort by the state to allow Medicaid dollars to be used for surgical “sex change” procedures to continue. This expansion of Medicaid funding was approved by the previous governor, Martin O'Malley, whose spokesperson told The Baltimore Sun in November that the state is “in the process of submitting state regulations and will seek federal approval for the expansion of transgender health care coverage by April 1, 2015.”

The spokesperson, Karen Black, also said that no more than five people are expected to request Medicaid's help with “sex-change” operations, and that the costs are anticipated to be lower than $325,000 per year. That regulation opened for public comment on January 23.

Expansion of Medicaid could create financial difficulties for Hogan, who is constitutionally required to balance the state budget. Last month, Hogan outlined a budget that would cut two percent across the state, which currently faces a $750 million deficit.

Click “like” if you want to defend true marriage.

Taxpayers Protection Alliance president David Williams told LifeSiteNews that while his organization is “not opposed to transgender operations,” dollars dedicated to them “should go under the same kind of scrutiny that other procedures would go through.”

“Maryland is required to balance the budget, which is why it's really critical they find ways to cut spending,” said Williams.

The measures come four months after a Maryland law banning discrimination against transgendered people took effect. That law was passed in May 2014 by O'Malley. 

Maryland is just the latest state to pass measures providing “transgendered” people special treatment under the law. A recent measure in Minnesota that critics warned would allow male high school athletes to use female changing rooms and hotel rooms was criticized for putting the safety of girls at risk.

Pro-family critics oppose “sex-change” surgeries, involving the surgical removal of a person’s genitals, as a form of physical mutilation.

Former Johns Hopkins psychiatrist-in-chief Paul McHugh has been a strong critic of the procedures, insisting that they are medically unnecessary. Transgenderism, he says, is “a mental disorder,” and most allegedly “transgendered” teenagers are no longer feeling that way within a few years.