Californians will soon elect a new governor. Voters might ask candidates where they stand on the use of taxpayer dollars to fund “sex-reassignment surgery” for gender dysphoria among illegal aliens and homeless people.
The state has already been funding such surgeries for convicted felons, for several years.
In 2017, convicted murderer Rodney Quine received “sex-reassignment” surgery funded by California taxpayers, the first such case in the nation.
According to Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute and Jonathan Choe of the Discovery Institute, those procedures now continue on a wider scale, in the state’s program for the homeless.
Last month, Rufo and Choe checked out a tip that California had opened its homeless shelters to “illegal aliens,” but there was more to it.
As the authors discovered, the shelters were housing “a population of male-to-female ‘transgender’ illegal aliens, who had hoped to obtain ‘gender-affirming care.’ To their shock, “state and local governments apparently are providing it.”
Rufo and Choe visited St. Vincent De Paul’s MSC-South, San Francisco’s largest homeless shelter. There they met a Honduran named “Lyca,” who admitted that he had entered the country illegally.
He also said that he had Medi-Cal, the state health care program Governor Gavin Newsom has directed to provide “full scope” coverage to persons illegally present in the United States. Under Medi-Cal, the Honduran was receiving “cross-sex hormone therapy.”
At the city-funded Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center, in San Francisco, a Mexican immigrant named “Jacqueline,” who claimed to be a lawful U.S. resident, told the authors that Medi-Cal had paid for his breast implants. He was currently awaiting “bottom surgery,” which involves “castrating a male and turning his penile tissue into a ‘neo-vagina.’”
As taxpayers should know, such procedures, though promoted by government officials as medically necessary, safe and effective, are not only irreversible, but can lead to serious health problems.
At the government-funded Taimon Booton Navigation Center, a group of male-to-female illegal aliens told Rufo and Chloe that they wanted to receive transgender medical treatment. For the authors, this confirmed that “if you make it all the way to California, the government will pay for your shelter, hormones, and surgeries — no questions asked.”
The authors wondered if Californians were aware they were supporting “gender-affirming care” on the taxpayers’ dime. The California Department of Health Care Services, which administers the Medi-Cal program, did not respond to the authors’ request for comment.
Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor, has kept rather quiet about the ever-expanding services of the city’s homeless shelters. On April 16, the governor’s website touted $145 million in spending under the Homelessness, Housing and Prevention (HHAP) program.
As UCLA economist Lee Ohanian notes, despite more than $20 billion in spending, state homeless policies have “exacerbated crime, damaged cities, and facilitated substance abuse.” State politicians are reluctant to recognize the failure and “show no willingness to change.”
Voters should also ask gubernatorial candidates to reveal their positions on continuing to fund “gender-affirming care” for convicted criminals like Quine, a twice-married father of two daughters.
In 1980 in Los Angeles Quine gunned down Shahid Ali Baig, a father of three, then stole Baig’s car and $80. In prison, Quine claimed to have sought female status since the age of nine. Judge Jon Tigar accepted the claim, and ordered the surgery, at taxpayers’ expense.
Previously confined at the Mule Creek State Prison for men, the convicted murderer is now listed as Shiloh Heavenly Quine, inmate WB1121 at the Central California Women’s facility.
Californians could be forgiven for calling that case a travesty of justice. And if they believe their state suffers from reality dysphoria, it would be hard to blame them.
Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.
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