Or, to be more specific, their left isn’t as crazy as our left. One instance among many is the United Kingdom’s relatively sane reaction to the “trans” hysteria that gripped the world’s leftists a few years ago. In America, “trans” ideology remains rampant, but in Europe it has been reined in. Thus, for instance, Britain has shut down its notorious Tavistock “child gender identity clinic.”
In the last days of the Conservatives’ majority, they enacted an emergency ban on prescription of puberty blockers for children, the heart of the “trans” regime. In the wake of Labour’s electoral victory last week, the incoming Labour government says it will keep the Conservatives’ ban in place:
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has said he will make permanent an emergency ban on the supply of puberty blockers to children.
The Conservatives rushed through the temporary ban just a day before parliament was dissolved, putting a stop to private clinics prescribing the medication to under-18s.
Streeting said he would keep the ban, as campaigners challenged the initial decision in the courts.
Government lawyers said that, subject to the outcome of the case, it was “minded to renew the emergency banning order with a view to converting it to a permanent ban, subject to appropriate consultation”.
Helen Joyce, director of advocacy for the charity Sex Matters, said: “Wes Streeting’s announcement that he plans to make his predecessor’s ban on puberty blockers permanent is an excellent sign that Labour intends to take an evidence-based approach to child gender medicine, and to prioritise child safeguarding.”
In America, liberals are monomaniacally committed to promoting child sex change surgeries, procedures that elsewhere are regarded as barbaric. The situation is similar with regard to abortion: the most liberal Western European countries permit abortions up to 15 or 16 weeks, and prohibit them thereafter. This is a compromise that most conservatives in America would live with, but it is anathema to American liberals. They insist on the right to abort babies up to the moment of birth, and in some cases (as in my state, Minnesota) after a baby has been born alive.
I am not sure why, especially on social issues, our left is crazier than the European left. But, for whatever reason, it is a fact.