DeSantis’ health office hits back at Biden’s attack on Florida transgender laws

Florida’s Ron DeSantis health administration is pushing back President Joe Biden after he said state laws regarding transgender youth are “sinful” and the governor called the operations “mutilation of minors.”

Florida Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Jason Weida told DailyMail.com that the federal government pushing people with gender dysmorphia to have surgeries as minors is the real “sin” and is “decades behind other developed countries” ‘.

Biden said in a snippet of an interview released Monday that Florida’s laws are “brutal” as the Republican-majority legislature reconvened this month and plans to pass a slew of laws critics claim are anti- being LGBTQ.

It appeared that the president’s attack on DeSantis and his state’s initiatives is in preparation for a head-to-head presidential election with the governor who has not yet announced a bid for the White House but is expected to participate in the GOP primaries at the field of months.

“It is not ‘sinful’ to ban the mutilation of minors,” DeSantis tweeted Tuesday. “It is unacceptable for the federal government to mandate that procedures such as gender reassignment surgery be allowed for children.”

President Joe Biden told Daily Show guest host Kal Penn in a clip released Monday after an interview at the White House that Florida’s laws regarding LGBTQ rights are “sinful” and “cruel”

An excerpt from Monday’s episode of The Daily Show offered a sneak peek of Biden being interviewed by guest host Kal Penn at the White House.

The Florida Health Care Agency’s administrative secretary Jason Weida (pictured) told DailyMail.com that the government’s pushing gender dysmorphic youth to undergo surgery is a “sin” and is “decades behind other developed countries”

The actor and comedian, known for his starring role in Harold & Kumar, took a break from acting in 2009 to work at the White House for more than two years as an Associate Director for the Office of Public Engagement under President Barack Obama. He returned to acting in 2011 with the television series How I Met Your Mother.

Penn also came out as gay in November 2021 and revealed his engagement to his longtime partner, Josh.

During the sit-down, Biden claims recent Florida laws, many of which DeSantis spearheads, are “cruel” and in the clip the president reveals his high school “revelation” moment when he decided being gay was OK in his book.

“It’s just horrible what they’re doing,” Biden said in a preview clip.

Florida Republican lawmakers introduced several bills during this session that activists claim are regressive and will strip members of the LGBTQ community of their rights.

“The ‘gender-affirming’ model being pushed by the Biden administration is decades behind other developed countries, including Sweden and most recently Norway,” Weida told DailyMail.com.

“What is ‘sinful’ is that the establishment pushes harmful surgeries and treatments with long-term effects on minors without accountability or transparency.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who could announce a presidential candidate at any moment, is leading the way with a slew of laws that would prevent minors from receiving transgender medical care and surgeries

Opponents of the proposed legislation in the Sunshine State say the governor is using the guise of education and parental rights to enact laws they say are anti-gay and anti-transgender.

For example, one bill would ban transgender surgeries and health care, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for children who say they are the opposite sex they were born into.

Weida said the new Florida laws are consistent with what was found after the state health agency conducted a 2022 review of services promoted by Biden and the federal government to treat gender dysmorphia in minors.

“Last year, the Agency conducted a thorough investigation of several services promoted by the federal government to treat gender dysphoria and found that these services — sex reassignment surgery, sex hormones, and puberty blockers — are inconsistent with generally accepted professional medical standards and are experimental and investigating with the potential for detrimental long-term effects,” he said.

DeSantis released his memoir The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival last month and is currently on a book tour that many see as a pre-presidential bid-announcement tour of the states.

The book and the priorities of Florida’s current legislative sessions are seen primarily as a platform on which DeSantis would campaign once he launched a bid for the GOP nomination in 2024.

The Parental Rights in Education Act, which the governor signed into law last year, has been called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by critics because it prevented educators from including discussions of gender identity or sexual orientation in their curriculum. The law currently includes children in kindergarten through third grade, but Florida’s legislature is now considering expanding it to minors through eighth grade.

“It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘You know, I’ve decided I want to be a man, or I want to be a woman, or I want to change.’ I mean, what are they thinking? They are people. They love. They have feelings,” Biden said during his conversation with Penn.

“It’s cruel,” the president added of Florida’s laws targeting minors.

When Penn asked about the “evolution” of his view of marriage equality, the president said it stretched back to his high school days.

Biden spoke to Kal Penn in an extended interview for The Daily Show. A portion of the clip released Monday shows the two discussing when Biden had the ‘revelation’ in high school that same-sex marriage was OK

Kal Penn with his old partner, Josh. The comic/actor came out as gay and got engaged in November 2021.

“I can remember exactly when my epiphany was,” Biden said before telling a story about his high school senior seeing “two well-dressed men in suits” kiss.

‘I will never forget. I turned and looked at my father. He said, ‘Joey, it’s simple. They love each other,’ he recalled.

“It’s that simple,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a same-sex couple or a heterosexual couple, you should be able to get married. What’s the problem?’

“Transgender kids are really harder,” Biden told Penn. “What’s happening in Florida is, as my mother would say, almost sinful.”

While Biden says he accepted same-sex marriage as a teenager, a 2006 video circulated during the 2020 presidential election shows then-senator Biden speaking out against same-sex marriage.

“Marriage is between a man and a woman, and states should respect that,” Biden said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press when defending the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act at the time.

Biden, a longtime senator from Delaware before becoming vice president and then president, voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004 and in 2006, claiming the measure was not worth Congress’s time.