Cheap Scoring Political Points

The Government of Ontario recently announced it would implement a new program to cover sex reassignment surgery. Such surgeries were covered at one time, but cancelled by the previous provincial Conservative government.

Ontario was kind of odd-province-out in that regard, since Alberta and other provinces have routinely paid for such operations. Now the Ontario Health Insurance Plan will pick up the tab. Not a very hefty one actually, coming out to approximately $300,000 out of a total $40.2-billion OHIP budget.

But for transsexuals, those individuals whose body doesn't come close to matching their psychological make-up, and who live with the anguish of the mind not fitting the body, this is a life-saving opportunity. It's called gender dysphoria, and is considered by the medical community to be a legitimate psychological malady.

The provincial Liberals' announcement of the change has been heralded by the medical community and those who empathize with the plight for sex-re-assignment as an overdue social commitment.

But the howls of outrage from large segments of the public, aided and abetted by the news media who have grasped the issue as yet another polarizing political-social news event, good for sales, have somewhat damped the enthusiasm of those who most need this medical intervention.

And thanks to Pierre Poilievre, Member of Parliament for Nepean-Carleton, this disaffected group has a voice in the federal parliament, threatening to cut off health fund transfers for provincial funding of health services.

Talk about kicking a weakly dysfunctional being in the head when what the issue really needs is a warm hug of reassurance from the population at large, those great majority of us who have never suffered the misery of confusion about what gender our minds and bodies represent.

And here's an interesting thought: we've been quick to embrace the singularity of gays and lesbians and the transgendered, and to accept they're due the same respect and human rights as heterosexuals. Yet we seem to think it's quite all right to jump all over those who suffer until they've undergone sex re-assignment surgery.

It doesn't cost the public purse all that much, folks. In fact, without that life-saving SRS, the mental state of the individual involved will only fester and plummet, and the cost of their psychiatric care will far overshadow the cost of surgery. That make a whole lot of sense?

If that argument doesn't work, how about this one: repressive, totalitarian, thuggish, theocratic, gay-punishing Iran sees fit to fund sex re-assignment surgery for its population of transsexuals. Sex change operations have been legal in Iran for "diagnosed transsexuals for 25 years.

No less a personage than the gloweringly autocratic, fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini, he of the Iranian Revolution, passed a religious edict authorizing such surgery.

And, as a result, in a country where homosexuality can be cured by death, there are more sex change operations carried out than in any other nation on earth, with the exception of...Thailand. Moreover, government coffers provide up to half the cost for those needful of financial help.

"Islam has a cure for people suffering from this problem. If they want to change their gender, the path is open", according to the religious cleric responsible for gender assignment in Iran.

And we, in our liberal democracy, our enlightened social system, our Western Judeo-Christian sensibilities are shrilly cavilling at opening up OHIP to assist in the needs of transsexuals?

Whoa, give us a break...!