Despite strong opposition from the Catholic Church and others, Gov. Tim Walz signed into law April 27 a bill designed to make so-called “gender-affirming” health care readily accessible to minors traveling or brought illegally to Minnesota from other states.

The “transgender refuge” law allows Minnesota courts to disregard parental rights and court orders from other states and take “emergency jurisdiction” over minors to ensure their access to gender therapies that have been stopped by other countries such as Sweden and the United Kingdom. Critics allege that the bill, HF146, violates multiple state and federal laws.

Walz also signed into law a related bill designed to ban so-called “conversion therapy” for minors and vulnerable adults that bans counseling which attempts to address unwanted same-sex attraction or gender discordance. The Church has argued that allowing “gender-affirming” health care and banning professional counselors from assisting minors and others struggling with their sexual identity can cause irreversible harm and undermine a person’s ability to live an integrated sexuality ordered toward marriage and family.

Minnesota Catholic Conference Executive Director Jason Adkins said, “We live in an upside-down world where it is allegedly harmful for young people to access licensed mental health professionals to help them live in accord with their biological sex, but it is OK for those same minors to access puberty-blocking hormones and undergo surgical procedures in an attempt to make their bodies align with their psychological state. The latter is the real ‘conversion therapy’ that should be banned.”

He continued: “Protecting human dignity requires that we respect the objective reality that each person is an embodied soul created in the image and likeness of God. We have a given human nature, not one that we create for ourselves and can manipulate at will. The consequences would be disastrous if we allowed our respect for each person to rest on their own subjective views of themselves, or the way in which we or others subjectively viewed them.”

Along with the counseling ban and transgender refuge bill, Walz signed a law providing refuge for those seeking abortions in states in which it is banned, as well as for abortion providers who have lost their license or have been forbidden from performing abortions in other states. The bills were framed by Minnesota Democrats as an attempt to position Minnesota as a welcoming state for abortion and transgender procedures.

In another area opposed by the state’s Catholic bishops, the Democrat-controlled House and Senate passed legislation April 25 and April 28, respectively, to legalize recreational marijuana use for adults. The bills will have to be reconciled before the legislation can reach Walz’s desk. He has pledged to sign legislation to legalize recreational marijuana. Minnesota already allows medicinal use of marijuana.

“Legalizing a recreational marijuana business is a big setback for the state of Minnesota, which will have tremendously harmful consequences and negatively impact our quality of life,” said Adkins. “Legislators refused for nakedly political reasons to pump the brakes on this proposal and learn the lessons from other states. It was irresponsible lawmaking at its worst.”

In a series of stories in late 2021 through mid-2022, The Catholic Spirit explored health concerns around recreational marijuana, business benefits promised in other states that have failed to hold up and Church teaching against legalizing recreational drugs. The package of stories can be found at TheCatholicSpirit.com/marijuana.