Flat Iron, GA — At a recent campaign stop on his newly minted 2016 effort to become President of the United States of America, Senator Dr. Rand Paul declared that President Barack Obama was “taking a stand against the freedom of adults to raise their children as they see fit” and that “government overreach is so commonplace and normal, God-fearing folk can’t just take their LGBT kids to any questionably-licensed religious fundamentalist parading as a real psychiatrist without worrying about the Federal government coming down on top of them.” The Kentucky Republican who just this week officially announced his candidacy was answering questions after a stump speech in which he used the words “free markets” and “taxes are theft” a record 385 times in just one ten minute speech.
It was at the press conference after his stump speech that Dr. Paul got specific about President Obama calling for an end to “conversion therapy” — the practice of trying to reprogram gay, lesbian and transgender youth away from their natural orientations — as being ultimately harmful to the children in question. Recent studies would seem to bolster the president’s assertion that efforts to forcefully re-write an LGBT youth’s brain chemistry to behave in a way that is unnatural to them are misguided at best, but Dr. Paul says there is a question of liberty at stake.
“Plan and simple, parents should be free to do with their kids as they see fit in my estimation,” Sen. Paul told reporters. “You want to join a cult that doesn’t let you see modern doctors, that’s fine by me. You want to stop getting your kids life-saving vaccinations because of some Facebook meme you read from some dumb-ass Food Chick or something, I’m cool with that too,” Paul continued, “but clearly Obama wants to put the government between you, your kids, and your bullshit pseudoscience, and I’m sorry but that’s not what America is about!”
Reporters asked the ophthalmologist turned senator why he supports therapy practices that have been widely condemned in the psychiatric communities. “Because in America freedom means being able to literally do whatever you want, whenever you want. Even if that means making a boneheaded decision that hurts your children,” replied Rand.
A female reporter asked Paul if he thought parents should have the right to force their children to become someone their children don’t identify with, and if a generation of psychologically damaged LGBT youth was something that we should be concerned about. “Shh! Lady, settle down, let me answer the question first,” Paul said to the reporter who was just asking a simple question, “The only thing we should be concerned about is some fat cat in D.C. not telling you what you can or can’t do to in an attempt to fix something that isn’t broken in your child that just wants to be loved for who they are,” the curly-haired Republican replied.
Another reporter from The Portland Sun Dispatch asked Rand if he’d support legislation that allowed children to undergo Christian conversion therapy, where they were turned off to the idea of talking snakes, virgin births, literally rending the Red Sea in two, and walking on water against their wishes as long as one or more parents wanted it. “Well, no of course not. But that’s different. There’s no specific Constitutional protection for being gay, but there is for being religious.” When the reporter, another female, asked if freedom of expression didn’t cover sexual orientation, Paul shot back, “Girl, calm down. Settle your female brain and get real. Stop editorializing, and by editorializing I mean asking me questions that make me uncomfortable because I don’t know how to answer them and not look like a peevish shit heel.”
Rand then got on his campaign bus and headed to the next town on his campaign tour.
