With Order Making Maryland a Gender Transition Sanctuary, Governor Aids Sex Traffickers

Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) issued an executive order Monday that makes the state a sanctuary for gender transition procedures on minors. Under the order, “all state agencies shall, to the fullest extent within their authority, take whatever action is necessary” to “protect people or entities in Maryland providing, receiving, assisting in providing or receiving, seeking, or traveling to obtain gender-affirming treatment.” The order, which follows a string of actions to promote transgender ideology in Maryland, will standardize the policy decisions that already contributed to the sex trafficking of one gender-confused teenager from Maryland.

“This order is focused on ensuring Maryland is a safe place for gender affirming care, especially as other states take misguided and hateful steps to make gender affirming care cause for legal retribution,” said Moore. “Gender affirming care” is the Left’s preferred term for a variety of experimental procedures with serious side effects, including gender reassignment surgeries, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers. It also describes a counseling philosophy that avoids any skepticism or caution when counseling people who are questioning their gender identity and views gender transition as the ultimate goal.

Moore signed the order during “the first Government House Pride reception in the history of the State of Maryland,” according to First Lady Dawn Moore. Moore welcomed “LGBTQ+ leaders from across Maryland” into the Government House, including representatives from the Trans Rights Advocacy Coalition.

The executive order forbids Maryland state agencies from providing information or resources to assist “any investigation or proceeding that seeks to impose civil or criminal liability or professional sanctions” for providing or helping to provide gender transition procedures, or traveling to Maryland “to obtain, provide, receive, or inquire into gender-affirming treatment that is permitted under the laws of this State.”

The order also declares that Maryland will refuse to comply with subpoenas from other states related to gender transition investigations, refuse to surrender anyone charged with crimes related to providing gender transition procedures, and refuse to consider a health care professional’s gender transition-related discipline in another state as a reason to deny or revoke a license to practice medicine in Maryland.

The order is a direct response to the wave of state legislation protecting minors from gender transition procedures. Missouri recently became the 20th state to enact a law protecting minors from the harmful, irreversible effects of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender transition surgeries, most of which “impose civil or criminal liability or professional sanctions” as penalties.

Moore’s executive order imitates one signed on March 8 by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), which also declares the state a gender transition sanctuary that will refuse to cooperate with investigations in other states. The Minnesota legislature then codified the state’s minor gender transition sanctuary status in April.

Colorado, Vermont, and Washington have also enacted minor gender transition sanctuary laws this year. Last year, California became the first minor gender transition sanctuary state, when it passed a law granting state courts “temporary emergency jurisdiction” to take custody of out-of-state minors who seek gender transition procedures in California, to evade either parental consent or the laws of their home states. The Board of Supervisors in Dane County, Wisconsin (location of the state capitol, Madison) is also considering a resolution to declare itself a minor gender transition sanctuary.

While a total of 20 states have enacted laws protecting minors from gender transition procedures, few are close to Maryland. The only adjacent state to pass a law prohibiting gender transition procedures is West Virginia, where the law includes a major exception and no enforcement mechanisms. The next closest states to Maryland with enacted protections for minors are Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Georgia. However, the executive order does make Maryland the closest sanctuary state to much of the southeastern U.S.

Moore has sought to distinguish himself as a leading promoter of LGBT activism in government. On March 31, he officially recognized March 31 as International Transgender Day of Visibility in Maryland. Last month, Moore signed a bill expanding Medicaid coverage of gender transition procedures in the state of Maryland.

In 2021, a high school girl named Sage who identified as transgender was sexually trafficked after a Maryland judge refused to return her to the custody of her adoptive parents in Virginia.

In a Virginia House committee hearing over “Sage’s law,” her adoptive mother (and biological grandmother) explained that Sage secretly identified as a boy at school because, when she began high school, “all the girls there were bi, trans, lesbian, emo.” Her mother summarized, “Sage says she doesn’t know who she was back then. She wasn’t a boy, she just wanted to have friends.” After a physical altercation in the boys’ bathroom, Sage ran away from home and was then sexually trafficked through D.C. and Maryland. The FBI found her nine days later, locked in a room in Baltimore after she had been brutalized by “countless men,” and called her parents to pick her up the next day.

When they arrived, however, a Maryland circuit court judge refused to place Sage in her parents’ custody, instead rebuking them for using female pronouns and threatening to remove her mother for using the word “trauma” to describe her traumatic experience. Instead, Maryland authorities housed Sage in the male quarters of a children’s home for two months, where she was repeatedly assaulted and “given street drugs by the other kids.” From that home, Sage was trafficked again, and her mother was told she might be gone forever. By the time her mother uncovered a tip on social media that led federal marshals to locate her in Texas, Sage “had been drugged, raped, beaten, and exploited.”

According to her mother’s testimony, Sage was sexually trafficked the first time because Virginia school officials hid her insincere transgender identity from her parents. She was sexually trafficked again because a Maryland court decided it was better for her to remain in the custody of the state than to return to a loving home where her parents refused to call her by a fake name and wrong pronouns.

Moore’s executive order will standardize the “gender-affirming” attitude adopted by the court that oversaw Sage’s case — an attitude that violated her parents’ rights, misled her into a transgender identity she later disowned, and placed her in a vulnerable situation that resulted in her being trafficked. Under this order, all Maryland state agencies must adopt this un-skeptical posture that separates children from their parents and places them at risk of exploitation.