Ed Emery: All I know about transgenders I learned by observation

Sen. Ed Emery, R-Lamar, clarifying remarks he made in Columbia recently about homosexuality and transgender individuals, told the Columbia Daily Tribune that transgenderism should be categorized as a mental illness and he revealed the source of his knowledge about the subject:

Emery said that over the past few decades, there has been a shift in the United States that has abandoned the notion that people who experience “gender confusion,” officially called gender dysphoria, need counseling. It’s contrary to what Emery, R-Lamar, called “absolute truths” for a male to identify as a female, or vice versa. Those truths, he said, are things backed up by science, biology and observation.

“If we ignore absolutes in favor of imagination, that is not a good direction,” Emery said in a phone interview. He said he came to the conclusion about “gender confusion” based on his own observations.

Emery said he used the word “imagination” because it is “the only one I can come up with to express thinking that is not confirmed in what we normally think of as reality.”