New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration announced last week that it will open a municipal clinic that is the first of its kind: It will provide free “gender-affirming” care to people who identify as “transgender.”
You may have thought that such a ridiculous usage of city resources would have been music to the ears of the city’s LGBTQ activists. But of course not.
According to transgenderism-focused Substack Erin in the Morning, Mamdani’s opening of the clinic “is as likely to be seen as a betrayal as it is a meaningful advancement of his promises.”
That’s because the clinic will only serve adults who are age 19 and older. That simply isn’t enough for LGBTQ activists, who want to ensure young children can receive medical treatments intended to make them (loosely) resemble the opposite sex.
New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin received backlash for this restriction at a city council budget meeting last week.
Councilmember Tiffany Cabán decried the “devastating decrease in services for youth, and especially youth under 13, 12” and asked Martin if the Mamdani administration is considering expanding its gender services to include “youth care.” Cabán added that she hears “all the time” from parents who don’t know where to take their children to transition them.
Martin answered that the Mamdani administration “want[s] to make sure that we provide the services and resources for youth,” but that it also wants to ensure that it doesn’t “expose [itself] to clawbacks from the federal government.”
This was far from a sufficient excuse for Erin in the Morning and its readers. Mamdani’s campaign promises to ensure children could transition are going “unfulfilled,” the Substack argued.
Mamdani has not taken “enforcement action” against New York City hospitals that have put their youth transgender programs on pause, Erin in the Morning complained. This is despite the fact that, during his campaign, Mamdani participated in protests of NYU Langone for its decision to cut its “transgender” care program for children and “explicitly pledged to hold the hospitals that deny transgender youth care accountable for their capitulation to Trump.”
Erin in the Morning was especially upset that Mandani’s denial of “care” to anyone under 19 used “the exact age cutoff from Trump’s anti-trans executive orders.”
The Substack explained that while the announcement of the transgender clinic may make it look like the Mamdani administration is “finally delivering,” in fact “It isn’t.”
LGBTQ activists are also upset over the fact that, though Mamdani pledged $65 million for “gender-affirming care,” the money has seemingly not appeared.
Aviva Stahl reported in Prism earlier this year that the promised $65 million “has not been explicitly allocated.” This has left activists “wondering,” even as they celebrate Mamdani’s creation of the “Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs,” Stahl said.
U.K.-based LGBTQ news site Pink News is also displeased by Mamdani’s exclusion of children from his transgender city clinics. Its top headline Thursday complained “Zohran Mamdani’s new transgender care clinic will not provide care to trans people under the age of 19.”
LGBTQ Nation similarly headlined its coverage “Zohran Mamdani is opening a gender-affirming clinic. But it’s already banning trans youth.”
One commentator on Erin in the Morning concluded: “Democrats talk big, but in reality, they are weak. We can’t depend on weak leaders to protect us. Trans genocide is real.”
Another person said, “This is a complete betrayal of every trans person who voted for him.”
