Last week, I argued that U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle’s legal case against Florida’s ban on puberty blockers for minors was overstated.

At one point, while comparing opposition to transition treatments with global anti-gay human-rights abuses, Hinkle wrote, “One doubts [transition] treatments are available in Iran or other similarly repressive regimes.”

As Joe Gabriel Simonson asked, “Couldn’t Google it, your honor?”

In 2019, the Economist reported on the real reason that Iran is a hub for sex-reassignment surgery:

The regime’s encouragement of sex-change surgery is related to its intolerance of homosexuality, which is a capital offence. Gay Iranians face pressure to change their sex regardless of whether they want to, say activists and psychologists in Iran. Therapists tell patients with same-sex desires that they may be transgender, not gay. “I thought I was trans until I was 18, because the only information online and in newspapers was about transsexuals,” says a psychologist in Tehran who is a lesbian. “It is a system where homosexuals are not educated and the law does not protect them.”

Before going under the knife, patients must receive counselling to ensure that they have gender dysphoria and are prepared for the procedure. But often this process is rushed and standards are not properly observed. Shahryar Cohanzad, a urologist who performs the operation, received 75 referrals in 2017, but only operated on 12 people, having concluded that 63 were gay or confused due to a lack of information. Questions have also been raised about the quality of the procedure in Iran: the United Nations has detailed grisly stories of botched operations.