The public debate on transgenderism can’t be left at “live and let live” because Democrats always take their arguments to extremes. This includes the demand that the criminal justice system bends over backward for transgender murderers and rapists.

Consider two examples.

On Saturday, the American Civil Liberties Union ran to Twitter to decry Florida’s treatment of Duane Owen. “The state of Florida never provided medically necessary gender-affirming care to Duane Owen — causing her enormous suffering and violating her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment for the more than 30 years she was in state custody,” the ACLU said. “In legal papers she drafted, Owen wrote that she 'should be accorded the 'essence of human dignity' and be allowed to become 'who she was meant to be' before her death.”

FIGHT OR FRIGHT: AMERICA'S MILITARY UNREADINESS LAID BARE

In 1984, Duane Owen, who is a man, broke into the home of 14-year-old Karen Slattery, who was babysitting two young children. He stabbed her 18 times and “raped her as she lay dying.” Two months later, Owen broke into the home of 38-year-old Georgianna Worden, struck her in the head with a hammer multiple times, and raped her. And yet the ACLU is offended that he was not “accorded the essence of human dignity” because Florida didn’t let him get a sex change surgery before he was executed.

Not to be outdone, the progressive bastion of California recently sentenced a man to life in a women’s prison. That man is Dana Rivers, who last year was found guilty of killing a lesbian couple and their son. He “used a handgun equipped with a silencer to shoot the victims” as they slept in their home, stabbed one of the women 47 times, and then set the garage on fire. According to prosecutors, this was all due to one of the victims leaving an all-women biker gang.

Seems like a reasonable idea to put a man that violent in a prison full of women, doesn’t it?

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If the ACLU had its way, serial rapist and murderer Duane Owen also would have been serving out a life sentence among women, after being put on hormone replacement theory on the dime of Florida taxpayers. It seems female inmates must be locked in enclosed spaces with violent men convicted of murders, rapes, and child rape if we are to be a truly tolerant society for transgender people. At least, that is the message the ACLU and California are pushing.

The “essence of human dignity” of the victims of Owen and Rivers is an afterthought to the transgender movement. So is the safety of the women who they want to force to live alongside those vicious men. All that matters is that the transgender movement has its delusions “affirmed” at the expense of everyone around them, no matter how violent or depraved the transgender criminals in question are.