It is generally better to err on the side of more liberty rather than less, and to maintain a healthy skepticism of government power and its potential for abuse. However, we should be just as concerned about abuses that can be committed where there is too much liberty, and even more wary of a government that refuses to enforce the good and punish the bad where it is able.

This balance is relevant to the debate over gender ideology and whether the state should take action to limit its harms. In a Sunday column, David French argued that government should not use its authority to restrict access to the “surgical and pharmaceutical interventions” for gender-confused children, specifically taking issue with a Texas order that instructs the state Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate such interventions as abuse. This order, French writes, interferes with parental authority and could some day be used against the very conservatives who now support it. From the article :

French has long been an outspoken advocate for what he calls the neutral public square — the idea that the state ought to govern in such a way as to make sure all ideas are welcome and that none dominate over the others. The problem is that government neutrality is as absurd as it is unrealistic. There is no such thing as a valueless government. Every single government imposes some sort of value on its citizens, whether by enforcing a criminal code, regulating business practices, or making certain requirements for those in need of state assistance. The very point of the law is to direct citizens toward a basic morality so that our rights are better protected (not just from the state, but from each other) and our lives more fulfilled.

It is also foolish to think, as French seems to, that the government is incapable of making moral distinctions. He points out that giving the state additional authority over familial relationships is a slippery slope, arguing that this authority could easily be used against, say, homeschooling families if the other side of the political aisle comes into power and decides to use it to their own advantage. This is true. But the fact is there are no laws on the books in any state banning homeschooling, while there are many laws criminalizing various forms of child abuse, because government officials and voters are very capable of making distinctions between things that are morally reprehensible and things that are nonpreferable.

And in this case, there is no question at all that surgically and chemically mutilating children who are too young to understand the long-term ramifications of their decisions is morally reprehensible. This reality must take priority over any concern of a slippery slope, no matter how legitimate it might be. Even if Texas’s order is someday used against the Right, that does not change the fact that the government has a responsibility to uphold what is good and punish what is evil — right here and right now. We cannot sit around and twiddle our thumbs out of fear that what we do might come back to bite us when we have both the power and the responsibility to govern well. To do so would be to abandon the entire point of government.

The only question that matters at this point is whether Texas’s order advances what is really good. I would hope that French, who has said he opposes the mutilation being done to children in the name of gender ideology, would agree that protecting vulnerable minors from such harm is, in fact, good. And if so, I hope he finds the courage to do something about it.

Kaylee McGhee White is the editor of Restoring America for the Washington Examiner and a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.