The U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania got a rocky start on all fronts — Democrat primary winner and current PA Lt. Governor John Fetterman was hospitalized following a stroke and started the final stretch of his midterm race in the hospital and at home recovering. On the GOP side, a recount ushered in uncertainty that eventually saw Mehmet Oz prevail following a messy primary that left him a bit wounded, politically.
But now, as both campaigns hit their stride with around 90 days until November's general election, Fetterman is shifting further to the left and is diving headlong into an embrace of the left's woke gender politics.
Earlier in August, Fetterman launched a "Real Doctors Against Doctor Oz" campaign offensive, despite the reality that Mehmet Oz is, in fact, a real doctor. The Fetterman campaign's launch of the group included a physician, Val Arkoosh, who also serves as the chair of the Montgomery County Commissioners and failed in her attempt to win the nomination for U.S. Senate against Fetterman. Arkoosh, during her primary campaign, made "trans rights" a cornerstone of her short-lived movement, which calls into question her status as a "real doctor" if being a doctor still means pledging to "do no harm."
In a campaign email from September 2021, Arkoosh lamented Republican parental rights laws, smearing the laws that restrict youth transgender surgeries as "anti-trans." The same email complained that Pennsylvania state legislators have been moving forward with bills that would prevent biological males from competing in women's sports. Arkoosh, one of the "real doctors" Fetterman is using to attack Dr. Oz, calls restricting so-called "gender-affirming" surgery for children and protecting women's sports a "gross violation" of "human rights." She also said Pennsylvanians should be "sounding the alarm bell during this concerning moment in our history."
Now, since losing the primary campaign to Fetterman and joining his group of "real doctors against Dr. Oz" Arkoosh continues to use medicine as a partisan political weapon. At the group's launch on August 10, Arkoosh attacked Oz, accusing him of "making his fortune as a TV scam artist providing reckless medical advice” and hawking “miracle” drugs that are not embraced in the medical community." Sort of how transgender surgery is pushed as a fix-all for kids struggling through the process of growing up. As Townhall has covered repeatedly (see here and here) those who undergo a surgical gender transition can end up regretting the permanent consequences of what they later find were temporary issues.
On Twitter, Arkoosh has pushed the idea that there is discrimination in the medical community against healthcare for transgender individuals, which is a vastly different thing than making transgender surgeries and hormone treatment more readily available to children, their parents be damned.
This doctor believes in gender-affirming health care. ?????? Restoring the rights of trans Americans to access health care free from discrimination is one step in the right direction toward creating a more inclusive society. Eliminating employment discrimination must be next.
— Val Arkoosh (@ValArkooshPA) May 10, 2021
What's more, the "employment discrimination" Arkoosh laments on Twitter is already illegal under the laws enforced by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "It is illegal to discriminate against someone (applicant or employee) because of that person's race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information," the EEOC website explains — an inconvenient reality for Arkoosh and her axe-grinding woke gender politics.
But it's no surprise that Fetterman and his campaign are making use of former opponent Arkoosh — her embrace of the left's gender politics line up with his own expressed beliefs on the subject.
During the Pennsylvania Democrats' U.S. Senate primary debate in April, Fetterman was asked whether he supported biological males competing in women's sports at the youth and college level. "Yes," was his simple response. He continued by accusing those who try to protect women's athletics as being on the wrong side of history, saying "we will look back on that as a shameful chapter if we don't immediately stop."
His same opposition to protecting women's sports and female athletes was expressed in Fetterman's response to a bill in West Virginia that barred biological males from competing in women's athletics from middle school through college.
If being cruel to trans children is part of your ideological wheelhouse, I am ?? not your candidate. ?????? https://t.co/KQlG6MvFpp
— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) May 1, 2021
With less than 99 days until November's general election, though, Fetterman's embrace of woke gender ideology is already proving out of step with Keystone State voters, especially mothers.
After the Pennsylvania Department of Education updated a page on its website titled "Gender/Gender Identity," PA moms were less than pleased to see their taxpayer dollars going toward indoctrination rather than education. The site explains "gender-neutral pronouns, such as ne, ve, ze/zie and xe" and urges teachers who "don't know a student's preferred personal pronoun" "to ask."
Going even further, the Pennsylvania education site flatly describes "binary gender" as a "faulty concept that there are only two genders: male and female."
Reporting explains that "Pennsylvania parents are speaking out against the state Department of Education's new gender identity page, which suggests teachers should not make assumptions about students' pronouns." One mother, Megan Eileen, joined Fox News this month to respond to the development. "As a Pennsylvania parent, I’d like to know what qualifies them to call the concept of biological gender 'faulty'?"
Another Pennsylvania mom, Veronica Gemma, said that "this kind of agenda has no place in the American classroom" and declared "parents at the ballot box will speak loudly."