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Dr. Hotze’s Political Malpractice

Despite being a medical doctor, conservative activist and radio host, Steven Hotze has a long history of being very bad at medicine. This is particularly apparent in his long-running war on LGBT people.

In a hearing last week, Hotze testified to the Senate State Affairs committee about a bill that would ban minors from drag performances and one that would prohibit minors from receiving gender-affirming care. He went on a tirade calling doctors who treat trans children “pedophiles” and was admonished by the Republican chair of the committee.

“Senators, you have a responsibility before God to protect children from perverts and pedophiles whose performances appeal to an obscene and an indecent interest in sex,” Hotze said.

“Dr. Hotze, we don’t use that kind of language. You’re excused,” said Chair Bryan Hughes.

Hotze was subsequently kicked out of the chamber.

The radio host’s viewpoints are in direct opposition to all medical science that is supposed to drive his understanding of his own industry. Gender-affirming care for transgender minors is recognized by every major American medical association as the treatment with the best outcomes for the patients. Literally no national governing body of medicine in the country supports the idea that Hotze pushed at the hearing that doctors who treat trans patients are preying on their patients.

Nor is being trans or non-binary recognized as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association, or any other similar body of expertise. Gender dysphoria, the anxiety and depression that results from profound dissatisfaction with a person’s current gender, is classified as a mental illness, but that is a result of being forced to live as an unpreferred gender, not the cause.

“Diverse gender expressions, much like diverse gender identities, are not indications of a mental disorder,” reads an entry on the APA website.

Then again, Hotze has always been very bad at medicine. Since his graduation from UTMB in 1976, the 71-year-old Hotze has been on the wrong side of a startling number of medical issues. He has claimed that taking birth control makes women less attractive and that men who lose their testicles lose their sense of direction and other cognitive abilities

During the COVID outbreak, Hotze was accused of selling quack cures for everything from postpartum depression to hyperthyroidism, specifically colloidal silver. In 2005, Craig Malisow of the Houston Press did a blockbuster article on Hotze’s fake cancer cures, bioidentical hormones. There is no evidence that the treatment does anything to prevent uterine cancers as Hotze then claimed. Nonetheless, he still practices medicine in Katy.

Hotze’s dedication to bad science is matched only by his dedication to other conspiracy theories, particularly that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. He remains under indictment himself on felony counts of unlawful restraint and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon when an ex-police officer he hired to investigate election fraud held an air conditioning repairman at gunpoint claiming that the man was smuggling ballots. 

Despite the unfounded claims of Hotze’s tirade at the capital and Republican pushback on his wording, the bill to deny trans children care appears to have more steam behind it this year than it did in 2021. Admonished or not, Hotze’s opposition to evidence-based practice is spreading.

Jef Rouner
Jef Rouner
Jef Rouner is an award-winning freelance journalist, the author of The Rook Circle, and a member of The Black Math Experiment. He lives in Houston where he spends most of his time investigating corruption and strange happenings. Jef has written for Houston Press, Free Press Houston, and Houston Chronicle.

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