Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law that bars boys pretending to be girls from using bathrooms and changing rooms in public schools and universities in Ohio, and instead forces them to use the facilities that correspond with their birth sex.

That’s good. That’s a step. Other states have done similarly. But this is the beginning, not the ending, of a fight that will take front and center in the new year, after the new president enters office, after Donald Trump returns — and helps return America to sanity.

The left is not leaving this transgender matter to the legislative and executive branches to decide. And the left is certainly not letting the will of the people decide, either. The LGBTQ community and its loudest, most mentally ill voices, are carrying the transgender issue all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They’re that dug in on the “right” of minor-age children to whack off body parts and ingest hormone-altering drugs with lifelong consequences that they are willing to wage the battle in the nation’s highest court. Think about that. That’s some kind of evil.

On Dec. 4, the Supreme Court justices will hear arguments in United States v. Skermetti, to determine the constitutional aspects of a Tennessee law that prohibits minors from receiving what’s been dubbed as “gender-affirming care” — which is to say hormone treatment, surgery, genital mutilation and the like — which is all to say: the destruction of one’s body.

Currently, 26 states have laws that ban minors from making these decisions, according to ABA Journal. The key word here is “law.” 

Legislators backed by the will of the people and with the cooperation or even coordination of the executive branch put pen to paper to flush out the details of the bans; held hearings on the proposed legislation; listened to various interested parties on the proposed legislation; went through the process of voting on the proposed legislation; in some cases, amended the proposed legislation and started at step one with the new version; then brought the legislation to the desk of the governor, who ultimately signed it into law.

Contrast that with the LGBTQ crowd — with the lunatic fringe screaming in the streets from pink-and-blue-haired types who protest any move this country makes toward sanity and morality; with the medical bureaucrats who abuse their positions and make a mockery of their own intellectual achievements by advocating on behalf of parents who want to medically malpractice their children — who want to destroy what God created — and who claim with unsmiling faces that sex is not affixed at birth but is rather a choice and moreover, that the choice includes upwards of 20 pronouns. Contrast that with the teeny, tiny, teeny and tiny percentage of those in this nation who are part of the transgender movement, but who have nevertheless been elevated to positions of Speaking For The Majority.

On one side is law and sanity and the protection of the most vulnerable.

On the other is chaos and confusion and mental illness leading to the destruction of the most vulnerable.

Sex is something that is assigned at conception by God, and as the Tennessee law makes clear, is the “immutable characteristics of the reproductive system that define the individual as male or female, as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.”

You can’t just operate away sex. 

Those who think they can — or those who want to try — are psychologically distressed. And youth should never be subjected to the guidance and dictates and influences and promptings of the psychologically deranged. That used to be called abuse. The LGBTQ crowd calls it freedom.

“Violations of the Tennessee law are punishable by civil penalties of $25,000 for each prohibited prescription or treatment, by professional discipline and by potential civil liability in private suits,” ABA Journal wrote, of the Skermetti case.

That’s severe.

But maybe not severe enough. 

Medical professionals who perform these surges on youth should have their licenses stripped. Parents who let their minor age children go through these medical procedures should face social service intervention, and possible loss of custody of their children. Judges who side with the LGBTQ agenda and allow these travesties of medicine to go forth against minors should face massive fines and disciplinary actions. 

And the “16 states and the District of Columbia [that] have shield laws that protect access to gender-affirming care for transgender youths” — laws that “protect patients, guardians and medical professionals from prosecutions for seeking or providing care” for minors, as ABA Journal wrote — well, these jurisdictions should be slapped by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ohio’s latest legislative attempt to restore girls’ rights and keep out boys from the bathrooms is a good thing. So, too, the dozens of other states that have passed legislative protections for females and against LGBTQ insanity.

But Skermetti is a crucial case and if justices don’t make the right decision, the fate of our nation’s youth — the future of our nation’s moral compass — will be forever darkened.

Trump, the legislative and executive branches, Republicans, and all those who see the transgender movement and the LGBTQ campaign as destructive forces that need to be stopped can only do so much. The high court will have a powerful say.

The choice is clear: Protect the children. Or side with evil. A unanimous ruling for the first would be the ideal.

Cheryl Chumley is an author, online opinion editor, commentary writer, and host of the “Bold and Blunt” podcast for The Washington Times, and a frequent media guest and public speaker.