North Texas Daily

The past few months have been a discriminatory, and possibly even traumatic, few months for transgender youth in Texas. Recently, State Rep. Steve Toth and State Sen. Bob Hall filed H.B. 2693 and S.B. 1311, “which would make it illegal for any physician in Texas to provide gender-affirming care to transgender people under the age of 18, including prescribing puberty blockers and hormones or performing gender-affirming surgery.” The bill would “redefine child abuse to include administering, supplying or consenting to provide puberty suppression drugs, hormone replacement therapy, or surgical or medical procedures to anyone under 18 for the purpose of gender transitioning or gender reassignment.”

The bill would classify any of these acts as a felony, so with this precedent set by the bill, it could send parents, along with any medical professional who gives transgender children this care and medical help, to prison for providing this gender-affirming care to children who are transgender. Essentially, any parent who has a transgender child will be sent to prison for wanting to help their child feel their most natural self so they could have a possibility of living a life they are comfortable within their progressing years.

Republicans and members of QAnon, an alt-right conspiracy group, have been aimlessly screaming and sharing across numerous social media platforms the hashtag, #SaveOurChildren, which was coined and further spread by QAnon members as a way to spread some kind of “awareness” of child sex trafficking led by a group of Hollywood and political elites. Apparently, however, this does not include transgender children as these individuals seem to think that these children do not exist or should not be “saved,” likely because they are transgender and that is just too much. While they believe this baseless, utterly insane conspiracy exists is indeed factual and exists in our world, the idea that transgender children exist and deserve care might just be crossing the line too far, though.

In addition to this healthcare bill being passed, S.B. 29 has now been advanced to the Texas House that would see transgender students be prohibited from participating in a sport “that is designated for the biological sex opposite to the student’s biological sex as determined at the student’s birth,” and “students would be required to prove their ‘biological sex’ by showing their original, unamended birth certificates. State Sen. Charles Perry argued that this bill would be necessary to keep girls safe from injury and to retain fairness in interscholastic athletics, according to The Texas Tribune. 

It is becoming increasingly evident among Republicans that they favor sports and school athletics more than transgender children and teens. While this bill might not inherently be dangerous, it is nothing less than outright discrimination that is being boosted up by some bizarre need to sanctify school-aged athletics. Simply put, the lives and well-being of transgender youth are just more important.

These simple act of proposing these bills is next level discriminatory and only exist to undermine the lives of transgender children because these Republicans and Senate members refuse to believe that any other person might go against their own proposed way of thinking and belief system. It is frankly sick and will prove detrimental to the mental and physical well-being of these transgender children who deserve just as much love and care as any other person.

Taking the option of gender-affirming healthcare away from these children should never have been proposed — and let alone passed — in the first place. Furthermore, threatening prison time to any medical professional or parent of a transgender child who wants to allow their child to live the life they believe to be the most comfortable for them is unfathomably discriminatory and potentially dangerous for these children. These Senate members should be ashamed.

Featured Illustration by Miranda Thomas