OT "I'm Dealing With A Few Transgender Issues"

Transgender youth health care bans have a new target: adults

Lawmakers in at least three states this year have filed legislation meant to restrict access to gender-affirming health care for individuals as old as 26, an escalation of a battle waged nationwide last year over whether minors should be able to access certain prescription medications and procedures.

Bills filed this year in Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia aim to bar state health care providers from recommending or administering treatments like puberty blockers, hormones and gender-affirming surgeries to patients younger than 21, signaling an aggravation in the fight over transgender health care.

Oklahoma bill filed this month would prohibit adults up to 25 from receiving gender-affirming care in one of the most extreme and restrictive bans introduced to date. The state’s proposed “Millstone Act,” which gets its name from a Bible verse about punishing adults who harm children, would also block Oklahoma’s Medicaid program from providing coverage for “gender transition procedures” to individuals younger than 26.

“I don’t think it was ever about children,” Erin Reed, an independent legislative researcher, told The Hill this week, referring to state and federal attempts to ban gender-affirming care over the past two years.

GOP legislators’ arguments against transgender health care have in the past centered around a need to protect children from alleged predatory doctors and “woke” gender ideology. Bills filed across the country last year used inflammatory and misleading rhetoric to disparage gender-affirming care for youth with titles like the “Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act” and the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act.”

“These adult bans show that that’s not what it was about,” Reed said. “It’s about banning care entirely. It’s about forcing transgender people back in the closet.”

State legislators haven’t moved away from youth health care bans entirely, and dozens of bills seeking to ban gender-affirming care exclusively for minors have already been introduced in more than 10 states this year.

Reed added that she’s skeptical whether legislators sponsoring adult health care bans this year expect those measures to pass as written. It’s likely, she said, that lawmakers are targeting older individuals to make youth health care bans appear less extreme and more palatable.

claims from so-called “gender-critical” organizations that young people should not be recognized as adults before they turn 25, when the human brain is believed to reach full maturity.

State GOP lawmakers in Missouri last year weighed extending a proposed youth health care ban to adults under 25, arguing that individuals even into their early 20s are unable to fully consent to gender-affirming interventions.

multiple inquiries have found that affirming a child or adolescent’s gender identity can improve their mental health outcomes into adulthood.

Passing laws to delay health care deemed medically necessary by most major medical associations is also dangerous, according to Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale University, and runs the risk of worsening rates of anxiety, depression and suicidality among transgender youth and young adults struggling with gender dysphoria.

Nearly 20 percent of transgender and nonbinary 13- to 24-year-olds surveyed last year by The Trevor Project, a leading LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization, said they had attempted suicide in the past year. Fewer than a third said their gender identity was affirmed at home.


For McNamara, who treats transgender youth aged 11-25, the primary concern with adult health care bans lies with individuals under 21 — or 26, in Oklahoma’s case — who are already receiving gender-affirming medical care.

“There are people currently on treatment, living as their authentic selves and experiencing relief from gender dysphoria who face forcible detransition,” she said.

None of the proposed measures include language or provisions that explicitly address transgender youth and young adults already receiving medications like hormones or puberty blockers.

Efforts to restrict gender-affirming health care for adults also risk backfiring by limiting the freedoms of individuals who can legally vote, drink a beer and go to war. They also discriminate based on sex and transgender status, according to Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the American Civil Liberties Union LGBTQ & HIV Project, making them unconstitutional.

“It’s not about protecting anyone,” Strangio said of recent legislative efforts to restrict gender-affirming care. “It’s about an opposition to trans identity.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-...th-health-care-bans-have-a-new-target-adults/

 

LGBTQ+ State Senator Proposes Ban on 'Religious Indoctrination' of Kids

A bisexual state senator in Nebraska has proposed that a measure be enacted prohibiting children from enrolling in Bible studies, attending church camps, or participating in other forms of “religious indoctrination.”

Megan Hunt, the first out LGBTQ+ person elected to the Nebraska Legislature, presented this proposal as an amendment to a bill prohibiting minors from attending drag shows.

Under the bill, LB371, introduced by Republican Sen. Dave Murman, anyone under 19 would be prohibited from attending drag shows. The bill defines drag as a performance by someone who uses clothing, makeup, or other physical markers to demonstrate a gender identity that is different from what they were born with, as well as singing, lip-synching, dancing, or performing for entertainment.

Murman claims never to have attended a drag performance but relies on videos he’s seen online to judge them as inappropriate for children, Nebraska Public Media reported.

“I think the vast majority of Nebraskans would agree that sexualized dancing and enhanced genitals is not appropriate for children to view,” he said.

Because of the broad wording in the bill, critics argue it would ban children from attending theatrical performances like Shakespeare’s works and musicals, where men routinely dress to perform women’s roles.

It’s unclear how Murman’s proposed law would affect the restaurant Hooters, which features women in suggestive tank tops who serve the patrons. Nebraska has at least one Hooters in the town of La Vista. All ages are welcome in the establishment.

Hunt chose to highlight the hypocrisy of the proposed law, even if the conservative legislature passes it. Her amendment would prohibit children from attending camps that are religiously based, like Bible camps.

“There is a well-documented history of indoctrination and sexual abuse perpetrated by religious leaders and clergy people upon children,” according to the amendment. “Abusers within churches and other religious institutions often use events like church or youth-group-sponsored camps and retreats to earn children’s trust and gain unsupervised access to such children in order to commit such abuse.”

Children also are prohibited from attending religious camps where alcoholic liquor is served, regardless if such alcoholic liquor is part of a religious ceremony. The amended law would punish violators and groups that host these camps with a fine of $10,000.

“This is an amendment that I will use to make a point about the underlying bill, LB371, which bans all-ages drag shows,” Hunt told The Advocate. “This amendment obviously won’t pass, and I would withdraw it if it had the votes to pass. It’s just a device to make a point.”

Hunt says she has introduced similar amendments to other bills.

“Any manufacturer who distributes chocolate-coated candy for consumption by an individual under nineteen years of age without explicitly identifying the candy’s gender assigned at birth on the 11 packaging of such candy shall be fined ten thousand dollars,” reads an amendment she wrote in January.

“They aren’t meant to pass,” Hunt said. “They are meant to help kill harmful and discriminatory bills like LB371, which, if we are forced to debate in the full legislature, will truly be a waste of time for Nebraskans and for lawmakers.”

https://www.advocate.com/politics/state-senator-protects-kids-bible

 

As Tennessee moves forward to ban drag, enjoy a high school yearbook picture of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee in drag (Franklin High yearbook 1977, page 165)