Texas' transgender order isn't a political 'winner.' It’s cruelty writ large.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's order to investigate parents of transgender kids for child abuse is stigmatizing, isolating, harmful. Kind of like child abuse.
If there was any question about what’s driving the nationwide Republican crusade against transgender children, a senior adviser for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s reelection campaign this week made the motivation behind the cruelty perfectly clear.
Speaking to reporters about his state’s outrageous new order encouraging child-abuse investigations into the families of transgender children receiving gender-affirming care, David Carney described the issue in crystal clear political terms.
“That is a 75 to 80% winner,” Carney boasted.
To put Texas’ attack on transgender kids and their families in terms like that shows Carney – and by extension Abbott and anyone else in his administration who endorses this nonsense – is either callous or ignorant or both. (Probably both.)
I’ll put it to them simply: Kids are going to harm themselves and families are going to endure ungodly pain because of your political winner. Yee-haw, you monsters.
'Undue harm to children in Texas'
The president of the American Psychological Association, Frank Worrell, condemned Abbott’s political winner in a statement: “This ill-conceived directive from the Texas governor will put at-risk children at even higher risk of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide. Gender-affirming care promotes the health and well-being of transgender youth and is provided by medical and mental health professionals, based on well-established scientific research.
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The peer-reviewed research suggests that transgender children and youth who are treated with affirmation and receive evidence-based treatments tend to see improvements in their psychological well-being.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Texas Pediatric Society released a joint statement of protest: “Evidence-based medical care for transgender and gender diverse children is a complex issue that pediatricians are uniquely qualified to provide. This directive undermines the physician-patient-family relationship and will cause undue harm to children in Texas.”
On Wednesday night, the White House released a statement from President Joe Biden on the Texas order: “This is government overreach at its worst. Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the Governor’s actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points. These actions are terrifying many families in Texas and beyond. And they must stop.”
State court issues injunction
Texas officials had already begun an investigation into the family of a transgender child. The ACLU swiftly filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction on Abbott’s order. On Wednesday, a state court judge in Austin – Judge Amy Clark Meachum – issued a temporary restraining order halting the investigation into that family, writing in her order that the family would “face the imminent and ongoing deprivation of their constitutional rights, the potential loss of necessary medical care, and the stigma attached to being the subject of an unfounded child abuse investigation.”
Meachum’s order applied only to the one family, so state investigations into other families can continue until further arguments are heard on March 11.
I spoke Thursday with Brian Mustanski, a psychologist and director of the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing at Northwestern University: “The first question that comes to mind when it comes to these kinds of policies is, ‘What’s the problem that’s being addressed here?’ Are there large numbers of people in Texas being harmed by the international standards of care being used? There’s a burden of proof on the people proposing such radical measures to really demonstrate some kind of harm. Because there are decades of research showing the harmful effects laws and policies like this have on LGBTQ people.”
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He pointed out the extensive steps involved in treating children questioning their gender identity: “There are multidisciplinary teams of mental health professionals, pediatricians and endocrinologists who work with families to figure out what some of the best options are for young people. It can include working with young people to understand their gender, possibly beginning with a social transition, trying a different name or different pronouns. It’s a careful process that begins with some exploration and some understanding. And everything is done under medical supervision after very careful consideration.”
Or, as Abbott and others in Texas call it: child abuse.
These policies only do harm
There is no justification for policies like this or any of the other anti-transgender bills being pushed in states across the country, targeting everything from who gets to use which bathroom to who gets to play school sports.
Last March, The Associated Press reported on the slew of “keep trans kids out of sports” bills: “Legislators in more than 20 states have introduced bills this year that would ban transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams in public high schools. Yet in almost every case, sponsors cannot cite a single instance in their own state or region where such participation has caused problems.”
Curious how that works, isn’t it? It almost seems like, once same-sex marriage became legal and the nation wasn’t overrun by locusts, far-right red-meat hurlers needed a new boogeyman to keep their base fearful and frothy.
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So the cruelty and dehumanization hose was turned on transgender adults and children, with zero thought to what it means for an entire group of human beings to have their very existence treated as a problem.
Mustanski described these legislative actions, along with the “don’t say gay” bill being considered in Florida, like this: “I think it’s a statement to LGBTQ young people that we want to silence you, we want to make you invisible. It doesn’t change the fact that they’re gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender. It’s not going to change. All it’s going to do is stigmatize them, make them feel less-than, make them feel invisible.”
That’s abhorrent. It’s cruel. It serves no purpose other than to prop up politicians too lazy to promote policies that actually help people.
Stigmatizing. Isolating. Harming. That’s what Abbott and Co. are doing to kids. And that, to me, sounds a lot like child abuse.
Follow Paste BN columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook: facebook.com/RexIsAJerk/