Transgender 8th-grader Adam, right, and his mother, Amy Allen, talk about how anti-transgender bills in Tennessee affect their lives. (Source: Human Rights Campaign)
Anti-transgender bills continue to progress through the Tennessee House and Senate, bills some say are part of a national effort by ”opponents of LGBTQ equality across the nation.”
Three bills now moving through the committee processes in Nashville target transgender children, specifically. One would mandate student athletes to play on the team ”determined by the student’s sex at the time of the student’s birth.” Another would stop sexual identity change therapy to minors who have not yet entered puberty, something at least one physician said is not happening at all in the state currently. A last bill would, again, mandate transgender students use the bathroom determined by the sex listed on their birth certificates.
Cathryn Oakley, the state legislative director of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), said during a press call Thursday that bills like this pose economic costs “from the inevitable litigation that” would follow their passage. There’s also a reputation cost for states like Tennessee that “persist — and Tennessee does persist — in innovating anti-transgender legislation.” But Oakley said such bills have a human cost.
“We also see the harm these bills perpetrate even when they’re just introduced,” she said. “Even if they’re not passed into law, the harm that folks go through watching their legislators debate the existence of trans youth is crushing.”
Even if they’re not passed into law, the harm that folks go through watching their legislators debate the existence of trans youth is crushing.
Cathryn Oakley
One Tennessee transgender youth, Adam, spoke during the HRC’s press call and said he’s a “pretty normal kid” that likes video games, music, and art. The Mt. Juliet 8th-grader used to go to a public middle school and was offered the bathrooms in the nurses office, the guidance office, or the faculty bathroom. They were not close to his classes, he said, and using them just made him stand out more “and alienated me further.”
“So, I started not to drink anything during the day and holding it until I got home,” said Adam, who did not give his last name during the news conference. “Everyone goes to the bathroom. So, why should it be more difficult for trans kids who already have enough to worry about?”
Dr. Kristin Rager, a pediatrician in Nashville, said she cares for a number of transgender patients. She opposes the legislation that intervenes in health care and said there is “zero evidence to suggest there are dangers within our current system of care in Tennessee.”
Rager busted some transgender myths on the call. No one is performing sex reassignment surgeries on the genitals of anyone under 18, she said. Transgender kids that have not hit puberty are not being treated with hormones or hormone blockers. However, those treatments are “safe, effective, and fully reversible” in youths that have started puberty.
“These bills that are being introduced are and attempt to criminalize parents — these wonderful parents and their pediatricians — over lawmaker concerns that are, frankly, unfounded,” Rager said.
Bills like the ones in Tennessee have been filed in state houses across the country said, Hannah Willard, the vice president of government affairs for Freedom for All Americans. They amount to the “worst attack on transgender people in recent memory.”
These bills come from a “small but vocal group of organizations” pushing to chip away at LGBTQ equality, Willard said. These groups include the Heritage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom, Eagle Forum, and more, according to the HRC.
“These bills are to spread myths and lies about who transgender people are and it’s unconscionable that transgender youth are in the crosshairs of this legislation,” Willard said.
Watch the full press call here:
