The GOP-controlled Texas Legislature on Wednesday approved a bill banning transgender minors from accessing hormone therapies and puberty blockers even though leading medical groups say such treatments are vital to their mental health.
Over the protests of LGBTQ+ advocates and families with trans kids, the Senate has voted 19-12 to accept a House version of the legislation and send it to Gov. Greg Abbott. Abbott, a Republican who’s made transphobia a part of his political brand, is all but certain to sign it into law.
If the proposal, authored by Texas Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, does become law, Texas would be the largest state to pass such legislation. The ban would affect some 30,000 teens between 13 and 17 in the state who identify as transgender.
Campbell and other supporters of the bill have couched it as an effort to protect children. The New Braunfels lawmaker has repeatedly claimed that doctors are misleading parents who are caught up in a “social contagion.”
Medical groups dispute that claim, pointing out that families must go through multiple counseling sessions and assessments before moving ahead with such therapies.
“Our children need counseling and love, not blades and drugs,” Campbell also said in her promotion of the bill — even though surgery is almost never used as part of minors’ gender-affirming care.
Faced with backlash over earlier attempts to enact anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, Texas’ conservative lawmakers have increasingly tried to justify proposals such as this one by saying they want to protect kids, according to Amy Stone, a Trinity University sociology professor who’s extensively studied anti-trans rhetoric.
“This is what happens when you become invisible as a community,” Stone said. “By design, this legislation is targeting kids who don’t vote, and it targets a part of the LGBTQ community that a lot of people don’t know much about.”
Stone worries the ban will increase anti-trans sentiment in the state and expose young members of the community to more harassment and violence.
The professor also said it’s likely to increase the exodus of families with trans children out of Texas. Indeed, some such families have already moved out after Abbott ordered state child welfare officials to investigate parents of trans kids.
“I already know several families in my own life who have already left the state,” Stone added.
The Texas bill is likely to face almost immediate legal challenge. Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal announced Thursday that they will sue of Abbott signs it it into effect.
Those groups have brought similar legal action in other states, arguing in part that the laws are discriminatory because the blocks transgender minors’ access to medical treatments that are regularly prescribed to other children.
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This article appears in May 17-30, 2023.
