Criminalizing Gender-Affirming Health Care — March 1, 2022 Round-up
The situation in TX continues to develop rapidly. Here’s a summary of what happened today, Tuesday, March 1, 2022.
Part 2 of this series was published
TX Officials Criminalizing Parents for Gender-Affirming Medical Care — where do companies stand? A Dell Inc. spokesperson shared that “Our position remains the same: anti-LGBTQIA policies go against Dell Technologies policies.” They’re the only one of 17 companies that “a) signed the Business Statement on Anti-LGBTQ State Legislation, b) signed the Texas Competes 2021 Open Business Letter, and c) sponsored a major organization working to help trans youth in Texas. This remains true if you look at all 41 companies on the stakeholder list with a HRC CEI grade of 100 and a TX headquarters”. They were also the only one in this group to take the time to respond to the request for comment.
On the other end of the spectrum, AT&T’s policy leader is the RNC chair, Ed Gillespie, who supported the North Carolina anti-trans bathroom bill. [originally highlighted in a Popular Information tweet]
TX Primary Election Day
The two elected officials, Paxton and Abbott, behind the opinion that gender-affirming medical care is child abuse are on the ballot today to contend for whether they will represent their party in the November 2022 elections. At publication time the New York Times reports both Gov. Abbott and AG Paxton won their primaries.
TX DFPS investigations of parents have started
Link to tweet | Link to NY Times article
The Courts
The ACLU filed suit today to get “a temporary restraining order to prevent Texas from investigating families for supporting their trans kids and to prohibit requiring professionals who work with youth to report these families.”
The ACLU, the TX ACLU, and Lambda Legal also filed “on behalf of a Texas parent who was placed on leave last week from her job as DFPS — because she has a transgender child.” Most shares of this story only mentioned the ACLU as a filer. [Doe v. Abbott filing PDF][The New Republic article]
Supporting Parents
Creation — A list of attorneys willing to work Pro Bono for TX parents of trans kids that have investigations opened against them for child abuse. ACLU TX, Equality Texas, Lambda Legal, TENT, and NCLR are compiling it. Parents should contact one of those orgs to be connected with a lawyer before they are investigated.
Announcement — The Campaign for Southern Equality launched a $20,0000 Emergency Assistance Rapid Response grant program to help parents with bills if they get reported to #DFPS. It would cover legal services, emergency planning, mental health support, and more. The grant application is open, they are taking additional donations, and merchandise is available. [tweet] [@SouthernEqual tweet]
Idea — Social workers do a home study to include a trans child’s Safe Folder. [tweet]
Visibility
Stop the Hate grassroots protest on the steps of the Texas Capitol in Austin. [tweet] @ReverendRam has 51 seconds of video.
Press coverage — The New York Times, The New Republic, The 19th, TruthOut, The Dallas Morning News,
TXtranskids.org was launched by ACLU Texas, Equality Texas, Lambda Legal, and the Transgender Education Network of Texas(TENT)
At the SOTU President Biden “acknowledged we are in a mental health crisis — one disproportionately affecting LGBTQ+ youth.” [tweet] He also urged passage of the EQUALITY Act. [tweet]
Impact on Kids
Today was the first day that the reaction of trans kids in Texas was specifically called out. The Deputy Director for Transgender Justice, ACLU LGBTQ & AIDS project, @ChaseStrangio, stated it’s “terrifying to trans youth and their supportive families.” They also got personal saying “Gender-affirming care saved my life. And I’m not alone.” Strangio also tweeted today that “You can’t make us not trans you can only make us not alive.”
The New Republic story starts with a story about one child’s reaction when their mom explaining what’s happening to them — we won’t spoil it for you.
