The midterm elections showed that most Americans aren’t fans of the Republican anti-trans crusade. But that’s not stopping GOP politicians across the country from pushing legislation that will strip trans people of basic rights and vital health care.
Already this year, GOP politicians in 30 states have put forward 155 different bills banning gender-affirming care for trans youth, criminalizing drag shows, and forcing trans athletes in high schools to compete on teams that don’t match their gender identity.
And they’re not slowing down. Here are some of the recent bills introduced by GOP legislators in states across the country.
TEXAS
In Texas, where Republicans won themselves a few more seats in the state legislature in the midterms, several bills have been introduced in recent days that would make it child abuse to give trans kids gender-affirming care. This is on top of governor Greg Abbot ordering state welfare officials to investigate parents of trans kids and report them to the state.
Another bill would make it a criminal offense to allow minors to see a drag show. The bill defines any organization that hosts a drag show of any kind as a “sexually oriented business” legally equivalent to a strip club. The bill characterizes drag broadly as any show in which a performer “exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth” while performing in front of an audience. This would presumably include not only Drag Queen Story Hours but also any show featuring a trans actor in any capacity.
OHIO
In Ohio, Republicans have recently revised a bill that would have dramatically curtailed healthcare for LGBTQ+ people. While the revised bill is intended to look like a “compromise” of sorts, trans activists say it is no such thing. Activist Cam Ogden told News 5 Cleveland that the bill is “a shameful attempt at appearing to compromise while actually still functionally banning gender-affirming care for new patients.” The bill would also set up what would essentially be a registry for trans youth in the state by forcing doctors to release private medical information about their trans patients.
TENNESSEE
Last week the Republicans introduced a bill that would make it a criminal offense for venues to host any “adult cabaret performers” that could be viewed by minors. The bill applies to a variety of performers ranging from strippers to “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest,” whatever that means. Offenders could be jailed for up to a year.
State Republicans have also introduced the so-called “Protecting Children from Gender Mutilation Act” that would not only prohibit gender surgery for minors but also puberty blockers.
VIRGINIA
On Tuesday, a Republican legislator introduced a bill to bar trans girls from competing against other girls in school sports competitions. The bill would require all school sports participants to provide
identification of the student’s biological sex on an athletics eligibility form signed by a licensed physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant to be submitted by any such student who desires to try out for or participate in an interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural or club athletic team or sport. The bill prohibits any such team or sport that is expressly designated for females, women or girls from being open to students whose biological sex is male.
ILLINOIS
These are just the latest legislative attempt to curtail trans rights. And we can expect many more to come.
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Kimstu
Thanks for reminding me. I’d more or less forgotten that I sang Hansel 50 years ago. More importantly, in the same year I sang Judith in Bluebeards Castle – wearing a white bridal gown costume – which needed very little adjustment for size and no adornment or embellishment. It had been designed and decorated for a man to wear in some quite explicit gay performance of some kind.
(It’s a bit sad really. I always knew we were pretty lucky to live in South Australia, and not just because of the social justice improvements of the 70s. Here we are 50 years down the track and it feels like we’ve been running on the spot for most of that time.)
Just a few minutes ago I cam across a Quora answer where a conservative claimed that “liberals are constantly misrepresenting conservatives as being anti-LGBT, the truth is that we don’t care who you are or what you do.”
Sure thing, buddy. I believe you.
@hammerofglass:
It may be generally unpopular, but they’re sticking to their devoutly-held core principles: staying in power by appealing to large, bigoted, ideological minorities while avoiding anything that improves people’s lives that would require making one rich man one cent poorer.
This is why it’s necessary for Americans to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot. The news might focus on the federal government, but much of the power is at the state and local level. Governors, state House and Senate seats, attorneys general, secretaries of state, judges (in states that have elections for them), school boards… They’re all important!
@Cavoyo: It was easier in the days of the big clanking machines with the lever that opened and closed the curtains and stored the votes in a glorious metal noise of democracy. It really felt like an occasion back then! Mom used to take me in when she voted, and one year our school got a decommissioned one set up with the current ballot so we kids could have the fun of lever pulling ourselves.
That wouldn’t work in states that have open primaries where the top two candidates advance regardless of party, though. In California, often both of the final general election candidates are from one party, because we still believe in not much gerrymandering and also that every vote counts. One person/one vote democracy sounds like a good idea to us. It ends up going mostly Democratic, unsurprisingly, although the less-salubrious areas might end up with two Republicans, which is fine if that’s what the majority of the people there want.
And this just in: at least five people have been killed and 25 wounded in the course of a mass shooting at queer nightclub Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/20/us/colorado-springs-shooting-gay-nightclub