Little hope for Trans youth under siege by Republicans

Brody Levesque

Health

HOUSTON, TX. – The thousand-yard stare is rapidly afflicting many members of the Transgender community in the United States these days, especially Trans youth and their parents.

That phrase, often used to describe the blank, unfocused gaze of combatants who have become emotionally detached from the horrors around them, sadly fits most Trans people.

It is a war without bullets, bombs and artillery shells, but it is a war nonetheless being waged against a fractional percentage minority in America ironically by another minority, only one that is well funded and politically powerful backed by religious zealots and extremists.

Fear, anger, outrage, and exasperation are now the experiences daily for Trans Americans of every age as they confront what has been a virtual tsunami of legislative actions in twenty-five states specifically targeting their existence, as Republican lawmakers work to limit medical care, participation in sports, or limit their being able to self determine their own gender identity.

In a published commentary this week, an 18 year-old trans male from Virginia pointed out;

“A lot of anti- trans bills targeting people like me passed recently and more are being proposed. Republicans have decided that the most important thing to do in the middle of a pandemic is to take away life-saving treatment from children and ban them from playing sports,” Eric Tannehill said.

“This has been painful for me. It’s like watching a murder in slow motion. I see what they’re doing and recognize that it’s going to get people killed and there’s nothing I can do but just watch as they target kids like me with a smile on their face and a Bible in hand,” he added.

The soft voice on the phone is weary filled with mixed tones of anger and disgust but also apprehension. “There’s so many of these bills,” 18 year-old Landon Richie tells the Blade. Richie, a college freshman in the metropolitan Houston area has been invested in the fight for Trans rights in Texas since he first came out as an young child.

“I’ve been very lucky to have had my parents’ support especially with my medical care. I’m on hormones, I had ‘top’ surgery- but if they pass both House Bill 1399 and Senate Bill 1311 I have a younger sibling who idemtifies as non-binary and they would be blocked from receiving medical care,” he said. “We don’t know what we (as a family) are going to do- I mean there are other families who are talking about moving away. [from Texas]”

HB 1399 prohibit health care providers and physicians from performing gender confirmation surgery or prescribing, administering or supplying puberty blockers or hormone treatment to anyone under the age of 18.  SB1311 would revoke the medical license of health care providers and physicians who perform such procedures or prescribe such drugs or hormones to people younger than 18. 

As these bills work their way through the Texas statehouse, the ACLU reports that in 14 other states, lawmakers are also pushing laws that bans or severely restrictions on transition care for trans youth under 18.

The Williams Institute at the University of California School of Law warns that 45,100 trans youth are at risk of loss of gender-affirming medical care.

Most of these bills propose to make it a crime or a cause for professional discipline for medical providers to deliver gender-affirming care to minors. Bills in Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas also include penalties for parents who encourage or facilitate minors’ access to gender-affirming medical care.

In three other states—Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina—school employees would be prohibited from withholding information about a child being transgender from that child’s parents, while a similar requirement proposed in North Carolina would apply to all state employees.

The bill passed in Arkansas, and bills under consideration in Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, and Tennessee, would allow individuals to file civil suits for damages against medical providers who violate these laws.

Bills in Arkansas and Montana provide mechanisms for the state Attorneys General to file suit against medical providers to enforce compliance. 

“I can’t see not being able to transition- I mean having to live with non-support?” Richie said. “I can tell you that if I had not had the support of my parents and well, if I hadn’t been able to transition- I may not even be here, nothing is more terrifying for a Trans kid than being out and not able to transition,” he added.

In the case of Texas, Richie says he is aggravated by the fact that lawmakers aren’t listening to experts, medical experts, counselors, and even trans youth who have been testifying in front of both Representatives and Senators in the various committees. “They don’t care, they listen to some bogus groups like the “American College of Pediatricians” which isn’t credible,” he angrily stated.

The ACP is a small group of physicians that left the The American Academy of Pediatrics after the AAP released a 2002 policy statement explaining that gay parents pose no risk to adopted children. The Southern Poverty Law Center has repeatedly labeled the ACP as an anti-LGBT hate group that promotes false claims and misleading scientific reports.

“Texas will be uninhabitable for Trans kids if they pass all these bad bills,” he said.

Medical experts agree that should this legislative tsunami pass into law, the mental health toll of gender dysphoria and social marginalization will produce spikes in youth suicides and other psychological trauma. 

In an interview with The Texas Tribune, Marjan Linnell, a general pediatrician explained that puberty suppression treatment has been used for decades to prevent children from going through puberty too soon. Once those children reach an appropriate age, their treatment stops and natural puberty occurs. Linnell said the same is true for transgender children, for whom puberty can often exacerbate poor mental health.

“The point is to have a reversible treatment that can give them some time,” she said. “That not only helps to gain some time to make sure we’re making an appropriate and best practice medical decision for these kids and families, but we also know it can be incredibly important for preserving the mental health of our kids that are going through gender affirming care.”

In Orange County California, the mother of an 11 and a half year old trans daughter, who asked to not be identified, relayed in a phone call to the Blade that the impact on Trans youth even in affirming states like California is horrific.

“She asked me if she was going to be safe. Like most kids who follow the news she panicked- kids think globally she has friends in Texas, she thought ‘the government’ would take away her rights,” the mother said.

NBC’s Jo Yurcaba reported Monday that George and Emily Spurrier are leaving their home of 16 years in central Arkansas due to a new law that will ban the health care that they say their 17-year-old transgender son needs.

Emily Spurrier said when her son heard the news, he sat in her car and cried for an hour.

“It was just kind of a wave of emotions, thinking about moving and then him worrying about some friends that he has here in the Little Rock area,” she said. “And then just the thought that this is really the only place he ever remembers living.”

Richie tells the Blade that worst part of this entire mess is being targeted by Republicans for what he sees as an immutable part of his existence as a human being.