With only about a week remaining in the Texas legislative session, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick—a polite Christian man who has called the U.S. citizen children of immigrants “anchor babies” and said that their parents bring "third world diseases” despite the fact Mexicans and Central Americans have better vaccination rates than Americans—basically put a gun to the state budget’s head and threatened to pull the trigger unless legislators got moving on bills attacking transgender school kids and gay couples trying to adopt. You know, priorities in a state that still has the highest uninsured rate in the nation. This past weekend, legislators gave in to Patrick’s demands:
The House passed a measure that would prohibit transgender students in public and charter schools from using a bathroom that matches their gender identity.
Though the legislation is much narrower, it drew comparisons to the contentious North Carolina bill that spurred boycotts and protests, marring the state’s image and ultimately forcing at least the appearance of a retreat.
And that’s not all Texas lawmakers did Sunday night. The Senate voted to advance another bill decried by LGBT advocates as discriminatory, a measure that would allow publicly funded foster care providers and adoption agencies to refuse to place children with non-Christian, unmarried or gay parents because of religious objections.
It was a frenzied night for Texas Democrats and civil rights groups, who fiercely protested both measures across social media into the early hours of the morning.
“Let’s just call today discrimination Sunday,” said Equality Texas.
Originally, the Texas Senate had passed a bill that would have banned all trans people “from using public restrooms in all government buildings, public schools and colleges and universities. But that proposal went nowhere in the House,” surprisingly.
So state Republicans finally settled on piggybacking the scaled-down version—the one attacking trans school kids—onto “a broader, otherwise unrelated public school bill,” which even lead a group of Democratic women legislators to walk off the floor and go to the nearby men’s room in protest:
The proposal would require a transgender student who “does not wish” to use a facility based on “biological sex” to use single-occupancy restrooms, locker rooms and changing facilities at their schools.
It would override policies at some of the state’s school districts that already allow transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.
During Sunday night’s emotional debate, Republican lawmakers said the measure was not intended to discriminate against transgender students but rather to protect the privacy and safety of all students.
Right. Those same legislators care so much about kids, they also advanced a bill that would protect state-funded adoption and foster care agencies from lawsuits stemming from discrimination against LGBTQ couples, non-Christian couples, and unmarried applicants. There’s currently 22,000 kids who need loving homes in the state, but Patrick and state Republicans would rather keep them wards of the state than to risk them possibly going to adoptive parents who just happen to be gay. The reality is that the children’s crisis in the state is the one that Texas itself has created:
The number of the state's most endangered children sleeping in CPS offices or in other temporary living arrangements more than doubled last month. Equally alarming: Officials don't know why.
This situation is beyond the crisis point. These kids can't wait for the state to suss out ramp-up plans to increase the number of available foster care beds. They need help now.
Did CPS learn nothing earlier this month when two foster teens being housed in a Harris County office building ran away from state workers? A 15-year-old girl was fatally struck by a minivan; a 17-year-old suffered an injury to her arm.
Earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott also signed racist “show me your papers” legislation that puts a target squarely on the backs of millions of Latino and immigrant residents by allowing law enforcement officers to ask anyone they stop about their immigration status. Immigrants rights groups and Latino organizations are already mapping out responses, including lawsuits and economic boycotts along the lines of those seen in Arizona during passage of the state’s “papers please” law. Now, discriminatory bills targeting trans kids and LGBTQ couples also appear to be getting closer to Abbott for his signature as well.
Sure, everything’s bigger in Texas, including—thanks to state Republicans—hate.