When Republicans decided that “parental rights” would be a great talking point in their continuing effort to con voters who don’t benefit from their policies, you had to know that they’d eventually default to their natural trait of hypocrisy.
Sure, you have parental rights, except if you want your child’s school library to have a book we don’t like, or for his history teacher to educate him on subjects we don’t want him to hear about.
There are ways for parents to counter this. They can buy the banned book for their child or make sure they talk about our real history at home, not the sanitized version the Right clings to.
But it’s not so easy with the latest GOP culture war game. One that demonstrates their acceptance of hatred and cruelty as part of their day-to-day political calculations. One that victimizes already vulnerable children.
Some Republican-controlled states have issued bans on gender-affirming care for minors. Mother Jones reported that at least 18 states have considered such legislation, pushed by a network of activists and organizations, including the religious right, that are at the forefront of the anti-trans movement.
For instance, Florida Governor/Wannabe Dictator Ron DeSantis last week signed into law a bill that bans gender-affirming medical care such as puberty blockers or hormone therapy for transgender youth, and also enacts obstacles for adults to access treatment, Reuters reported.
You can read the detailed Mother Jones’s account here.
This effort has made partners out of GOP politicians who see culture, race, and class wars as beneficial to their efforts to hold and retain power, and so-called “Christians” determined to force their way of life and “moral” code on the rest of the country.
The World Health Organization defines gender-affirming care as encompassing a range of social, psychological, behavioral, and medical interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity when it conflicts with the gender they were assigned at birth. The American Psychiatric Association said that one’s identity lies within a range that includes man, woman, a combination of those, neither of those, and fluid.
Gender-affirming care consists of an array of services that may include medical, surgical, mental health, and non-medical services for transgender and nonbinary people.
This a real thing involving real people. It’s not a joke or a whim or a fad.
“Gender-affirming care, at its most basic level, is about validating and supporting children and loving them for who they are as they explore their gender identity,” Dr. Jane Chang, an adolescent medicine specialist, explained. “Gender-affirming care is evidence-based and done in a developmentally appropriate manner as we give patients and families the space to express the youth’s individual gender experience and journey,”
Dr. Chang was quoted in an article on the Health Matters website of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Here are some interesting facts from that piece:
*Gender-affirming care for transgender youth is supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association.
*According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 2 percent of high school students identify as transgender. Of those, 27 percent felt unsafe at school, 35 percent had been bullied at school, and 35 percent had attempted suicide in the past year.
*Adolescents who identify as transgender or gender-diverse have higher rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicide. A 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ youth mental health conducted by the Trevor Project reported that 52 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered suicide in the past year and 20 percent attempted suicide during that period.
I get a couple of things from this. One is that the experience of finding one’s sexual identity can be a traumatic time for many young people, an ordeal not aided by hatred from others. The other is that gender-affirming care is supported by the experts.
That’s enough for me. I’m going to trust the science and the medical professionals on this one, and I want to see children undergoing this to receive the best help possible.
I understand why trans youth are an easy target, especially since the LGBTQ community in general is demonized by the Right. For a lot of people, including those as old as me, we never heard about this stuff when we were kids.
It’s easy to be skeptical instead of looking at it as another benefit of the continuing growth of our scientific and medical knowledge. Instead of understand that young people in our day faced these same self-realizations without the benefit of a more accepting (to a certain degree) society with the medical tools to help them.
The bottom line here is the Right wants to deny parents the ability to make crucial healthcare decisions concerning their children. They have absolutely no right to interfere in these matters.
They’re slamming the door on any efforts to help these vulnerable young folks to navigate what has to be a stressful time. These heartless bastards continue to stigmatize trans kids, seeing them as political props instead of actual human beings.
We’ve heard so many times that with Republicans the cruelty is the point. Here’s another example of it. It has to stop. We have to stop it.
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Thank you for reading my post. You can see more of my writing on my blog: Musings of a Nobody.