QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced an incredibly hateful and harmful bill targeting trans youth on Friday, Aug. 19, as covered at LGBTQ Nation. The Georgia representative tweeted that her legislation would “immediately” make it a felony for physicians to provide gender-affirming health care to trans youth, including puberty blockers and genital surgeries. Mind you, gender-affirming surgeries—including both “top” and “bottom” surgeries—are generally not done on people under 18. But given the right’s emphasis on pushing this hysteria recently, including garnering harassment and threats against physicians at Boston Children’s Hospital, I’m not surprised they’re trying to present this false information as fact in order to get people riled up.
To get into specifics, the bill is (again misleadingly) called the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act.” It would make providing gender-affirming care to youth a class C felony, which comes with a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison, and the sentence can go as long as 25 years. It can carry a maximum fine of $250,000.
It would also ban the use of federal funds for gender-affirming health care, which would include Affordable Care Act plans. The bill also seeks to ban colleges and universities from offering courses on gender-affirming health care.
RELATED STORY: Federal court rules trans folks are entitled to protections under Americans with Disabilities Act
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As of now, Greene’s bill has 11 co-sponsors (all of whom are Republicans). Is it likely this bill will be signed into law by President Joe Biden? Not remotely. Is it likely it will even pass the House? Also no. But it’s still dangerous.
Why? I worry conservatives are fully aware of what they’re doing when they push bills that are more and more outrageous, hateful, and frankly, discriminatory. No, all of these won’t go anywhere. But these horrendous bills normalize these beliefs as somehow legitimate enough that we should be respectfully engaging with them.
For example, seeing bills like this over and over begins to shift our concept of the “middle” or finding a “common ground” further and further to the right; while we’re fighting for trans folks to get basic protections, folks on the right are arguing for professionals who help trans folks to be put in jail. For people in the “middle” who aren’t educated on queer issues, it’s all too easy to sucked into anti-trans rhetoric and beliefs.
Other examples of this happening include trans girls playing sports and trans-inclusive pronoun policies at public schools. We have conservatives rushing to legislate based on hypothetical allegations and rumors, whereas real young people’s lives are hanging in the balance.
In the big picture, we know health care is already difficult to access for many people in this country, including trans folks. Depending on where you live, even trans adults struggle to find safe, affordable, and accessible gender-affirming health care. Youth can face all of those same struggles and more.
The ongoing effort to criminalize providing such care could result in an already limited number of specialists changing their minds about offering these lifesaving services, making it even harder for people to get the care they need. It could also result in efforts from insurance providers to cover less and less of this necessary care. Adding other layers of marginalization to the circumstances—like trans women of color, for example, or trans disabled youth—means there are even more barriers and obstacles to receiving health care.
It’s cruel. It’s a ripple effect. We have to be loud and proud in our allyship and advocacy with trans folks, especially those who are too young to even vote.
