First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
- Pastor Martin Niemöller
In what is obviously and transparently a blatantly unconstitutional and fascist move against the transgender community (which encompasses less than 2% of the total US population), Republicans in numerous states have already filed a total of ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE anti-trans bills in the first five days of 2024, already tripling the number of laws written in in the first 5 days of 2023.
These bills are blatantly unconstitutional and target a person’s rights to simply exist authentically and many force trans people to detransition, to use bathrooms of their birth gender, to compete in sports only as their birth gender, or to reveal their birth gender in order to simply obtain a drivers license. If passed, these cruelty of these bills will make living and existing as a transgender person difficult or impossible, which is obviously the point.
From Erin in the Morning, who has done a yeowoman’s job of tracking these bills:
Only three days into 2024, legislators have already submitted 125 bills targeting the transgender community this year, surpassing the 50 bills filed at this time in 2023. The previous year marked one of the worst in U.S. history for anti-trans legislation. Statehouses are rapidly advancing bills through committees, covering issues from bathroom access to gender-affirming care. Despite significant election losses in school board races across the U.S. on transgender issues, Republicans show no signs of halting their campaign against transgender individuals. In some states, such as New Hampshire, which resisted anti-trans measures in 2023, a few Democrats have even supported anti-trans sports, bathroom, and surgery bans, allowing these bills to move forward this year. With the 2024 election cycle looming, the pace is unlikely to slow down.
This year's anti-trans legislative surge resembles the second wave of a tsunami, leaving little time for recovery from the initial impact. States are now revisiting anti-trans bills that failed in their own borders but succeeded elsewhere, effectively borrowing legislation from one another to enact the full gambit of discriminatory laws. Among these are book bans, drag bans, bathroom bans, and forced outing bills. Missouri, for example, failed to pass a drag ban in 2023 - it has already proposed three such bills for 2024.
The breakdown of bills that have been introduced or renewed for the 2023-2024 cycle are as follows:
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17 Don’t say Gay or trans/Forced outing bills
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16 Gender affirming care bans
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11 Book bans
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10 Online obscenity laws that could suppress or ban LGBTQ+ content
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9 Sports bans
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8 Trans bathroom bans
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8 National appropriations bills with a variety of anti-trans “riders”
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6 Pronoun usage bans or restrictions
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6 Drag bans
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6 DEI bans
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4 Anti-boycott acts
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4 Liability laws/backdoor gender affirming care bans
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4 Bills ending all trans legal recognition
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3 Forced misgendering bills
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3 Prison bans
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2 Pride flag bans
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2 KOSA-type laws that could suppress LGBTQ+ topics in social media
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2 Trans child abuse/custody bills
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1 Ban on public investments
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1 trans surveillance bill
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1 bill legalizing discrimination in healthcare
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1 bill defining “grooming” in a way that could target LGBTQ+ content
One of the most extreme bills being considered was just submitted in Florida that will require ALL transgender AND cisgender Floridians to submit an affidavit detailing their sex assigned at birth simply to receive a drivers license. It cannot be stated just how invasive and cruel this legislation is, and how it violates the privacy of EVERY SINGLE FLORIDIAN who require a drivers license.
The bill starts by defining “sex” in a way that excludes transgender people and incorporating this definition at the beginning of Florida's legal code - Section 1.01. It demands that every law in Florida adhere to this definition, effectively eliminating all transgender legal recognition in a single move. It then goes through many areas of code and creates additional policies that allow for the tracking of transgender people’s assigned sex at birth and the enforcement of laws that exclude or criminalize them.
Again, what is the purpose of this bill that literally nobody except the most extreme right wing wingnuts are demanding? The purpose is to LITERALLY erase the transgender identity, of course. This is on top of other bills requiring the outing of transgender individuals to the government, such as a lawsuit filed by the Kansas Attorney General that mandates all birth certificates and state ID’s must revert back to the individual’s birth gender, or a new bill in Montana that erases legal protection for trans individuals.
The author of this odious bill in Florida, Dean Black, has also outrageously threatened to prevent Floridian mayors from attending their own city’s Pride parades after Jacksonville’s mayor attended in 2023.
In a particularly cruel twist of language, Missouri has decided that if a transgender person uses the bathroom of their gender identity, this is a violation of the CIVIL RIGHTS of cisgender people (who are obviously not at all affected), and Missouri has proposed a bill that uses their own state’s Human Rights Commission to enforce bathroom bans against trans people. It shouldn’t be necessary to state that
THIS IS FASCISM
It should be noted that the famous Nazi book burning photo used in history textbooks happened at the world’s first gender clinic located in Berlin that performed the world’s first gender affirming surgery on Lily Alba (aka The Danish Girl). I discuss the history of this clinic in my Substack article “Transgender History That Was Never Taught In School”.
This is the reality of America should Republicans win in 2024
The bigger question is why? Why all the hate and animosity towards the trans community who simply wish to exist? The answer, as always, is the hard rightward turn of the Republican Party into outright fascism. And fascism NEEDS a scapegoat to blame for all the nation’s problems so that irrational people will vote them into power and they can enact their hateful and anti-human policies once and for all. We’ve seen this story before. It does not end well.
First they came for the transgender people.
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