So recently Elon Musk promised to move all of his businesses out of California.
And why exactly is that? This is why.
Recently, Elon Musk tweeted that he intends to relocate operations for two of his companies — Twitter, which Musk is still vainly insisting the rest of us refer to as X, and SpaceX — from California to Texas. Musk has whined and complained about various aspects of California for years, but according to his tweet, the last straw was Governor Gavin Newsom signing bill AB-1955 into law.
“I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago,” Musk wrote in a reply to his tweet announcing the move, “that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.”
Boy, that law must be pretty bad. AB-1955 is titled the “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act,” which — now you know it’s just gotta be terrible, right? With an aggressively positive title like that?
And yes — Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth — the first letters spell “Safety.” An aggressively positive title that is also an acronym — this bill must be bad news! Okay, what’s it actually say?
From the summary at the top of the bill: “This bill would prohibit school districts, county offices of education, charter schools, and the state special schools, and a member of the governing board or body of those educational entities, from enacting or enforcing any policy, rule, or administrative regulation that requires an employee or a contractor to disclose any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent unless otherwise required by law, as provided.”
Okay. So, basically, the bill makes it illegal for employees of school districts to out LGBTQ students without the consent of the student. Given how mistreated and misunderstood queer people, especially queer young people, are in this country, that sounds like a good and, sadly, necessary idea. But! That’s just the summary! The devil’s in the details. I bet the actual text of the bill hides all sorts of horrors — horrors so horrible they’ve driven the mighty Elon Musk from the Golden State!
“SEC. 2. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following: “(a) All pupils deserve to feel safe, supported, and affirmed for who they are at school.”
Okay, but what else?
“(b) Choosing when to ‘come out’ by disclosing an LGBTQ+ identity, and to whom, are deeply personal decisions, impacting health and safety as well as critical relationships, that every LGBTQ+ person has the right to make for themselves.”
That’s . . . I bet paragraph (c) is gonna have the dangerous stuff that parents will be fleeing the state to protect their children from — it’s always C!
“(c) Parents and families across California understand that coming out as LGBTQ+ is an extremely personal decision and want to support their children in coming out to them on their own terms.”
. . . Can I get that (d)?
“(d) Parents and families have an important role to play in the lives of young people. Studies confirm that LGBTQ+ youth thrive when they have parental support and feel safe sharing their full identities with them, but it can be harmful to force young people to share their full identities before they are ready.”
Can I get a . . . what comes after (d)?
VD, if you’re not careful — but, all kidding aside, the SAFETY Act is not a dangerous bill, it’s an attempt to protect the privacy and well-being of LGBTQ kids and to give some legal backup to public school employees — teachers, counselors, et cetera — to provide a safe harbor at school for queer kids who don’t have one at home.
If you read the bill in its entirety — and I recommend that you do, if this interests you — I’ll put a link to it in the description of this video, or you can just search for “AB-1955” and you’ll find it — it’s not long — if you read it, you’ll see that not only does the bill strengthen legal protections for the safety and privacy of LGBTQ students, as well as protections for school employees who support them, it also mandates the development of expanded resources to provide support for parents and families of LGBTQ students, including support groups and safe spaces for parents and families of LGBTQ kids, suicide prevention resources, and support for physical and mental health care providers with experience treating and supporting parents and families of LGBTQ kids” — it’s not about the state coming between parents and children — it’s about the state recognizing that queer kids need support, affirming that public schools are allowed to provide that support, and putting community resources in place to encourage everyone to get on board with that mission, including the parents and families of LGBTQ kids.
Who could possibly have a problem with this? Bigots, mostly — like Elon Musk. Scroll through Musk’s Twitter account — and I recommend that you don’t, there’s nothing there of any substance or value, but if you want to get a sense of the man and where his head is at, go ahead — and you’ll see, in between posts supporting Donald Trump and embarrassing retweets of AI images depicting
Musk himself standing on the surface of Mars, a steady stream of hateful, paranoid transphobia. Musk’s personal bigotry becomes even more reprehensible when you consider the fact that he is the father of a trans child, a daughter, who came out in 2020 by, reportedly, texting her aunt and saying “Hey, I’m transgender, and my name is now Jenna. Don’t tell my dad.” Two years later, she officially changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson and issued the public statement, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
Gee, I wonder why Elon Musk, anti-trans bigot with a trans daughter who wants nothing to do with him, feels so threatened by the SAFETY Act?
But, this isn’t just about Elon Musk. The entire Republican Party — of which Elon Musk is an enthusiastic and generous supporter — has committed itself to pushing blatant and unapologetic transphobia. The thing is, by opposing any efforts to affirm and support trans people, by attempting to cut off trans people’s access to gender-affirming health care, by vilifying trans people and seeking to delegitimize their very existence, the Republican Party is not just supporting transphobia — it’s supporting something else, something most Republicans insist they are absolutely against.
What do you call it when a parent rejects a child on the basis of who they are? What do you call it when a parent refuses to allow a child to obtain medical care, or counseling? What do you call it when a parent makes a child feel unwelcomed and unwanted in their own home? What do you call it when a parent drives a child — a child — to end their own life?
I don’t know what you call it, but I call it child abuse, and that’s what the Republican Party supports. They don’t say that, obviously. The Republican Party supports child abuse the same way it supports racism. They never — well, somewhat rarely — come out and say “we hate Black people.” They just support policies that disproportionately target Black people for negative consequences.
They attack social programs that benefit Black people, they close polling places in majority Black neighborhoods to make it more difficult for Black people to vote, they structure budgets to deprive majority Black communities and public schools of funding. When they oppose efforts to address racial discrimination in policing and the courts, they say it’s because those reforms are “soft on crime.” When they attack affirmative action policies, they say, “Actually, it’s affirmative action that is racist, not us — we don’t think race should be a factor at all, we believe in a colorblind society.” And, you know how it goes.
Same thing with their support for child abuse — they don’t say “We’re the Republican Party, we’re pro-child-abuse!” They say, “we’re pro-family!” But what they mean is, “we’re pro-family as long as everyone in that family is cisgender and heterosexual.”
That’s the only kind of family they care about — deeper than that, it’s the only kind of family they recognize. Under the conservative, Republican view of the world, if you’re a parent and you have a child who is gay or trans, that child is doing something wrong, that child has been corrupted, and you as the parent need to fix them.
Why did legislators in California feel the need to pass the SAFETY Act? Because frequently, when LGBTQ kids are abused, that abuse occurs in their homes, and it is perpetrated by their parents or other people in their families; because abuse perpetrated by family members contributes to higher rates of depression, self-harm, and homelessness among LGBTQ people; because LGBTQ kids, as a group, need help, and all too often they cannot expect to find that help at home.
Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country have passed laws intended to do the opposite of help: banning gender-affirming care for trans youth, blocking public funding from being used to subsidize gender-affirming care, and allowing the state to take custody of kids whose parents have allowed them to receive gender-affirming care. Last year, the State of Florida — obviously — passed bill SB 254, which was subsequently signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis. The bill not only bans gender-affirming care for minors, and makes it more difficult for adults to access gender-affirming care, it establishes that a child receiving gender-affirming care can be used as justification for the courts to remove the child from a parent’s custody. According to the language of the law, it applies not merely to permanent residents of Florida, but also to anyone “present in the state,” which means a Florida court could conceivably seize custody of a trans child who is visiting the state, who doesn’t even actually live there.
That law has been blocked by a U.S. District Court judge and that ruling is currently being appealed, but the clear intent of Republicans — in Florida, and all around the country — is to give the full support of the state to transphobic parents, and to use the power of the state against parents who are accepting and supportive of their trans kids.
You might pick up on an inconsistency there. When Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis and other right-wing dipshits speak out against gender-affirming care for minors, or seek to prevent school districts from providing an environment where LGBTQ students can be safe from mistreatment, including mistreatment at the hands of their parents, the argument always boils down to parental rights. The rights of the parents must be sacrosanct! Who is the State of California, or any other government, to tell a parent how to raise their child?!
That’s in line with the general conservative attitude toward children, which views children as the property of their parents. Kids aren’t human beings with certain essential rights that must be respected by everybody — they belong to their parents, and with few exceptions, parents can do whatever they want with them. If a parent wants to withhold vaccines from their child, according to most Republicans, they should have the right to do that. If a parent’s extremist religious beliefs compel them to deprive their sick child of medical care and that child dies of a treatable condition, those parents shouldn’t be punished — thirty-four states and the District of Columbia allow parents to forgo medical treatments for their child on the basis of religious belief. Because, hey — what’s more important — the life of a child, or the beliefs of that child’s parent?
Those are Republican values. Except when it comes to parents of LGBTQ kids who are supportive and accepting. Then, the state needs to step in — then, parental rights go out the window. You want to allow your child to die of measles? That’s fine. You want to allow your trans child to live openly as who they are? You’re a monster! Remember — Republican values — or, the values Republicans claim to have — only actually apply to people like them. When they say “parental rights should be absolute,” they mean “parental rights should be absolute — for people like us.” If you’re the parent of a trans child, and you support them and accept them, you forfeit your parental rights.
Republicans are always saying that they believe in self-determination, and individual liberty, and they want to keep the government out of your private life — and they mean it! . . . As long as you do what they want you to do. They try to make it sound consistent when they support parental rights out of one side of their mouth and support the state taking custody of trans kids from affirming parents with the other — they try to make it sound consistent by doing what they always do, and lying about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. They try to frame gender affirming care as something violent, as an attack on innocent children.
That Florida law I mentioned, SB 254, uses phrases like “subjected to” or “threatened with” in reference to gender -affirming care, to make it sound like an attack.
They accuse parents, and teachers, and doctors, and drag queens, and pretty much every adult who wants to understand and support transgender youth of “transing” kids, or grooming them.
And, I mean, come on, who are you going to believe — Ron DeSantis, or the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry? Elon Musk, or the American Academy of Pediatrics? Donald Trump, or the American Psychiatric Association — and actually, that one in particular applies much more broadly than just to gender-affirming care.
Who are you going to believe — a pack of fascists, bigots and religious zealots, or dozens and dozens of professional associations representing millions of doctors?
For the record, virtually every major medical organization in the world recognizes the legitimacy of gender-affirming care, including gender-affirming care for kids, and endorses it as safe and necessary care for transgender people.
The term “gender-affirming care” refers not to a single treatment or even a single kind of treatment, but to an entire category of care that trans people may need or want. It’s not something that is inflicted on an unwilling patient, it’s not something parents or teachers or doctors are forcing on children. It’s something that is done with full collaboration and consent involving the trans child, their parents or guardians, and their doctors. It’s done deliberately, considerately, and the health and safety of the child is always the top priority.
Why do Republicans call it grooming, then? I think there are a few reasons. One reason is that these people don’t actually have principles, or values. They don’t actually care about the things they say they care about — they care about power — obtaining it and keeping it through any and all available means. To maintain and expand their political power, they need to win elections, they need to get people to vote for them.
The Republican Party’s appeal to voters isn’t based on coherent policies — the party has no policies which, considered soberly and fairly, appeal to anyone other than those who are already rich and powerful. As a practical matter, there is no reason for an average, middle-class or working-class American to ever vote for a Republican candidate.
What motivates so many people to vote for a party that doesn’t offer solutions? Grievance. For a long time, but especially since Trump became the figurehead, the entire electoral effort of the Republican Party has been centered on mobilizing grievance, and resentment, and fear — fear of the future, fear of change, fear of young people, fear of people from other places, fear of anyone who is different. Where’d all these trans people come from, anyway, all of a sudden? There never used to be this many before — what’s going on? Who’s causing this, and why? Everybody knows that a man is a man and a woman is a woman — why are they trying to change that? Why do they want to turn your children against you? You’re not gonna let them do that, are you? After all, you did nothing wrong! Vote for us and we’ll put a stop to all this, we’ll set everything back to how it was before, when it made sense to you.
It’s a terrible reason, but a compelling one to many people.
Another reason, and a big one, is that every Republican accusation is actually a confession. Am I saying that all Republicans are groomers? No. Am I saying that everyone who characterizes people who are supportive of trans kids as groomers, are groomers? No. I will point out that, if news reports are to be believed, a lot more right-wing folks are being arrested for child abuse than liberals and leftists are. I admit, I haven’t done a scientific study. But, how many Christian pastors have been busted for sexually assaulting a minor or possessing child pornography lately? It’s at least a few, right? And, how many drag queens? . . .
It’s not that Republicans who accuse trans people and those who support trans people of being groomers are all secret sex criminals themselves — that’s not what they’re confessing to. They’re confessing to the fact that they view the gender identities and sexual orientations of children and adolescents in an exclusively carnal and lecherous way.
They assume anyone who wants to help a young person understand and explore and express their gender or their orientation must be doing so because they’re a pervert who wants to fuck that young person, because they — the Republicans — can’t imagine why else anyone would do that.
And, I dunno, maybe the creepy, sexually repressed conservatives who want to be able to decide where everyone goes to the bathroom, and who seem to harbor a lurid preoccupation with the genitals of strangers, shouldn’t be the ones telling the rest of us how to treat children.
Withholding medical care from someone who needs it is a form of abuse. Withholding medical care from a child who needs it is a form of child abuse. A court removing a child from the custody of responsible, loving, supportive parents is a form of state child abuse. Republicans say they’re the party of family values, yet when it comes to queer people, and in particular, trans people, they support and enable all of those things. They say they’re the party of family, unless that family includes trans people. They say they’re the party of life, unless it’s the life of a trans person. They say they’re the party of parental rights, unless those parents are supportive and accepting of their trans child. They say they’re the party of individual liberty, unless it’s the liberty of a trans person that’s at stake.
Republicans say all of those things about themselves, but their actions tell the truth, and the truth is that they’re the party of hypocrisy, and corruption, and authoritarianism, and ignorance, and intolerance, and abuse, and death. So, you know.
Vote accordingly.
I endorse this message.
