NATIONAL State legislatures wrap, leaving terror in their wake

CHRISTOPHER KANE | ckane@washblade.com

Conservative state legislatures from Florida to Idaho, have finished or will soon finish their business, leaving transgender Americans and their loved ones reeling from the onslaught of attacks against them.

Between 400 and 600 bills were introduced since January that target LGBTQ folks, disproportionately transgender kids – a figure that has often been cited by LGBTQ groups and elected Democrats.

What is often lost in this accounting, however, is how harmful the legislation is (or will be, in the case of so many bills that have yet to take effect), because for those who are directly targeted by the ceaseless legislative and rhetorical attacks, they are hardly an abstraction.

On Monday, Oklahoma became the 16th state to ban guideline-directed best practices healthcare interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors and the fourth state to make it a felony for providers to administer that care to their patients.

Then, on Tuesday, Montana became the 17th state, having just evicted duly elected state Rep. Zooey Zephyr from the chamber because, in her words, “I dared to give voice to the values and needs of transgender people like myself.”

In March, Kentucky passed what was then deemed “the worst anti-trans bill in the nation,” a healthcare ban augmented by language pulled from Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which criminalizes discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools.

The following month, just across the border, the torch was passed to Missouri, whose Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey issued an emergency rule prohibiting gender affirming care for youth as well as adults and then published a form allowing citizens to formally record complaints about “a gender transition” they have “experienced or observed.”

Powerful conservative Christian advocacy groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom have lobbied for anti-LGBTQ bills and defended them from legal challenges. The organization has backed anti-trans measures from restrictions on access to gender affirming care to “Don’t Say Gay” laws.

For trans people, the prospect of having to flee their home states “doesn’t feel theoretical anymore,” Ari Drennen, LGBTQ program director for Media Matters for America, told the Washington Blade.

“The thing is,” she said, “I feel like we got there a while ago, and I just kind of adjusted, and now it’s like this weird world where I have multiple adult friends who are leaving multiple states for their own safety.”

“It’s hard to keep perspective of just how bad it’s gotten and just how quickly,” Drennen said.

She added the recent polling data, which indicates “most voters do not think that this is a good use of the government’s time and energy” offers cold comfort because “when that doesn’t seem to stop them, it almost makes it scarier.”

Drennen said the reality for so many of these Republican legislators is “they are just so genuinely opposed to the existence of trans people” that they will continue apace with these legislative crusades, political consequences be damned.

Another concern, often overlooked, is the escalation of transphobic rhetoric that abets the work of anti-trans GOP legislatures and to some extent makes their goals more reachable.

“You can look at The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles giving his big speech at CPAC,” Drennen said, in which he argued “that transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”

“Those were his exact words,” she said, and “what he’s say- ing there is that trans people should not be in public, really under any circumstances, and I think that’s where a lot of the right wing media has gotten.”

“This has escalated very quickly in a couple of years from, ‘oh, well, you know, we just have some concerns about the fairness of trans people who are competing in sports,’ to multiple states passing bathroom bills or considering bathroom bills, multiple states expanding what kinds of gender affirming care they’re considering trying to take off the table,” Drennen said.

“And it’s hard to not be alarmed about the direction that this is all heading,” she said.

At this juncture, according to the ACLU:

• Anti-LGBTQ bills can be divided into seven categories: Healthcare (e.g., bans on gender affirming care); public accommodations (e.g., laws prohibiting trans people from using restrooms and facilities consistent with their gender identity); schools and education (e.g., “Don’t Say Gay” laws, bans prohibiting trans student athletes from competing in sports); free speech and expression (e.g., restrictions on drag performances, book bans); accurate IDs (e.g., laws prohibiting trans people from obtaining documents that reflect their gender identity); civil rights (e.g., measures to allow discrimination against LGBTQ people); and other (e.g., Alabama’s proposed bill to define “woman” based on sex characteristics at birth).

• Fifteen states have introduced more than 10 anti-LGBTQ bills: Arizona, North Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida.

• Four states and the District of Columbia have not introduced any anti-LGBTQ bills: Pennsylvania, Delaware, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

• 318 anti-LGBTQ bills are now advancing through state legislatures. Forty-five have been signed into law; 105 have been defeated.