DeSantis Signs Bill to Allow State to Take Trans Kids Away From Their Families

by Sharon Zhang

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TRUTHOUT

While gleefully tossing Sharpies into a crowd at an evangelical school, far right Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a series of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills, including one horrifying bill that allows the state to temporarily take trans children away from their families if they’re receiving or are planning to receive gender-affirming care.

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S.B. 254, which passed the Florida legislature earlier this month, allows trans children to be taken by the state, giving courts the power of “temporary emergency jurisdiction” to modify out-of-state custody agreements in certain circumstances. The bill classifies gender-affirming care as “serious physical harm,” allowing a dissenting parent to request a warrant to receive physical custody of a trans child if they are undergoing or “threatened,” as the bill says, with gender-affirming care.

The bill further places restrictions on gender-affirming care for trans children and adults. Medical facilities will have to pledge to the state Department of Health that they will not provide gender-affirming care to children or refer children to receive it, or else risk losing their medical license. It bars children from receiving gender-affirming care like puberty blockers, and makes it a third-degree felony to provide genderaffirming care to a trans child.

Access to gender-affirming care for adults will be severely restricted under the bill. Only physicians, not health experts like nurse practitioners or physicians’ assistants, would be allowed to perform genderaffirming care.

This is already having widespread impacts; at least one Florida clinic that provides gender-affirming care in the state is staffed only by nurse practitioners, leaving the clinic’s patients in limbo, while Planned Parenthood is canceling adults’ appointments for gender-affirming care in the state.

If a trans adult wishes to access genderaffirming care, they will have to obtain written consent by two state “oversight” boards whose members are appointed by DeSantis under the new law.

The use of telehealth for gender-affirming care for trans people, as well as the use of state funds for gender-affirming care, is also banned under the bill.

Opponents of the law have called it an “abduction” bill allowing for the “legal kidnapping” of trans kids that will almost certainly lead to death for people now unable to access the life-saving care, which is recommended by every major medical association in the U.S. Some providers say their patients are moving out of the state due

“I would say free states don’t ban health care,” state Sen. Lori Berman (D) said during debate on the bill last month. “This bill is wrong on the way it attacks transgender adults, wrong on the way it attacks parents’ rights to raise their children, and wrong on how it puts medical professionals at risk.”

In a bill-signing ceremony in front of an applauding crowd at the Cambridge Christian School in Tampa, DeSantis signed several other bills in one of the most sweeping legislative attacks on LGBTQ rights yet seen in the GOP’s current attacks. One bill attacks drag shows, giving the DeSantis administration the power to take away the licenses of establishments if they allow children into a drag show. Another restricts faculty and students from using personal pronouns of their choice in public schools, saying that every school must implement hateful anti-trans policies declaring that “a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait.”

Another bill bans trans people from using changing rooms or bathrooms that match their gender identity in public buildings, including those in public schools and universities. The law makes it a first-degree misdemeanor for a trans person to not leave a bathroom if asked by a government employee to do so — a charge that can lead to up to a year in prison.

Added up, these bills amount to an attempt to legislate away trans peoples’ ability to exist in the state.

“This isn’t about disagreeing on issues. We aren’t all expected to think the same things or make the same decisions about how to live our lives or how to raise our children,” wrote legal expert Chris Geidner for Rolling Stone. “This is about his using the law to take away fundamental choices that we all should be free to make for ourselves. And in the latest attacks, DeSantis and his ilk are staking out an even more extremist position — criminalizing certain choices, turning fundamental freedoms into potential prison sentences.”

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license. For more articles like this and more, visit: https://truthout.org

Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter: @zhang_sharon.

Florida Republican Admits His Party Has Hatred for LGBTQ People by Chris Walker, TRUTHOUT

Republican state Rep. Jeff Holcomb made the admission on Monday while arguing that opposition to a GOP bill to bar the U.S. military from implementing more inclusive policies was an attack on the military.

AGOP member of the Florida state House of Representatives recently admitted that people in his party hate gay people while defending a piece of anti-LGBTQ legislation. recently approved a bill that would allow state courts to intervene in custody disputes and remove children who are receiving genderaffirming care from supportive families with whom they live — a measure that LGBTQ advocates have said essentially amounts to legal kidnapping.

“I just can’t let our military be labeled as racist and discrimination [sic] without any, without a response,” Holcomb said.

He then claimed that the bill isn’t truly anti-LGBTQ because the Florida Republican Party is less hateful toward LGBTQ people than al-Qaeda or ISIS, describing the extremist groups as “folks that discriminate.”

“We bombed a building in 2017 like we never usually do. We bombed it because they threw homosexuals off that building,” Holcomb said.

“Our terrorist enemies hate homosexuals more than we do,” he went on, drawing audible gasps in the chamber.

Holcomb’s words come as Florida Republicans have introduced a barrage of anti-LGBTQ legislation over the past years, much of it under the guise of protecting children.

In April, Florida legislators expanded Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) discriminatory “Don’t Say Gay” law, restricting discussions on LGBTQ issues in K-12 public schools across the state. The state House of Representatives also

In recent days, LGBTQ lawmakers in Florida have spoken about the effect that laws targeting LGBTQ people have had on their mental health.

“I have enough tears in my car to fill a lake,” state Sen. Shevrin Jones (D), who is gay, said in an interview that was published last week.

“I’m literally trying to exist,” said state Rep. Michele Rayner-Goolsby (D), a lesbian in the state legislature, adding that “the harsh things [Republicans are] saying” in promoting their anti-LGBTQ agenda “are to prop up a governor’s political ambition, and their desire and quest for power.”

Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people. He can be found on Twitter: @ thatchriswalker