{
"type": "rich",
"version": "1.0",
"provider_name": "Action Network",
"provider_url": "https://actionnetwork.org",
"html": "",
"author_name": "Trans Pride Initiative",
"author_url": "https://actionnetwork.org/groups/trans-pride-initiative",
"title": "Take action: support trans kids in Texas",
"thumbnail_url": "https://can2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/letters/photos/000/215/491/normal/supportTransKids_banner.jpg",
"description": "Introduction State officials in Texas have issued extra-legislative rulings that criminalize trans children and youth, their families, and those who support them! We all need to take action to stand with Texas trans children, as well as their parents and guardians who are currently threatened with criminal injury for providing caring, loving, and affirming support. What is clear is that politicians should not be tearing apart loving families — and sending their kids into the foster care system — when parents provide recommended medical care that they believe is in the best interest of their child. » Kate Murphy, senior policy associate for Texans Care for Children (source) Take action TPI has created this tool to help people reach out to state and federal legislators for Texas, as well as the president and vice-president, and staff at child protective services (in Texas, known as the Department of Family and Protective Services), urging them to oppose this ruling and put pressure on the agency and attorneys general throughout the state to refuse to comply with actions or allegations against trans families for provided support for trans children. This is a tool that we control the data, so we do not use your contact information for anything other than matching it to your legislator and addressing the correspondence. You will not get requests for donations, nor be signed up for our emails (although you can sign up here if you wish). Please consider adding your own text to the subject line and the message body. Messages with individualized subjects and beginning sentences tend to be read and logged separately, but messages with repeat subject and beginnings are often just counted and deleted. Please contact us at info@tpride.org if you have questions or concerns. We also welcome contact emails for persons that should be added to our targets, especially upper level DFPS executives. Thank you! 2021 Background In 2021, Republican state legislators introduced a bill, SB 1646, that would redefine child abuse to include providing (and parental consent to the provision of) puberty suppression medications or hormones. There were also the conservative requisite surgeries, which seem to have become a focus of right-wing pundits that want to promote a trans-surgery-gate conspiracy theory concerning "horrible forced surgeries on innocent children" (paraphrased from this source). This would have made supporting trans children "a felony, alongside physical and sexual abuse and sex trafficking" (source). Parents would have faced up to 10 years in prison for supporting their children. Legislators were also considering separate legislation criminalizing healthcare providers for treating transgender children. Thankfully, SB 1646 failed. In August 2021, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to look at gender-affirming treatment as child abuse (source). The letter dated August 6, 2021, addressed to DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters, asked Masters to provide a determination about whether surgical procedures that could be considered "gender transitioning" constitute child abuse (source). Because the letter focused on surgical procedures (characterized as "genital mutilation") that are extremely rare for trans youth, TPI and most other advocates saw it as primarily a publicity stunt that would not have much real impact, although it certainly constituted public servants bullying trans families. Masters responded with the results of her "inquiry" within days. On August 11, 2021, naming the same effectively non-existent surgical procedures that Abbott identified as constituting child abuse (source). Circumventing the legislature It appears that several anti-trans Republicans jumped on the Masters letter as an opportunity to push the issue further to implement extra-legislative opinions effectively criminalizing trans youth. Republican Representative Matt Krause was at the forefront, requesting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to issue an opinion on whether trans-affirming healthcare for youths was child abuse (source). Krause wrote Paxton on August 23, 2021, only two weeks after Abbott received the letter from from Masters (source). Krause took it on himself to define "genital mutilation" as any of those practically nonexistent medical procedures in children, but he escalated the endangerment for trans families by asking if any medications "that induce transient or permanent infertility," including puberty blockers and hormones, also constitute child abuse under existing law. It appears that other conservative voices piled on as Paxton delayed responding through the fall and winter, haranguing Paxton for not addressing fictional surgeries being performed in this tragic trans-surgery-gate conspiracy. With Masters' support and prodded further by Krause and his ilk, Paxton issued his opinion February 18, 2022, stating that "[v]irtually all gender-affirming care for people under 18 . . . is already illegal in Texas" (source). Paxton's response included all of the "medical and chemical procedures," and said they all can "legally constitute child abuse" (source). It should be noted that mental and emotional injury and other harms are far more likely to be caused by blanket denials of treatment like that promoted in this letter. Paxton also promoted the false claim that sex is a simple binary and established at, not birth, but conception (that sex is determined at conception is absolutely false; a few articles and publications for general readership on the limitations of the sex binary model and sex characteristic mutability can be found here, here, and here) Biologists may have been building a more nuanced view of sex, but society has yet to catch up. . . . [W]hen it comes to sex, there is still intense social pressure to conform to the binary model. » Nature,"Sex Redefind" Paxton provides selective information out of context from reputable sources of trans-affirming care (such as Fenway Health), while also providing general citations for organizations and reports condemning responsible, professional treatment protocols trans youth (such as the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine). Paxton resorts to absolute falsehoods when stating that "[t]]he medical evidence does not demonstrate that children and adolescents benefit from" gender-affirming care (see page 3). Numerous studies have shown the benefits of supportive care for trans children and youth (one overview of 15 such studies can be found here), and all major professional medical associations support trans-affirming care (see the list here). In summary, there have been, to my knowledge, 15 studies to date studying the impact of gender-affirming medical care for transgender adolescents. Taken together, the body of research indicates that these interventions result in favorable mental health outcomes. » Psychology Today, article posted January 24, 2022 Paxton also compares gender-affirming care to opioid prescription abuse (see pages 4 to 5), and implies that gender dysphoria in kids can be or is fake or socially induced (see page 7). Paxton was unequivocal in his announcement of the opinion on his web site, heading the announcement "AG Paxton Declares . . . Prescription of Puberty Blockers to be 'Child Abuse' Under Texas Law" (source). He described trans-affirming care as "the horrors that flow from the merging of medicine and misguided ideology." Abbott quickly followed up on February 22, issuing a comprehensive ban on gender-related care for trans youth (source). His letter to the DFPS directed the agency "to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures." He added that "all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children . . . including doctors, nurses, and teachers [may face] criminal penalties for failure to report such child abuse, [and that t]here are similar reporting requirements and criminal penalties for members of the general public." With a nod to promoting vigilantism, Abbott said that anyone with knowledge of child abuse must report it to the state or face criminal prosecution and up to a year of incarceration. This includes reporting on parents and guardians, medical professionals, and teachers and social workers who may be accused of helping any gender diverse young person access gender-affirming medical interventions. Worse, Commissioner Masters at DFPS has agreed to follow Abbott's letter to implement Paxton's opinion, saying any reports of gender-based "child abuse" will be "promptly and thoroughly investigated and any appropriate actions will be taken (source, source, and source).",
"url": "https://actionnetwork.org/letters/protecttranskids"
}