(C) Ohio Capital Journal
This story was originally published by Ohio Capital Journal and is unaltered.
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Ohio GOP lawmakers bully trans kids for Christmas, shedding themselves of any basic human decency [1]
['More From Author', 'December', 'David Dewitt']
Date: 2023-12-15
Ohio’s gerrymandered Republican supermajority decided to spend their last day of session in 2023 bullying and victimizing vulnerable children and their families.
Their priorities are abominable. Did they do anything to address the hunger and food insecurity that impacts 1 in 5 Ohio children? No. Did they do anything to protect children from gun violence that is now the leading cause of death of kids ages 1 to 19? No.
What they did instead was to spend their last session before holiday break bullying a handful of high school trans athletes out of sports, robbing parents of rights to support their trans children, interfering in intimate family health care decisions, and upping suicide risk among LGBTQ+ youth. That was the year-end priority of Ohio Republican lawmakers.
Republicans in the Ohio Senate passed House Bill 68 in a 24-8 vote Wednesday afternoon, and Republicans in the Ohio House concurred with the Senate amendments in a 61-27 vote Wednesday night. The bill blocks doctors from providing gender-affirming care to trans youth, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, and prevents trans athletes from participating in Ohio women’s sports. A grandfather clause would allow doctors who already started treatment on patients to continue.
There were only six transgender high school female student athletes last year in Ohio. Only three were approved to play for the spring sports season. There are approximately 400,000 athletes participating in 7-12 athletics in the state, according to Ohio High School Athletic Association. Those three trans athletes this past spring represent 0.0000075%.
No Ohio children’s hospital currently performs gender-affirming surgery on those under 18, and gender-affirming care is supported by every major medical organization in the United States. The Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, the Ohio Psychological Association, the Ohio Counseling Association, the Ohio Council of Behavioral Health Providers, the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians, Cleveland Clinic Children’s, Cincinnati Children’s, Nationwide Children’s, Dayton Children’s, Akron Children’s, the Ohio Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Physicians Action Network, all oppose HB 68.
Now it will be up to Gov. Mike DeWine to decide if he really wants to protect Ohio’s vulnerable children, as he always claims, or if he wants to go along with this cruelty toward them, against the sworn testimony of every major medical and children’s health association, against the testimony of every LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, and against the testimony of trans kids and their parents who spent their Wednesday in tears in the halls of the Ohio Statehouse.
He has 10 days to decide, meaning that as late as Dec. 23, DeWine could either follow the science, follow the medicine, follow the facts, follow the psychologists, guidance counselors, children’s hospitals, and the vocally expressed critical human needs of the LGBTQ+ community, or he could sign his name on to government-mandated bigotry and discrimination against the most vulnerable children in Ohio and their families.
Just before Christmas, DeWine will decide whether to be needlessly cruel, or whether to follow the best available science as well as basic human empathy and decency.
This bill will cost lives
Talk to geneticists, endocrinologists, gynecologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and every respected expert source, and they say the same thing: Intersex, trans, nonbinary, and other people on the continuum are all part of normal human variation.
But in 2023, 550 anti-transgender bills have been introduced across the U.S., more than in the past eight years combined. As the wider LGBTQ+ community has gained acceptance, political opportunists and right-wing religious zealots have banded together to harass and target the only members of the LGBTQ+ family that polls show majorities still won’t accept: our trans sisters and brothers.
For what? To stoke resentment, scapegoat a vulnerable community, “other” fellow Americans, dehumanize fellow human beings, and prey on forces of hate and bigotry for shrewd political gain. This is a base, primal ugliness coming from Ohio lawmakers. Their fear and intolerance consumes them, and they only know how to punch down, betraying a devastating and fundamental weakness of character.
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[1] Url:
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/12/15/ohio-gop-lawmakers-bully-trans-kids-for-christmas-shedding-themselves-of-any-basic-human-decency/
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