The "Party Of Small Government" Demonstrates That It's Nothing Of The Sort
What business does the Oklahoma GOP have legislating who can be transgender?
There are many places where Republicans don’t belong. Perhaps the first place that leaps to mind is a doctor’s office. When politicians insert themselves into medical treatment, you can rest assured nothing good will come of it. In Oklahoma, Republican legislators have released SB129, which, if passed, would ban gender-affirming care under the age of 26.
While one might be able to understand a “concern” for the well-being of minors, legislating what adults under the age of 26 can or can’t do seems…problematical and heavy-handed. I’m not an attorney, so I can’t speak to case law or legal precedent, but from a decency perspective, this doesn't seem respectful of an adult’s right to self-determination.
And didn’t Republicans used to be all about free will?
A terrifying new bill was released late Wednesday night in Oklahoma that would ban gender affirming care for a huge number of people. Oklahoma SB129 would ban gender affirming care under the age of 26 years old. Gen Z would be entirely banned from gender affirming care under this bill. This prospect is terrifying because Gen Z has been the most open about transitioning and a bill like this would medically detransition a huge portion of Oklahoma’s transgender population. This comes after other states like New Hampshire and South Carolina saw bills filed to raise the age of transition to 21, and places like Florida utilized a sham medical board to ban gender affirming care under 18. Slowly, states are moving towards an outright ban on being transgender - it is for these reasons that people have begun calling the attacks on gender affirming care an attempt at genocide.
Anti-transgender bills have been on the upswing in the US for years now, and the push to pass “adult medical detransition” bills have only been discussed in hypothetical terms…until recent weeks. Now the theoretical has taken a turn toward the concrete.
These legal assaults on transgender individuals have occurred primarily in red states, where the LGBTQ community lacks an influential voice and the American Taliban is active and powerful.
Adult medical detransition bills have been a hypothetical escalation until recent weeks. Anti-trans organizations such as Genspect and Transgender Trend started pushing for 18-25 year old bans this year. Up until recently, the closest we have come was a representative in Missouri musing over increasing the age of the bill to 25 years old - a decision they declined to make. These earlier discussions of 25-and-under bans and indications in committee hearings in states across the United States lead me to make a call several months ago that at least one state would attempt to ban gender affirming care for this age group. If this bill passes, it would be the harshest anti-trans bill ever passed.
Oklahoma has been traveling down the path of attacking transgender rights for some time and spent much of 2022 passing multiple bills explicitly intended to target transgender individuals.
One bill threatened to defund hospitals if they provided gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Hospitals had no choice but to relent and cease providing gender-affirming care for that population.
Other bills passed in Oklahoma in 2022 included legislation banning transgender youth from bathrooms that don’t match their birth gender and a ban on transgender girls competing in sports.
The problem with Republicans passing these bills is that they understand little about the subject matter…outside the “ick” factor. What they fail to grasp is that gender-affirming care can keep young people alive.
Gender affirming care saves lives. One study in JAMA showed that gender affirming care reduced the risk of suicide by up to 73%. The consequences of banning this care, especially for such a large population, are horrifying. It would outright cause an increase in the death rate in the trans community via suicide. Mental anguish from withdrawal of gender affirming care and re-feminization or re-masculinization would be too much for many transgender people to take and the community would face one of its worst mental health crises leading to real physical harm.
Bills like this are designed to do two things - stoke fear in the trans community, and turn up the temperature to banning gender affirming care entirely by shifting the Overton window. Even if these bills don’t pass, they help drive trans people out of the state or back into hiding. Likewise, they make it easier for “moderates” to then react with banning the care for “only those under 21” or “only those under 18.” It is easy to see this effect when just 3 years ago, the main debate was over transgender people playing sports - now we are looking at states attempting to eliminate their transgender populations entirely.
The idea that states like Oklahoma may be looking to eliminate their transgender populations is the textbook definition of genocide. Republicans will deny this until their dying breaths, but when research shows that gender-affirming care can reduce the risk of suicide by up to 73%, that’s significant. And ignoring the significance of that number means being complicit in genocide.
Let’s first define “gender-affirming care” so we understand that it’s nothing sinister or evil.
An Oklahoma state senator with a history of authoring anti-trans legislation filed a new bill late on Wednesday that would make it illegal for a transgender person to get gender affirming medical care before the age of 26. Yes, 26 — an age at which one can legally smoke, drink, vote, get a tattoo, gamble, die in a war and, that last of age-related privileges (besides serving as US senator or president), rent a car while on vacation.
Gender-affirming care, in this case, refers to puberty blockers, hormones and surgery meant to help transgender people look on the outside the way they feel on the inside.
Oklahoma GOP state Sen. David Bullard's Millstone Act of 2023(named for a Bible passage reading “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea"), would also make it a felony for a physician to provide gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 26 and possibly result in the loss of their license to practice medicine.
The Millstone Act would also make it illegal to use public funds, such as Medicaid, to directly or indirectly provide gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 26. The only exceptions to this rule are for intersex people or for those detransitioning (put rather grossly as "[t]he treatment of any infection, injury, disease, or disorder that has been caused by or exacerbated by the performance of gender transition procedures, whether or not the gender transition procedure was performed in accordance with state and federal law").
So now the Party of Small Government wants to be in the business of telling people (and adults, no less) what they can or can’t do with their bodies and how they must live. Not that they understand the struggle of someone who knows in their heart that they were born into the wrong body and want only to be their true selves.
But Bullard has a more insidious plan in mind. It appears he wants to “time out” those wishing to transition, hence the 26-year-old designation.
Why 26? Well, sure, it could be that scientists say the brain isn't fully finished developing until the age of 25, but it's highly unlikely that the brain of someone who has known they are trans their entire life would finally finish developing some part of their brain that would make them suddenly be perfectly comfortable living as the gender they were assigned at birth. That would be a tad ridiculous.
It could be that this coincides with when people are no longer allowed to stay on their parents' insurance, as some bigoted parents might be upset by the idea of them using their insurance for gender-affirming medical care?
More likely it is because people like Bullard believe that being transgender is simply the hot new trend — like slap bracelets or fidget spinners — and that they will grow out of it by the time they are in their 20s and less beholden to peer pressure. Or, more insidiously, that the less likely young people are to interact with transgender people, the less likely they will be to feel comfortable coming out as transgender themselves. The goal of this, literally, is fewer out transgender people.
Bullard fails to understand that being transgender isn’t a “trend.” It’s not something that popped up on TikTik and suddenly went viral. No, it’s something that’s been part of humanity since we could recognize the difference between men and women. It’s just that it wasn’t widely acceptable until recently. For millenia, people suffered for being “different.”
Now, options are available to those wishing to transition and become the person they feel is their true self. And yet there are still those busybodies who consider it their right to weigh in on something that’s none of their damned business. They may not like or even approve of someone being transgender, but if that’s the case, that’s fine. It’s a free country, and they’re entitled to their opinion…bigoted and ignorant though it may be.
If the idea of being transgender offends you, then don’t transition. It’s a choice, and if someone chooses to subject themselves to that- and it’s by no means an easy or pleasant process- that’s their decision to make. No one else gets to cast a vote- especially not some Holy Roller Republican legislator convinced that his belief system is the be-all and end-all of moral and legal codes.
There is a tendency to want to associate a trans child being who they are to kids going through normal adolescent “this is who I am now, Mom!” phases — probably because that's the only comparison people who have never questioned their own gender can make. But it is a very, very different thing. Physicians and psychologists are very rarely involved in a child's decision to get unfortunate bangs or decide to become a Wiccan for a week after watching The Craft. Transitioning isn't anything anyone takes lightly — it's hardly as if a 9-year-old can walk into a doctor's office, declare themselves trans and get all the surgery and hormones they want. These are decisions made with care, based on the individual patient's needs. Which is exactly what all medical decisions should be.
The Oklahoma state legislature will not convene until February, when it will consider this bill, as well as another bill that would fine physicians $100,000 for providing gender affirming care to anyone under the age of 21.
The biggest thing Bullard’s bill will accomplish will be to drive more of those struggling with their gender identity to suicide. Then again, anyone sponsoring such a bill could hardly be accused of possessing an overabundance of compassion. Or, for that matter, knowledge about the subject matter.
If Bullard cared about the people his bill would impact, he’d think twice about introducing it and talk directly to those dealing with transgender individuals. He’d learn how difficult it is for those struggling with gender identity issues to navigate through life while dealing with the ridicule and the shame they too often face. He’d come to understand that transitioning isn’t an easy choice to make, nor is it a pleasant or painless process to endure. For someone to transition can mean months and years of surgeries and medications, and other medical procedures that most of us can’t begin to imagine.
Perhaps if people in positions of power like David Bullard could be bothered to learn about the people behind the transgender label, he might develop some compassion. Maybe it would humanize what he currently refuses to understand.
Because if being transgender was a “trend,” it certainly wouldn't have lasted long. There’s too much physical and emotional pain and anguish involved, especially when they have to deal with American Taliban Christian zealots like Bullard.
What would Republican Jesus do, eh?
"Small gov't" means government for a small number of vicious bigots and multi-millionaires.
I was not aware of the suicide statistic -- thanks for sharing that.
A thing I read a while ago (though, of course, I no longer have a link) is that the claim that TG athletes put "normal" female athletes at a disadvantage does not hold up when you look at the actual statistics.