Adult Kentucky Lawmakers Really Stick It To LGBTQ Kids

That'll show 'em!

Last week, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed an absolutely grotesque law banning transgender children from accessing gender- affirming care in the state. Unfortunately, the Kentucky Legislature has a Republican veto-proof majority, which means that they were able to override Beshear's veto and pass the law anyway, without his signature. (Beshear is a Democrat, but the same thing happened to Utah's Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican who did the right thing for a minute ... before he didn't.) 

Kentucky's new law is one of the most extreme anti-trans laws in the nation. It bars any kind of gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 18 and allows teachers to bully trans students by misgendering them. Patients that are currently receiving gender- affirming care will also be forced to detransition, which surely will not be traumatizing or anything. This is a horrible and cruel thing to do to these children, and the Republican House and Senate are loving every minute of it.

As if that isn't bad enough, it will ban any discussion of sexuality prior to sixth grade (we can assume this probably includes the fifth grade period talk we've all been getting since forever) and bans any discussions at any grade level regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. Basically they want schools to just act as if LGBTQ people do not exist.

Gender-affirming care is considered the standard of care for trans patients by the National Institutes of Health and the American Psychiatric Association . The American Medical Association both supports gender-affirming care as the standard and considers these sorts of laws to be an interference in a physician's obligation to provide the best care for a patient.

“Decisions about medical care belong within the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship,” the AMA wrote in a 2021 letter to state governors. “As with all medical interventions, physicians are guided by their ethical duty to act in the best interest of their patients and must tailor recommendations about specific interventions and the timing of those interventions to each patient’s unique circumstances. Such decisions must be sensitive to the child’s clinical situation, nurture the child’s short and long-term development, and balance the need to preserve the child’s opportunity to make important life choices autonomously in the future. We believe it is inappropriate and harmful for any state to legislatively dictate that certain transition-related services are never appropriate and limit the range of options physicians and families may consider when making decisions for pediatric patients."

It would be an incredible degree of hubris if these Republicans thought they knew better than these organizations do about what is best for gender-nonconforming children. But they don't — they claim to think they know better, but they don't really give a shit about these children or what happens to them. They are not well-meaning people who simply don't understand. They are angry at these children.

They would rather screw these kids up for life than live in a world in which they are expected to live side-by-side with trans people without being horrible to them. They desperately want to go back to the "before times" when they were not even expected to acknowledge the existence of trans people beyond sometimes making Austin Powers-style "That's a man, baby!" jokes. They want to go back to it being okay to make those jokes, to go back to ostracizing trans people, to not being expected to know anyone's pronouns. They don't want to have to contend with trans children because they don't want to feel like assholes who are picking on little kids — which is exactly what they are and what they are doing.

Hell, they want to go back to it being normal to bully kids for even appearing to be gay or trans or otherwise queer. They liked things that way, they liked that they got to be cool and popular just because they happened to be good at being horrible to people. They liked it when people laughed at their jokes instead of looking at them like they were monsters — especially when those people are their own kids.

The bill's sponsor, state Sen. Max Wise, insisted that the goal of the legislation “was to strengthen parental engagement and communication in children’s education while protecting the safety of our children." It's pretty clear that they are not talking about the parents of trans children. This, of course, sounds bizarre to anyone who realizes that it sure doesn't help the parents of trans children who do want them to get the care they need and that it certainly does not help gender-nonconforming children.

Democratic state Sen. Dr. Karen Berg, whose trans son, Henry Berg-Brousseau, committed suicide not too long ago, spoke out against the bill on Wednesday. “To say this is a bill protecting children is completely disingenuous,” she said. “And to call this a parents’ rights bill is an absolute despicable affront to me personally.”

Of course, it's not supposed to help parents like Karen Berg. It's not supposed to protect students like her son. No one who cared about the well-being of kids would want teachers to be allowed to bully them and embarrass them in front of their classmates.

It's supposed to protect bigoted parents who don't want their kids going to a school where trans kids are welcomed and treated kindly. Who want their own kids to be too scared to come out of the closet while they're under their roof, and who seriously think that if they simply never mention that LGBTQ people exist (unless they're making fun of them) that their kids will be straight and cisgender. That's who this bill is for. That is who this bill protects.

There are kind people in Kentucky, there are the people who got together and voted out Matt Bevin, there are the hundreds of Kentuckians who showed up to scream and scream what protecting children really means. 

“One of the most surreal videos of the entire resistance to anti-trans laws this year. Members of the gallery get arrested while shouting "trans lives matter" as Rep. Stevenson delivers a scathing rebuke on the House Floor. "Somebody will have to atone!" https: //t.co/DDhD4kcm5p”

— Erin Reed (@Erin Reed) 1680186095 

And hopefully that kindness will be catching, and their neighbors will join them to vote these other jackasses out of office — least of all, to protect the children.

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