Two Red States Read The Room, Forego Punching Trans Children For A Minute

Because even most conservatives hate this shit.

Woke culture FTW! And by woke culture we mean "treating children with basic human decency and getting the hell out of their underpants and doctors' offices." In a season of repeated assaults on the health and safety of trans kids, let's celebrate the fact that two such bills died yesterday in the Montana and Florida legislatures. Gotta take your victories where you find 'em!

The GOP has decided the best new wedge issue for 2022 is to cancel trans kids. Because the biggest danger to the Republic, after BLM and "Marxism" of course, is this little girl .

‘I do not like spending my free time asking adults to make good choices’ — Watch 10-year-old Kai Shappley call out… https: //t.co/xaSPINAMTp

— NowThis (@NowThis) 1618518180.0 

This season's best-dressed bigots are styling themselves as protectors of "the children." They're either "helping" trans kids by barring them from receiving medically necessary treatment , even going to so far as to remove them from their homes if their parents accede to doctor's recommendations to administer gender-affirming care (FOR THE CHILDREN!), or they're protecting female athletes by barring trans kids from playing on the appropriate team. This requires them to invoke a horde of giant, hairy boys slapping on pink shirts and stealing the mountain of full college scholarships from girl athletes.

Spoiler alert: Neither one of those things exists.

As the parent of kids who play league sports in a state that allows for full participation by trans athletes, I can tell you from personal experience that this is not a thing . If approximately 1 person in 250 is transgender, and the average high school has 526 students , we're talking about two kids. One of them is probably a boy, in which case no one cares. And if the girl wants to participate in college sports, she has to be taking testosterone suppressants to be eligible to play at all under current NCAA rules .

Here's what the NCAA handbook says:

A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who is not taking testosterone related to gender transition may participate on a men's or women's team.

A trans female (MTF) transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatments related to gender transition may not compete on a women's team.

There's no problem here. The GOP is just shitting on trans kids for political advantage.

But this is a nicetimes post, so we get to write today that state legislators are finally starting to get the message that this might be bad politics — in addition to being unspeakably bad generally.

Yesterday in Montana HB 427 , a bill to deprive trans kids of healthcare, was indefinitely postponed in the Senate after eight Republicans crossed party lines to oppose it. And it appears that the legislators have grokked that they risk a fight with the Biden Department of Education if they try to exclude trans kids from school sports. The bill that's making its way through the legislature right now has a provision which would void the trans-exclusive provision if the DOE sends a letter informing the state of its intent to challenge it. There's also concern that the NCAA will make good on its threat to withhold sanctioned events from states that bar trans athletes. Because actions have consequences!

Florida bigots had high hopes for a bill which would have forced trans girls to undergo hormone therapy for a year before participating in school sports. Have you ever sipped your coffee in the bleachers at a U12 soccer game and wondered about the genitals of your child's teammates? Then this is the bill for you! (And you are filth.)

 SB 2012 empowered any member of the school community to challenge the gender of an athlete, forcing the child to submit to invasive medical testing or genital inspection . It was extremely gross, and the public outcry over it means it's extremely dead right now.

As Florida Politics notes, currently a trans student has to attest that their gender identity does not conform to their birth gender when requesting to play on the appropriate sports team, and only 11 kids in the entire state have done so. Because this is a "problem" which does not exist.

Republicans are going to keep coming with this bullshit. They've already passed anti-trans laws in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. But clearly they're getting the message that this isn't the magic bullet in the culture war that they dreamed it would be.

Keep shouting, it's working.

[ Billings Gazette / Florida Politics ]

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